I hate seagulls.

Why the hell do you sound like a trumpet? What are you doing right in front of my apartment in Washington, DC, where the seagulls hover but never land? Why are you so goddamn loud? It's 8:50 a.m. on a Saturday. Fly away!

I hate it when my McDonald's closes.

Last Friday I walked to McDonald's on my lunch break, only to discover that the doors were locked. I figured that they were taking an extra day off to celebrate Martin Luther King Day (it's kind of the Chicago Black History McDonald's), and I didn't really think about it again until yesterday my co-worker mentioned it was closed because of health code violations.

So now it's open again, and I'm stuck with a problem: Do I go back to that McDonald's? I mean, I knew it was gross - it was a McDonald's - but out of sight, out of mind, right?

Look, McDonald's: You don't tell me about your health code violations and I won't complain about how YOU ALWAYS FUCKING PUT CHEESE ON MY HAMBURGER EVEN THOUGH I SPECIFICALLY TELL YOU NOT TO.

I hate stupid lyrics on Myspace.

I really hate people who put song lyrics in the "About Me" section of their myspace profiles. It's like saying, I'm not sure how to describe myself, but Bon Jovi, who has never met me, does an awesome job of it. Or maybe it's the Postal Service.

Did you know Bon Jovi has a cousin who makes speaker systems for cars? It's true. His name is Tony Bongiovi.

I hate the trials of my life.

The diet Pepsi is in the trunk of my car. The car is down three flights of stairs and a fifty-yard walk in the cold. Woe is me.

I hate new years resolutions.

Personally, I don't make them. Unfortunately, I suffer when other people do.

So I had been editing my thesis* for the past five hours, breaking only for super-imperative phone calls about how much Babel sucked and a frozen burrito, and I decided that if I really planned on making the six pages' worth of "light revisions"** my advisor recommended for my 62-page document of doom, I better take a real break. So I went to the gym with the intention of running my carpal tunnel off to Le Tigre, but nooooo ... all eight machines are in use at 7 p.m. on a Saturday. Wtf?



* Code for "reading blogs"
** Code for "massive overhaul." Joke's on Megan.

I hate ruined holiday weekends.

I hate when a perfectly good three-day weekend turns into a marathon thesis-editing session.

Which is exactly why I chose to go out last night and wake up at noon today. You know. So I'm well rested and shit.

Two drafts, six days, and four drives out to Virginia left to go.

I hate Burt's Bees.

For years people have been telling me how Burt's Bees is The Shit and when I finally spend more than two dollars on a tiny little tube at Walgreen's for it, I discover that my lips are STILL chapped and the wax is receding very, very quickly.

I hate thieves with balls.

I hate when I go down to my apartment building's laundry room and see a girl in sweatpants going through my clothing in the dryer. Then you approach her and say, "I think those are my clothes," and she reponds, "I was just making sure there was nothing of mine in there." I hate that too.

Because wtf does it mean?!

Were you stealing my clothes? Did you think I was stealing your clothes? Something tells me the latter isn't likely. Please back away from the dryer.

It's a good thing I air dry most of my clothes. Although, you know, my gym socks are pretty damn sexy. To say nothing of my hand towels. Hot!

I hate Jeb Bush.

Ladies and Gentlemen, our obsession with the Blackberry has gone TOO FAR.

I hate coming back to work.

I spent all day yesterday thinking, "Yeah! 2007 is going to ROCK SO HARD, y'all!" There was so much optimism floating around in my head, it was almost hard for me to believe that I started this blog. "Hating things? That's so 2006."

And then the alarm went off at six this morning, and I realized that I did have to go to work because I would lose my holiday pay if I called-in. And now I remember why I hate my life.

My mother has the day off because of Gerald Ford's death. I told her she better spend the day mourning her ass off.

I hate capital one.

First my credit card gets stolen. Not your fault. You send me a new card -- with the same number. I complain. You send me a new card with a new number.

Then you cut off my online account. I change my mailing address. Maybe there was some confusion. But after the stolen card incident, I didn't hear from you for two and a half months. No calls. No bills. No mail. Not a big deal though, because hey, after you guys fucked up the replacement card, I didn't use that card for anything. Not one purchase.

Then out of the blue, I get a bill for $150 in the mail.

How does a card that has not been used generate a $150 bill? Curious how the bill doesn't actually say what the charges are for. So I call and I ask. What do you tell me? My statement for the past two and a half months is not available. Um. You're the credit card company. You want me to pay you $150 without telling me what it's for?

Does anyone know how much it will hurt my credit score of I cancel my goddamn capital one card?

I hate being an hourly employee.

Here's a good reason I hate my job: I work from eight to four. We're allowed to work until five during the busy season to get some overtime hours. This morning I came in at 7:30 with the intention of staying until 4:30. And it's almost 3:30, and I'm really ready to fucking get out of here. But here's the problem: do I go in and explain to my manager that I came in early and deal with her being snotty? Or do I stay until four and just report 7.5 hours and risk my actual boss thinking it strange that I reported a half hour when no one else does? Or do I just stay until four and pretend that I didn't actually work an extra half-hour, just because it's a lot easier than having questions raised about my hours?

I'm so pathetic. I'm overworking myself and I'm not even salaried.

I hate stupid vocabulary.

There's a guy I work with who refers to children as "munchkins," and that really grosses me out. When I think of munchkins, what comes to mind are little creepy men wearing rainbow knickers and speaking with voices that make me assume they've been nursing their throats with scotch and cigar smoke. That's not very childlike, is it?

I hate the pattern in my posts.

Do I only hate things when I'm hungover these days? I think the answer to that would be ... yes. Oh oh, and when I have cockroach drama.

It's not so bad really. I found my bra in the kitchen this morning, which was, you know, interesting, but since I was the only one here, not as interesting (or embarrassing or exciting) as it could have been.



It's the holiday season, the thesis is almost done, the cockroaches are gone, and frankly, there's just not been much to hate recently.

I hate gross blog posts that might give me nightmares.

Ew.

Dude. That's so nasty.

I hate finding cockroaches in muffin pans.

I don't really think I need to say anything more.

I hate fudge frosting.

I was making cupcakes for someone's birthday and thought I'd try a little yellow cake/chocolate fudge frosting combo.

Making the batter was tough without an electric mixer, but I persevered. Then I realized that I didn't have any of those little cupcake holders, so I sprayed the muffin tin with some Pam and hoped for the best. Then I iced those those fuckers and licked the knife.

Ew.

(This blog makes me curse, I swear to god).

I hate that the weekend is still so far away.

Mid-week happy hour, anyone? Or maybe a tranquilizer? Anything to dull the pain.

I hate the resilience of jello.

You know you're hot stuff when you stumble up to the barista for the third time in an hour and a half and notice that you have bright red jello stains up and down the sleeves of your hoodie.

Then they dimmed the lights, turned up the music, and exchanged the barista for a bartender, signaling it was time for stainy Megan to pack up and go.

I hate bibliographies.

For the sake of the weekend before your thesis draft it due, please remember to document your sources as you go. Don't leave your 40+ page paper all naked and source-less until the Saturday night before you have to email the draft to your advisor.

And don't think that archived blog posts are just a Google search away either! Thanks, Arianna.





Write bibliography, insert citations into text, rewrite intro, finish conclusion, write that random middle bit about related literature, finish glossary, edit whole damn thing, format by Monday? Oh jesus god.

I hate jello shots.

If I do not manage to write or edit any of my thesis this weekend, I will blame it entirely on jello shots.

And banging down the street? I hate you too. Megan has a headache.

I hate bad hair cuts.

I asked her to "trim" the bangs. She took off an inch. An inch! I feel a little too close to this for comfort.


And unlike this fine lady with the manicured brows, my hair is uneven. Yes, the left side is longer than the right. And I paid $35 for that privilege.

I hate laziness.

I feel as if the majority of the things I write about hating are actually related to my own laziness. Unfortunately it's probably one of my primary characteristics.

I hate when you have good plans for the evening, but rather than cleaning up the roach carcasses on your kitchen floor or wiping up the stain on the floor that the exterminator made when he helped himself to some Crystal Light or going for a run or eating a normal dinner instead of a defrosted english muffin and half a bag of jelly beans, you just lay around reading novels and then, you know, posting in a hate blog.

Go me.

Time to drink.

I hate being forgetful.

I hate it when you realize that you've come to work wearing three shirts because it's COLD and WINDY and SNOWING outside but of course inside it's REALLY HOT and unfortunately you forgot to put on deodorant this morning. So what do you do? Do you put on your hoodie and coat and hat and scarf and go down eight floors and trudge through the snow and head to the Walgreen's across the street to buy some deodorant (even though you can't even afford to buy LUNCH because you don't get a paycheck until next Friday and - fuck! - it's the first of the month, which means you have to pay rent today)? Or do you just sweat it out?

Consequently, I also hate making tough choices.

I hate it when people misspell "y'all."

Seriously, this is literally in my top ten hates.

Kelly, I'm looking at you.

I hate watching videos online.

Do you have a friend that always goes:

"OMG! You have to see this video I found on youtube, it's like totally crazy, it's like this singing dancing musical and then it gets racist and there's a cat dancing but it's really hysterical and oh man, it'll just take me a second to find it, trust me, it was on the site last night and oh my gosh they totally make fun of Bush and Hasselhoff is like totes singing and it's HYSTERICAL!"

I sincerely HATE that friend.

I hate headaches.

I hate headaches, especially when aspirin and peace and quiet are far away. I never want to be the type of person who goes "oooooh, I have a migrane!" and dramatically rubs their temple whilst looking pathetic.

But lo! The hater becomes the hated.

In the words of Britney:
"Karma's a bitch ya'll."

I hate falling asleep in my clothes.

Last night I fell asleep in my clothes. And consequently woke up at 5:00 with my plaid shirt twisted awkwardly around my torso, one sock on, and a headband digging into my skull.

Suffice to say, it was not pleasant, and also rather disconcerting.

I hate Taco Bell.

I hate Taco Bell. During my break at work today I decided to go to Taco Bell because I've had a shitty week and I was so hungry that I was getting mean.

I got back to work and started eating my chalupas, only to find that Taco Bell decided to only make one of my two chalupas vegetarian.

I'm not flipping out because of my ideals or because of the poor animals but because I hate puking. Seriously. I mean, I know, who likes puking, right? But I really really hate it. When I drink, I have what I call a "puking point," where even when I'm inebriated, I know where to stop so that I won't give up the contents of my stomach.

If Taco Bell makes me puke, well,

I'll be upset.

I hate laundry.

I hate when laundry piles up and you can't bring yourself to actually wash any clothes.

Right now I have two separate piles of laundry plus a pile of ironing. Normally I don't mind ironing but this week feels so long already, I just have no energy.

I hate MySpace privacy settings.

How the hell am I supposed to stalk high school classmates and JUDGE them if their MySpace profiles are all private? There's absolutely no way I'm going to add them.

I'm sure they're all fat and have illegitimate children and I can't even find out.

I hate roaches.

Specifically, I hate the roach that played peekaboo with me from the top of my kitchen cabinets at 5 a.m.

Yes, I saw you! And then I got up on a chair and the counter and saw that you live in a three-inch hole in the wall that was obscured by the cabinets.

There will be no more games as of Thursday. Thursday is your death day. On Thursday the exterminator comes and then they will plug up your hole and I'll never have to sleep in fear again.

I hate Chicago weather.

Look, Chicago. I don't mind if you want some snow, but I'd like a bit of a transition period from wearing a light jacket on Wednesday to wearing a PARKA on Thursday. If you're going to be an asshole, I'm going to start referring to you as "Chi-town."

It hurts me more than it hurts you.

I hate my hair.

My hair has become such an uncontrolable mess that every morning someone at work asks me if I've done something new with it. "No," I reply. "I just washed it." Or, "It's slept on." Or, "The two-block walk from the bus stop to our office was really windy."

Oh, if only I didn't have issues with A. Haircuts, B. Calling to make a haircut appointment, C. Calling strangers on the phone, and D. Paying more than fifteen dollars for a haircut. I wouldn't have these problems if I could afford therapy.

I hate my sleep issues.

I never had trouble sleeping until I had to start waking up at 5 a.m. every morning to get to work on time. First I suffered. I took long, fitful, unsatisfying naps in the afternoons. I abandoned all schoolwork. I downgraded my runs from six days a week to three. I drank a lot of coffee.

Then I learned about melatonin. Oh melatonin! You were my favorite dietary supplement. Better than B12! You put me to sleep in less than half an hour most of the time. So why did you stop working?

The next step up with Ambien. And with my runs only inching back up to four times a week, I really can't afford any night eating issues.

I hate drama.

I hate when you're actually looking forward to four whole days off work, something you haven't experienced since you began working back in March (I know people go much longer than that, but when your last four days off were to go up the East Coast and see your favorite band four nights in a row, working nonstop seems a little, I don't know, tired in comparison) and then shit happens and you decide, hey, maybe it'd be better to just work through Thanksgiving! If your office was open, that is! Ha! Ha ha!

I don't want to go home. Sorry Kel.

Wednesday afternoon through Saturday afternoon = destined to be hell.

Only my thesis can save me now.

I hate my phone.

Why does my phone die at odd times and make weird noises that vary from ring to ring?

I know, I know, it probably didn't help that someone dropped it in beer on Halloween and that I didn't fish it out for a good 10 minutes(I was laughing too hard at the time, natch) . It probably also didn't help that it fell out of my pocket and into a rainy gutter when someone was giving me a piggy back ride down Old South High last weekend. Still, I don't think that it needs to sound like Liza Minelli dying whenever it decides to ring.

I hate not knowing what's going on.

I hate being confused. Especially when it's about something in my life, and something that I can't really control. I had the most frustrating/confusing/encouraging/relentless/awkward/comforting/obnoxious lunch in the world before I drove two hours all by myself. Which is a bad idea considering that I have an extremely overactive imagination.


The only comforting thing is that whenever I feel like this, I can just think of myself with my arms thrown up in the air with a twisted face, similar to the pose that I adopt when getting mad whilst driving. If you can't picture that, try a generic "wtf" pose.

It always works for me.

It's funny, just try it.

I hate my stupidity.

I know that I'm no good by myself at home. I play on the Internet for eight hours at a time. I defrost three english muffins and call it lunch. I don't do laundry. I don't clean. I don't get dressed. Sometimes I don't even brush my teeth. It's shameful.

I left my apartment for the first time today at 5:45 p.m. I feel much better after spending two hours in an overheated coffee shop drinking overpriced coffee and generally being productive on my laptop for the first time in a week.

I hate post-weekend blog catch up.

And I don't mean Sunday night posts about weekend activities. I'm talking about actually reading all the blogs on my blogroll after two and a half days of ignoring them. There are about ten blogs that I look forward to reading. Then there are about 100 that only occasionally post entertaining thoughts, but I feel compelled to read them no matter how many irritating pictures of someone's revamped squash casserole there are. So first I read the ten I really want to read, then I start clicking through the remaining blogs, chugging through them actually, until finally, three hours later, I'm staring at the words "Guardian Technology Blog" and "200 posts." That's when I put down the laptop and walk away.

With all the time I spend reading blogs, I could have an actual hobby.

I hate smelly fratboy nerds.

I went to see The Decemberists on Saturday, which was a pretty good show (despite Colin Meloy's chattiness and the percussion section's enactment of the final battle scene in The Hobbit in the middle of the audience). What wasn't so great, however, was that we were standing next to two very greasy and smelly members of Sigma Delta Tau. Well, there was at least one SDT brother who was wearing a sweatshirt featuring his letters and something about waking up in a bar. His cohort was Some Dude who was wearing Harry Potter glasses and a black hoodie with "Come on baby, light my fire" printed across the back.

What brought these two together? Maybe they were old high school buddies whose only common interest was folky indie pop? I'd imagine the Harry Potter fan listens to Sufjan Stevens while masturbating to internet porn, and Frat Dog puts on some Iron and Wine to set the mood before he date-rapes Sigma Chi's sweetheart.

I hate copycats.

Sorry, dudes. I had to do it.

(Original TWH post here.)

I hate people and their stupid opinions.

Overheard outside Logan Square Auditorium, in line for the Joanna Newsom show.

Some Dude: "Have you heard her new album?"

Some Girl: "No, I haven't. Is it any good?"

Some Dude: "It's different. I mean, it's very... 'proggy.'"

"PROGGY?" I think you don't realize, Dumb Shit, that "prog" is already an adjective. Shave off your ironic mustache and stop spouting out baseless opinions and I might not want to punch you in the balls.

I hate being pathetic.

See last post.

I hate waiting.

I hate waiting for people to come home from Hawaii.




Sigh.

I hate getting sleepy at 8 p.m.

Was it the four rum and cokes? The obscenely early wakeup call? The three hours of gossip?

If I go to bed now, will I wake up 12 times the way I did last night?

I hate that iTunes doesn't have Spell Check.

What's more embarrassing than having the soundtrack to Sweeney Todd pop up in your weekly top artists on Last.fm?



Spelling it incorrectly.

I hate bugs: update.

Right after I posted and googled " 'bug' AND 'apartment' AND 'kill' " the beast -- or at least, a beast appeared on the ceiling. I leapt into action and vacuumed that sucker up. Now I'm left contemplating calling an exterminator tomorrow and whatever friends and family that asshole left in my apartment. I've already windexed the whole kitchen and turned my heat off because wikipedia says cockroaches thrive in warmer temperatures.

I can't stop eyeing the vacuum -- as if the stupid bug is going to come flying out of the machine and spurt a thousand baby cockroaches out into my apartment.

I'm never going to sleep tonight. And it's already freezing in here.

I hate bugs.

I was peacefully reading in bed when I looked up and noticed a gigantic flying-type bug on the ceiling above me. I jumped up, grabbed the vacuum, and tried to suck it up, but it scuttled down the wall behind the bed. I blindly waved the vacuum attachment around under the bed, but I'm sure I didn't get it.

I'm not even willing to consider that it might have been a cockroach.

Sweet Jesus. What do I do?!

I hate those Snickers ads.

I don't really enjoy Snickers (I hate nuts), but even if I did, I wouldn't be able to enjoy them because of the DUMBEST AD CAMPAIGN EVER.

Anything ending in "-ectomy" cannot be appetizing.

I hate this picture.

Let's face it: Will Oldham is not a particularly attractive man. But this picture is just TOO MUCH CREEPY.

If American Apparel sold Evil, this is what the advertisement would look like:

I hate burning my tongue.

Goddamn soup! I've been sucking on ice cubes for 45 minutes, but there's no relief.

My body is falling apart.

I hate the fake Starbucks.

Dear Girl Working at the Barnes and Noble Cafe,

If I'm going to pay $1.75 plus tax for a blueberry muffin, I expect it to be a good muffin.

Also, when I order a Grande Caramel Frapp (because I'm so onto your lingo at this point) with a shot of espresso, don't warn me that it may be "liquidy" because of the espresso. I'm not paying four dollars for your disclaimers.

Love,
Tyler.

I hate when a cold becomes sickness.

Yesterday I felt pretty good! I was eating salad and oatmeal and I went running, for god's sake. The cold was a not-so-distant memory, but it was assuredly not present. Then I had a sushi date, who offered me more zicam, which I took not because I needed it, but as an extra precaution. See how safe and healthy I am?

Today I am sick. Fevery chills. Throat on fire. Bad night of sleep (could be blamed on sugar content of York Peppermint Patties and red wine combo, but whatever, let's blame it on the the sickness.

Now I'm starting to wonder if taking tomorrow off isn't really so ridiculous after all. I could use a day to sleep and eat soup and drink tea and moan about how awful I feel to my mom over the phone -- a person I have not spoken to in, oh, two weeks, but who really fits the criteria for someone I want to talk to now. Sympathetic, kind, willing to send me OTC medications and leftover Halloween candy in the mail because I am so poor, Mom, so so poor!

I hate Halloween.

I don't hate it so much as I don't get it. For kids, yes, Halloween makes sense. It's fun. But for adults? What's the appeal? Is it because after the age of 16, Halloween just becomes another drinking holiday? Is it the excuse to dress like you're a third of your actual age? An excuse to wear slutty clothing? I really don't get it.

I hate Pitchfork, still.

Today, Pitchfork posted a review of the two-disc soundtrack to Marie Antoinette, which is a soundtrack that I love to a movie that I also loved. They gave it a 7.6 (I'd love to understand, exactly, how they get such precise numbers. Why not just a 7? 7.5? How did it deserve a 7.6 instead of a 7.5?). The interesting thing about the review is that Stephen M. Deunser chose to write it in two parts: one is a review of the album before seeing the film, the second an attempt to review the way the music works in the movie. Unfortunately, Mr. Deunser fails at the second part of the review and, instead of analyzing the music in the film, he begins to share his disappointment in Coppola's treatment of the political aspect of the film.

It seems after reading the reviews of the film that critics are split down the middle on the political issues. Should it have been heavier on the negative aspects of Marie Antoinette's life? I don't think so. I think that since the subject matter has been covered extremely well in the past two-hundred years, it's not a big deal for an American writer / director to make a film simply because she related to the character she was writing about. Art doesn't have to be historic.

But that is not the point of my post. My point is this: PITCHFORK SHOULD NOT PUBLISH MOVIE REVIEWS DISGUISED AS MUSIC REVIEWS. And, not surprisingly, Deunser ended his article with a reference to the fake-quotation, "Let them eat cake." Lame!

I hate being sick: the refrain.

My throat still feels mediciney from yesterday and despite the shivery sweats, no temperature here. My appetite is good with the exception of a vague, sort of gaggy feeling I get once an hour or so. Despite the 13 glasses of water, one glass of Crystal Light and three cups of tea I had yesterday, my lips and mouth are dry.

Siiiiiigh.

I hate rats.

And they're everywhere!

I'm on the fourth floor but after watching a parade of rats on U Street last night, I'm convinced that every sound in my apartment is a rat clawing his or her way through the walls.

I hate being sick.

I hate when you wake up feeling like death, but you drag yourself to the computer and do work. And you have a little tea and okay, that's not so bad. Then you shower, and you're feeling good! You eat an English muffin, you turn up the heat, and two hours later you're plastered to the floor with shivery sweats and your throat is crying for mercy.

I hate when you forget daylight's savings time.

I hate when you try to go out to breakfast but every restaurant is closed and you can't figure out why. And then you realize it's actually 8 a.m. on a Sunday the weekend before Halloween and go to a 24-hour diner.

I hate coming home.

I hate coming home when all I have waiting for me are deadlines and projects.


I'm going to a concert tonight! I should be in a good mood! Happy! Excited! Instead I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to cram two day's worth of work into four hours.

I hate what my thesis makes me do.

Shots or not, my alarm went off at 9 a.m. this morning and I leapt out of bed to sit at my little laptop-holding, blue-spraypainted card table. In preparation of today, I had turned it toward the wall, so I couldn't be distracted by trees or birds or blinds or light switches or ironing boards. All of those objects have played a role in preventing me from writing my thesis this fall.

So I've been writing and staring at the wall for three hours straight.

I also checked the school Web site to check on my formatting requirements where lo! and behold, I discovered my left margin could be 1.25 inches! And on pages on which headers appear, I can have a 2-inch top margins. How awesome is that? Can I have a header on every page?

Anyway, after reformatting my paper to fit the school's requirements, I discovered that my formerly single-spaced, normally margined nine page paper was, in fact, a halfway-completed 22-page masterpiece. And that's without the two-page glossary and whatever appendices I may decide to pad everything with it.

I'll admit it though, I'm starting to get seriously concerned about finishing this damn thing.

I hate waking up and feeling like ass.

And finding that my pants are mysteriously very, very dirty. Also, why did I take a cab one block last night?

I hate my neighbors.

For banging on the wall when I play Regina Spektor too loud. It's Friday!

Time to do shots. In my kitchen. By myself. Well, with Regina. Hotel Song? Ah!

I hate hindsight.

I purposely didn't make plans tonight so that I could get up tomorrow, go for a run, work on the thesis, get stuff done before commencing two nights of drinking + one extra hour.

But I am bouncing off the walls and dancing and drinking by myself, and I'm about to call someone, anyone in my cell phone, who might be in a bar right now.

I'm itchy!

I hate American Apparel.

Dear American Apparel:

Shut the fuck up.

The first thing I think of when I see this girl wearing metallic silver leggings is: "date rape."

I can't explain why, but I do know it's bad.

Sincerely,
Tyler.

I hate waiting for phone calls.

Call call call!

I hate it when people ask me stupid questions.

Since I go by my middle name, I've faced a lot of trials and tribulations throughout my life. For example, my work email address features my first initial rather than my middle, and I imagine that if anyone ever needed to email me for important reasons, they might get confused. It's these types of scenarios that keep me on edge.

I've also had to deal with having others realize for the first time that my first name is actually John. The inevitable question is asked: "What made you decide to go by Tyler?"

I DIDN'T PICK MY NAME, PEOPLE. My parents chose to call me Tyler. I was too busy discovering my hand and trying to lift my own hand to come up with what I'd like to call myself. And is it really so odd to go by your middle name? I mean, what else are you going to do with it?

I hate it when people don't remember which foods I hate.

No one every remembers what foods I like. I know this may sound petty, but consider this anecdote:
For years, I have despised coconut. I hate the way it feels in my mouth (slimy and stringy), I hate the way that it tastes (like weird milk and babies), and I HATE HATE HATE answering questions on why I hate it. It's preference bitches, recognize.

Regardless, I feel like I express the fact that I dislike coconut on a fairly regular basis. Often enough that my family and close friends should probably know that I consider it a demon fruit. So what does my mom make me for my 18th birthday? A coconut cake. And what does she do when I don't eat any of the disgusting concoction? Force me to eat a big slice. Thanks Mommy. Love ya.

I hate being questioned when I know I'm right.

That's it. No story that I really feel like sharing. Just know that I'm right. All the time.

I hate teachers.

It's more complicated than the headline would lead one to believe.

I hate when I'm reading the blog of some random DC person, someone on my blogroll who doesn't know I read his blog, who has written a page-long ode to a favorite English teacher -- the same English teacher who once gave me a C for an entire semester based on my interpretation of some R.E.M. lyrics as poetry.

If he hadn't turned down all my other goddamn suggestions for lyrics based on the fact that he'd never heard of the bands maybe I could have analyzed the song lyrics -- an activity, by the way, I did every year of public school from eighth grade on -- more to his liking. We don't all marvel at the wonder of Dave Matthews Band lyrics. Pity, I know.

Okay, I was being pretentious and immature. I'm over it. Really.

I hate spiders.

I especially hate spiders when they're teeny tiny and in vast quantities climbing up the walls of my apartment. I'm not putting away the vacuum until the first frost.

I hate headband headaches.

Ouch!

I hate my lack of motivation.

I've had seven whole days to write the two short papers (two pages maximum! that's just four pages!) for class tomorrow night. What did I do instead?

I've watched a whole DVD of Gilmore Girls.

I've gone to a conservatory. (I don't even particularly enjoy plants!)

I bought two pairs of jeans (total spent: $23).

I also bought a bitchin' scarf (it was the same price as the more expensive pair of jeans).

I saw Marie Antoinette.

I spent several hours trying to download the soundtrack to Marie Antoinette.

I went to a concert.

I went to a party! (A real party! With strangers! And people I know in vague ways! And, unfortunately, a lack of appetizing alcoholic beverages which forced me to experiment.)

I drunk-dialed someone after two mixed drinks!

So now, twenty four hours before my papers are due, I'm finally getting around to writing them. I've finished one, which only took dragging my ass to a coffee shop a mile away from my apartment. Did I mention that (I think, at least) it's FREEZING outside? And that the girl working here tonight has played an old Green Day album and then the new Coldplay album?

Shouldn't I sit here for another hour and a half and write the stupid second paper?

Yeah. I'm going home and eating a slice of pizza instead.

I hate getting out late.

So I took a little detour after work today and went to the movies instead of home. I saw Little Children, which was fairly impressive, and I got to see my drag queen friend who is the movie theater ticket-taker and always wearing the same color as me. Today was salmon. He has better hair than I do though.

But the movie was way longer than I thought.

And it was really cold when I left. And windy. And my earrings kept hitting me in the face. And where did all the people come from!? I had no idea what rush hour was really like until tonight, when I didn't get home until 7:30. At night, people!

Now I can't stop dancing to The Blow, and it's seriously hindering my gym possibilities.

Oh, and spiders in my apartment? I hate you. I see you too, when you scuttle under the dishwasher. I have a vacuum. And I'm going to get you.

I hate blogger.

Blogger, I've been trying to post for four hours. But you just spun and spun and froze. Now I've forgotten what I hate. But it's cool because I can't think of anything I hate more right now than you. Cheers.

I hate LIARS.

I had to read The Last Picture Show by Larry McMurtry for my Southern Literature class, which kind of confused me because it's not a Southern novel, nor is it particularly literary. And since my professor likes to waste our valuable tuition ("our," of course, means the people in my class who don't work for the university as I do and therefore are paying about two-hundred dollars for each class session) by watching movies, he naturally began and ended class with scenes from the very good film version released in 1971.

(Side note: My professor has a thing about sex (he LOVES it) and so I'm not surprised that the first scene he showed us was the nude swimming party sequence where Cybil Shepard strips.)

Anyway, my professor likes to think that he knows as much about movies as he does about literature. Maybe he does, since it's become pretty obvious to me that he knows nothing about literature. One of the scenes we saw last night was the funeral for Sam the Lion, the Ben Johnson character. At the end of the scene, Lois, played by Ellen Burstyn, starts to cry and runs away from the funeral. My professor told us that the tears were genuine - "Ben Johnson had just discovered he was dying; he died four months later."

So this morning at work I was looking at the IMDB listing for the film, and I clicked over to the Ben Johnson page to see what other movies he was in. Imagine my surprise, then, when I discovered that I recognized him from another film based on a Larry McMurtry novel: The Evening Star. Which was the sequel to Terms of Endearment. Which was made about twenty five years after Ben Johnson "died.".

I hate decisions.

Do I start drinking and do the one thing I've been dreading all week? Or do I drink Crystal Light, turn on a movie and straighten up the apartment?

Decisions!

I hate traffic.

I think I spent two-thirds of the last five hours with one fist in the air, yelling "You are the shittiest driver. Ever. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. Goddammit. Goddammit."

I left DC to go to an appointment in Fairfax at 1:50 p.m. Middle of the afternoon! Why would there be traffic? It's a distance of 20 miles. I got to my appointment at 3:20 in the afternoon. Twenty minutes late.

Then lots of stuff happened, mostly involving my going to Wal-mart, getting utterly confused, and leaving Wal-mart without a single one of the items I was looking for. I dropped by the parents' house to pick up some fruit and an extension cord, because they had extras of both, and left Virginia at 5:15.

I got back to DC at 6:45. Now this is more understandable. It's the worst time of the day, traffic-wise, even if I am going the opposite direction from everyone else.

So let's count. That's three hours in the car. That's more time than I've spent in my car in total since I moved here two months ago. That's obscene.

I hate dead mice.

I hate when I walk out into my apartment building's hallway and find a dead mouse, frozen in gallop mode, in front of the elevators.

What I really hate is when I go tell the front desk person that there's a dead mouse in my hallway and she laughs at me.

Rodents are oh so hilarious, folks, didn't you know?




How did it drop dead while running?! Was it poisoned? Did it have a heart condition? How did it get into the hallway of the fourth floor?

I hate my thesis.

More to the point, I hate that I can't seem to make myself write my thesis. This thesis I am allegedly writing is about blogging. Yes, I read blogs. Yes, I write in a blog. But do I write about blogs for the long paper I have paid for the privilege to write? No, no, I don't.

I hate that I have no chance today.

Come on, everyone has to admit it, how can I compete with Tyler's passing out at a show? It's classic. Tragic, but classic. And my faux meat addiction just can't compete. Kudos, Tyler. And I'm sorry I didn't pick up my phone last night. I was asleep and disoriented. Although maybe not as disoriented as you were.

I hate that I love processed faux meats.

I had one for every meal yesterday. Vegetarian sausage, vegetarian hamburger, vegetarian pepperoni. So good. So not healthy. Healthier than meat, but still not healthy. I think I get more protein than the average omnivore.

I hate my poor judgment.

It's one thing to embarrass yourself in front of friends.

It's quite another thing to go to a show by yourself after forgetting to eat dinner, drink three beers, smoke several cigarettes and then get dizzy and dehydrated and pass out in the middle of the headliner's set.

Not my finest moment. That's for damn sure.

I hate my chin.

Because it's red and it hurts and there's nothing I can do about it.

I hate making mistakes.

Especially when they're mistakes that other people can see.

I hate that HTML doesn't work in real life.

I had to write a rhetorical analysis on an essay called "Hateful Things" by Sei Shonagon. Now, I've never written a rhetorical analysis. And, honestly, I went to the type of college where professors said, "Rhetoric rhetoric rhetoric!" at me, expecting me to know what the hell they were talking about. (I wanted to respond, "I read And Then There Were None in my twelfth-grade HONORS English class. Don't expect me to know anything except that Agatha Christie wrote the great masterpiece of the British canon.") Anyway, I don't know how to write a rhetorical analysis, which showed in my shitty, shitty paper, but there was nothing I could do because no one will show me how to do things.

But the most frustrating part was the irony of the reading assignment. I wrote a sentence this sentence: "Shonagon's list of hateful tings includes actions and behaviors that are almost universally disliked." The professor underlined "are almost universally," and above the first paragraph he wrote in red ink, "Do you dislike everything she mentions?"

I wish I could have responded, "Yes."

I hate my addiction to google.

Will the stalking never end?

I hate my neighbor.

I hate my neighbor for the usual reasons, as well as some more superficial ones. But the thing I hate the most is how I can tell when there's a Redskins football game on because he plays his TV so goddamn loudly I can hear the commentary.

Dude, you live three doors away from me. I know it's you in the baseball cap. I can hear you and your friends yelling at the TV and ripping open bags of chips.

Today is going to be different. Today I'm going to drown you out with Sonic Youth. Because it's the only band I own music by who has the potential to drown out the goddamn drums.

I hate it when drunk girls are smarter than me.

Q: "Hey, where did you apply to college?"

A: "Umm... Berkley, University of Chicago, Brown, Yale, Harvard. I ended up at Penn. How about you?"

FUCK YOU. IT WAS A RHETORICAL QUESTION.

I hate getting that drunk.

Ever get so drunk that you go into the bathroom and stare at yourself in the mirror for so long that you realize that you're that drunk that you're staring at your reflection, not even in a narcissistic way, but just in the way that you say to yourself, "I can't believe I'm so drunk LOL ROTFLMAO"?

I hate that.

I hate when hangovers get in the way of life.

I hate when you're so hungover, you can't walk until 3:30 p.m.

I hate getting too drunk.

As in so drunk a cop stops you on the subway to ask if you're okay because you're "staggering." Hot!

I hate not having options.

The only things in all of the vending machines in the entire building are Red Vines and Chili Cheese Fritos.

I hate flickr fetish.

I hate when I start looking at some random blogger's flickr site and I just can't stop. Inevitably, there are 87 pages of pictures and one-third of those pictures are of the flickr user's cat, who is unwilling to pose.

But I can't stop looking.

I hate Patse.

Veto!

I hate getting up earlier only to be thwarted.

I hate getting up to run at 5 a.m. and finding that my key suddenly isn't opening the gym door. But there's somebody already in there, you can hear their beeping treadmill, so you stand outside the door, hoping that he or she catches a glimpse of your beady 5 a.m. eyes in the mirror, takes mercy, and opens the door. That doesn't happen. So then you march yourself down to the desk and announce your key is broken and the lady goes, "Well, baby, we ain't got no engineer 'til 7."

Is the engineer really going to fix my key? Really? Something tells me no.

So now it's 6 a.m. And what I'm really mad about is that today marks my third trip to the DMV. Hello, fun.

I hate my body clock.

I hate getting really really tired super early in the night. It makes me feel like an old lady. I can normally stay up until all hours of the night and get up decently early and not feel like crap(it's a gift, I'm well aware), but there are occasions when I feel like death warmed over at say, 10:30 at night.

I hate nursing homes.

Just use your imagination: the smell, the food, the incessant 1920's hits playing the background, the poorly applied wallpaper, the nurses, the dirty floors, the yelling, the wheelchair jams in the hallways.

I hated Brick.

When I was in high school I used to wish for movies to come out and portray people my age having adult situations and dealing with them the way adults do. I think this is because I hated watching teenage movies and would have rather seen an all-teen cast in L.A. Confidential.

I would have probably loved Brick then, but now it just makes me angry. It’s got so much style, great film noir-inspired dialogue, a terrific, jazzy score. But it takes place in high school.

There’s a reason why high school-aged actors don’t play high school-aged characters in films. Young actors are rarely mature enough to grasp the emotional range. The same can be said for any high school student, which is why dramatic movies featuring seventeen-year-old detectives should not be made. Or maybe I just shouldn’t watch them, because seeing serious lines delivered by teenagers makes me want to die.

Also, Lukas Haas's face kinda makes me want to throw up.