#3 When someone tries to casually bring up bad news

So you're sitting on your couch wasting away your already unproductive life, equipped with a plastic guitar and a soda. You hear a distant crash, but your current state of mind has a somewhat ataxic effect on you and impedes you from acting on your vague curiosity. A minute later your friend staggers in your front door and sees you sitting there. The conversation goes something like this.

Him: Bro

You: ...yeah

Him: What's up ?

You: ...

Him: So...I drove here.

You: Yeah?

Him: Yeah

You: ...

Him: I just want you to know I love you. You're my bro for life, man.

You: Thanks...?

Him: You know something crazy?

You: Mm?

Him: Actually I'll tell you later

As it turns out, his crazy story was him downing seven shots of Bacardi at a friend's house, fighting his friend due to his belligerent drunken state, driving his car to your house, making your beloved cat a fine addition to his tire treads, and as a grand finale rear ends your car all the way to next Thursday.

All this unbeknownst to you, you step out your house, stepping gingerly around the vomit on the doorstep, and walk outside to find a scene straight from 2012. The intelligent dialogue continues:

Him: I tried to tell you inside, but you know...

You: ...

Him: I was gonna call to tell you I was coming...

You: Yeah you should do that next time. Preferably before using my cat to paint the driveway red.

Ok, now let's think about this. Besides your friend's obvious intoxicated state, what causes people to do this? Yes it's difficult to break the news, but blunt honesty, when used correctly can do wonders. Explore this scenario:

Him: Bro

You: ...yeah

Him: Your gd cat is all over the driveway.

See how easy? When we attempt to sugarcoat the truth, it doesn't make the news any easier to handle. So why do it?

It might be for fear of their reaction, the difficulty of admitting your mistake, fear of sending them into a state of cognitive dissonance, or (if it isn't your fault) the desire to spare their feelings.

In my opinion, no good ever came from withholding or distorting information. If honesty was practiced in a consistent manner by everybody, imagine the peace we'd bask in daily.

And there's a lesson to be learned from this.

So what do I suggest to all you typical, boring, law-abiding, society-conforming people out there? Nothing. Keep living your unhappy, conformist lives. Don't try to change anything, just accept the world is out of your control. Don't try anything new, don't be yourself, stay a subservient slave to the ultimate socialist whore. Leader of the free world.

Or stay tuned as I turn the world and the masses into a two-dimensional examination table.

Opening your mind one word at a time.

Alright get out of here, all of you. You're a waste of my time.

Whether you believe it or not, this is the most productive thing you've done all day.

#2 Laugh Tracks

We've all been there. Flipping through channels, when you're unfortunate enough to stumble upon the Nickelodeon channel or something equally appalling. A combination of sheer boredom and the desperate hope of potential entertainment stays your trigger finger. You watch just enough to catch the last three words of a joke from a sassy 7-year-old girl, essentially telling her parent to do something that is not anatomically possible. And people wonder why kids have no respect for their elders these days. As if this wasn't bad enough, there is an invisible audience of adults laughing at a unimaginative joke. Due to your low self-esteem as a child and a inexplicable desire to fit in, you let out a few small chuckles in spite of yourself. Of course, no one wants to be the odd man out, not laughing. No one wants to be that guy. An angel falls out of heaven and breaks her neck. Somewhat conscious of the fact that you've just laughed at a joke that you don't find funny, you grow irate. Not only has this 7-year-old girl forced a laugh out of you that you will never get back, she just brutally murdered and disemboweled any possibility you had of enjoying your monotonous channel-flipping session. As you clean up the graphic crime scene in your head, you turn off the TV, lay down on the couch, and toy with the notion of guzzling hydrogen peroxide. Then slowly you come to the realization that it's not the 7-year-old's fault, it's the invisible audience's.

Why do laugh tracks exist? It almost seems as though laugh tracks draw attention to the fact that the show is not, in and of itself, humorous enough to bring people to laugh without the use of an auxiliary audience. Which brings us to the root of the strategy. Please somebody explain to me why a group of people laughing is reason enough in your mind to laugh along, regardless of whether the joke was understood or even humorous. I suppose the reasons could be endless.

Maybe a desire to fit in stemmed from a childhood full of bad playground memories.

Maybe hearing other people laugh makes you laugh.

Maybe life is just so great and wonderful that you can't contain an endless spout of giggles.

Maybe you don't have a desire to genuinely laugh, but various extraneous forces dictate that you do. (i.e. social politeness, crowd psychology, the bandwagon effect, etc.)

Personally, hearing others laugh automatically gives me an impulse not to. If several people are laughing at once, I'd rather observe quietly and analyze the so-called joke. After lengthy examination of the people involved and the root of the humor itself, I afford myself a few quiet chuckles. Often at the expense of people questioning my sanity. If you want a scenario where sanity is questioned, consider the person who lets a group of people control his individual output.

I suppose I have to give you guidance as a reward for spending the two minutes reading this. Because this age of instant gratification dictates such, correct?

In my opinion, as is this entire blog, laughs are worth something. If the less you say makes your words more valuable, and the less you kiss people makes your kisses more precious, then the natural extension of that logic is that the less that you laugh, the more it means every time you do.

William Shakespeare said: "Men of few words are the best men." And also, "When words are scarce they are seldom spent in vain."

I'm not saying to be miserable and to not enjoy life. I'm saying that you should only laugh when you genuinely think something is funny.

I'm saying the next time you have a crowd-driven impulse to laugh, stop and reconsider whether it's actually worth your laugh. And I believe it will, as a direct result, mean more to people when you do laugh.

Alright get out of here, all of you. You're a waste of my time.

Whether you believe it or not, this is the most productive thing you've done all day.

#1 Parents who shamelessly scream at their kids in pulblic places.

We've all been there. Wandering (insert department store name here) aimlessly on an early Tuesday afternoon, when a small child throws a spectacular temper tantrum in the middle of the store. Some pass and politely avert their eyes, while others kick back with a lawn chair and a 6-pack. For whatever reason, this 4-year-old has had enough of the day's stressful events, and refuses to move another inch. Face down, fists pounding the tile, the child's screaming face turns every color of the rainbow before settling on a shade of dark purple. Now almost everybody walks slower than usual, heads turned, curious as to the source of the anguish.

Now comes the interesting part.

The parent, usually a 280 pound female, decides for whatever reason that reciprocating the child's actions (minus the face-down fist-banging) will somehow improve the already embarrassing situation. Clearly, screaming back will result in a more subdued, complaisant attitude from the child. The screaming match continues for a few minutes while the mother dishes out a mixture of curses and promised future punishment.

Faithful bystanders now have made sense of the situation in their heads, siding with the child, their rationale being "I would act like that too, if I had a mother like that."

What follows next is nothing short of abuse. The mother, in the eleventh hour, realizes that the public berating of her child is pointless. She then proceeds to grab the child by the most easily accessible appendage, and drag him/her out of the store with little or no regard to the dangers of revolving doors. Whatever body part the child loses in the event is collateral damage.

To all you such mothers out there: Take a parenting class. And then five more. Then some anger management courses, and star on a two-hour special with Dr. Phil.

Moral: If there's one thing I have learned from growing up in my home, it's that screaming is not the answer. It only makes things worse.

"Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured."
Mark Twain

Get out of here, all of you. You're a waste of my time.

Whether you believe it or not, this is the most productive thing you've done all day.

Like I have to explain myself to you people.

Ok let me explain something to all you prospective followers of this blog. I am not a angry or hating person. It's just that 'Oh the little things I hate' has a slightly better ring to it than 'Oh the little things that bother me just enough to start a blog in an attempt to get readers to empathize with my pet peeves'. And besides, the latter isn't even the reason behind this. This blog is a journal of sorts. I created the title topic in a inevitably vain attempt to create some structure for my thoughts to flow through. If you've ever seen a journal of mine (which none of you have), or spent an hour with me, you'll know that my thoughts lack structure, purpose, joie de vivre, or whatever other adjective you can contrive. So you ask yourself, "Why not just write these thoughts on paper? Why a blog?" Save the planet people. Duh. Am I kidding? We may never know. I don't have to explain myself at all, which renders this post inane, but I want to fashion a disclaimer of sorts.

This blog is for me. These are my thoughts. I won't change, censor, adjust, or expurgate them in any way. They are guaranteed to open your mind, and guaranteed to offend. This is nothing more than an attempt to put my thoughts on something a little more tangible. Although it's a webpage. Not so tangible.

So why would you read this? Because you have nothing better to do.