Get Off My Lawn

by MyPeeve

This is not brain surgery, people. It’s not even remotely taxing. If someone sends you an invitation, you DO NOT DO ANY OF THE FOLLOWING:

1) ignore it
2) reply yes, then not bother to show up
3) reply no, then DO show up (with or without gift)
4) bring several people you thought might enjoy it if they were not invited
5) post it to social media so the whole damn planet shows up at someone’s small house

I could go on and on, but these 5 should help you to NOT be a complete num-nutz douche bag to your next unfortunate host.

You see, RSVP from the original French is répondez s’il vous plaît and means roughly “please respond.” Let me emphasize here that it is NOT A FUCKING OPTION. You must reply. Period. If you don’t reply, you are a rude jerk wad who should be shot at sunrise so that you no longer breath my air.

Think about it. Someone has taken the time to invite your stupid ass to their lovely event, opened their home, asked you to join in their celebration, whatever. They must do menu and drink planning, ensure there are enough chairs and tables or other gathering places to sit and chat comfortably. They have to make sure there are a variety of menu options for people with specific dietary needs. They don’t mind doing this as you are their friend or acquaintance. They are happy to accommodate your needs with advanced notice.

I cannot tell you how many times, from my wedding onward where a bunch of people RSVP that they will attend and then on the day itself they just don’t bother to show up. If this is you I’m talking about, you should be ashamed of yourself. The only legitimate excuse is if you died in a car crash while attempting to reach the event on time. Then, I might forgive you. Maybe. And only if you weren’t speeding and only if you didn’t hurt anyone else on the way.

The next worst (or perhaps this is far worse) are those who RSVP no or do not bother to RSVP at all and then show up. The penultimate offense in this category is the douche bag who shows up WITH EXTRA FUCKING PEOPLE WHO WERE NEVER INVITED IN THE FIRST PLACE. What, are you a mountain gorilla? Oh wait, they aren’t even that rude. Even animals know never to invade someone else’s territory uninvited.

And, of course, the ultimate creme de la creme of RSVP bad etiquette (in my humble, yet well reasoned opinion) is the person who posts an invitation on social media without first asking the host.

Now, if you are a complete idiot and incapable of understanding why this is wrong and offensive, please go to http://emilypost.com/ and learn to be a decent human being probably for the first time in your life. The whole world will benefit. Now, get off my lawn!

by Kati

I sat there politely at the dinner party as you all bemoaned Twitter and Facebook and the whole entire Internet even! Weakening the social fabric of our communities! Turning our children into Zombies! And even, this was my favorite one, just making it “too easy” to find information…turning what used to be “great quests” for knowledge into something too quick and easy.

I’ve actually sat there politely many times, as you clucked your tongue about “what is it that people DO on Facebook?” or how pathetic people who use Twitter are, with their thinking they’ve got something interesting to say. “Where DO they find the time??” you say in that tone. “They must not have children,” you say in that tone.

A) Clearly, you’ve never seen the number of family pictures on Facebook and B) F*CK YOU, because married people with children who think their lives are higher on the meaningful scale than barren singles like me is a Get Off My Lawn rant for another day.

Do you know how many times I’ve told someone that the fact that they’re NOT using Facebook or Twitter means they’re choosing to live like cave people? That refusing to engage in social media is like deciding you’re going to be Amish? NONE! I’ve never criticized people for not digging the Internet or still loving their paper newspapers or not wanting to My Space or Facebook or whatever the new new thing is because I don’t care. I respect all lifestyle choices. People should do what they do. So I like to tend an imaginary farm at the end of the day…this interferes with your life how?

My Granny is 92…NINETY TWO, and she has a Facebook page. Granted, she doesn’t completely have the hang of it. Sometimes she posts long personal messages to people on her or their Walls. Occasionally I have to stop by and block all the messages from whatever new game one of her friends is playing. But my Granny is CURIOUS and she’s NOT AFRAID OF LEARNING NEW THINGS. Now, I’m not judging people who…oh what the hell…you judge me, so I’m judging you. Get curious about the world and learn a new f-ing thing once in a while! My Granny is hipper than you.

GET OFF MY LAWN!!!!!!!!!!!!!

by The Q

There are a couple things that send me right over the fucking EDGE–and today I’m going to tell you about one of them:

You see, nothing will make my head explode like someone trying to carry on a conversation with me when I am just out of hearing range. That is, I can hear their voice and perhaps decipher 20-30% of the words they are saying…but the content of their (more often than not) bellowed message is lost.

And to make matters worse, I am generally expected to respond. If I do not respond, or if I answer back with a “HUH???” the undecipherable message is repeated again only this time, at a slightly higher pitch.

Let me make this clear: if I’m upstairs, downstairs, in the shower, on the toilet, indoors, or outdoors–and you are NOT in the same location–DO NOT attempt to talk to me about even the most trivial of matters.

You know why?

BECAUSE I CANNOT FUCKING HEAR YOU.

If you wish to discuss why you can’t find your socks, where we should go for lunch or that we need to add dental floss to the shopping list–COME TO WHERE I AM AND SPEAK TO MY FACE.

Otherwise, you are wasting my time and yours–and making me very, very irritated.

by midnightferret

The title says it all, really. I mean, I moved to Texas. Tex-Mex is supposed to be a delicious fusion of Texas and Mexican foodways, culminating in a party in my mouth. Instead, I am confronted with all sorts of atrocities: bland refried beans and weird “Spanish” rice with that peas-n-carrots blend in it, enchilada sauce containing tomatoes, so-called “burritos” that taste worse than that frozen Patio brand at the store… The list is endless.

I ask you, owners of crappy Tex-Mex restaurants located in Texas: WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?! Did you just move here from Iowa or something and decide, “Hey, I’ve got a great idea! Why don’t I open up a Tex-Mex restaurant? I know nothing about Texas food OR Mexican food, so I know it’ll be AWESOME!” Oh yeah, and Austin residents, don’t think you’re going to be off the hook for this either. If you didn’t keep patronizing these temples of atrocity, they wouldn’t still be in business!

To sum up: I live in Texas. I have a right to be able to access at least decent, if not awesome Tex-Mex food without driving more than five or six miles. I mean, if I can find good Cali-Mex, New Mex, or Interior Mexican food easier than I can find good Tex-Mex, I feel like that’s a giant fail. I’m tired of Tex-Mex restaurant hopping and being seriously disappointed more than one out of five times. Bad Tex-Mex places, your very existence in Texas is creating a huge, withered, dead spot in the middle of my lawn. Get off it.

by noahvail

Virginia Woolf wrote that “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” I’m pretty sure if Virginia Woolf were alive today she’d sit in her room checking Twitter and Facebook all day long, and trying to get to the supposed Shangri La of “zero inbox” instead of writing great books. She was a genius, but still only human.

I am seriously mourning my attention span these days, and I blame its decimation on our multitasking culture. In fact, every time I see a job description asking for someone “multitask-oriented” my rotten husk of a heart wizens a tiny bit more. And yet as I write this I have 16 tabs open in two different web browsers.

How much scientific evidence do we need to convince us that humans are not wired for multitasking, and that trying to do many things at once usually results in things not getting done, or at least done more slowly?

Hang on while I check Facebook.

Back.

As I was saying, we’re really bad at doing many things at once. It’s amazing how much more gets completed when we slow down and focus on one thing at a time. Try checking your email four times a day, instead of having it open all day long. If you can do this, you are a better human being than me. I tried it for awhile, then quickly lapsed into old bad habits.

There’s a quick, simple solution to all this, which…

Wait, hang on. Twitter.

by myerman

Not only are you the type of person who would own a big giant truck, but you also park in spaces marked COMPACT CAR ONLY.

Once, just once, I’d like to catch you in the act of actually pulling into one of these spaces and just stand there and shout, “REALLY? You’re really going to park there?”

Of course, you’ll probably just back over my compact car and drive away, but I’ll still shake my fist at you from under the wreckage.

by noahvail

If you run a blog, particularly a WordPress blog, comments of this type will be familiar:

“Spot on with this write-up, I really assume this website wants way more consideration. I’ll in all probability be again to read rather more, thanks for that info.”

“I am usually to running a blog and i really respect your content. The article has actually peaks my interest. I am going to bookmark your web site and hold checking for brand spanking new information.”

“Hey, be fond of your website I’ve been understanding a propos this subject every one night.”

If you’re a novice blogger, or just naive, you’re tempted to let these comments stand. Why not? They make it look like people are reading and enjoying your blog, and so what if their English skills aren’t quite up to snuff? And thus the spammers win.

In 2004, blogger Anil Dash proved that he could get a #1 Google search ranking for the phrase “nigritude ultramarine” just by asking people to link to him. Now SEO spammers have automated this process. They (or more accurately their robots) crawl the web for WordPress sites and then post innocuous-seeming comments like the ones above. The common thread among these comments is that the words entered in the “Author” field are always some sought-after SEO phrase (e.g. “xbox live free,” “cialis online”) and the URL goes to some spam website. When the comment gets published, the spam websites rise in search rankings because, as Anil Dash demonstrated, all it takes is inbound links from a wide variety of sources to convince Google that a website is reputable.

This is why SEO is broken. This is why search is starting to break as well. It’s also why I get a dozen emails a day asking me to moderate new comments on my blog—so get off my lawn!

by Nathan Haley

As a general rule I accept and genuinely appreciate the proposition that we as caring, considerate humans should not judge a person by his or her (insert physical trait here).

I accept this rule generally, not unconditionally. One such exception to this rule is the men’s (boy’s) hair style phenomenon characterized by long(ish) hair combed oddly forward from the back / top / side of the head in defiance of any natural part in the hair in such a manner as to cover up the eyes, i.e., the BieberBang (see example below).

Don’t get me wrong – I have no bias between long hair vs. short hair. Military buzz cut, 50’s side part, 90’s chili bowl, the timeless mullet, hell I don’t care if you have a pony tail down to your ass, just so long as maintenance of said “style” does not require an epileptic neck seizure every 10-15 seconds in order to perfectly twitch your bangs back in place in front of your eyes. Seriously, this is completely unacceptable.

I can’t quite put my finger on what it is about the BieberBang that gets me going, but I do know that the second I see it I want to kick some ass.

Not in the casual sense like, I’m irritated and this is my ass kicking cliché figure of speech, but in the literal sense; i.e., the instant I see the BieberBang I have an uncontrollable urge to run up behind the guy and trip him, hold him down & cut off the bangs, then pour a bottle of Old Spice body wash down his throat in the hopes that he starts acting like a man, man.

Maybe teach him to ride a horse backwards? Besides, it’s not like he’s going to see me coming – he’ll be way too distracted texting while his iPod shuffle blares the latest emo ballad which, of course, never fails to bring a tear to his mascara tinged eye. Alas, I digress…

All that said, the point is that the douchebaggery that is the BieberBang has reached epic proportions and it must stop, at once. I’m not kidding. You look like an asshole, and you deserve no mercy. Now get that shit out of your eyes and stop staring at your shoes, you aren’t that tortured and your hair is not epic.

Ed. Note: I couldn’t believe that grown men would actually get a haircut like this, so a-googling I went, and found an image of Tom Brady with the Bieber cut.

by Lady Jane Grey

As a person of the feminine persuasion, I am constantly amazed by the level that so-called “women’s” magazines will stoop to in order to attempt to sell me their product. Sure, everyone loves learning about new sexual positions, products that will save you time at home or at work, and about the hilarious horror stories that result from having a uterus, but seriously, peeps, I do NOT want to read any of the following stories, EVER:

1. Celebrity Couple Dating!

Brangelina vs Jennifer Aniston is, like, 10 years old. But they are STILL flogging this horse. Give it up, and while you’re at it, I don’t care who ANY of your celebutards are dating this week. It’s musical beds, anyway, so why am I expected to be taking up mental real estate with these pointless details? If I ever need to know who was fucking whom in the late ’80s, there’s always Wikipedia.

2. How to Drive Him Wild in Bed!

Not that I don’t have an interest in driving him wild, but let’s be honest: these tips are recycled every month, and the positions are just given new, “cheekier” names. Oh, and by the way, why is it assumed that I’m NOT driving him wild in bed? For that matter, why is it assumed that he drives ME wild in bed, and where are HIS tips on getting all up ons? Now THAT would be a sexy take on a very old, worn-out pair of panties, my friend.

3. Buy This and You Can Look Like [INSERT CELEB OF THE MONTH]!

No, I cannot. No, I will not. No, I do not want any of these products. See #1 for why I don’t care about celebrities, but add to that the fact that 99.9% of them have no taste whatsoever. Do not tell me it is the “hot new trend.” I want to buy things that I like, rather than things you tell me are good. You don’t know shit. And neither does Celebutard Of The Month.

4. Amazing True Tales About the Time I Had My Period and Something Went Awry!

No shit, really? Something embarrassing happened while your uterus was trying to turn itself inside out like in the movie Aliens? How could that ever happen? I’m flabbergasted! Seriously. Women bleed for a week, once a month? This is news to me! Share with me more of these exciting and entertaining feminine factoids before I put this magazine down to buy another!!

5. Cute Boy Alert!

A certain “feminist” magazine does this one, and it bugs the everloving shit out of me. Sure, I am interested in “boys,” as you call them. (Men, actually, as I am a 30+ woman.) I like to listen to bands made up of males, read books written by people with goatees, enjoy the movies of people with penises. But for shit’s sake, lady, this is supposed to be a WOMEN’S MAGAZINE where we embrace WOMANITY! I can find out more than enough about the menfolk from all of THEIR magazines, plus all the “general interest” magazines that assume having a dick is the norm. How about we leave the dudes out of our clubhouse for one second, and talk about the unsung feminine heroes of music, film, literature and art? Cus frankly, I would like to see more names than the oft-heralded Margaret Cho held up as examples. (No offense, Margaret. You are beautiful and hilarious and I will one day attend one of your super shows. Really.)

P.S. I don’t need to “get to know” the lead singer from Weezer; he’s been making music for almost 20 goddamn years now. At least pick someone who is a BOY for your Cute Boy Alert!

GAH!!!

by noahvail

If you have small children, or frequent small children’s birthday parties (wtf?), you know the drill: At the end of the party everyone gets a goody bag. The goody bag is traditionally filled with stickers, cheap plastic toys, and if the kids are lucky, candy. Surely this custom began when a parent observed Little Sally crying about not getting a present at Little Timmy’s party. Forget that it was Little Timmy’s birthday, and not Little Sally’s—it was an injustice that needed correction!

While I’m too lazy to conduct actual research I’m pretty sure goody bags really took off in the 1980s and 1990s—which helps explain why young people act so entitled nowadays. They have been taught that every day is their special day, and that everyone gets presents always.

I have two small kids and lots of firsthand experience in this department. I have personally observed a much-older, probably uninvited sibling of a party guest break into tears over not getting a goody bag, and (semi-related) a new-to-me practice of busting open a piñata only to give the candy back to the host to have it redistributed in equal proportions.

But more importantly, I have had a hand (albeit a small one compared to my wife’s) in planning seven or eight birthday parties, and I can tell you this: party planning is hard, and often expensive, and goody bags are just one more goddamn thing that makes the endeavor stressful and not much fun for the hosts.

So let’s stop it with the goody bags. Please. Your kids can handle it, I promise.