Top 5 Things That Make Me Go "Aww, NO!"

This is a response to a post on my friend Joel's blog, one in an impressive series of Top 5 lists. Believe it or not - believe it - I've given this subject a great deal of thought, and have been waiting for just the right pulpit to come along so that I could seize it and condemn all of these stupid effing things from high atop it. And now I have a blog! So watch out, pet peeves, because you are about to get called out bigtime.

Number 5: Waiting on Very Elderly Women

I recognize that, as a society, we greatly undervalue the wisdom and the link to the past that our senior citizens represent, and I'm personally acquainted with a bunch of really badass old ladies (for instance, the great robinowski, den mother and world traveler extraordinaire, and my grandma, poet, adventurer, and mother of seven), but that doesn't mean I want to wait on their friends from book club. From the minute a gaggle of these these stink-eyed mamas shuffle gingerly into my section I know I'm in for a world of hurt. It takes them a solid 5 minutes to get settled in a table that they select for themselves, breezing past the 'please wait to be seated' sign on a cloud of some perfume they've been buying from the Macy's counter since 1964. I know before I even go over there that they will all demand, in a chorus of wavering crone voices, a freshly brewed pot of decaf coffee and glasses of water with no ice. Which is no big deal, I'm not the one who has to wash the lipstick smears off the rim of their mugs, and I'm also cuckoo for fish sandwiches, so I can totally understand why that is such a hot item with this demographic. The cole slaw isn't so much my thing, but I'm sure I'll get the hype eventually. It's all cool.
What really makes me say 'awww, @%$& no' when I see this gripe armada staggering towards one of my tables is that I know that for the next 45 minutes my every action will be the object of the most unyielding surveillance, everywhere I go, a concentrated beam of four unison grimaces will follow me, waiting for me to slip up. Sometimes I'll go to the kitchen and forget that they're out there, but when I reemerge their stony, impenetrable frowns hit me like a brick wall. It's like being held in a panopticon, but instead of driving you crazy with uncertainty, they drive you crazy with a total awareness of the ceaselessness with which you're being monitored.
Also, it's not cool to leave tips in quarters, and ten percent hasn't been the standard since like, the New Deal. Get with the times.

Number 4: Guys who tell you "I actually prefer it when women don't wear any makeup."

Is this supposed to make you seem like some kind of really elevated feminist ally? Am I supposed to be grateful that you're encouraging me to lay down the shackles of the patriarchy and thank you for creating this safe space for me to let my tits hang loose and my goddess self spread her wings? Should I be impressed with your ability to see beyond convention and glimpse the unique, radiant beauty that all women naturally possess? Do you even know what most women would look like if they never wore any makeup at all? All you - you, a man - are doing when you say that is creating another male-defined paradigm of what constitutes beauty that actually is impossible to embody, because 98% of women don't look like this when they're not wearing makeup. And you voicing that paradigm doesn't override everything we've been hearing from men about our beauty for all of our lives, it just provides a competing message that isn't necessarily positive. What it seems like you mean when you say that is really "I like women who are naturally flawless." Well, I like men who are over six feet tall with huge dicks and perfect musculature, but that's just not the way the world works all the time. "Confidence is sexy" is probably closer to what you mean, which is totally positive and true, and we try to take that message away when you tell us that women are more beautiful without makeup. But most of the time, it just gives us another reason to feel crappy that we don't look like Penelope Cruz.

Number 3: Insufficient Ketchup
Tragedy Strikes

As Joel points out in this post's sister post, Dane Cook is pretty wack. However, he says some things that are really "true, hence, funny" - that's another funny thing Dane Cook said. He does this bit about how when you're at a fast food restaurant and you don't have enough ketchup, your whole world ends, and you become this snivelling, single-minded Gollum until you have the requisite ketchup to pair with your french fries. Also, when you run out of ketchup, rules of society cease to bind you; you'll cut in line, interrupt conversations, steal, anything to get your angry fix.
I fucking love ketchup. I love it so much. I am so grateful that I was born in a country in which ketchup is a dietary staple. Normally I hate it when people approach me at work to ask me for things, but when they come seeking ketchup, I understand that their need is grave. Some people, however, don't understand the urgency of a no-ketchup situation. My least favorite thing in like, the world is when you're on a long car trip and you go to the drive-thru to get yourself a little snack to munch on while you sing along to Michael Jackson's Greatest Hits, especially the really emotional ones like "Man in the Mirror," and you don't realize until you're back on the highway that there isn't a single fucking ketchup packet in the bottom of your bag. Nothing makes me shakes my fists at an unjust God and cry NOOOO!! like Dr. Orpheus like being faced with the possibility of having to choke down some C-Nugs dry.

Number 2: Talking Animal Movies (Babe excluded) and other Trash:

In an ENVS class at college, my teacher once asked us what aspects of our childhood we remembered shaping our relationship with nature, and like 5 of us mentioned the movie Fern Gully. Kids are so impressionable, and filmmakers have such a cool opportunity to shape the future by making movies for them, and yet the movies they make are often so a) stupid and boring and not funny and b) laden with dangerous stereotypes. I know that no one's going to take the millions of dollars they would have spent on Beverly Hills Chiuaua and give it to PBS to start making awesome Sesame Street movies again, but don't our kids deserve better than this?

Number 1: BONO

I fuckin hate this smarmy asshole. But elaborating any more will make me sound like a bad person because he loves African babies and is trying to save them from AIDS. So just look at this picture and tell me you don't kind of want to punch this guy.