Category Archives: stuff i hate

The Case Against Cars (Especially Taxis)

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I hate taxis.

I don’t think cars belong in New York City in general.

I think people who think they need to drive or taxi everywhere when there’s a perfectly awesome subway and train system are dumb.

I think if people didn’t take cabs everywhere after 11 p.m., the MTA would be forced to provide better after-hours service.

I’ll admit that I’ve enjoyed a ride home in my friend Beth’s car from time to time. I’ll admit that after a 5-hour dinner with Kamran, it feels good to be dropped off at his doorstep and rolled inside. And I’ll admit that our trip to the Hamptons last weekend might not have even been possible if my group of friends didn’t have four cars. But for the most part, I’d love to see cars banned in the city, and I’d happily give up my quick trips home from late-night karaoke if it meant there weren’t any taxis on the road.

More than cabs themselves, I hate the people who drive them. I really do. They’re generally smelly, generally unfriendly, and generally the worst drivers you’ve ever seen.

They cut each other off.

They nearly run over pedestrians at every turn.

They drive infinitely faster than the streets allow, leaving their passengers bumped and bruised.

It costs $2.50 to $3 just to sit down in one, which is already more than it costs to go as far as you want in the subway, and then you have getting charged for standing in traffic to look forward to. They expect to be tipped for their awful service and will grunt at you no matter how much extra you give. Hilariously, the default tip on the touchscreen payment system in the back of every cab is 20%, and it only goes up from there.

And my absolute biggest cab peeve is the way some of the drivers will cut across four lanes of traffic to pick you up. I understand that this sort of service should please me, but they inevitably have to drive an extra half-block to make it all the way over, and no, I’m not taking a walk down the street just for the pleasure of watching you almost cause three accidents, thanks.

Yet on my way home from the Hamptons on Sunday, I broke down and took a cab. My friends Ash and Michael had dropped me off near the 7 train in Queens with even more stuff than I’d left with: my purse, a bag of clothes, a bag of leftover food, a bag of my Rollerblading gear, and my Rollerblades themselves. That coupled with the fact that it was approximately 4000 degrees had left me more in the mood to eat the cold tails off a glass of disgusting cocktail shrimp than walk to Kamran’s apartment.

Oh, also? I had fallen down and hit my head on the asphalt on Friday while trying to learn to Rollerblade with the help of my friend Christine, so there was a searing headache to help me along. Oh, and also, I was stupid and got ridiculously sunburnt on my back and shoulders, so carrying anything on them was out of the question.

So I stood on the street outside of Grand Central, and I let a cab driver make a U-turn on 42nd Street to pick me up, and I paid him $5 to drive me a mere 2 avenue blocks and 1 street block, and I felt like it was worth every penny, even when he grunted at me.

Not only because I couldn’t hold on to those skates for another minute, but because while I’d been waiting outside of Grand Central, I’d tried to flag down a previous cab, but he’d been cruising at approximately 90 MPH and had whipped past me before slamming on his brakes. I knew he was waiting for me just a little way down the street, but my bags were on the ground, and there was no way I was going to pick them back up and walk with them. He eventually started honking at me, and you can bet I didn’t so much as look his way until he sped off again.

I win!

New York City is Supposed to be Devoid of Nature, and That’s Why I Moved Here

Filed under living in new york is neat, stuff i hate, super furry animals
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I spent my entire morning commute yesterday thinking that something was crawling on me. Now, my morning commute is only five stops on the train, but rush hour trains are always held up at the stations by passengers trying to cram themselves in, so five stops can take a half an hour. So picture me feeling itchy all over for a half an hour, adjusting the tags on my shirt and jacket in case that was the problem, furiously scratching the places I felt it most.

At first I thought it might be my imagination, because I do drop acid before going to work every morning, after all. But at one point, I actually felt like something was crawling on my ear. And I felt like the guy across from me on the train was watching it happen. I tried to distract myself with my Kindle, but I kept having to reach up every two minutes to brush existent or non-existent things off of my face. I wanted to get out a mirror and have a look, but I thought it was better to not know for sure, considering what my reaction might be.

I had it in my mind that it might be a spider, and I am totally scared of spiders. Like, scared in the way that if someone put a fake one in my lunch or on my pillow, I would never talk to that person again. Growing up on a farm, I was running downstairs nightly to wake my dad up and make him kill one I had or had maybe spotted on the wall beside my bed. Even now when I go to Ohio to visit, I’m on a constant look-out for spiders all over the house, and last time I was home and made my sister kill one for me that was dropping from the ceiling, she asked me, “How did you manage to survive twenty-some years in the country?” In that same trip, I made my best friend, Tracey, reach across me while we were in the Taco Bell drive-thru to pluck one of those little hairy spiders off of the armrest attached to my door. I really think I’m more equipped to deal with cockroaches somehow.

Anyway, I finally got to work and ran to the bathroom to check out my face. I didn’t see anything, so I officially chalked it up to my wild imagination and did my business. As I was washing my hands, though, this cute little spider came down on his web right in front of my face FROM MY HAIR. It was then that I remembered walking underneath a tree and noticing a spider hanging from it at the very last moment that morning, but never did I consider that it might have jumped on me. I tried to scream, but only air came out, and even though the last thing I want to do in the world is purposely touch a spider, I reached up and smacked it away.

And then I frantically checked the floor for it, but it was nowhere to be seen. And then I spent the rest of the day itching myself and being completely miserable.

The Yankees Apparently Won the World Series

Filed under living in new york sucks so hard, stuff i hate, why i'm better than everyone else
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The Awesome Part About Working in Downtown NYC on Yankees World Series Parade Day: My office building overlooks the parade, so I can watch it from our balcony without having to actually stand amongst the stinking masses.

The Awful Part About Working in Downtown NYC on Yankees World Series Parade Day: I don’t actually care about the Yankees or even baseball in general, yet I had to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with all of the cheerful fans this morning on the train. Grand Central was flooded with people in jerseys who had apparently taken the day off for the parade, which makes me a little sick to my stomach.

The Idiot Thing I Did in NYC on Yankees World Series Parade Day: I wore baby blue pants with a baby blue shirt and a navy blue track jacket. If one more person says something Yankees-positive to me on the train today despite the fact that I’m wearing headphones and reading a magazine, there will be blood.

Benjamin Button Should’ve Been Called Benjamin Suckin’ OHHH!

Filed under stuff i hate, there's a difference between films and movies
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Netflix delivered The Curious Case of Benjamin Button to Kamran’s apartment a good month ago. I’m the one who put it on our list, yet I’m the one who kept dragging my feet, because three hours of Brad Pitt doesn’t excite me like it does normal women.

I’m trying to catch Kamran up on five seasons of “Lost” so we’ll both be prepared for the final season when it airs in January, so we spent a few hours on Friday night and all morning Saturday watching episodes from season two. Kamran was getting too good at guessing exactly what was going to happen next (seriously, am I the only one who’s taken by surprise by every minute of the show?), so we stopped at one point and decided to finally watch Benjamin Button so we could send it back and stock up on Halloween movies to give us an excuse to eat loads of candy pumpkins.

It sucked. We didn’t care about any of the characters, though they were obviously intended to be intriguing in the way all of the characters in movies like Amélie or Fargo are. And the worst part was that it seemed like Benjamin’s getting younger really had no effect on anything. Aside from kissing a woman for the first time as an old man, any of it could have happened to someone who wasn’t aging backward. And the Hurricane Katrina stuff? CRAP, and obviously not from the Fitzgerald short story.

To be fair, there were two scenes I liked:

1) Benjamin leaves Daisy because he’s growing too young and doesn’t want her to have to take care of both him and their baby. As he’s walking out in the middle of the night, she opens her eyes, and they silently look at each other for a moment before he walks out the door.

2) Daisy’s grown daughter reads postcards written by Benjamin to her. They say totally vague and cheesy one-liners like “do the things you love”, but they still touched me somehow.

I just find it insane that this was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar the year after There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Men were, especially when there were so many good films that year that The Diving Bell and the Butterfly wasn’t even nominated.

What did I miss in the movie that everyone else saw?

Hatin’ on “More to Love”

Filed under a taste for tv, good times at everyone else's expense, stuff i hate, stuff i like
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“More to Love” is my favourite/most hated show on television right now. I was torn between it and “NYC Prep” on the first Tuesday night it aired, but after watching 20 fat women cry nonstop for an hour, I knew I made the right choice, and I’ve been making it every week since.

I’m not a person who believes weight has anything to do with love. I’m not thin, and I’ve loved and been loved in return by all sorts of men, thin and not-thin themselves. (But mostly thin, because fat people are gross. (Kidding.)) These big-boned ladies all truly believe, though, that their one shot at love is this 26-year-old spike-haired real estate developer who likes to eat and doesn’t want a woman who watches her weight.

And they all cry about it throughout every episode. Their skinny friends get hit on at bars. They’ve never had serious boyfriends. They’ve never been on a single date. And there’s a reason for that.

If you’re single–if you’re perpetually single–and you don’t want to be, there’s something wrong with you. There, I said it. Don’t blame it on men being superficial. Blame it on you being a crappy date. Unless you live in the middle of smalltown Iowa, in which case I’m a little more sympathetic, but seriously, it’s probably still your fault, especially if you’re one of those assholes who scorns Internet dating. Whenever I hear some fat chick say, “I have no idea why I’m alone!”, I want to go through a laundry list for her, because it’s always so obvious. Even the guys who are willing to look past your weight can’t deal with your jacked-up face, your total lack of humor, your junior high vocabulary, and your skank clothes.

For instance, not a single one of the women in the two episodes of “More to Love” I’ve watched has said something funny. In fact, when Luke asks each of them in turn if they’ll wear the ring that signifies their staying on the show another week, each of them in turn says, “Of course.” I’ve been waiting for even just one of them to say “bitch, please” or fake like they don’t want it only to throw their arms around him and snatch it out of his hands a second later, but they’re all so worried about losing their “one” chance for “true” love that all behave like robots. Whiny, sobbing robots.

My boyfriend called the show depressing, but I really delight in watching these pathetic women mope around. None of them are actually the least bit interested in this guy specifically, as far as I can tell, and are only interested in him being interested in them. And he’s too pleased with the opportunity to grope 20 fatties to care. I mean, MAYBE the producers are hiding the parts where Luke and the ladies have deep, meaningful conversation about politics and religion, but it seems like the most intimate information the group has about Luke is the name of his dog.

I had a long-distance relationship like this once: the guy would want to talk about how interested he was in the sinking of the Titanic every single time he called me–I mean, he really, really loved the Titanic–and I just wanted to talk about how in love we were. But I realized I was using him, whereas these girls are planning their weddings.

And the worst part is that they make absolutely none of this secret to him. They tell him that they’d pursue their music careers if only they had better images. They tell him that they’re virgins. They tell him, “You’re my first second date.” And he uses these confidings as teachable moments where he gets to build their self-confidence by calling them sexy and telling them to believe in themselves. And they cry.

It’s pretty clear that in the end, Luke’s going to pick the thinnest/prettiest girl in the house regardless of her personality, and all the other girls who were using his choosing her as sole proof that there’s hope for fat girls are going to kill themselves.

I finally asked my boyfriend why I’ve been able to find love when these women haven’t, and he said, “Because you’re not psychotic.” Win.

(Also check out Noel’s thoughts on the show.)