[Blarg]

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The sober female friend of a drunk girl. The drunk one wants to party, have an orgy, do all kinds of outlandish things...you could be just getting ready to leave the bar with her...all 5 of you...and then some b!tch comes up and says..."Come on Shellie, I'm taking you home. I promised so-and-so that you'd get home safely"

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That was a good one.

Here are some of mine.

8 inches of pencil and a quarter inch of eraser.

People who leave the faucet dripping. What's so hard about just shutting the darn thing off all the way? You're already right there in the room -- you're touching the darn thing already!

People who leave empty milk cartons in the fridge, or that last 100th of an inch because they don't want to make it look like they took the last of it.

People who when you buy a pizza, eat as fast as they can so they can eat twice as many slices as anyone else while still paying the same cost when you split the bill.

People who try to short the bill at a restaurant.

People who decide the top or bottom of the escalator is the perfect place to take stock of the planet, consider their options, light up a smoke, make a call on their cell phone, and just generally show the world how into themselves they are and how the rest of us can kiss their ass.

The poker table equivalent -- the guy who holds the whole table hostage by waiting till the action is on him to start telling a story. In a home game, a variation of this is picking that time to run to get a beer or some cookies or whatever.

People who walk into any place and think everyone owes them attention. This is often done by street bums and racists(often the same people), who think that if you haven't noticed them and instantly made them an intimate and welcome part of your life, you're "disrespecting" them or somehow owe them an apology for living. An example: I remember reading the newspaper on my long subway ride home one day and some kid saying loudly to me, "Hey, don't be down because I'm brown." I didn't know when he got on the subway car, and can't say I cared -- I hadn't made eye contact with anyone for probably 15 minutes or more -- but apparently our relationship was a lot more important and symbolic to him than it was to me. I didn't even know we had one; in my ignorance I had thought I was just reading a newspaper, not engaging in an aggressive and unspoken dialogue with someone who deserved much better from me. How foolish of me!

Old ladies who think they're entitled to stab you with the ends of their umbrellas, step on your feet, ram their shopping carts into you or whatever, without ever apologizing. This behavior is exclusive to old ladies; I have absolutely never seen an old man do it, but have seen decades of this pointless and angry aggression from old ladies.

Store clerks who treat you like gold when you wear a nice crisp shirt and like crap when you wear a t-shirt.

Dirty dishes, especially dirty silverware. Ever see a piece of rice or something stuck on a fork and ask for a fresh one? I expect better from a restaurant. Worse is when it's at someone's house, though. I don't want to embarass the host, but really get grossed out by dirty silverware and don't want to eat off it. Ever have the host come back with ANOTHER dirty fork? NOW what do you do? (sigh) It REALLY detracts from the meal for me. It's not quite as bad, but I don't like getting a supposedly clean wine glass that has lipstick on it either. Many people just have no standards when it comes to cleanliness. Washing a dish clean really isn't hard, and it seems the least you can do for a guest is offer them clean dishes if you're going to feed them.

Hmm..what else...people who let their kids scream in restaurants. Or anywhere else, really, but restaurants are the worst. That's supposed to be normal and a sign of good parenting, so I guess I'm a terrible person who knows nothing.

People who let their dogs poop on your lawn.

People who allow vicious behavior in their dogs or train them for it, especially when they let those dogs out.

Salesmen of any type coming up to your table in restaurants. You can get guys coming up who want to take a picture of you with your date, then a guy wants you to buy roses, then the first guy comes by to see if you've changed your mind about the pictures, then a guy comes up wanting to sell you cigars -- Jesus Christ! Talk about being intrusive and destroying the experience. Restaurant owners who put up with this crap should be shot.

Oh, and my three rules for bums and real or imagined "charities" -- I will NOT give money for any reason in three places -- when I'm on the toilet, when I'm in traffic, and when I'm eating. These are sacred activities, and it's either extremely inconsiderate or outright dangerous to be begging for money at those points.

Ok that's enough for now.