Five Things I Hate

Oh, the dangers of non-blogging weekends. Apparently there's a meme floating around right now where people are sharing five things that they hate, which people ordinarily enjoy. (If you are unfamiliar with the concept of a "meme," it is a topic which gets spread from blog to blog; essentially, like those forwarded quiz emails)

So, lest I be "unhip" in the blogosphere (heh, probably too late for that), here are the five things that I hate:

1. Instant Messenger
I despise it. I mean, don't get me wrong, chatting and instant communication with friends and coworkers is great. Being able to multitask or get instant information from lab partners has been invaluable to me.

But the whole thing is ridiculous. Maybe I just wasn't built for the computer age (a strange thing coming from someone of my generation), but when I sit at the computer and see text flash back and forth, I have the hardest time equating it with real human contact. I don't often remember to put up "away messages." I'll often wander off in the middle of "conversations," because I'm trying to do homework or clean the house, or something more important than inane chatter on "the box."

And boy, does that ever tick people off. Which is one of the reasons I hate instant messenger. If you really want to talk to me, if it's something important, call me. If communicating with me is really that important to you, you can pick up your dang phone and hear my voice.

Ah, but then people couldn't talk to multiple people, or simply look at my away message all the time without actually having to talk to me. Stalking: It's not just for weirdos anymore!

2. Religious Do-nothings
You may wonder what I mean by the phrase. Let me explain. It's rather a phenomenon of modern Christianity (perhaps other generations suffered from this as well, though I have not the learning to know one way or the other) that we like to talk. We talk and talk and talk. We talk about how much God is doing and all of the great things He is working on. We talk about all of the wonderful things we could be doing in his name. We talk about the possibilities for ministry, the good works we could do, that others do, and so on ad infinitum. And yet it all comes down to sound and fury signifying nothing.

For all of our talk, we return with lame excuses. "Hey, we should work at the soup kitchen this weekend! Will I be there? Uh, no. I, uh . . . I have homework to do. And I need to go visit my family. I have plans already." It's a major problem. We like to talk, we like to plan, we like to think about how great the ideas are we can come up with for serving God, but when the time comes to give our faith feet and make it walk, we wimp out. We'd rather be self-serving and insulate ourselves. If we don't have to face real problems, then we can live our life like none of that really exists.

And yet, I'm probably the worst of hypocrites when it comes to this, preaching against something I do as much as the next man. Lord, have mercy on me.

3. Online Gaming
Hey, abrupt change of subject. I hate online games. I hate them with a passion. Not just the MMORPGs (Massively-Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games, for those not in the know), but the strategy and the shooter games, though for other reasons.

Primarily, I hate them because the majority of peope playing online are immature 13-year olds who have the mouths of sailors. They seem to get their thrills from being absolute jerks and telling you about it in ways that would make gangsta rappers blush. Why? Here's one theory (WARNING: Bad language!). Playing games with these people makes me want to hurt them badly.

That problem applies to both genres, but I can live with multiplayer gaming online otherwise. It's the MMORPGs that really bug me. You see, I like paying for a game once, then being able to enjoy it whenever I want for as long as I want. Not so with these. With these, you continue to pay for the privelege of playing the game, even after you paid $50 for the game in the first place. You shell out this money to play a game that has no point. It's not even a game. If it was a game, someone could win. But the only person who wins these games are the companies taking your money over and over.

Additionally, you can't play these games by yourselves. They make the games too hard to be played by people who can't stand the swearing 13 year olds. The games are mainly for stats/item junkies who want to get the best stuff, and you do so by spending your first 20 or so hours of game play killing rats and oversized fungi, just for the privelege of moving on to slightly larger rats. Eventually, you get to kill real monsters, but that's still only if you've taken on the patience to put up with the "other people" long enough to go on quests.

Count me out.

4. Smokers
This might seem like an obvious, and overplayed item, but public smoking just really steams my carrots (wow, that is really lame). It's not just the bizarreness of having "smoking" and "non-smoking" sections in restaurants when it's all the same air, or having to sit with people in those places who just light up without asking if anyone in their vicinity would mind them saturating the area with foul smelling carcinogens. It's the utter inesecability of public smoking.

For example, I can't walk to class without getting a faceful of smoke. It's awful. I'm glad they enacted the rule where smokers must remain 15 feet from the doors of all campus buildings, but good luck finding people who actually follow said rule. Even if I manage to leave a building without getting caught in the cloud of smoke that lingers with them outside the doorways, I always manage to end up walking just downwind of some other smoker taking the same path as me to class. They just blow their filth into the wind, and "WHOOSH!" . . . right into my face. Blechh. Keep it to yourselves, fellas.

5. Contrary Opinions
Don't get me wrong. I don't think everyone has to agree with me, and I can often times respect people who hold differing opinions from me, because I know that they hold their opinions in good conscience and reached their conclusions because of the reasoning they applied to the knowledge they had.

But sometimes . . . people just don't get it.

This really encompasses so much. It's the people who think that if you hold an opinion contrary to theirs, you must be some ignorant troglodyte who cannot think rationally about anything. It's the people who remain willfully ignorant of a subject because they are satisfied with their position, or the people who willfully ignore information in order to preserve their preconceived ideas. It's the people who are so deep into their ideas that they cannot possibly even conceive that they might be wrong about it; all argument with them becomes an exercise in futility, as they don't even take a moment to consider your ideas. It's the people who hold vehemently to their idea, but live in ways that completely contradict their idea (example: "peace" protesters who attack counter-protesters).

So, it's not that people believe or opine differently than I do. It's the people who do so in ridiculously silly ways that really frustrates me.

There you have it. Five things I hate. Maybe later I should do a "Five things I love" list just to bring some balance. I don't want my audience (that's you) to think I'm a crank.