Stuff you hate (aka: the new f. you thread)

[oncegompedtwiceshy]

Despite your nebulous use of the word "some" and the dangerous of incorrect measurements, I will say Sarah that your remedy worked. I have also been banned from the elevator at work for my gastronomic expressiveness.

[Sarah]

I'm glad.  I use this as my last-resort remedy, because of all the sodium, but it has never failed me yet.

[Martin]

As some of you know, I edit the online version of an academic film journal, which basically means I receive, review and publish essays and festival reports to our website, stuff we can't fit in the printed journal. And I'm constantly amazed at the incompetence of some of our contributors. On a formal writing/editing level, that is - they usually know their subjects very well. Writers can be a sloppy, lazy bunch as it is - but throw in "middle-aged", "academic" AND "written for the web" into the mix and you got a headache-inducing combo. You'd think these professional people in their 40s-50s knew better than to use comic sans, embed images in Word documents, use [space] instead of [tab] and [............] instead of [...], but no. Enough to make your head spin. I spend way more time on these texts than I should.

Anyway. Short story long. Something that's really appreciated by me as an editor is when writers supply their own images. Images can be a bitch to track down, even with Google. So this morning I was thrilled when I got an essay in my Inbox with accompanying images. Perfect! Then I looked at the images. This is the actual size of one of them:



This guy probably spent a good amount of time tracking these thumbnails down too. What's even more hilarious frustrating is that he sent like fifteen images - all about the same size - for a piece that warrants perhaps three.

I know, I whine, this is a tiny issue and I can't believe I wrote this much about it. But I'm sure some of you can relate, especially if you work with the web or with people who still, in 2009, have no idea how images, documents or formatting work.

[Barry Egan]

So at work today I rented this special lens called the Abakus Stadium lens to the Discovery Channel, who in the past have used it for the "in-bowl" shots on Puppy Bowl.

"So you are you guys doing pickups on Puppy Bowl?", I ask.

"No, this for a new show.  It's going to be about hoarders!"

"Wait, another show about Hoarders?"

"Yeah.  Ours is going to be way better than A&E's"

So uh, look out for that, folks.

[kiemzi]

But, that doesn't make any sense! The "Arts & Entertainment" network has already helped us "Discover" the "Entertainment" of other people's misery. Or wait... is "Hoarders" art?

Besides, when is "Discovery" going to realize that they're sitting on a goldmine and just become the 24 hour "Puppy Bowl" network?

[Big Plastic Head]

Waking up in the morning to find out that your hot water heater pipe has frozen.

[erika]

Not every member of our immediate family is going to be able to come to all of your family dinners. There are 20 of us.

So if only, say, six of us can come, try not to mope the entire time about the remainder of the people not making it out. Kind of takes the fun away from family time. And, it's a shitty way to tell us that our presence isn't appreciated unless everyone else shows up too.

Because, you see, next year NO ONE will show and you will really have something to complain about.

[Reeleyes]

I hate vague emergency texts like "Accident at work, in the hospital, it's broken pretty bad. Call you later" my brother sent this to me an hour ago... WTF?!!

[fonpr]

I hate vague emergency texts like "Accident at work, in the hospital, it's broken pretty bad. Call you later" my brother sent this to me an hour ago... WTF?!!

Probably not his finger, huh?

[Bryan]

F. you, Old Navy, for foisting the Super Modelquins on us. Is this a Canadian ad campaign, or do you have it in the U.S., too? It kinda smells Canadian.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQ9zhOaEIrw

What effect are they going for here? Disgust? Repulsion? Alarm? This is one of the most unsettling ads ever. It falls pretty neatly into the category of the "uncanny," not something that any advertiser should be striving for.

[Under The Rug]

The officials at the University of Chicago. They can't get their servers straight for admissions day, can't send out notification emails to applicants for hours for the second time (like they said they would), and then defer me when they admit: "I can't believe it! I'm going to HOGWARTS!!!!" (paraphrase).

[erika]

I'm sitting here with all these gifts, food and money I collected for an adopt a family program. So I call the nonprofit I'm working with to find out when I can drop them off, and they say no later than 4:30 pm, because that's when they go home for the day. Doesn't matter that most people have to work til 5 or later, and that I'll have to take time of work during the busiest week of the year to go do this. No need to make it easy for us volunteers.

[Andy]

you should volunteer to make their life a little easier and just follow the rules.

[JonFromMaplewood]

I hate the soda machine at work. Yesterday, it dispensed a soda can that, upon coming out, promptly exploded in my face.

[erika]

you should volunteer to make their life a little easier and just follow the rules.

Nobody said I wasn't taking the obligatory time off work to follow their rules.