Some militant vegans are such elitist snobs. They consider the eating of meat as murder! Yeah, well what about the wholesale slaughter of grains and salad greens! What about the widespread and unpunished practice of stealing and eating the fruits of trees, tomatoes, corn, squash… the list goes on and on. That's murder too isn't it?

What about the rape of helpless flowers, unable to run or defend themselves? Can you imagine how the flowers must feel when some humanoid thrusts his or her nose right into their sexual organs! Where's the outrage there huh?

Animals are protected from rape by bestiality law, customs, taboos and social mores.

Someone has to take up the cause here to protect the plants in the same ways that the animal kingdom is protected.

Fauna has protective advocates and the protection of the law where's the love and the law for Flora?

Makes me right hot! What are some of the things that tick you off, other than the O's being well on the way to a record setting season?

I agree with the Vegan and Vegetarian thing.

Killing 1 cow feeds a dozen people. Killing 10 carrots feeds 1 person maybe?

Jack:

I am with you there. My son (20) is vegan, and while pretty sane, he has his moments, and I'd like to think that part of the reason he is pretty sane is because I tease him enough that he just smiles and stops the banter.

And then my daughter (15) decided she can't do dairy, as that is momma's milk of another species and it is unnatural for us to imbibe.

As for how they can drink soy milk with a clean conscious, I say the process of taking soy beans and milking those little suckers is drastically painful. If you do the human milking, you have a much larger creature, man, grabbing that sweet innocent like soy bean and yanking its poor little thingies to extract milk. Talk about painful. Machines are slightly worse.

After all that, who could live without bleu cheese, sausage, ribs and carnitas? Everything in moderation. Or In-N-Out burgers off menu items like Animal Fries. CHeck them out. But only about once every other month.

Speaking about things that really bug me.

Band wagon fans.

A good buddy in college, while not much of a team sports guy, would cheer on the 49ers, until one day I noticed he was yakking about some other team that had been playing well for the last few seasons while the 49ers were stinking up the joint. I ask and he says that it was tiresome waiting for the 9ers to win, but the other team was playing better and it was more fun.

I was prepared to disavow any relationship with the guy.

I also hate those plastic bags at the veggie section of your local market. First, which end is supposed to open. Once you figure out that part, how do you get the damn thing open while you are holding your veggies in the other hand?

Now you are getting serious! I could not agree more. The damn things adhere so closely that once you finally get the correct end to open it resists the dropping of the veggie into it so the veggies frequently drops to the floor.

Fine with me if there were no salad bars. Most fruits & veggies would never be slaughtered, skinned, plucked, peeled, pureed, mashed, whipped, crushed, canned, or frozen, if everyone was like me. I don't like them.

With the O's being well on the way to a record setting season, everything that makes me mad, makes me madder. Like people who do not know how to say "I don't know". They would rather look you in the eye and lie or guess with assertion. I could jar them for the winter.

Cashiers at the grocery store who are not allow to operate the register. Invariably while in line gazing at celebs on rag-mags my cashier must summon a manager over the loud-speaker. A few minutes later someone who is obviously affected by the force of gravity much more than normal humanoids saunters out and replaces the tape, or merely inserts a key and turns it a few times, then walks away.

The lady in front of me with a pocketbook I could easily get enough belongings in to vacation for a week, waits till the merchandise is rung up and bagged before beginning the arduous search for her checkbook. Proceeds to borrow a pen and ask the date. I could beat her with a stalk of celery....oops.

And my mechanic who suddenly cannot speak English after diagnosing my engine's problem. Your spilionix coming off the revercatalper is bad. We will need to order it. He has no problem communicating the amount of money he will need to get my spilionix.

Not being able to find anything worth watching on my 500 channel satellite TV.

It makes me mad that I can't think of more of the things that constantly make me mad. Now I am really pissed!

Many of mine relate to commuting in NYC. People on the subway and pedestrians mostly. There are so many I don't even know where to start. I'll use my most recent one for the people who hold open the train doors to ask if this is such and such train or if it goes to such and such stop. There is a reason there are maps everywhere.

People who you can say something to several times, and they are so in their own world that when there are consequences for not listening they get upset.

Anyone who uses an anonymous internet username as an excuse to be racist, homophobic, or spew any other kind of hatred or rudeness.

People who won't admit they are wrong and blame everyone and everything else.

Parents who blame teachers when their kids are screwed up.

The people who see bad movies, listen to bad music, and watch bad TV shows so more of them will get made.

Remakes, reboots, and bastardizations of things I loved when I was younger.

I hate losing a baseball game because of a curfew.

Another thing that bugs me…I have long identified myself as a "independent" for voting registration purposes, now Dorchester county informs me that I have to choose among the traditional parties, between "Twaddle-Dippy-Doo and Tweedle-Dummy-Dumb," no thank you!.

The best choice I had was "unaffiliated," un-freaking-affiliated! That sounds so wimpy, wishy-washy, can't make a choice like…bat-dung!

Independent sounds clear-minded, forthright, having the ability to choose and not just have a "party's" mindless, knee-jerk, follow the butt of the lead lemming line.

But damn…I'm "unaffiliated" what a horrible inappropriate label to have on my voter's card.

"Unaffiliated" can be a good thing. It would be awesome if Garrett Atkins were unaffiliated with the Orioles.

Excellent point Sluggo!

Jack,
As an unaffiliated dude, you might like California's law, by way of an initiative that passed in last week's election.

Now, all candidates for a state wide office will be listed, with no party designation. Voters punch their e-chads for the candidate they like. In a primary election, all the candidates of every party are simply listed alphabetically or however they figure that. You can pick a secondary candidate of another party to take a vote away from that party's frontrunner, or try to skew the results for the other party's candidates. Of course you then cannot vote for the person who you would vote for (because that candidate makes you less violently ill than all the others.)

I guess you could say that in California, everybody is unaffiliated or appears to be unaffiliated.

Personally, I think each party should pick its own candidates and them offer them up to be attacked by the next multibillionaire who is running. (Take, for example, Meg Whitman. Really, Take Meg Whitman, please. As CEO of eBay, she was at the helm when the company caught on. In a few short years, she went from a CEO of a start up to a multibillionaire. And because of that short, sweet and most fortuitous ride, Whitman now knows how to run California. Of course, nobody can, as we are an impossible state in an impossible condition, but hey, if I had 70 million dollars lying around, I could be deceived into believing I could be governor. $70 Million worked for her, as she spent that and got the Republican party primary win. Glad she is a fiscal conservative, or we would all be screwed. But hey, what do I know? I don't know, and I say that not gratuitously, just to be off Milt's short list of peeves.)

I also like people and cell phones. I won't even elaborate, as y'all know what I am talking about.

Today's peeve:

Over the counter "medicines" or "supplements."

First, you might get a near impossible bottle to open (though prescription tops are even worse), then you have to get that paper or plasticy seal thingy off, and then, you have to extract enough cotton to make two t-shirts, a pair of socks and about 5/8 of a pair of underwear (tighty whities--or about 3/8 of a pair of boxers.)

On a baseball theme, I have a problem with pro ballers who cannot hit with RISP, with two outs. Take, for example, Luke Scott, who is, drum roll please:

0 for 21 with RISP with two outs this season. At this rate, he'll be 0 for 2010.

I always look at and compare two hitting stats for hitters, their HR total compared to RBIs. If they hit 7 HRs but have 14 rbis, then they are doing a lot of solo shots, and meaning they cannot deliver with runners on base. Yes, Scott has a grand slam this year, but throughout his career, he hit lots of HRs, most of them solo bombs.

I like that…sort of what the Founding Fathers had in mind with the Constitution…no political parties, they had had enough of that with the Brits.

The Founding Fathers wanted people to vote for the candidate and not vote for the party. Whoever was the runner-up for President became the Vice-President, didn't work out so good, and the parties came in, see what that has gotten us.

I guess it is not so bad to be unaffiliated…I'd hate to have to defend Joe Barton.

I would go with the tried-and-true I "misspoke" defense, if Barton needs defending at all. Is there a better term than "shakedown" to describe the event?
The "misspoke" defense was a slam-dunk for the finally proud of my county and the under fire in Bosnia fish story cases.

This is the same Joe Barton who a few years ago had 15 minutes of fame for blasting BP for a relatively minor oil spill in Alaska. I think his then famous tag line in reference to BP was "shame, shame, shame."

What brought on this recent apologetic change of heart relative to BP in Joe Barton?

Shakedown sounds good to me. I really don't care what word is used to describe how BP was made to cough up 20 Billion to help pay for the clean up and to compensate the "small people," as the BP board chairman refers to them, who have lost their livelihood due to BP's negligence, stupidity or incompetence among other things. Big companies Who cause damage should pay and pay big. To paraphrase Michael Steele and others…"Shakedown, Baby, Shakedown."

I am outraged that BP allowed this disaster to happen, they ignored the signs that they had big problems at that off-shore site, not the least of which was ignoring the pieces of protective gasket which started coming up before the disaster. This disaster makes the Exxon Valdez look like a tea party.

I agree, Jack. I just hope that the fishermen and others that have suffered economic damage actually get the compensation they deserve and the fund isn't raided and used for other objectives, as was attempted just last week on Capitol Hill to siphon money out of the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund—established in 1986 and funded by oil taxes to help clean-up spills—to pay for extension of unemployment benefits.
I find this much more egregious than a choice of words.

I was reading that the special master appointed to administer the disbursement of the funds was saying that it will be a big task to sort out the frauds who will be seeking compensation from those truly affected by the disaster and deserving of compenation.

Scams and schemers work both ends of the spectrum of greed from the "fat cats" to the "small people."

And the insolence of a fat-cat calling some people small.

On a minor note, Luke Scott had an RBI when he singled in Markakis in the third tonight. Notable? Yes, his first hit with a RISP with two outs. 1 for 22 on the season.