Oh, bother

We've entered the silly season.
Our store's going franchise again this Sunday, meaning another inventory. Eva's in the middle of, last I looked, entirely too many projects to count, working twelve hour days. Life is, in short, once again interesting.
And the blog has suffered a tad, for which I apologize.
Peter over at Dodosville recently compiled a list of things that irk him. Being in something of an irksome mood lately, I thought I'd do the same.

Before I get to that list, I'd better qualify it a little...because chances are just about the entire human race fits into this thing someplace. Including me. Sometimes especially me. So just because you recognize yourself in a point or two doesn't mean I think you're evil--or an idiot. (I do stupid things sometimes, but I don't believe that makes me stupid.)

Without further ado:

Telemarketers. Look, I know it's a job, but can you please find another one? Easily ninety percent of the calls that come to this house are unsolicited. Thank God for Call Display: it saves me from picking up the phone nine or ten times a day and swearing into it.
Forget just during supper. The phone starts ringing here at eight in the morning and doesn't stop until 9:30 or even 10:00 at night, long after we've retired. Saturdays and Sundays no exception.
The same firm will call eleventy-dozen times: gee, buddy, after the first hundred calls, don't you think for a second that maybe nobody here is buying what you're selling?
If I'm already your customer, a sure way not to keep me is to call me and ask how you're doing, because my answer will be "just fine, up until you decided to invade my home and interrupt what, for all you know, might have been extremely important."
A couple of subvarieties deserve special mention. One is the company that pretends to be doing market research (a legitimate activity, as far as I'm concerned--I worked in it for a time myself) but that is really trying to sell you something. That's called "sugging", for "selling under the guise", and it's against the law.
Another is charities. Now I'm sure many charities do a fine job (though let's be honest here: how many are really in the business of perpetuating themselves?) But do they need to call you every week looking for cast-off clothes? I can see one call to let me know that the Society for the Prevention of Brain Farts is looking for my used lacy underthings. Maybe even two, to remind me they're there--because let's face it, most people don't associate used lacy underthings with the prevention of brain farts. But every week? I just don't have that many lacy underthings to give away, you know?
As far as I'm concerned...never mind the "no-call list" that's been promised for years. I want telemarketing made illegal.

Door-to-door salespeople. See above, although this is even worse. I can answer the telephone without having to restrain two moderate-sized dogs. If I'm home alone, the door doesn't open. Period. And it is my firm belief that unless you've been personally invited to my home, you're trespassing. (Friends and family: you have a standing invitation. You knew that, right?)
The subscum here that really gets me are the Direct Energy people and their ilk. We've had three doorknockers on the same day, two from the same company, trying to get me a great rate on natural gas I don't use. (We have electric heat.) We've had people from "Universal Power" who claim they're actually from Waterloo North Hydro and ask to see our bill. The next one who tries that will get to see the cops instead.
Oh, and memo to Jehovah's Witnesses: according to your own beliefs, only 144,000 people will get into heaven. There are several million of you already. Don't bother diluting your heavenly chances any further by trying to recruit me. Okay?

Whiners. Yeah, we all do it sometimes. On some level it's even kind of necessary: shared suffering is lessened, says Spider Robinson, and I agree with him wholeheartedly. What I mean here are the sort of people who employ what James Redfield called a 'Poor Me control drama'. This is your basic victim/martyr stance, characterized by a predominantly negative attitude towards just about everything, including the self. (Especially the self: criticize these people at all and they'll assume they're worthless and that nobody cares. Poor, poor pitiful them.)
Like any control drama, the poor me has its uses, or people wouldn't employ it. But even a year of "how dead is my garden"--especially when they prove they'd rather complain than water the garden (or water the garden and then bitch about all those damned green plants)--that gets old.

Know-it-alls. Special exemption given to those people who really do know it all. But most of you know-it-alls actually know very little. The way to tell the difference: "know-it-alls" broadcast far and wide about how competent they are, whereas the really smart people stay quiet and let their actions speak for themselves.

Fundamentalists. One naturally would assume I mean religious fundamentalists here. And I do. But I also mean those people who believe strongly that any aspect of their lives is the one, sole, right and proper way to live. There are atheist fundamentalists who chafe against the mildest expression of religion or spirituality, and they bother me just as much as the holy-rollers. Ardent vegetarians who shun me because of my burger...people who say George W. Bush is the living antichrist...People who say Michael Moore is the living antichrist...
In fact, most fundamentalists these days are political, not religious. Sure sign you're one of them: if you only see two sides to a given issue, yours and the wrong side. Another: you consider it your sacred duty to show the world how wrong they are. I like how Neale Donald Walsch describes his Conversations with God books and the philosophies therein: "Mine is not a better way: mine is only another way."

Snobs. My life has no less (and no more) value than yours simply because I work in a grocery store. I'm an eyewitness to this sort of snobbery almost daily. A woman who worked in our deli was driven to tears by the actions of one mother, who pulled her daughter aside within earshot and said in an overly pointed tone, "See, dear? This is why you should stay in school. You don't want to end up like her." Carrie (not her real name) was so stunned she couldn't articulate her thought, which was lady? I have two degrees and a diploma, and I work here because I like it.
You see the same thing routinely directed towards fat people, and that galls me even more. I may be fat, but you're ugly...and I can diet.
Often the snobs are also

Monarchs. Not the real ones, the people who act as if they are. The ones who roar past you at twice the speed limit because their time is so much more valuable than yours. The ones who demand servitude from every least peon they meet, or simply ignore them. (I once had five customers in a row enter the store, buy their items, and depart, all without saying so much as one word in response to my greeting, suggestive selling, thank-you and farewell. After the fifth one, Mental Sarcastic Bastard busted loose and said that's funny, I didn't know there was a convention of deafmutes in town. I got a couple of dirty looks and one guy invited me, under his breath, to perform an anatomically impossible act.)

Various and sundry other species of ignorance, for which I'm too lazy to coin a one-word name:

--those who treat the assorted utterances of a Hollywood celebrity or sports figure as if they had a degree of importance. I blame the media for bothering to report these things.

--those who believe government is the solution to anything that ails this country. Reagan had it right: government is not the solution. Government is the problem. But this disease of government dependance is endemic here in Canada. From insisting government should raise our kids to calls for more and more laws to ban any and all behaviour somebody finds questionable, many Canadians are very sick, to the point they rely on a government crutch to tell them what and how to think.

--Anti-Semites. I take back what I said above: if you think Jews are running the world/primarily responsible for the mess in the Middle East/planned 9/11/ exaggerated the Holocaust/drink the blood of Palestinian babies...well, then, you are both evil and an idiot.

--those people who think homosexuality is a sin
...because it's not "natural" (when dozens of species from birds to dolphins engage in homosexual behaviour)
...because it's in the Bible (right next to that passage prohibiting shaving)
...because they're "recruiting" (go ahead and try and "recruit" them right back and see how far you get)
...because they are "anti-life" or "anti-human". (Yes, I've actually heard that said aloud, the reasoning being that they can't procreate. Neither can many "straights"...are they "anti-life" too?)

--those who think that because I wrote the above, I must be a closeted queer. Hey, I'm not arguing for homosexuality, either. One's sexual orientation is not open to positive or negative moral interpretation. It simply is. One's sexual behaviour can certainly be moral or immoral, according to however you define "morality"...adultery within a committed relationship is generally seen as immoral, for example. That you cheated on your wife with a man instead of another woman is no less (and no more) reprehensible.

--People who abuse animals. Spiritually, I know "all attack is a cry for help", that those who hurt animals do so because it's the only way they can feel powerful. Rationally, I don't give a shit. I favour the Code of Hammurabi ("an eye for an eye") for those who abuse or neglect animals.