What Annoys Jeff this Week?

1. The 9/11 Memorial Gift Shop. I hear people are up in arms about there being a gift shop at the freshly minted 9/11 Memorial in New York. Fine. I don’t get it, but I certainly don’t claim to hold a monopoly on righteous indignation. I hear the argument that that the site of the World Trade Center is hallowed ground; that Americans are interred there. Arlington National Cemetery is hallowed ground too. It’s sanctified by the blood of generations of America’s patriots, but they still operate a bookstore there catering to the millions of visitors who show up there every year (there’s one at the Pearl Harbor visitor’s center too). On Ebay you can buy artifacts raised from Titanic’s resting place in the North Atlantic. I hear that 9/11 is different, but that’s only because it’s still fairly recent in our living memories. In any other context, it’s just another memorial – like Arlington or Pearl Harbor or any of a thousand other places. I can’t wrap my head around selling trinkets at one being any worse than doing it at any of the others.

2. Finger licking. There’s something altogether repulsive about someone who licks their fingers to separate the papers that just came rolling off the printer and then hands your set of prints over as if they’re doing you a favor and all that paper isn’t now covered in their cast off saliva. It makes me throw up a little in my mouth… and there just isn’t enough hand sanitizer on the planet to make this an OK thing to do.

3. Anything that delays your departure from the office on the day before your 4-day weekend starts. I think this one is fairly self explanatory.

Clip… clip… clip…

Dear Colleague,

Are you really sitting in your cubicle trimming your fingernails at 7:10 AM? Really? There are only three of us in the office at this hour and that means there’s no way you’re even trying to hide the clip… clip… clip noise that you’re making over there. You are, quite simply, a disgusting person. That isn’t something you might have wanted to do in the privacy of your own home or even in your car if you want to stretch it. But sitting there with fingernails flying all over your cube? Yeah. You’re classy like that.

I liked you better when you use to sleep all the time. But in fairness even then I didn’t like you very much.

Regards,

Jeff

Editorial Note: This part of a continuing series of previously de-published blogs appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date.

Eww… Ewwww… EWWWWWW…

There are some things that you’re never really prepared to handle. It never really occurred to me that dogs eat poo, but based on a quick Google search of the topic, it’s very apparent that they do. I’m sure that’s a behavior that can be adjusted with some serious training. If Maggie were just eating off the ground, it would be bad enough but she has taken to following poor Winston around like he was a warm, furry, four legged soft serve machine. And yes, that’s exactly the mental image I was trying to get across. I’ve been disturbed by it all day so you might as well be too!