So Many Things Annoy Me. Why My Adored? Why?
Pet Peeves That Annoy The Hiss Out Of Me
WARNING: This is an article written while I am high on steroids to treat/cure work-related injury. (The doctor WARNED that steroids would make me BITCHY.) May you never say that I ever wrote a blog entry without cautionary instructions for how to proceed; in this case, with noted precaution. Even still, I write this with a bit of humor kept in mind.
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| #10. Bunch of bat-winged penis ogres of Tanzania's Popobawa fame run Seattle |
I have enough pet peeves to write an encyclopedia but this is just a blog entry so here are a mere few things that are wrong with Seattle.
1. What is it with bicyclists in Seattle who REFUSE to use the (very expensive) protected maze of bike lanes that weave around and through our city, such as the $1.5 million pilot project on 2nd Avenue. The bike lanes are something that motorized tax payers keep footing the enormous bills to expand, and yet cyclists themselves (who are not obligated to pay for any of it) insist on slowing down traffic in the too few lanes made for cars, trucks, motorcycles, and "Ride The Ducks" killing machines. I've sat for ridiculous hours in gridlock traffic without seeing a single bicycle use those lanes ... so why not open them up to motorcycles and people who want to abandon their parked cars when they can just run really fast?
Please bicyclists. For trucker's sakes. That solid white line between the bus and my semi, utility vehicle or midget-car IS NOT FOR YOU to roll your rims over! So stop splitting lanes. You're much too-easy-to-splat like a bug on our windshields. Move to YOUR skinny-spandex-wearing-bony-butt into the DESIGNATED LANE.
SAFETY FACT: Cyclists have a too silent and nearly translucent way of appearing out of nowhere like a scary poltergeist. Are you trying to ruin other people's lives by causing us to merge into you on accident? Wear a wind-whistle around your necks or something. For crying out loud!
2. Am I the only one who had driver's education instructions in my student manual that declared I must PULL my vehicle over to the side of the road whenever an emergency vehicle, or cop car, with sirens and flashing lights, is approaching? If not - then what-in-tarnation is the matter with you dumb-masses who keep on driving in the same lane that an on-coming ambulance is driving? Pull the Hell over! Stop turning our streets into "death row!" Your schedule is not more important than someone who just dialed 9-1-1. Right now I feel like choking the life out of you just to save whomever the fire trucks are racing to rescue.
3. Ism you hungry? Because this "ism" rant is a big one. To be a functioning society, we all must follow rules that fellow residents agreed upon, and if you don't agree with that particular society's rules then move more-than-a-yell away to some place where you do agree with the rules. You don't see me living in the Bible Belt, for instance. (The Pantheon of Gods forbid.) Yet when I went to an anarchist march in Seattle only to observe a bunch of fellow vagrants act like they want bigger freedoms while they wrote graffiti on metro buses and otherwise damaged or destroyed public property ... I just gotta say that's not anarchism slum-guts! That's vandalism! (Know that just because two words end the same way, they don't mean the same thing!)
4. All over the media Seattleites are presented as granola-eating, pacifists. For the most part they may pass on throwing a fist and get a sunburn every time it stops raining. Yet I really hate the stereotypes spoken about all of the wide and varied folks who live here and that whole designation about people from Seattle looking alike does not hold water; not the way our gutters, retaining ponds, and my feet do. People, meaning both men and women from Seattle, may grow beards to shield their faces from the wind but many of Seattle's women actually pluck theirs. We're not so distinct-looking that you can tell us apart from, say, someone living in the mountains of Kentucky, North Carolina, or Montana.
5. Notice how everyone who campaigns AGAINST the minimum wage getting raised to $15/hour in this hard-to-make-it city makes a lot more money than that? The naysayers should all be forced to live on the current minimum wage. That's all I need to say about that. Oh wait. I'll say more. Read #6.
6. There are definitely way too many homeless people living in Seattle and they didn't just move here because they like sleeping in soggy blankets. Why is nothing being done about it? No I don't think we should be giving everyone a hand-out. But why can't these people at least be given the opportunity to earn a decent minimum wage when many of them are working to earn their food for less than a sustainable income? Why are returning wages so low - especially if you're a woman who took time off from your career to care for ailing parents, for children, or for just five minutes when you got a hair cut. Why are people making less money today when they did this same job ten years ago at much higher pay?
7. I love Seattle's scenery, the clean smells from the forest, and the many natural attractions available here in Jet City. Yet if I were in control I'd declare it really should rain between the hours between midnight and three in the morning. Beyond that? All those many consecutive months of 24-hour drizzle mixed in with grey skies and downpour? It's torture! There are reasons why Seattle is affectionately known as the "Coffee Capitol Of The World." It's because sun-deprived residents must self-medicate with enough caffeine to not feel lethargic as a slug shriveling up on on a trail of sea-salt. Perpetual darkness and gray skies can suck the soul out faster than anyone attending Bram Stoker's Vampire Ball. Note: Seattle is also known as the "Suicide Capital."
8. "The Seattle Chill." We're not talking about outside temperatures here. Depending how long you've lived in this city - your experience may be a little better. Yet try being a tourist, a new resident or guest and say "hi" to someone on the street and you might wonder if all people from Seattle have severe hearing problems. Most don't talk to strangers; at all. There are many speculations as to why that might be. I grew up in Seattle and was taught early-on about "stranger danger!" (Don't get inside that white-paneled van with "free candy" painted on the outside no matter how friendly the driver may seem.) Yet perhaps a more logical explanation for the "Seattle Freeze" is because this evergreen city is a technology hub. Most people are too busy listening through their ear-buds to notice that you need them to unwrap their dog leash from around your ankles so you can enter the grocery store.
9. Until I moved to the Queen Anne neighborhood - I never knew any of my neighbors. That wasn't because I didn't try to get to know them. It had everything to do with Seattle's "no touch" policy when it comes to speaking to whomever you share an apartment laundry room with. Don't expect to get eye contact from your neighbors when you hold the door open for them either. Yet now that I live on Queen Anne? Because everyone looks alike in this neighborhood with various shades of blonde hair and blue eyes? I gotta admit there's at least one bunion in Seattle where people do actually speak to each other.
10. No matter how long you live in Seattle, how much you dialogue with the powers-that-be, or how active you get in volunteering for the community your opinion will never count in this city no matter how many "troll be-gone" spells you cast. Your money will never be your own either. That's because a bunch of bat-winged penis ogres like the Popobawa run this city. Perfect example? Voters turned down the construction of the new Safeco Field stadium back in 1997. In fact we voted it down TWICE. So what did the Popobawa's (meaning: Washington State Legislature) do? They built the stadium with public money anyway.
Another example? Our Sonics basketball team was pulled away when we were promised it would stay with new ownership. This list for making voter opinion not count could get really long because in Seattle there is never an issue that ever gets decided permanently by majority rule. Not even when it regards building sky-rises in places where a house used to stand only to provide zero parking for it. Seattle seldom fixes the pot holes in its plethora of one-lane-only streets. Currently insurers of Bertha, the tunnel-boring machine, are suing to avoid paying $143 million for repairing it; a machine which tax payers paid more than $80 million just to get started. Pretty sure the average citizen will be picking up the repair costs too; against their will and vote.
