tiggerprr’s scratching post

In order to make sure that none of us go on sugar overload this holiday season, I thought I would stray from the warm fuzzy feelings of the season to bring you a different kind of list. (Strangely the song in my head as I type this is a Christmas Carol: “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year”. That’s a little twisted.)

1. Christmas Shopping Black Friday and beyond Yes, it’s my fault I waited until now. I know I hate it, and my life was much better the year I had nearly everything done before Thanksgiving. It didn’t happen this year and I found myself out in the madness albeit at a different time of the day. I feel guilty. Those of you out there working retail, should have been able to stay at home with YOUR families, instead of being at the store at 3 am to prepare to deal with ours. Furthermore, you shouldn’t have to be working until 11 or 12 at night through December because we didn’t get our shopping done early. I hear that some retailers are considering opening up on Thanksgiving evening because “people don’t have anything to do that night”. Ummm…no…those “people” should stay home and enjoy time with their families. It’s bad enough that movie theatres are open that day, and yes…I did go see a movie on Thanksgiving. So I am a holiday hypocrite.

2. We can fund a war, but we gotta kill the music programs in a lot of our schools as well as cut back government spending on other educational programs. This REALLY makes me angry. You read about funding getting cut to educational programs and music/art programs. What part of “That money feeds the talents and minds of the people who will take care of us and our planet when we’re old” is so hard to understand?

3. On any given day, you can read on the news about some terrible thing that a kid or worse, an adult, has done to harmless animals. This makes me so sad, and so angry. I think this upswing in cruelty is a by-product of the thing that peeves me in #2. Music and the arts, nurture the soul and knowledge leads to understanding. If your heart and soul aren’t being taken care of it’s easy to become bitter.

4. On any given day, you can read on the news about some terrible things that one person has done to another person. I don’t know if it’s more that we have news at our fingertips and people have always been this violent and cruel to eachother, we just didn’t get to read about it as it happened, or if it’s just another byproduct of #2 plus some other disturbing chain of societal events. But dang, there’s some awful stuff happening in this world, isn’t there?

5. Intolerance.I am no saint. There are some things I am intolerant of and perhaps I should work on that. But I do not understand the trains of thought where masses of people insist that their “way” is the “only” way and interfere with how the rest of us choose to live, or not live, our lives. At the risk of insulting or hurting anyone, I won’t use a realtime example. I’ll borrow from Dr. Seuss. If I want to remove that “star upon thar” and you choose not to, it should be ok and you shouldn’t have any business telling me I can’t, I won’t tell you , “you have to remove yours too”. Likewise, if I’m a Star-bellied Sneetch, and I choose to love a Non Star-bellied Sneetch or a Star-bellied one, you really should let those Sneetches be! People should be required to read “The Sneetches” on a regular basis and just sit down and think about what Dr. Seuss REALLY meant when he wrote that story.

7. Being ganked by some snotty little kid when I’m playing video games. If you don’t game you probably don’t understand the term, ganked. But bear with me, I think you’ll get it soon. This doesn’t irritate me because your 12 year old did something mean to me in a video game or steals something out from under me, it’s just pixels right? This makes me mad, because their parents are not paying enough attention to Jr. and how she/he’s turning out. I play a MMORPG called World of Warcraft. Every day, at any given time, there’s CHILDREN, yes children, playing this game, cursing up a storm, treating people like dirt, stealing and just generally being obnoxious beyond what I consider to be “normal obnoxious” for a kid. The internet, is not a babysitter. Teach your kids manners, please. Otherwise, I’ll have to start doing PvP and “pwn” them just to save MY sanity.

8. It makes me mad that I can’t figure out how to add things to my sidebar.I’ll figure it out eventually. I have that book, I’ve talked about before. But it’s pissing me off right now.

9. As a nation, we spend so much time policing the rest of the world and helping everyone else out that we have people starving in the streets without homes and there’s working poor that can’t afford to feed their kids.I think it’s grand that we send aid to poorer countries, really I do. But I can’t help but be angry that there’s even one child that goes to sleep hungry, or worse, hungry and in a car, or on a street somewhere here in the U.S. I believe in happy mediums and balance in life and nature. I don’t understand how there’s any balance at all when things like that can occur. I wish I had all the answers, I really do.

10. My 17-year old daughter.I love her more than life itself. Sometimes though ::making Ralph Kramden “to the moon, Alice!” gestures::. I truly do understand why some animals eat their young. I also understand why our younglings are so cute, it’s to keep us from choking them.

11. The winning Powerball numbers keep eluding me.When is it gonna be my turn!?

12. The whole Happy Holidays/Merry Christmas debate. I mean really, aren’t there just bigger fish to fry out there? IMO both sides of the debate have lost their ever-loving minds. I’m not offended if you say either to me, Mr. Retail Person, so you just say whatever you want to, as long as you expeditiously check me out and get me the HECK out of the store.

13. I still haven’t found a job. I work in Human Resources, I am an SPHR (a certification that I took a big long test to get and should make me more desirable). I can’t even get people to give me an interview. I have tons of experience. I can’t even get am interview for a “lesser” position and I know THAT’S because I’m overqualified and they won’t even look at me. It’s making me sad, really, really, sad.