I hate today.

Fuck snow

Boy, I’m not sure what happened, but I managed to work myself into a cantankerous mess tonight. Everything is feeling my wrath.

Here are some things that I currently hate.

1. Snow, and those who plow it.

Last night we had a miniature blizzard – enough snow to make people late, but not enough to really endanger lives or cause cancellations – and I knew as soon as I got home that I would be shoveling today. For the most part, I was right. It was a horrible windy mess – I’d get part of the walk shoveled, turn around, and realize that what I’d just “finished” was covered in white again. Arg. This ordeal, during which I succeeded to break my body instead of breaking any sort of path, lasted for about an hour. I did feel confident that, since the first thing I’d shoveled was the driveway, I would be able to leave later to go to work.

Then the plows come by.

What is this shit? Why do the plows have to come by when you’ve just finished shoveling the driveway out? Do they wait to see someone finish, place their shovel against the fence, and breathe a sigh of relief and accomplishment, at which point they decide “hey, that guy looks like he’s worked his ass off to get that driveway unblocked…allow me to block it up again by plowing every bit of snow in this street to a place directly in front of his clean area.

Do the plows hate me?

2. Tabloids.

One of my closing duties every night at the relay center is lowering and picking up the stations. The nature of the business is that in between calls, in order to keep a sane mind and pass time, people will read. So when I pick up the stations, I usually find 5-6 magazines left by the last person to occupy each cubicle.

Eighty percent of these magazines are tabloid/celebrity magazines, like US and People, and every one of those magazines has one of three covers: “Jennifer Aniston/Jessica Simpson can’t believe it’s over!” or “Mary Kate/Ashley Olsen is too thin/stressed/drunk!” or “Julia Roberts/Demi Moore/Angelina Jolie has/wants twins!” These magazines, which have actual sections called “Celebrities are real people!” where they show shots of Madonna getting out of the car with a sweatshirt and no makeup on, are as low on the literary food chain as you can get without reading a Jack Chick comic. They are horrible, and I, for one, think they should all be burned.

3. Computer spyware.

Who ever came up with this clever little virus-like item should be burned with all those tabloids. I currently have a little bit of spyware that has blanked the background on my desktop, creates a little warning bubble in the corner that says “Warning! Your computer is infected with spyware!” and then kindly gives a series of links to “spyware finding software,” and periodically pops up a fake blue screen of death that says, shockingly, “Your computer has SPYWARE!”

It’s all rather troublesome, and I’ve had to consult with a website online that takes your registry information, analyzes it, and then tells you what to do to get rid of the shit that’s making ten thousand different “spyware threat detectors” pop up everytime I try to turn the damned computer on.

They’ve been a lot of help, so far, though, so that’s actually a positive thing. But positive is against the grain of this rant.

4. Abducted white girls.

Why are the only children ever advertised on television as abducted are the rich, cute, white girls? I saw, for the second day in a row, a picture of a cute white girl who has been reported missing. According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, there are nearly 800,000 missing children reported every year in the United States. Why, then, are the only ones I ever see on TV the ones that all won their kindergarden beauty contest? Are they the only one’s worth finding?

5. NCAA Tournament Pool websites.

I was in a situation where I needed to find some easy programs to help fill out and score a heap of NCAA Tournament brackets due to a contest we are having at work. I searched high and low to find a good free website that would be easy to use – simple, but effective in scoring. I found one, at www.poolhost.com, and I proceeded to enter a few early brackets in.

Then I was sick for two days. Frantically, on Thursday I ran to work and grabbed the rest of the brackets from the last two days. I had six when I left on Monday – I now had six…ty-nine. I drove home and went to log onto poolhost.com to start plugging the numbers in.

The site was down.

Two hours before the tournament starts, the entire fucking site was down. Yeah, that’s right. I just swore. I was that mad.

So, instead, I just find another website, one that appears free and is actually easier to use. No where on the site was there any indication that the service would cost any money, so I proceeded to enter sixty-nine NCAA Tournament brackets (with sixty-three games on each one) onto the website.

You can probably guess where this one is going.

Thursday night I get a message thanking me for using the website (www.runyourpool.com). It also informed me that, after the first round, the service would no longer be free. WOULD NO LONGER BE FREE! And that it would cost over 60 dollars to continue. OVER SIXTY DOLLARS!!!

With tail between legs, I tried poolhost.com again, and this time the site was back up. This site was still free, so I ended up entering the entire batch again. It took a long time, and in between shoveling and feeling tired as hell, I entered these brackets. I haven’t watched more than 30 minutes of the tournament yet, but at least I have everyone’s picks memorized.

The only good thing coming from that debacle is that I’m currently tied for 11th place (with Chris, the kid who hosts this site) out of 69 people. I’ve picked 24 of 32 first round games correctly. Kerrie, who somehow ended up in our office pool even though she doesn’t work at relay anymore, unfortunately has only picked 10 games correctly, and is tied for 61st with five other people.

6. No Adult Swim.

For some reason, Adult Swim was not on tonight, and instead, when I turned on Cartoon Network, I found myself staring at Dexter’s Laboritory.

I hate this cartoon.

That sucks.

That means it’s time for bed.

This was lovingly handwritten on March 19th, 2005