“Things I Hate” is back again, earlier than expected. Today I am going to step off the Noble Eightfold Path and romp in the brambles and stinkweed of the not-so-noble big asshole path.

• Casey Affleck’s voice. I’m listening to an interview with him right now. I want to put him in a room with John Mayer and they can discuss life without testicles.
• News burnout. Every morning the Iraqis blow themselves up, Musharraf straightens a crease from his jacket and we say ‘oh, how civillized’, Putin sinks deeper and deeper into fantastical spy novel behavior and bumps off his detractors with defenestration and polonium 210, the Palestinians struggle against the entire planet to get their country back and they will never succeed because you cannot win against the entire planet. It wears me out. It is exhausting to listen to the news, to hear about what is happening and and know there is nothing that can be done. The Israelis will continue to poke the Palestinians for their own amusement, Putin will even crazier ways to kill people and say “what? me? no way! I am crazy for awesomeness!”, Musharraf will play ‘democratic election’ out of one side of his mouth and ‘military coup’ out the other and Iraq will continue to explode 40 people at a time.
  And all the while, the soil of Darfur will continue to absorb blood in the same disinterested way it always has. That doesn’t even hit the morning news that often, it doesn’t really affect our economy so there’s not much interest.
• The idea that ‘fair’ and ‘justice’ are pretty much just made up concepts and their definitions can change from nation to nation, person to person, minute to minute. There is no math in ‘fair’ and you cannot calculate ‘justice’. They are not universal. I hate that.
• Social Anxiety.
• Forgetting my carrots at home and not being able to have them for lunch.
• Having to work on the days that are the most perfect days for the dog park
• that I don’t live in the bizarro universe of high powered CEOs. If I make a huge mistake at work that will cost the company millions of dollars I will get fired and would probably never work again. In bizarro big money universe a CEO can grossly miscalculate the subprime mortgage market, screw his company and retire and live on lollipop island. An Island funded by a gigantic multimillion dollar golden parachute.
  and while I am on the subject, let me never ever hear that a large corporation (Wal-mart) can’t pay their employees more or provide benefits or humane working environments because spending that money would make them less competitive. I don’t want to hear that so long as the people on the top are making such obscene salaries. you live in an 8 million room super moon house? you can’t afford to have your products produced by people making a living wage? hmmmmmm you can have polo shirts constructed by uneducated vietnamese orphans for about $1.50 a unit and you can sell them for $37 each? but you can’t pay the kids more because….why? you need more space toilets in your house? Man, entire fucking nations need to unionize because so long as there is a glut of poverty stricken, uneducated people willing to work for 12 cents a day and a sheet of scratch and sniff stickers, companies are going to continue these practices (and say “oh look at how good we are! we brought 12 cents and some stickers to this previously impoverished neighborhood! it doesn’t matter that if one gets sick or injured they are just fired and replaced! Americans need their $37 shirts!”).
• Ghengis is dead