Three things I hate about you

In my continuing quest to find things that irritate the hell out of me, I’ve got a couple more (surprised?):

1) I’ve noticed an increasing trend to refer to basketball players as being “long”. Not tall, not big, “long”. I understand where they’re coming from, but is it necessary? When I hear them say that a guy is “long”, I don’t think its something that needs to be discussed on Saturday afternoon basic cable.

2) I’ve also come across a number of commentators and fans alike referring to wide receivers as “the X receiver” or “the Z receiver”. To me, this is again just throwing terms out to show that you think you know what you’re talking about. It’s annoying. I’m still pissed that there are no more guards or forwards in the NBA, just ones and twos or threes and fours. If you’re really good, maybe you can “play the point”, but you’re probably more of a “one that can play the two”. Makes my skin crawl.

3) A little more seriously, I’m finding myself more and more apt to beat the living crap out of anyone with one of those yellow “Live Strong” bracelets on. I hate to think like that, because cancer is a scary disease, and there are probably alot of people that really do care about the fight against cancer, more than people who think “Dude, those are really cool, and like, by wearing them, I’m finding a cure for cancer or some shit like that.”, and with my luck, the first person I’d confront would be a survivor, but do you really think all these people suddenly care about the fight against cancer enough to wear a bright yellow wristband? Call me skeptical, but I doubt it. And now that there are wristbands for any other crusade known to man, including supporting your favorite sports team, people are going to start having to wear short sleeves just to be able to show all their favorite causes. And junior high girls are going to start performing sex acts because some boy came up and snapped her “I hate cirrhosis” bracelet. (For the record, as I drink another beer, I believe that a beejer to fight liver disease is a brilliant idea, just not for pre-teens.)

And I must mention, that both the funniest, yet most disturbing illustration of this (back to the “Live Strong” bracelets, forget the young girls, dammit!) was shared by Pete a couple months ago.


One other thing I realized last night, as I was waiting for the new year to arrive, is that Blister in the Sun is one of my three most annoying songs ever. I don’t know what the other two are, nor am I sure there even IS another two, but this song about made me crack last night. And it’s not really so much the song, as it’s the reaction by every female in a 20 mile radius when the song comes on. The first 10 notes alone are enough to make me want to go Bobby Brown on every chick in the place.

I also noticed that when you’re in a bar with a DJ, a good 75% of the songs that are played ellicit a similar, if somewhat toned down response. It’s the exact same response we used to get when we were trying to make “mix tapes” off the radio, having the tape cued up on the cassette deck, then having that jaw-dropping, “All right!!!” moment before the scramble to hit the play and record buttons at the same time, which inevitably led to a tape full of songs with the first five seconds cut off. It was like that last night. A song would come on, the chicks in the bar would have that wide-eyed, jaw-dropping moment, then scream, “AHHHH! BRITNEY!!!!” and sing along. It was fun when I was 10, now, I just wanted to find a ball bat and clear a path to the door.

Not to say I didn’t have a good New Year’s, cause it was really good. Although while the DJ broke out some Def Leppard and a little Bon Jovi, he claimed to not have any Digital Underground. (“Freaks of the Industry” holds some sentimental value to me.)

And he calls himself a DJ?