Things Around the House and in the Business World

Around the House
• Those little plugs of lotion and shampoo in pump or squirt bottles
• The last few paper towels that curl in annoying ways while you try to use them
• Floating dishes that move around in the sink while you wash them, causing water to spray all over everything
• re-sealable bags and tear-off strips
• Transformers on appliances that eat up all your sockets
• Remote controls
• Fancy kitchen faucets
• The scrolling menu on cable TV
• When your glass sticks to the coaster and it drips everywhere
• Videotape cases, especially the two buttons
• thermostats
• The "Open Here" spout of paper drink cartons that always gets messed up and torn when you open it
• Can openers, because that little magnet is the dirtiest inch in the house, and because the lid always falls into the can and you have to fish it out by hand
• Men’s designer colognes
• Spray nozzles. They all clog.
• Spice racks, especially the little jars and how greasy and dusty they get and the labels fall off
• Overly-manicured lawns
• Appliances used by people to maintain overly manicured lawns, such as leaf blowers
• The serrated metal strips on plastic wrap and foil and those zip-lock strips that don't work on baggies
• Cotton in pill bottles
• Lids that don’t fit their disposable cups, and cups that crumble and break, spilling their contents over the user
• Postage stamps
• Any tall kitchen bag that isn't drawstring
• Being out of stamps
• Price tags and the sticky gum that doesn’t come off.
• Shoulder straps
• Bra straps
• Eggs and bread because they should be sold in smaller units
• Vacuum cleaners, except Hoover Wind Tunnels, and especiall vacuum cleaner cords
• Reading glasses, especially those tiny screws that are screwed in upside down and fall out so you can’t see them and if you could see them you wouldn’t need eyeglasses to begin with.
• The little strips on official envelopes that say “tear off strip before opening” and you can’t and it gets all chewed up
• The control buttons on my Walkman because when I use them I never know which way the tape is going.
• Personal care products that have “wings”
• The One Book
• Shower stall organizers
• Japanese shoji screens
• Energy savers. On anything.
• Telephones and answering machines and anything else having to do with them, and telephone companies, too.
• Telephone recordings that say over and over, “your call is important to us” and “it will just be one more moment”
• The one single gummed up hair that gets wrapped around the end of a toothpaste tube and you have to unravel it to get it off.
• CD wrappings which consist of a cellophane wrapper, a long sticky label, and a little Mylar strip and you can’t get them off. They have to sell a gadget to cut through them, which tells you that they’re so annoying you need a gadget to get them off, but once you get the wrapper off with the gadget they are less annoying.
• Faulty bathroom fixtures, for example, toilets, towel holders, toilet paper dispensers, soap dispensers, and faucets, including electronic sensors,
• Low water pressure, and no hot water, too
• Safety caps on bottles
• Pantyhose, except Queen-sized
The Business World
• Agribusiness entities, like ConAgra. Especially meatpacking companies.
• Car company mergers: Daimler-Benz, Chrysler, Rolls-Royce
• Nike CEO and alleged slave labor king Phil Knight (he gets a second listing under Sports)
• Starbucks
• Microsoft Corporation, called by its competition as “the Dark Side”
• Marriott Corporation
• ‘Team Rodent’: Disney, or ‘Mauschwitz’ to those who work there
• The stock market, especially ‘corrections’ DC Cablevision
• Raytheon, except for Doug
• 7 Eleven/Southland Corp.
• Tyson foods
• Seagram’s heir and poser movie mogul Edgar Bronfman, Jr.
• Safeway, especially the one at 17th and Corcoran
• Blockbuster
• MCI, especially their multiple solicitations for business
• Outback restaurants
• Corporations
• Banks and banking, especially the requirement at some banks for customers to leave their thumb print on checks
• CVS drugstores
• Businesses that take down your phone number and then they don’t call you when there’s a screw-up
• Amazon.com vs. Barnes & Noble.com
• Beauty pageant pimp Donald Trump
• Dutch grocery conglomerate Royal Ahold, which bought Giant Food
• 101-10 dial around numbers and the corporations who hide behind them.
• Macy’s and their Thanksgiving Day Parade
• Applebee’s
• All commercials using old songs from the 70s
• The “Welcome to Our World of Toys” song from FAO Schwartz
• The Cozy Shack pudding jingle and the Daisy Sour Cream commercials, "What would you do for a dollop?"
• The sign in 500,000 Chinese restaurants that says, “No check please”