Stuff I Hate (In No Particular Order)

1. The "cute" slang shortening of the word 'little' to 'lil'. For that matter, I hate any cute shortening of a word...Nobody is impressed, just spell it and say it correctly!!! (p.s. - there is a business of some sort here in my town which has managed to absolutely enrage me with its name...it is called, now get this - 'Lil Dis & Lil Dat'. Can you believe it? Someone actually had the nerve to try to pull that off. I don't care what kind of business it is or how good their service is or how inexpensive their products are, I WOULD NEVER EVER GIVE THEM MY BUSINESS ON PRINCIPLE!

2. Twenty something young men with flat-billed baseball caps worn sideways and unoriginal tattoos of barbed wire or other sharp/dangerous adornment and driving $60,000 trucks with obnoxiously loud exhausts that gush big clouds of black smoke. There is a pathetically large number of these misguided young fellows in my town. So insecure and lacking any sense of self-worth that they dump every extra penny into their trucks in a desperate plea for attention...sadly these same individuals are usually delinquent on their child support payments (usually with more than one woman) but still seem to find the money to buy their little chrome skulls and naked lady silhouettes to decorate their 20 foot tall trucks which require an extension ladder to get into. My hate-o-meter is beginning to peg out as I write this.

3. People who stand too close to me in line at the store. I can't stand it when people crowd right up next to me with either their bodies, or their shopping cart. To all of you self-centered people who do this: Stop!! It is incredibly annoying, obnoxious and rude. You'll not make it through the line any faster by crowding people (this also goes for traffic). In such situations I have been known to turn around and stand facing the person standing right behind me. This is a great way to silently announce that "YOU'RE STANDING TOO CLOSE...BACK UP!!!"

4. Parking lot "Tent Sales" that aren't really sales. Here in my town we have a store called 'Basin Sports' which, from time to time, moves a whole bunch of its overpriced crap outside under a tent and tries to pawn it off to the public like it is some special event. Everyone is supposed to go on a shopping spree because there's a tent in the parking lot!! BUT ALL OF THE MERCHANDISE IS THE SAME PRICE AS WHEN IT WAS INSIDE THE STORE! How utterly lame!