Ian's Pissed Off Page

Why do the doormats that you put just inside your door have to try and creep all the way across the floor. You have to keep moving it back every day, or if you're lazy like me, just leaving it until you have to jump halfway across your room to wipe your feet. It doesn't seem to matter what size the doormat is or if it's got a grippy rubber bottom, the stupid bastards just seem to prefer it in the middle of your room.

If you've never heard of Fred Basset, it's a comic strip about a basset hound called Fred. Fred doesn't solve mysteries, he doesn't rescue kids trapped down a well, he's not red or 20ft tall, and he doesn't eat huge sandwiches. Fred is just an ordinary dog that does ordinary things, and, well, that's it. I guess it's meant to be observation humour for dogs, except without the humour. It's the most unfunny comic strip ever. I've drawn a possible Fred Basset story to show you what I mean:

Sometimes I decide I'll watch a DVD while I'm eating my dinner, so I put in the DVD before I start making my dinner to avoid messing about later. The DVD loads up the menu automatically, that's fine I have no problem with that bit. I then leave it on the menu and make my dinner. When I get back to the TV with my dinner I go to push play but the film is already half way through! Why would it play automatically? Does it think I'm that stupid that I don't know how to push the play button? Does it think I was just sitting there watching the stupid fucking menu animation repeating over and over thinking that it was a bit of a shit film? If I want the DVD to fucking play, I'll push the fucking play button.

I really hate it when the shop assistant doesn't turn on the little conveyer belt that comes after the till. I mean the one she puts your stuff on after scanning it. It's all right for her, the stupid bitch, she just dumps it right next to her, no problem there. But it means I have to keep stretching up to get the stuff. It's hard enough to keep up with packing the bags at the rate they scan stuff without having to stretch too. All she has to do is flick a little switch, it's not like it's a big deal for her, the selfish bitch.

My washing machine has this magic feature which means that any T-shirt I put in it always comes out turned inside out. How does it do that? If I'm also washing a duvet, it will attempt to get as many things inside the duvet as possible before it's finished washing. While I'm here, washing machines in general are a bit crap. Can't someone invent a better method of holding the washing machine down than putting a ten ton brick inside it? And do they really need to make such a racket?

Flies are dirty little bastards. They walk around on shit all day then try and fly into your mouth. You also get those small stupid ones that just seem to spend their life buzzing around under trees like they're drunk. You walk into them without seeing them and get a whole mouthful of the little buggers. The worst thing though, is when you get a fly trapped in your bedroom at night. They seem to just sit still until you turn the light off to go to sleep. That's when they start buzzing around and making a bigger racket than you would have thought possible. You then have to spend half the night chasing them round the room. Why can't they all just die, I know spiders and other things need them to eat, but why can't they just eat grass or something, there's loads of that about.

What the hell are sidelights for? All they are is a dim version of your headlights. Some people seem to use them when it is only a little bit dull, but what is the point? Surely putting them on full is still going to be better? If anything, you need your lights brighter when it's only a little bit dull to make them stand out more. Even their name is stupid. I realise it's because they used to be on the side of the car in the old days, but it's stupid now. Actually, I guess that's quite appropriate. A stupid name for stupid lights.

I think I have a magic bike and it's annoying. Whenever I sit on it, it seems to make me invisible to people driving motor vehicles. They will pull out in front of me, go on to my side of the road forcing me to stop when it's their side that's blocked, and leave me about a foot of room when they overtake me. I must be invisible, because people wouldn't really do that if they could see me, would they?

I don't mean me getting wind when I'm cycling, that might actually help a bit :-) What I hate is when the wind is blowing against me when I'm cycling. You don't realise how much harder this makes it. It feels like you are constantly cycling up a hill when it's flat. Very annoying. It wouldn't be so bad if it helped you out by pushing you from behind occasionally, but it doesn't. Whenever it's behind you, you don't even notice it, at least I haven't. Well, either that or it just doesn't blow behind me, which is just as annoying.

Why do TV channels insist on turning up the volume at the adverts? Do they think this is going to make you more likely to buy the products that are being advertised? Well, it doesn't, in fact if it does anything it gives you more reason to turn the volume down even further or perhaps completely mute it, therefore making you less likely to listen to the advert. Or do they think that for some odd reason I have set the volume too low for me to hear properly? Idiots.

I think this covers just about everyone. Most people seem to turn on their car headlights when there is the slightest bit of rain or it gets slightly dull. It doesn't seem to occur to them that they can still see perfectly well. If people can't see well in that light then they should either have glasses, or shouldn't be driving. Apart from it just being stupid though, there is the fact that having your headlights on makes your brake lights less obvious, so you should only put your headlights on when it's necessary.

There are quite a few problems with hot water taps. First of all you need to turn them up full blast so that they will actually heat up, then you have to wait ages for them to actually heat up, and when they do heat up, they are usually far too hot. But if you do actually want the hot tap on full blast (for filling a bath or whatever) then, full blast is never fast enough,it's much slower than the cold tap. Somebody really needs to sort these out.

I don't mean people that only go to the gym occasionally, them I have no problem with. It's people that go to the gym, but when they are there they don't really try. They just do a little bit so as not to tire themselves out or get sore muscles. They don't seem to realise that that is the whole bloody point. This includes the people who read a book while on the exercise bike, if you can read a book while exercising then you are not bloody exercising properly, get your fat arse off the machine and let somebody that is going to get some benefit from it use it!

There are some people who seem to think that the only speed their car does is 40mph. You get stuck behind them in a 60mph limit and get annoyed. You think it's probably some stupid old woman who is being overly careful. But then you go into a 30mph limit and they still drive at 40mph! Who are these people and why do they never drive at any other speed?

Usually these are solar powered calculators, but you do get some simple battery powered ones that just switch off after 5 minutes of not being used. Both kinds annoy me, I'm not sure why.

I hate it when animals (for example dogs) attack people and think they are tougher than them. The reality is we are just too nice. If a dog was attacking us and we didn't give a shit about it, we could easily just boot it in the face and it would go down (obviously this would not be the case if it was a massive dog attacking a small child, but you know what I mean). But we are too nice so instead we just run away, and the dog then thinks we are scared. Bastards, they should show some respect.

When you're wee, you are taught all these magic rules about how to spell words and stuff. For example: "I before E, except after C" and "The magic E makes the a say A". You think "yes that's nice, that'll help me remember". But then you learn words like "weight", "neighbour", or even "have" (which is quite a basic word) and discover that these rules are complete bollocks because they only work sometimes. All of the English language is like this, it's a complete mess, there is no structure to it. Somebody needs to sort it out.

Sometimes my computer crashes and I have to shut it down by pushing the reset button or something like that. That's annoying but not as annoying as when I then restart and Windows starts doing a scandisk and it says something like:
"To avoid this in the future, make sure you shut down your machine properly"
It's like it thinks that you just switch off the computer without shutting down for a laugh. When in actual fact it is its fault and you have tried everything else you could think of to fix it before switching it off. What is should say is:
"Sorry I screwed up quite badly and have to do some checks to make sure I haven't cocked something up completely. I'll try my best not to do it again"

I push the button on my monitor to switch it on. I definitely feel it click, so I sit and wait for it to come on. I wait for a wee while because monitors are always slow to come on. But then I realise it hasn't actually switched on, as the little green light isn't even on. The most annoying thing is I never seem to get used to this, it catches me out almost every time. Grrrr.

I think everyone probably knows someone that has said this. You mention to them how you like some singer, band, or TV show. They then say "Oh, I used to like them, but they're not as good anymore" in a really smug and superior way like they know better and you're just so naive. The worst thing about this is that I've recently realised that I'm one of these people, because I feel exactly this way about Red Dwarf.

Clothes washing liquid I mean, laundry liquid, whatever it's called. You buy the plastic bottle the first time, then the next time, and all the times after that, you buy the cardboard carton and pour it into the bottle, a refill. I don't have a problem with that, even though the refill is no more that 20p cheaper than the bottle. My problem is with the pouring process. You start pouring the liquid, you see it coming out of the carton, but once the first bit of it has gone inside the bottle, you can't bloody tell if it's doing anything. It moves so slowly that it doesn't appear to be moving at all. This inevitably (although you get wise to it after a few times) leads to you tipping it up even further and then it come out too fast and pours all down the side of the bottle. I'm not sure of the best way to solve this one, perhaps a clear bit on the side of the bottle (like you get on a kettle) so you can see it filling up.

I hate people who pick you up for "spelling mistakes" when they are blatantly "typing errors". You may not see the difference but to me "spelling mistakes" are when you spell a word wrong because you don't know how to spell it, this implies a certain ignorance. "Typing errors", on the other hand, are words spelt wrong because you are typing fast and haven't checked over what you've written, this implies sloppiness, but personally I'd rather be sloppy than ignorant. People tend to do this most in newsgroups when they are losing an argument so just decide to call someone an idiot because they have spelt "the" as "hte" which is obviously just a typing error.

Ants are cool, they march about in single file and carry stuff that's much bigger than themselves, excellent. This is what I used to think about ants. That was until the little bastards invaded my garden. You may not realise this but they make a complete fucking mess. You get big piles of sand type stuff dug up round the cracks in your path and even in your grass. They are also very difficult to get rid of. I have put tons of ant stuff down all over my garden and path. They die off in the area you put the stuff down, but they just move house and turn up in a different bit. I vow to kill every bloody ant that comes near my house (and even some others that I might see somewhere else). It's a difficult task, but I'll do it if I have to kill myself in the process.

There are lots of people moaning about other people "hogging" domain names. They seem to think that just because they are famous then they have a right to every domain name that includes their name. Well this is crap. It should belong to whoever buys it first and if they want to buy it just to sell it at a bigger price then fine. That's how business works. Besides these famous people can usually easily afford to buy these domain names back. So stop all your moaning you stingy bastards and just cough up the money.

Cutting the grass is boring as hell. But not only is it boring but annoying as well. You have to keep moving that stupid cable out the way (with an electric lawnmower). You could get a non-electric mower but that means one of those ancient things that you have to get up some speed before it'll cut properly and by that time you've missed half of your grass. You could also have an air -polluting petrol lawnmower but these are usually too big for a wee lawn and besides you have to keep filling them up. I think it is about time that someone invented a way of transmitting electricity through the air, or a way of using solar power without a ton of huge panels that even work when its dark. Another problem with the grass is that in winter it's fine, it doesn't grow at all. Great you think, but the pay off is that in summer it grows at top speed. You have to cut it every bloody weekend. Why can't it just spread it out a bit more evenly so that you only have to cut it every four weeks or so, for the full year? That would be much better. I think some genetic modification is called for.

I hate it when there is something I am trying to explain to somebody but I just can't get it right. When I think about it in my head it all makes perfect sense but when put in to words it sounds rubbish. So I try to come up with examples, but sometimes this is not so easy and it ends up confusing things more. It just gets more and more confusing until I don't really understand it myself. Do you know what I mean? Did I explain that OK? No? Well it's like when ....emm..... oh fuck it!

For ages someone is doing something that really annoys and/or upsets you but you don't say anything because they are really only trying to help and you don't want to upset them. Then one day you tell them (either because you had finally had enough or because the overheard you telling someone else). You try to break it to them gently and explain that you don't mean any offence or anything. But then they say something like "oh well, if you don't want my help", go in a huff and make you feel like the bad guy! The fact is they have been annoying you for ages and you have only tried to be nice, it's them that has been a complete pain in the arse. If anyone should be going in a huff and giving the silent treatment it's you, bastards!

It really bugs me when people slag off good singers. Recently everybody has been slagging off Phil Collins because he won an Oscar. They are trying to say he is rubbish but he is actually a very good singer it's just that he is not particularly "cool". The ironic part is that most of the cool singers are shit. Most of the cool stuff is stupid dance songs that only have three lines in them that are repeated enough times to make the song last a decent length of time.

Most new films are usually no longer than two hours and more often than not they are only one and a half hours. This is not due to the people making the film not having any more good ideas, in fact they deliberately cut out lots of good scenes simply to make the film shorter. This is because of all the stupid people with low attention spans that complain about very good films (such as The Green Mile recently, not that I've seen it yet but I heard it is good) being too long. The fact is, a film is only too long if it is no good. I got the Austin Powers 2 DVD recently and on it there are some of the deleted scenes that were cut out and Mike Myers explains it was to keep the film at an hour and a half. I expected the deleted scenes to be not quite as good but they are hilarious. There are just too many idiots in the world now and films pander to them to much. If anything this is only going to make them more thick and it doesn't please me much either. Come on film makers, don't pander to the dummies!

SCART sockets are meant to be the modern and best way to plug your video/DVD etc into your telly but they are crap. They do work great if you plug them in correctly but the problem is that it is bloody hard to make sure they are in correctly. It wouldn't be so bad if, when it wasn't in correctly what ever you plugged in just didn't work then you would know for sure but the problem is that bits don't work and bits do. For example I have a DVD player that plugs into my telly through a SCART and I had two different problems that were both due to it not being plugged in right. The first one was that when you brought up a DVDs menu it didn't shop the selected item right. The second problem was that the sound was just really quiet. It took me ages to realise what the problem was the first time. Would it have been so hard for the guy designing SCART sockets to add little bits at the side that clicked when it was in right?

You set the radio to wake you up at 7:30. It does and your knackered and can hardly move and suddenly you hear
"I HATE YOU SO MUCH RIGHT NOW" (that awful song from Kelis) screeching out the radio. This is not the kind of thing I want to wake up to, I want some nice easy listening music that doesn't make me feel like I just had my head jammed in a very small space that's getting smaller all the time.

The millennium really bugs (pun not intended I promise) me. People going on about it like it's something really special when in fact its just 2000 years from a date that somebody made up. It is not even 2000 years since the current calendar was made up well after 1AD and was just started earlier to be based on when they thought Jesus was born (although according to some people it wasn't when He was born but don't get me started on that one, I'll be here for days, not that I don't agree with them I just don't care). If people just used it as an excuse for a big party then that's great but they go on and on about it like it is the most amazing event ever when it's not even as amazing as George Michael turning out to be gay. The other thing is that loads of people are using it as a marketing scam they just stick "2000" or "millennium" on something and charge more for it. As for the millennium bug, what a lot of rubbish. I hope all the people that stored stuff away so that they would survive when all the nuclear plants exploded and whatever feel like the complete idiots that they are.

If you've read all the rest of my pissed off things you'd probably already worked out that I don't like old women very much. Well I still don't and here's another reason. Those old women that get drunk at a party and dance about like an idiot then lift there dress up like they think it's funny if they pretend like they are sexy. You usually see them on those TV shows where people send in their home videos. Perhaps they do think they are sexy. Well they're not and it's not funny either its just disgusting seeing some wrinkly old woman's legs and giant undies.

The word "free" is used everywhere nowadays, especially on the Internet. This would be great if it was actually true and all these things actually were free. But most of the time they are not and it's just some bloody trial or free when you pay for something else or something equally rubbish. What this means is that now the word "free" means bugger all except perhaps "Here's a crap offer put together by some twat who thinks he/she can lure you into a paying for something by kidding on it doesn't cost anything". So when somebody is actually offering something free then you can't find it anyway because it gets swamped in all the pretend free offers.

I hate it when semi-celebrites go to third world countries for some charity thing and they talk about how great the people are and that they're much better than us because of what they put up with. This is a lot of crap. I've nothing against third world people they're probably great and everything but they are not better than us just because they're really poor, ill and hungry. That's just peoples nature, to survive, if we were poor, ill and hungry we'd be like that too. Those bloody stupid washed up celebrities just think it makes them look smart and nice to say that. Good examples of these are Nigel out of Eastenders and Ex-Ginger Spice when they went to some third world place for Comic Relief.

I hate it when I do something the same every day, I mean just wee silly things like when I went down for my breakfast I used to fill the kettle and open the blind at the same time (because the sink is under the window) and it just annoyed me that I did this automatically every day. I also hate it when I do something stupid when I'm driving such as cut somebody up by mistake or stall in front of someone. I get a bit road rage at other people but when it's me that does something stupid I really get pissed off. The thing that annoys me most is that there is no way to say sorry to the people you have annoyed and I just imagine them getting really pissed off at me and thinking I meant to do whatever I did when I didn't, it's just because I'm not that good a driver. There are more things about me that piss me off, I won't list them all but of all the things that piss me off I think that I piss me off the most.

Most laws are really stupid as they seem to allow the bad guys to get away with things and get the good guys into trouble. For example the way people who have been renting somebody's house can just stop paying and stay there for ages before you can't get them out. I reckon laws shouldn't be so specific but just have a general set of laws (kind of like the ten commandments I suppose but maybe a few more and minus the one about using Gods name in vain or whatever it is) and have professional juries (instead of just picking any stupid idiot off the street) who can then just use the general laws and a bit of common sense to decide if somebody has done something bad or not.

When it's sunny for a few days everybody gets all excited and puts on their shorts and sunglasses and stuff. But when the sun goes away nobody notices for a while and they are still walking about in their shorts for a few days because they're so desperate for it to be sunny, although I don't know why.

Sun burn, sweat and songs that suck more than usual. Need I say more?

Why do they bother putting an eject button on remote controls for video recorders? If you are ejecting the tape the presumably you want it out so are going to have to go up to the video recorder to get it anyway. But the thing about them that really pisses me off is when you are sitting in your comfy chair with your dinner on a tray on you