Pedestrian Pet Peeves

Cars, Things That Make Me Want to Throw Rocks at You:

  • Camping in a crosswalk even if you’re not turning right (and even when you’re turning right)
  • Turning left, impatiently waiting for someone to cross the street and inching closer to the pedestrian the whole time
  • Taking a turn right in front of a crossing pedestrian, because you can <em>make it</em> (even though you only made it because we stopped in horror)
  • Honking. Always.

Bikes and Skateboards, Things That Make Me Want to Clothesline You When You Ride By:

  • Bikes: Riding at top speed on the sidewalk when there’s a bike lane
  • Bikes: Expecting a pedestrian to “feel” your presence before you let out an exasperated “excuse me.”
  • Bikes and Skateboards: Sliding past within millimeters of a walker/within a walker’s personal space bubble
  • Skateboards: Rolling at top speed with the cacophony your wheels make right behind a person and then splitting around them at the last minute
  • Skateboards: Practicing tricks so that you take up the entire sidewalk. Also, be better at your tricks.

Pedestrians, Things That Make Me Want to Yell Mean Things at Your Face

  • Using your family/work group going to lunch to spread out across the entire sidewalk
  • Walking on the wrong side of the sidewalk (the sidewalk is a road you use by the power of your own propulsion; slide to the right)
  • Stopping dead in your tracks with no warning
  • Mall-walking
  • Pressing the crosswalk button the entire time you’re waiting for the light, a signal which has its own timing and doesn’t care how often you press the button.
  • Parkour

An 'Adventure' For Kids, And Maybe For Their Parents Too : NPR

Adventure Time isn’t your typical cartoon, but it’s capturing an audience of kids and adults who believe it’s getting at something special.

Of course NPR would use a quote that takes a very accessible, impossibly awesome cartoon and contextualizes it in something esoteric and a little snobbish. Heh heh. Balzac.

He knew that he was the stuff of which fanatics and madmen are made and that he had turned his destiny as if with his bare will. He kept himself upright on a very narrow line between madness and emptiness, and when the time came for him to lose his balance, he intended to lurch toward emptiness and fall on the side of his choice.
The Violent Bear It Away by Flannery O’Connor

personal.

Sometimes I don’t think people care for me, much like in the way that people open a box of chocolates and pick around the coconut. Then I think it must just be because they don’t know me very well since there are a lot of people who do know me and they’re really into me. Then I realize there are probably more than a few people who know me really well and don’t want any part of me. 

They know too much.

You can see my dilemma.