Apparently someone has now come up with ‘green’ cigarette butts, which biodegrade in 2 months instead of never for the current variety. Never? Seeing smokers casually throw away their cigarette butts is one thing that really pisses me off — and that was before I realised that they never biodegrade. So, this got me thinking about all the other things that are liable to turn me into a homicidal maniac:

• Umbrellas. Particularly golf umbrellas, umbrellas held at poke-my-eye-out level, umbrellas held in front so the person underneath can’t see where they’re going and umbrellas in storm force gales (if only the wind would carry those idiots away).
• Asda. I’m not sure what’s worse, the fact that they never have any meat on the shelves or the “parents” who use their kids as verbal punchbags whilst dragging them around the store. The whole place just makes my trigger finger itchy.
• Expensive Technology that doesn’t help. I get particularly pissed off with expensive technologies that hinder the users it’s supposed to help: Huge internal database systems that force users to copy and paste, or even copy longhand(!), into another application like Excel to get what they want
• Nazi Sysadmins. You have about 2 minutes after you start thinking of yourself as “above” your users before I want to kneecap you, break your fingers and pluck out your eyeballs. A systems administrator is there to support the IT-related activities of the business. It is not a power trip for cowardly geeks who got bullied at school and now want their revenge by going all KGB on their users
• Fake Science. As practiced by religious zealots (too dumb to admit that the Bible is not supposed to be an accurate history book) and cosmetics companies alike.
• Spitting in public. It’s all fun and games until you’re infected with H5N1 bird flu, SARS or the 1918 flu.
• Dog shit. I’m not too bothered by this now but the pavements around Merrion Square in Dublin were always littered with it and I had to walk around/over/in it several times a day.