Things That Irk Me

1. Cynicism.
2. Bad email etiquette in all its forms.
3. Meetings in which people surprise other people with the agenda.
4. Meetings in which people gang up on other people in arguments.
5. Meetings that probably signify I'm about to lose a lucrative gig for no real reason other than mismanagement.
6. Improper use of the brainstorming technique. (You're not supposed to analyze, just throw out ideas. And no, if you go home and do it by yourself, that's not brainstorming. It's actually better done in a group.)
7. People lacking management experience coming into a leadership position with no understanding that they could learn appropriate skills through training and reading.
8. Always being polite and nice and having my suggestions ignored or being laid off as a result.
9. Dealing with harmful idiots, as opposed to harmless idiots, whom I rather like.
10. People who are leaders in title only.
11. Creative people who don't understand business skills.
12. Business people who discount great ideas couched in creative language.
13. Life.
14. Being a bad parent and not knowing how to improve despite feverish Googling. That's sad.
15. Mediocrity and its excuses.
16. Paternalism.
17. Anger management.
18. War.
19. The Internal Revenue Service. It took anger management just to write those three words without any adjectives.
20. War.
21. People who are irrational or mercurial in their beliefs.
22. People who harass other members of a democracy about their politics rather than engaging in reasonable debate.
23. That no matter how hard I work to get everything under control and out of crisis mode it's not.
24. Having to be mature and realize that blabbing about your problems gets you nowhere in this world.
25. That as soon we evolve past one set of socially discriminatory beliefs we develop a new set that is even harder to detect than the previous one.
26. That being a woman working with male software developers or musicians means you're constantly battling a stereotype that they're smarter than you are.
27. Wondering if they are indeed smarter or just have expertise in areas I don't.
28. Wondering if I will ever feel smarter than anyone.
29. Worrying that my boys will not grow up to be good people.
30. Insomnia.
31. People who present false fronts of humility, environmentalism or clean living while acting in cruel and unpious ways within a business.
32. Liars who lie all the time about everything. I prefer a big lie over many small ones. Depending on the lie, I guess.
33. Wars and the idiots who start them.
34. Wars and the difficulty of stopping them.
35. The business of war and how it pervades our culture.
36. Nihilism in popular culture.
37. Screamo music. Ooh, an oxymoron! It is funny music, though. I give it that.
38. The fact that I do not have a personal librarian who appears at my side in times of need and says "Read this, you'll love it" and as a result causes me to absorb great thoughts rather than every drab word written by the Associated Press and various fashion magazines.
39. The new tyranny of beauty forced on women, involving ever more heroic amounts of plastic surgery.
40. The fact that young women today feel obligated to look attractive now in a million new ways, not least of which is their weight, and that for every intelligent female role model there are ten famous strippers.
41. Hair extension abuse.
42. Clothes with logos.
43. Butt implants. You have to sit on them?
44. The fact that an angel investor is not funding my music career as I "take it to the next level."
45. Unscrupulous music bookers who'll give you the gig if you let them play in your band.
46. Bad gigs.
47. Coming home after a bad gig and finding chaos that needs immediate fixing.
48. General yuckiness.
49. Poopy gloppiness.
50. Slithy grak.