Starting from the small to the large:

• Why would a fancy hotel renovate its showers and NOT include a soap dish? I didn’t ask the clerk what I was supposed to do with the soap because I was afraid of the answer I would get. And, hey, for the price you charge, you should damn sure offer room service.
• So many Judeo-Christian sects. Only one pantheon. Boring.
• Funerals where the officiating minister oh-so-hopefully reads the story of Lazarus rising from the dead.
• People who can’t grasp the concept of “it’s not OK to recycle with plastic bags, but it IS OK to use them for garbage.”
• Supermarkets who offer cheap paper bags without handles that aren’t strong enough to recycle a kleenex in.
• Cops who have nothing better to do than harass kids for skateboarding. At least when I was a kid, playing was not a ticketable offense. What next? Handing out tickets on the basketball court? Maybe the gym is a criminal hideout. The thought of all those Baltimore City drug dealers swimming laps and pumping iron just boggles the mind. Obviously Lynne Brick keeps bad company.
• Bureaucrats who are too self-important to answer email from anyone but a supervisor. I got stuck behind this woman in line at the office cafeteria, listening to her and the cashier whine about “people who have no respect” for other people. Helloooooo, anybody hooooome?
• I don’t know why the Maryland MTA even BOTHERS to post bus schedules for the number 27 bus. “Maybe today, maybe tomorrow, maybe never.” And then you PAY THEM for the privilege of being late to work through no fault of your own. Another story for later.
• Gas stations. I’m convinced the owners raise their prices and sit smoking their Camels in their little glass cubicles, laughing as we suckers pull up to the pump. Perhaps I should change jobs so I, too, can be laughing all the way to the bank. Why the hell can’t our government be smart enough to give tax and other incentives toward the development of alternative fuels and other “green” technologies?
• I commented to someone at work that our ISP was down last weekend. She said brightly, “oh, then you probably got to spend more time outside!” (She has kids.) As a matter of fact, I DID spend some time outside on Saturday, freezing my butt off, because a friend of mine was moving. (I wasn’t doing the heavy lifting–I was playing “guard dog,” but damn it was cold. On the upside, I got to see geese returning en masse.) I also got to hear my husband complain for three days (although, in his defense, he does a lot of work from home and needs regular internet access).
• Dear ISP: The next time you come out for service and can’t get into the building, please call one or more of your customers who LIVE in the building to let you in. D’oh.
• Professional publications who don’t edit before printing. The Baltimore Sun recently printed a headline, “Guard’s death called a ‘hit’ for corrupt officers.” I had to read that twice, scratching my head. Maybe it went platinum.
• WHY do people talk on their cellphones while using public restroom facilities? How is that different than taking a pee while using a public phone booth? While I was listening to Air America Radio one day in my car, a guy called whatever show it was and made his comments, immediately followed by the sound of a toilet flushing. I repeat, all of us in Air America Listener-Land heard this guy’s toilet flush. There was a pause… then the host said “not smart, dude,” and hung up. Answer one question: Would you call your mother while sitting on the loo?
• Dear [insert name of urgent care center here]: I very much appreciate the fact that you were open and able to see my husband when he needed it. However, your waiting room is aptly named and not very comfortable. It has the ambience of a cattle pen. You could do more to make the passage of time more pleasant than just leaving the TV on CNN. How about some games or WiFi access? Is a small coffee and snack bar too much to ask? And I think I caught a cold from the kid sitting across from me, coughing all over his cell phone. (Happy New Year to me.)
• Anyone who abuses animals, whether they are a Marine or not, should be tossed over a cliff.
• People who let their pets run unsupervised in the street.
• People who get so intoxicated on whatever substance that they lose their common sense and inhibitions, get behind the wheel and shoot someone because they didn’t use a turn signal. I think a large majority of so-called “road rage” incidents result from stupidity–anger is a normal human emotion, but most people are not “driven” to homicide over the small human idiocies we see on the road every day. Getting so high that you lose the ability to control yourself is just stupid, but once you get behind the wheel, it becomes dangerous and criminal. I’ve called people some colorful names in the privacy of my car, but I’ve never gotten out and THREATENED anyone for driving like an a-hole.
• Gun owners (and drivers, too): If you have a death wish or want to get high as a kite, keep it at home. It’s a different matter entirely to blame others for your problems and retaliate violently on your friends, family, strangers or innocents of any species. The recent shooting at NIU shows why it makes sense to outlaw the possession/carrying of firearms by anyone other than police, military, and first responders. When is the amount of gun violence in this country going to be considered too much? I propose that, if people want to hunt or otherwise shoot guns for recreation, they should go to a business set up for that sole purpose and rent a gun by the hour, used only on the premises. As for the argument that criminals will always obtain guns by illegal means, if guns were better regulated there would be fewer available, period. Our taxes are supposed to pay for protective services; if the system is “broke,” then we should damn well prevail upon our elected officials to fix it.
• OK, I screwed up this past weekend. I threw a rug down the trash chute in my building and it got stuck and backed up the trash. I probably should have taken it down to the garage as a “bulky item.” In this instance, I reasoned that, if I rolled it up and dropped it from the first floor, it would slide a short way straight into the trash bin–and I wouldn’t be messing up the the lobby dragging around a dried-out, sand-dripping cat hair magnet. I’ve lived in this building for 17 years and had NO IDEA until this morning that the trash chute is not a straight drop–it ANGLES at the bottom in order to slow the speed and impact of trash dropped from higher floors. When trash backed up, I thought something tall had landed vertically in the trash bin, and I always wondered, how hard can it be to lay it flat? Now HERE is a PERFECT example of the kind of information management should share when people move in–offer an explanation for WHY something long, large or bulky shouldn’t go down the trash chute, even if it seems to fit.