Things I Hate!

Yes, of course, I hate genocide, climate apocalypse, the unequal distribution of wealth, etc. This is intended to be a relatively light list (in rough order of most to least hated) from someone of pretty considerable privilege.

1. The phrase “We are so fucked" - Usually uttered by people who are not, in fact, so fucked. What it really means is, "I don't want to fight against injustice."

2. Pop ups - We managed to do away with pop-up ads. Why can't we obliterate those aggravating suggestions to sign up for Pitchfork New Music Friday or whatever?  If you know a program that blocks these irritants, tell me tell me do! A perfect segue into...

3. Signing up/in everywhere - Every site wants your email address and yet another password. Even worse, every site is now an app. Question: why? Why do you need an app for YouTube? Why does Pitchfork have an app? (Okay, I know why but ARGH!) And what's with this cloud business? Use your Apple ID login or your Gmail account on your new iPhone to access your junk on the cloud. No! Let ME do it! I spend half of my life on data migration anyway so I'll drag my pix over thank you very much.

4. Vagueposting - When it's not passive-aggressive, it's flat-out annoying. You do you. But never bitch about lack of engagement in my digital presence. 

5. Leaf blowers - Listen, I've internalized so much noisy music/noise that I regularly interpret non-musical sounds as music, e.g. the automatic garage door in my childhood home reminds me of a song from the excellent first half of My Bloody Valentine's Isn't Anything (Creation, 1988). But leaf blowers are a gas-powered menace, strafing the environment for miles around with its humming miasma. I'm pleased to learn that several states are looking to outlaw them. 

6. Onion Fascism (and perhaps an encroaching Cheese Fascism) - I've long since abandoned my run for the mayor of Sherman, Texas on the Stop Onion Fascism Now platform. But I'll forever rue the many minutes I've spent picking onions out of a dish, onions that the menu or packaging never signposted! This is especially upsetting since I give unto onions but they never give unto me. I like onions when they're fried to funk. I love French onion soup and salsa, sofrito, pico de gallo, etc. I dig green onions and chives. So DON'T be putting them in my food without telling me! A friend tried to convince me that you don't need to tell anyone that onions will be in their food since onions form a part of mirepoix, hence, they're a basic flavor base. As the French say, neauxp! Force an onion into my cream cheese and broccoli omelette (hi, The Omelettry in Austin!) and I'll be shoving unannounced octopus in all of your dishes! Cheese is poised to take over onion's fascist bent nowadays. I love cheese. But so many American restaurants ram it into all of their sandwiches. A French Dip with cheese? Tastes fine but too heavy overall. 

7. Crappy on/off switches - The design of my coffee pot and bedroom fan forces you to hold the entire apparatus in order to turn it on or off. And having to dip your whole damn arm down or up a lamp shade to turn the lamp on or off is why The Clapper was invented. I thought all that's solid was supposed to melt into air.

8. The words “traveling” and “shower” - Because they are insufficient descriptors. No one likes traveling*; they like being in different places. And at the very least, a "shower" should be called a "shower and dry" since the toweling off must be incorporated into the activity, especially in the summer when you can never get fully dry. *Yes yes, train/plane/car rides can be fun and even productive. But face it - if you could snap your fingers and be in Paris, you'd take that over a pleasant 7-hour plane ride (with many hours attached for the car ride to the airport, getting through TSA and customs, waiting to board/take off, etc.).

9. Brackets - This is low on the list because as a sports hater, I never encounter them. But some fellow music geeks engage in such asininity and I just don't get it. I grasp the overall point but you start with...just whatever? Who gets to choose the initial "teams" (Maxinquaye vs. Nevermind, say) and how? (These are rhetorical questions. I don't really want to know the answers.)

9.5. Instagram - Half because it has many pros. Its algorithms are excellent in that I may actually want to buy some of the products advertised (yo, YouTube - I'm never ever buying a car so you can stop forcing me to watch car ads now thanks!). The search function leads me to cute guys and campy commercials. I hear more new music via TikToks here than on any other platform. But, ugh, uploading pictures is a slog. If they're not in a square, then they must be cropped. I have an app called Instasize to properly format pictures for Instagram fussiness. But it's laborious and time wasting. And why get another app when the original app should have that function? Also, you can't download pictures as easily as you can with Tumblr and Facebook. Not very 2023, Insta.