“Screw you guys. Home.”

– South Park

The song “God Bless America,” sung in lieu of the National Anthem. Mean, large dogs and the people who mistreat them. Shouting in the hallway at 8 a.m. on Sunday. Vending machine coffee. RAIN. Music snobs. Goth. That pale shade of pink grown women are wearing in public these days. Peasant blouses made of gauze and sold in winter. Pointless little sandals. Purses too small to hold anything. Medium-point pens. American Idol. Vegetables. Coming Apart, The Bridges of Madison County, and Patriot Games. The eighth season of the X-Files. The seventh season of Buffy. Alarm clocks. Toby Keith. Toby Keith. Toby Keith. Boy bands. Whiny boy-band music. DJs who think it’s fine to play R. Kelly songs over and over as he goes on trial for having sex with an underage girl. Obssessive coverage of the Peterson murder. Operation Rescue. High-pitched club girls who come into my favorite pub dressed in leather-look pants and snakeskin halters and look at me, in jeans and a T-shirt having a pint with my friends, like I’m the one who’s out of place. Their carbon-copy head toss. Their universal hairstyle of the would-be gold-digging sububan wife. Their vacant stare, coupled with their blow-job mouths. Hummers. Cadillac SUVs. Ford Excursions. American men with handbags. Shoe shopping on a hot day. Shopping in general. Clothes for 14-year-olds finding their way into the grown-ups’ department. Grown-ups wearing these clothes. “Networking.” Business cards. Sunday drivers. Tuesday drivers. People who don’t use their turn signals. People who don’t turn a corner in less than five minutes. People who don’t get the fuck out of my way. Circular saws. Spiders. Bikinis: tools of Satan. Snobby churchgoers who won’t shake hands or say hello. Cold days in June. Warm days in December. Messes in the car. Message in a Bottle. Hypocrisy. The president. Sens. Santorum, Lieberman, Miller and Chambliss. Reps. Hastert, Inhofe, Delay and Nethercutt. The vice-president. Ad campaigns that encourage non-conformity because c’mon, please. Journalists who make stories up and then blame people who go after them. Jack Kelley, you miserable excuse for a human being, I’m looking at you. You too, Jayson Blair, you stupid little punk. Miniskirts. Bigots. Bigots who’ve figured out how to dial the phone. Bigots who learned to type through their drool and have polluted the Net. Bigots who are in Congress and the bigots who vote for them. People who use my marriage as an excuse for their bigotry. Kids who scream in restaurants. Slow or unfriendly clerks, except in gas stations. Overly friendly waiters who can’t read a table and can’t tell you don’t want to be offered dessert in the middle of trying to break up with someone. Crappy adaptations of Sherlock Holmes. Crappy imitations of Sherlock Holmes. Songfic of Sherlock Holmes, unless opera. Too-slick legal paper that makes the pencils skid. Nonprofit work that is more about voting on the official color of the end-hunger brochure than it is about actually ending hunger. Rednecks. People who sing about rednecking in a perverse attempt to make ignorance some kind of badge of honor. Little yappy dogs. Seagulls. Centipedes. Hockey games that end in a tie. People who whistle with two fingers in their mouths, directly into my ears. Cell phone usage in the bathroom. People who ask, “When are you going to have children?” and then don’t laugh at my joking replies. Backaches. Headaches. Nonbreathable fabrics. Little appliqued cats and such on denim. School system budget cuts. PETA. Too-high air conditioning. Did I mention Toby Keith?