Misanthropy
Sometimes I look around me and despise the world for all of its stupidity. Sometimes I just want to be liked, regardless of by whom. It's a strange and heady mix of contradiction. I get frustrated by things which need not be bad but are. Driving, which I seem to do a lot of, certainly brings out some of the worst in me. I tend to remain fairly calm and patient, even in the most extreme of driving conditions - by which I don't mean off-roading, but do mean things like horrible traffic, or being collided with by an ignorant motorist. This patience does not stop me from caring that the roads are bad and feeling resentful that this thing, which needn't be so, is.

Overall, I think that driving offers the best examples of things which annoy me. I hate it when:

• Things get in my way
• I'm moving more slowly than I need to
• People are selfish in a way which impacts on me
• People act stupidly
• Something which should be simple ends up being complicated
• Something costs me more than should be reasonably expected

And I think that's probably a good list of things that happen in life that get you down. As a result of buying a car which turned out to have a few problems, I've been running hither and thither getting it fixed and spending money on it which I didn't want to spend. As a result of being collided with, I had to go and get my car fixed yesterday. As a result of the difficulties of fixing a dented car, my car will be off the road for over a week, and the loan car (which is quite nice - a Corsa - a bit cramped, and only powerful above 4000 revs, but quite nice all the same) has a mileage limit, which means I've got to be careful about driving it to this gig on Thursday. As a result of the sluggish nature of the person loaning me the loan car, it took about 20 minutes for him to process my request, when I was standing there waiting to get off to work. I was just on time yesterday.

Strange isn't it. I'm naturally quite a tolerant person, able to take a load of grief from people and reply back calmly and thoughtfully. Yet I'm also a selfish quick-tempered brute. How so? Well, let's put it down to a good mix of personalities in my family. I can see both sets of traits in my heritage. Maybe it's good to be both. The calmness in a crisis has gotten me out of a number of tight corners. The impatience and goal-driven behaviour has gotten me a number of single-minded successes. My analytical brain hasn't done me a huge deal of harm when it comes to my livelihood of software engineering.

So it looks like I'll have to put up with these irritations. To not notice them will be to lose some of my intrinsic capabilities. To fail to put up with them would be out of character too. I just need an outlet. Comedy is probably one answer. Whingeing is probably the other. Thank goodness for this blog, which allows me to say what I like, when I like. Well, almost. There are things I probably wouldn't say on here. Sorry to be holding back, but it's true. If I were into dog felching, I probably wouldn't mention it on here. I would probably keep it very quiet.

Things which annoy/amuse me
So, here is a quick run down of things which annoy or amuse me at the moment:

• The guy at work who speaks to me while I have my headphones on - he speaks quietly and doesn't wait for me to remove my headphones, nor does he repeat anything he said before I take them off unless I ask otherwise
• My own stupid relationship with food and calorie laden drinks - if I'm going to consume more than I burn then I'm going to gain weight
• The woman at work with such a fat arse that it looks like she's doing the hula when she walks - I should take tips, it'll be me next
• People who drive in the middle lane regardless of the road conditions
• My own practice of using my back two footwells of my car as rubbish bins
• My computer's insistence that it should try to reinstall office every time I use it
• other stuff - see the rest of this blog

In fact, I've a lot to be thankful for and probably not a great deal worthy of moaning about right now. I'll be back when I've thought of something else to talk about.