Mo "Mad Dog" Stoneskin: There is nothing worse than...

A few years ago I ran an on-line survey titled "There is nothing worse than...". More recently I continued the theme on a blog, which I have now discontinued.

However this is the best of the list. Some of them are, well, a bit crazy. Hope you enjoy them, you may want to add to them, or you may just want to cry. I'll admit it, some of them were written by me (the really funny ones of course).

******

...being served fish and chips by a lady with 9 false nails. *Crunch*
...those word "verification" images that you have absolutely no chance of interpreting.
...being just beaten to the bar by people that then proceed to faff.
...telling the checkout lady that no, you don't need help packing, and then spending minutes fiddling with the plastic bag and being completely unable to open it.
...the sound of nail clippers. Is it just me, or is this one of the most terrible sounds?!
...being told I looked "lost" in Blockbuster. I wasn't lost, I was just browsing. Dagnammit.
...picking an apparently innocuous scab and nearly bleeding to death.
...finding that your banana and kiwi have been obliterated at the bottom of your bag.
...when people put library books upside down on the shelf.
...walking up and down the end-of-aisle lane in Sainsbury's trying to find the quickest-looking queue, and ignoring the "basket-only" queues because they are huge, and then watching the "basket-only" queue disappear within seconds as you are trapped behind fumblers and dawdlers.
...sharing a busy commuter carriage with a small child and his robin redbreast whistle, I mean, seriously, what kind of parent gives out robin redbreast whistles? It goes without saying that that little child was relentless in their whistle blowing. Relentless.
...people who hold up the commuters by standing IN the ticket barrier trying to find their ticket.
...discovering that you have been walking down the street flying low, and wondering how many people noticed.
... the 'toothpaste cough', the awful tickly cough you sometimes get after brushing your teeth at night.
...walking back and forth in front of an automatic door like a loony trying to get out the shop before being told by a staff worker that it is broken.
...forgetting on numerous shopping trips whether you have any toothpaste and ending up with 9 tubes in the bathroom cupboard.
...sneezing on a full bladder whilst pregnant and wearing light trousers.
...being pooped on by a pigeon, and knowing that the people behind on the platform observed it all. What could I do but stand there quietly, pretending nothing had happened, grimacing as I felt it trickling down the back of my head.
...hoovers. I hate the things in every way. The way they get caught on everything, the way the lead always runs out of length. The way they remind you how dusty everything gets in just a week. The way they always need emptying.
...losing my glasses and being unable to see clearly enough to find them, scrambling around the flat like a mole.
...battling in vain with a supermarket's self-service system as it fails to recognise every other item you throw at it, while a crowd of impatient customers wait behind you, grumbling and snorting with impatience and frustration.
...a bad Thursday.
...cheap toilet paper in an expensive hotel (you'd expect quilted...).
...taking a bath mat to the gym (grabbed in a hurry because it looks like a towel) instead of a towel
...having to struggle through a minute and half of awkward polite conversation in a lift with someone just because you both know you're from the same office.
...heading down the local bakery to buy fresh croissants for breakfast, and then finding it closed because it is Good Friday.
...forking out 83 pence on a can of Coke and then finding you don't have quite enough change for the ticket machine. And why 83 pence?!
...going against your wife's advice that the 'large chips' was too large, and then failing miserably to finish the large chips.
...walking past an empty fish and chip shop on the way to a cash machine, heading back with some cash to find that it has filled up with tourists.
...waiting (starving) in the supermarket queue for 10 minutes just buy a Mars, while surrounded by posters boasting at being the first self-service supermarket in Britain (neglecting to explain why it is not self-service enabled now, or why there are so few till staff).
...washing up sieves, the way tiny pieces of food grip stubbornly to the tiny holes. Who would have thought that such a useful tool as the sieve would be such a stressful thing to clean? I simply refuse to wash them up anymore.
...being repeatedly rung up by a kitchen company because you got a quote 6 months ago, even though you have repeatedly told them that you now have a kitchen (which you are very pleased with), and even though you have repeatedly demanded that they ring you no more.
...babysitting a hyperactive child with a tin whistle.
...being chased barefooted across a field of upturned plugs by a mad dog.
...trying to read a broadsheet in an overcrowded train.
...burning my last chicken and mushroom pie to a cinder whilst browsing this website...
...having to replace your torch batteries on a dark night.
...asking someone to repeat the question for the third time.
...eating ash for dinner after cooking a microwave meal for half as long as it said on the pack.
...a screaming child in the quiet coach on the train home on a Friday.
...being unable to check you're "clean" after a nose blow in a public place.
...finding on Monday that you didn't empty your lunch box of yoghurt, over ripe fruit, and cheese on Friday.
...minding your own business on your bike and crashing and burning in front 200 school girls. (this story is actually covered here)
...feeling "that" pang in your bowels.
...having an over-active, needy, and huggy child be in your way when you're desperate to empty your bladder.
... trying to find oyster sauce in a supermarket.
...trying to explain what "refined kidney beans" are to a confused local shop owner who first and second languages aren't English.
...ever-so-slightly-off coleslaw.
...splash back.
...brushing your shoulders...straightening your tie...doing up your jacket...and then tripping over a loose paving slab.
... lots of wee on the seat of a public loo.
...getting a nose bleed while rushing to leave the house and wearing a white jumper.
...losing my glasses and being unable to see clearly enough to find them.
...trying to find a pen in a hurry.
...being desperate for the loo in town, and knowing that most public loos will be closed due to vandals or tomfoolery, and any that aren't closed should be for hygiene and safety reasons - as we all know there is nothing worse than British public loos anyway, except Ukrainian public loos, but that is another story...
...walking up a steep stony beach.
...walking into locked 'push' doors in full view of other people.
...grit under a contact lens.
...being bitten by a gerbil.
...supermarket gift card selections.
...Gym membership.
...eating spaghetti bolognese at other people's houses.
...music shops that don't order their CDs by genre.
... the piercing and reverberating sound of small children squealing in a subway.
...getting soap on my toothbrush and not realising till its too late.
... idiots on public transport that have nothing better to do than cycle through their polyphonic (bling - init) ring tones.
...trying to get melted cheese off a towel.
...a) catastrophically stubbing your bare vulnerable toe on a brutish hard metal object while getting ready. b) knowing that you'll sound lame if you say that's the reason why you're late.
... people who think the narrow staircases and walkways of the tube were made for them and their slow, meandering, walking pace.
...people who can't comprehend that the sound of an arriving tube might provoke some in the crowd behind them to want to hurry.
...being snotted on in public due to someone else's over zealous sneeze! and them not realising the trauma they've created! (actually happened)
...finding a pube on your desert at a friend's house.
...riding a bus to college in the early hours of the morning whist having to put up with loud, hyperactive children who are eating cheese and chives crisps.
... getting stuck in the bathroom in someone else's house.
...taking a bite of a fantastic steak and tomato sandwich, and then spilling tomato all down your front.
...trying to cut a well-cooked steak with a butter knife.
...dropping a bag containing 6 cartons of stinking UHT milk, which then splits, turning the kitchen floor into a foul lake of off milk.
...constantly almost sneezing, but never quite making it, a sort of sneezing constipation.
... going sky-diving and, when you pull the parachute cord, watching nothing but your brother's maths textbooks spill out of the opening in your back-pack.
...buying a new toothbrush and finding its handle is slightly wider than standard, and so doesn't fit in the bathroom's toothbrush holder...why oh why?
...waking up and thinking "I feel unusually refreshed for a Thursday morning...wait a second, it's far sunnier than usual, is this a Saturday? Wait, it is definitely not a Saturday, oh pants, I recognise that sinking feeling in my gut, I've overslept..."
...having a video project urgently due to be handed in and having the misfortune of asking technical assistance from a complete nincompoop who, after admitting that he has no idea how to use the editing program that you need help with, insists on spending half an hour trying to figure it out ON YOUR COMPUTER, masterfully humming and hawing his way through everything you've already tried while you sit there writhing and nodding your way through valuable minutes as you try and deduce a strategy to politely recapture your ravaged machine.
... subtitles that are just slightly too small to read without squinting.
...headaches caused by squinting to read small subtitles.
...attempting to drop some chewed gum into your bin, watching it miss and role out into the walkway in front of a passing colleague.
... taking your squash stuff down from the train luggage rack in the crowded rush hour and watching your spare boxers fall out into the aisle.
...taking a bite of an egg-mayonnaise sandwich and crunching a piece of egg shell.
...pedestrians that walk in front of you just as the light turns green.
...spitting while jogging and getting the spit back in your face.
...after-leak in summer trousers.
...getting the first part of a span text, then getting a message with 'Text missing'...
...jeans that chafe.
...itchy clothes labels.
...slow dramas with Robert Redford in.
...loos that not only have the light switch outside, but on a timer that is set for an unreasonably short time.
...trying to get women somewhere on time.
...coffee mugs with handles so small you can't even use them properly.
...taking your jumper off in a public place and displaying your tummy.
...nails on the blackboard.
...trying to have a private and personal conversation with someone in a slightly-too-quiet-for-comfort cafe.
...being Humpty Dumpty.
...accidentally using someone else's toothbrush.
...forms that don't leave even close to enough space in the gaps.
...Martin Creed's exhibit which is a recording of Martin blowing raspberries into a microphone for 9 minutes at a volume loud enough to be heard around the entire floor of the Tate gallery and then repeated on circular.
... being unable to read the paper because of a loud argument about popodoms in the background.
...someone who has poor spacial awareness wearing a giant rucksack trying to navigate round a small and crowded coffee shop.
...getting my work pass tangled up in my keys every day
...being asked if you want anything else with your coffee when you only ordered a coffee because you only wanted a coffee!
...jumping out of your skin because an old man has crept up behind you and sung loudly in your ear.
...going to the bank to cash a cheque and getting served by a trainee on his first day on the job.
...running out of loo paper, and then finding that you have managed to buy kitchen roll at the local shop instead of loo paper!
...people that don't understand the concept of the queue, and who form a split in the queue causing all manner of confusion, and then seem to convince themselves that their queue is the right one.
...trying to find a tea spoon in a strange kitchen.
... a loo holder so far behind the loo that you have to swivel every time you need more.
...being unable to stop giggling in church after you bit into an orange piece and squirted the people in front of you.
...being unable to get the whole yoghurt lid off.
...being unable to wash your hands in the cinema toilets because the three basins are taken up by three chaps washing their feet (you don't believe me?!)
...people who chat to cashiers when there is a huge queue behind them.
...being made to feel stupid by a colleague for a tiny decision made under pressure in a week when the only staff with the required knowledge were on holiday and when any sane person would have made the same decision under the circumstances.
...leaving the house and then needing to go.

18 comments:

MadMad said...: Wait-wait-wait. WHO doesn't finish the chips?! No matter how large? They're chips! (Fries, I know, I know.) You can't stop eating them. Unheard of.; 26 February 2009 at 14:42
Diane said...: I went through and read that whole blog a while ago. It cracked me up. I've been meaning to tell you that I'd love it if you did a post like that every now and then... and you know, it's all about me.

Thanks for your input about my time-management issues. We're of like mind... I'd already decided that I'm going to have to allot a certain point in the day for blogging activities and if I can't fit it all in, then tough.

Forget the phone emails, though. Ugh. I don't want to be THAT connected. It's why I won't sign up for Twitter, too.; 26 February 2009 at 15:49
Unknown said...: These are awesome! And this American loves the Britishisms... even if I had to look a few of them up. (Faff? Who knew!)
Hope #22 doesn't come true today.
Thanks for stopping by to say hello!
:) Robin
cinnamon & honey; 26 February 2009 at 16:16
Captain Dumbass said...: Faff?; 26 February 2009 at 20:37
mo.stoneskin said...: OK, for you non-British, some definitions of "faff":

1) (British slang) To waste time on unproductive activity

2) to aimlessly waste time doing useless tasks

3) the excessive use of time for nonsense activities; 26 February 2009 at 20:42
Anonymous said...: Actually, there IS something worse than #15 - walking face-first into that non-working automatic door.

Ouch.

Jan from the Sushi Bar; 26 February 2009 at 21:08
blognut said...: Awesome list! All of that happened to me last week, so what are we going to talk about next week?

By the way, you have an illegible word verification prompt here. I've already gotten it wrong once.; 26 February 2009 at 21:58
bernthis said...: you took a bathmat to the gym?!!! hahahahahahaha!!!!!!; 27 February 2009 at 00:39
Jon Dayton said...: There is nothing worse than...
stubbing your toe and teaching the baby to say F***, then realizing the mistake and teaching the baby to say S***, and several other choice utterances before you get things under control.

I mean... I heard... that... that's um, pretty bad.; 27 February 2009 at 01:57
Everyday Goddess said...: This is my first visit and I am happy to say you have covered all possible annoyances. Well done.

I tried to follow publicly, but ended up following by google reader. Could that be part of the Blogger conspiracy SNAFU?; 27 February 2009 at 03:09
Queen of the Mayhem said...: WOW....it would seem that you have a lot on your plate!

Very funny! :); 27 February 2009 at 09:47
Vodka Mom said...: OMG I will HAVE to come back to finish this. I got to about 25 !!!!; 27 February 2009 at 11:20
Lucy Filet said...: That's a whole heck of a lot of nothing worse thans. Which makes no sense really. If there's nothing worse than something how can there be multiples?

And I laughed out loud at number 16. My husband does this with toothbrushes. But not for the next 37 days, 9 hours.

I'm not counting down though.; 27 February 2009 at 14:01
Pseudo said...: There's a lot of comments about peeing and pooping. I guess the only perk of having a starbucks or McDonald's on every block is they have public bathrooms.

I will find a way to use the word Faff today. Will notice if my students bother asking....; 27 February 2009 at 15:01
Glennis said...: Damn. This is a whole life here.; 1 March 2009 at 01:26
Sass said...: You sneezed on a full bladder, while pregnant?

Uh-huh. That's what I thought.

Faker.; 3 March 2009 at 15:42
Anonymous said...: there were alot there about annoying children...did you write these prior to the arrival of yours...cos i'm thinking maybe you should revisit and rewrite it after you've developed that selective deafness that parents seem to have...

and faff joins banjax as one of my new favourite words...; 4 March 2009 at 04:14
Nej said...: #97 I completely agree. For some reason, it's a big pet peeve of mine. Actually, I agree with pretty much the whole list.

(Not including #96.)

:-); 12 March 2009 at 21:25

Mo "Mad Dog" Stoneskin

Thursday 26 February 2009

There is nothing worse than...

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