Prank Callers

My grievance at this particular sub-class of society began this morning, with my first day of holidays... thought I'd sleep in and really enjoy it, but no a person called at 8am, granted it was a wrong number but really it could have been a prank caller, and that was enough to shit me. How hard is it to press correct numbers in a sequential formation, people who can't do it should get their fingers blown off.



Interestingly, most prank calls (in England) are made by people living in London, yet it is Birmingham that receives the most prank calls. Generally it is men who are most gullible and who fall for pranksters more often, yet it is females that most often make prank calls. One final fact, it is indeed a felony in the US to make prank phone calls, with penalties of up to two years.

Now, back to my episode of Crank Yankers

Slow Internet Connection

My Parents would say that I shouldn't complain, that back in their day you had to walk a mile to just connect the dial up. But really when I think about it, internet infiltrates nearly every aspect of our lives. I can drink milk without internet, that's about it. The least it can do is to work at a somewhat speedy pace. Stupid lag.



Spyware can dramatically slow down your Internet connection. Every Internet connection has a limited amount of data it can transfer at any one time. All spyware communicates with the Internet thereby using up some of your available Internet communication. Mind you through the internet 13.3% of users in the US become victims of identity theft, which is also something that pisses me off!

Press refresh if you dare!

Hangovers

It seems a bit ridiculous that people are unable to drink to their merry delight without suffering some form of aftershock. Headaches, drymouth, tinnitus and general wobbles accompany a day post-drinking and it angers me that scientists have yet to come up with anti-hangover alcohol....hop to it einstein!



The biggest cost in fact of hangovers is not to the people enduring them but to the everyday consumer. In the United States, related absenteeism and poor job performance cost $148 billion annually (average annual cost per working adult, $2000). Although hangover is associated with alcoholism, most of its cost is incurred by the light-to-moderate drinker.

Your hangover is costing you money!

Notes that aren't in tune

Now I'm a bit of a music nerd, and whilst I don't have perfect pitch, in my school bands I've had my fair share of icky notes but my god there are some doozies. Akin to babies playing violins whilst screaming, out of tune notes are disgusting to ears and most annoyingly easily prevented through tuning, and generally proper breathing! Nothing is worse than the sharp breath in every time somebody hits a dodgy note




In fact it was Cher in her song Believe that was first to use Auto-Tune a common industry tool in the 1980s however it wasn't until the turn of the century that this tool used to make people sound vocally correct was used. Nowadays artists such as T-Pain use Auto-tune as regular practice, however many are against such as Jay-Z and his DOA album (Death of Auto-tune)

Natural Disasters

This may seem silly, but really how stupid are natural disasters. Regular things and people on this planet do their best to lead honest lives and to just stay out of each others way, then BAM! Flash Flood, Bushfire and Hurricane! Natural Disasters are not only cruel, but due to the general way of the world for some reason they always end up affecting the same hapless people, who can't afford to rebuild. Plus they make things smell gross, and that in itself angers me.

By estimates the 2004 Sumatra earthquake cost some $14 billion

2005 Katrina cause $125billion. In terms of the cost in human lives the Laki Volcano explosion on Iceland killed only 9000 in 1783, however this represented 1/4 of the Icelandic population. Some 10,000 people per year are killed by Earthquakes.

Natural Disasters, bastards!

Speaking German

Now this may seem like a weird thing to be angry about, but really as a non-native speaker of the language it's as hard as the dorky kid trying to be cool. The issue I have is that there's a lot to think about. Is it regular or irregular, what tense is it in, is there a modal verb, what type is the preposition, is the person i'm speaking to higher in rank and position to me. How the hell am I supposed to spell/say that word.





German as a language is spoken by over 100 million people. The Standard German is spoken by educated people everywhere, but on top of that you have several different dialect regions with their own words, contractions and other expressions. Added to this Germans have a penchant for not only changing the spelling of their words, but joining words together such as this beauty Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz which means beef labelling oversight transfer law.

You just can't win when it comes to learning German.

Rude People

It's a daily thing, people on the street, in shops even in your own house are often less than polite. Even in a day where people do have high-stress jobs it doesn't mean that rudeness is acceptable, and it angers people. Ironically it is this anger and stress that causes people to "be short" with unblinking customer service attendees who normally get the rude end of the schtick (although i don't imagine there really is a polite stick)

Some 8 out of 10 Americans believe rudeness is caused by bad parenting.

43% of people do not turn off their mobile phone in cinemas

And the icing on the insolent cake. 90% of drivers will experience an aggressive driving incident with Road Rage being the US' #1 Traffic incident.

Manners please.

Leaving the Seat Up

As a female, men leaving the seat up is one of the most major inconveniences known to me. Not only is it gross when we have to touch the underside of a toilet seat, but the sheer laziness of the previous user ensures the ire of the female toilet going world. One of the dirtiest public toilets in the world, the Lincoln Memorial Toilets (I kid you not) was riddled with upstanding seats... in a female bathroom no less
the mind boggles!


In light of this anger... have some toilet related facts.
1. The first toilet in a row is the least used, and most often cleaned
2. A person spends an average 3 years on the toilet
3. The toilet handle in a public bathroom can leave up to 40,000 germs per square inch

It seems we still may have a while to go from Sir Thomas Crapper, inventor of the toilet... who I'm sure after first use, failed to return the seat to the proper position!

Sore Feet

So I recently started a new job, I work in a supermarket as a "checkout chick" which I actually really enjoy, because I get to complain to people and make them listen as I hold their groceries hostage. One side effect of this though is really bad foot pain from long haul standing. When asking some of the more seasoned workers what they did to stop the pain, they replied "we don't." Don't think I've ever been more disappointed in an answer.





One of the most painful foot conditions, trench foot came about in the First World War with the unsanitary conditions in the trenches. Treatments included rubbing whale blubber on the feet of soldiers as a type of coating, but it was eventually found that this in fact sped up the onset of trench foot due to sweating.

It was also reported that there were cases of trench foot at the 2007 Glastonbury Festival

Might just go soak mine in a bucket of warm water!