Things that Piss me off..

I’ve been away from Youngmanridge for quite some time.  I haven’t published or written an article for the site in well over four years.  It’s been so long that since the last time we tangoed that I met a girl and got married, started a family, switched jobs, and finished my bachelor’s degree.  In order to kind of ease my self back into the game, I figured that I would write a short article about things that I see in public on a regular basis that piss me off.  It’s kind of blogish and a little self-indulgent, but I haven’t had the time to tackle the review for the last Joe Castro flick that we watched and I wanted to add some new content to the site.  Besides, “converting” our old articles to the new format can get a bit tedious so I’m hoping that this will be a refreshing break that will help recharge my conversion batteries.

On with the self-indulgent blog post…

This is perhaps one of my biggest pet peeves.  I took this picture with my cell phone so it probably doesn’t illustrate my point entirely, but it should suffice.  By my count, the cart in the picture is about 3 or 4 parking spots away from the cart return.  Is it really that hard to take an extra minute or two to put the cart where it belongs?  It always chaps my hide when I think I’ve stumbled upon a prime parking spot only to be foiled by a stray shopping cart.  It pisses me off even more when the freaking cart return is ultra close.   I understand that there aren’t always cart returns that are in a convenient location and that it doesn’t make sense to trek all over a scorching hot parking lot just to return a cart.  However, one of the grocery stores by my house has a plethora of cart returns.  There might even be more of them than there are carts in the store and people still can’t walk an extra 5 feet.  I’ve seen carts that were so close to the return that they could have been accidentally swallowed by the cart return if someone didn’t willingly stop them.

I’m pretty sure that most rational and educated human beings hate tagging.  To borrow an idea from my Dad, it’s the human equivalent of a dog lifting his leg to mark territory.  It’s also one of those things you just kind of have to live with and if you are lucky, your local government has a good graffiti clean up program.  I’ve had my fence tagged and the sidewalk near my house has been hit a few times.  While it certainly upsets me a bit, I know I can call the graffiti hotline and it will be cleaned up fairly quickly.    What really gets me is some of the objects that taggers choose to leave their illegible marks on.  Not too long ago, I had someone tag a tree on my side yard.  How fucking retarded do you have to be to tag a tree?  My dog has better impulse control and he pisses on everything.

If you don’t know what you are looking at in the picture above, it’s a bin that people use to donate used clothes and shoes to those in need.  They are usually located in shopping centers or in front of stores.  I’m not exactly sure who the items go to or how they are collected, but I would like to assume that the operation is on the up and up.  I actually saw people drop stuff into this very bin the other day, so I at least have some sort of evidence that they are being used.  Once again, how fucking retarded do you have to be to tag something like this?  Shouldn’t there be a special place in hell for someone that defaces something that is obviously there to help people?  I know taggers are generally idiotic kids with genetic stock from the shallow end of the gene pool.  Still, a pretty simple code of ethics should be in order.

1. First and foremost, you shouldn’t deface property that doesn’t belong to you, but if you do..
2. Don’t tag living things.
3. Don’t tag things that help people out.  Do you really need to “claim” the wall at the local soup kitchen?  Isn’t that sort of like stealing a 1972 Ford Pinto from an old man that pees on himself?  It’s just cruel and you don’t really gain anything from it.

I’m sure more could and should be added to the list, but these are fairly simple rules that even a retarded tagger can follow.  Those that break these rules should have to spend eternity watching an endless reel of Joe Castro movies.  It might be cruel and unusual punishment, but does someone that tags a tree or a bin that collects clothes for the needy really deserve compassion?

Of course, after reading this article, the taggers in this case might not be so bad after all.  It’s still a jackass move and I’m pretty sure  the common tagger doesn’t hit up Google before they go on a tagging run.

I just had to add this picture into the article.  A few days after I wrote my tagging rant, I was taking the dogs for a walk and came across a tagged tree in my neighborhood.  I’m pretty sure that my dog wanted to piss on this tree to make his mark, but I yanked on his leash and that was that.  Too bad there isn’t a human equivalent of the choke chain….

I took this picture a few years back while on vacation with my wife (who was my girlfriend at the time).  I know it is really hard to tell in this picture, but the car is parked right smack in the middle of two parking spots.  There is really no excuse for this kind of stuff.  It may be hard to tell, but the parking spots at this particular place were pretty damned spacious.  I was originally going to write that I would grant a little leeway to an older driver with bad eyes, but they shouldn’t be driving in the first place and if they are they certainly shouldn’t be driving anything bigger than a Hoveround. I always want to know what makes someone think that they are so special that they should  be able to take up two parking spots.  At least they aren’t as bad as the jackasses who park in handicapped spots when they aren’t handicapped.

Cigarette butts are the focus of this picture, but the overall theme of this rant has to do more with litter (and is somewhat related to my shopping cart rant).  This pic was taken in the parking lot at a 7-11.  If you know anything about convienence stores, they usually aren’t lacking in trash receptacles.  Though I may be wrong, my brain keeps telling me that there are trash cans on either side of the door at the 7-11 where this picture was taken.  I know for damn sure that there is at least 1 right by the door, which was probably less than 20 feet from this pile of butts.  What gets me even more is that most of the time, people stop at 7-11 because they are going into the store (I know there are exceptions).  This person probably went in to buy a pack of smokes and walked by the trash can.

I could make the list way longer if I really tried.  People that bump their music while riding through neighborhoods at ungodly hours.  Neighbors that let their dogs bark for minutes that almost turn into hours at 4:30am.  Seriously, I could write a thesis on this crap but I’ll leave at this:  The things that piss me off generally have to do with being considerate.  Putting a cart in a cart return isn’t hard.  Throwing away your trash is pretty easy.  A tagger that vandalizes someone elses property is an asshole.  Parking in two spots when it isn’t necessary is selfish and rude.  Thinking about someone else for 2.2 seconds isn’t a bad thing folks.