200 Annoyances

181. Old people who are just now reaching the stage of email proficiency where it seems like a great idea to send out massive amounts of forwards to everyone they know.

182. The bottom third of the tortilla bag.

183. Sitting at the exact jurisdictional border of two waiters, and neither thinks he's covering your table.

184. People who use the counterfeit verification pen on small bills.

185. People who, when choosing donuts for the dozen-donut box, round out the selection with a coconut donut and a peanut donut. This is done out of some misguided belief that there needs to be complete variety in the donut box, and ignores the reality that not a single person on earth prefers the peanut or coconut donut. If I ran the show, when people chose one of these donuts, the clerks would be instructed to say "Ma'am, are you SURE you want a peanut donut?"

186. Celebrity game show contestants who play for animal charities.

187. A pick-up or SUV whose headlights are at the exact altitude to bounce off my rear view mirror directly into my pupils.

188. Wikipedia entries that inform me, in scholarly prose, that whatever I'm looking up is also the name of a manga/anime/videogame character/band/soap opera episode title/nickname of a wrestler/name of a fictional town in a graphic novel, etc. Who. gives. a. SHIT. Can wikipedia please create a separate site for this meaningless information?

189. Getting the white gumball.

190. When your birthday is too close to Christmas.

191. Foul smelling water in the gas station courtesy window wipe bucket.

192. Bad action/fantasy/sci-fi movies that have the arrogance to end with a sequel tease when it should have been abundantly clear to everyone that there would be no sequel.

193. Kids who make a big production out of adjusting the side mirrors to impress the driving tester.

194. That wheezing laugh. The one fat people have where it sounds like a pig is dying.

195. When news anchors ask their field reporters to describe something they're witnessing on a scale of 1 to 10, no reporter has ever said 4. Or 6. Really the whole 3 through 7 range is never used. This bugs me.

196. These spam emails with subject lines like "RE: your dental plan". Doesn't it cross the spammers minds that this implies I wrote an email with the subject line: "your dental plan"? Why would I write an email whose subject line is "your dental plan"? Wouldn't it be "my dental plan"? This seems like such a basic error yet I see it all the time. Try harder, spammers. Work for it.

197. People who take the elevator to the second floor at the gym.

198. Google not customizing its logo for Memorial Day or Veterans Day.

199. "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." Am I the only one who has always secretly felt that this just isn't a great quote? That the sentiment isn't really that profound? That the word choice was pedestrian? That its very quotability makes it seem manufactured and canned? Even when I was kid, I always thought "That was the best he could do?" I mean, I can't say anything, cause it's a "Great Quote". But c'mon. We needed a home run that day, and this wasn't it.

200. For the entire 20 year lifespan of the VCR, people have made the casual claim that they could make me a copy of a VHS tape. "Oh don't worry," they'd say. "I'll just hook up two VCRs together." But it never, ever happened. Was there any claim on earth more frequently made but with less actual follow through than the offer from a friend to dub a VHS tape to another VHS tape via linked VCRs? No one ever, not even once, ever did it. Granted, VCRs are almost entirely obsolete now, but it just must be stated for the record that no one, despite thousands of casual promises to the contrary, actually linked up 2 VCRs to make their buddy a copy of something, ever. And don't bother writing me saying that you did do it, and what the hell am I talking about. Think about it. Did you *really* hook up two VCRs at home to dub something? You really brought the bedroom VCR into the living room and sat there on the rug trying to make sense of all the cables? No. No you didn't. So why did you tell people you could? You just wasted their time.