1. Progress bars which reach the end, and then spend an indeterminately long time paused on 100% before finally completing the task.
2. When someone, on a training course for example, lists sources of information, and one of them is “the internet”. You might as well say, “reading”. The internet is not a source. The internet is a means of communicating with innumerable sources.
3. “Free” wifi spots which you have to register with to use. I don’t need any more username and password combinations in my life, certainly not for some random wifi hotspot I’ll never use again.
4. The word “webinar”.
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(Originally published on 1st August, 2012)

1. Trying to spread chilled butter on cold toast.
2. The inexplicable fluff you get in an old jar of instant coffee granules.
3. Pillows which are too thick, so that while one isn’t thick enough on its own, two are way too thick.
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(Originally published on 5th September, 2010)

1. Most Haunted. I hate the fact that a successful prime-time programme has been made out of a premise little more convincing than your average YouTube compilation of “floating orbs” (ie. flashlit raindrops). And the fact that the analysis is on a similar level to YouTube comments. I hate the fact that for all the spiritualists, mediums, “parapsychologists” and other spurious experts featured on the programme, not one sceptic is interviewed to point out that nocturnal creaking in an old house can have a perfectly natural explanation. I hate the fact that no-one ever acknowledges or even mentions the possibility of mundane physical phenomena, tricks of perception and imagination, mass hysteria, or plain old deception by the “experts” profiting from the show. And even more than I hate Derek Acorah, who is a shameless fraud and liar, but at least knows what he’s doing, I hate the heifer-eyed credulous moron, Yvette Fielding.
2. Uri Geller, an unashamed, unrepentant fraud. Look into his eyes, and you will see a cold, empty vacuum. They are the eyes of a man who has lived by lies all his life, and who knows that his entire career, fame and fortune are built on nothing but foul deceit. He is a common scam-artist with pretensions of grandeur, a corrupt, dishonest little worm, and we shouldn’t stand for him any longer. Ignore him. Encourage everyone you know to ignore him. Don’t watch any programmes with him on, don’t buy any magazines with him in, boycott him until his snivelling little lies no longer get him any money or attention. In the name of truth, and the good of society, he must be crushed without mercy.
3. Continue reading →

(Originally published on 3rd October, 2010)

IT SPECIAL EDITION

Co-authored by Tom Bell and Wam Silliams

1. People who don’t know the difference between Google and the internet, so that if you ask them to go to apple.com, they will go to Google and type in “apple.com”.
2. People who don’t know that you can press Return to submit a form, and are hopeless on the mouse, so that after typing in “apple.com”, they will slowly remove their hand from the keyboard, timidly grip the mouse, and slowly move it over to the “Search” button. Hit Return, you mouthbreathing simpletons!
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(Originally published on 13th April, 2008)

1. People who read their phone numbers out loud and break them down into the wrong groups of numbers, eg. “072 814 67 89 4”, leaving you mentally floundering. How hard is it to read the code followed by two trigrams?
2. Posh crisps, particularly ones which try to make the flavour sound gourmet when really it’s just cheese and onion. The worst I’ve seen so far is “mature cheddar and lyonnaise shallots”.
3. Anything which advertises itself as containing “Ylang Ylang”. Or anyone who has ever uttered the phrase “Ylang Ylang”.
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(Originally published on 2nd May, 2005)

1. Student-produced magazines which use 47 different fonts.
2. The 15 people out of a million who buy products from email spammers, providing them profit and incentive to continue spamming. These people must be rounded up, stripped naked, and released into a forest. I will then enter the forest, armed with a variety of assault weaponry, and the Games will begin.
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(Originally published on 29th April, 2003)

1. Use of the phrase ‘I could care less’, which is a stunning example of people simply repeating something they’ve heard without spending even a fraction of a second considering what the words actually mean.
2. The US pronunciation of ‘croissant’, i.e. ‘cruh-SONT’.
3. The way Americans profess to love cheese, while the only cheeses available in the country are rubbery, tasteless versions of cheddar and ‘Swiss’.
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(Originally published on 25th July, 2002)

1. The word ‘beastiality’. As if ‘bestiality’ just means any sex, and one has to pun it with the word ‘beast’ to talk about animal sex. Look, you etymologically-challenged fuckwits, ‘bestiality’ comes from the Latin ‘bestia’ meaning ‘beast’. Which leads to my next hate…
2. Puns between two words which come from exactly the same root, like ‘beastiality’ above, or ‘terror-riffic’.
3. Continue reading →