Quirky Chicks Playing Acoustic Guitar Selling Stuff: This has really taken off lately thanks to the humorous but slighty overrated movie Juno. You know that movie, right? The one that would have us believe that parents get cute and sarcastic when their teenaged daughters come home pregnant..and that teenagers are actually deep individuals who are rarely shallow and always have something witty to say? Yeah, that one. Well, that little flick was ripe with tunes being sung by oh-so-quirky chicks whilst strumming away on an acoustic guitar. Soon after that, Feist was featured in some TV commerical and played all over the radio. Then, someone exactly like Feist was played in a commerical on on the radio. Now, some Dell commercial features another quirky chick playing guitar and singing in that "I'm such a cute lil' elfish character" way that currently dominates adversiting. Like someone once tried to tell all the "Grunge" kids I went to school with, I will say to the strumming pixies: If everyone else is also doing it, you're not so quirky or unique anymore.

Language Obsession: A certain group wants the word "Retarded" to now be changed in common usage to being called "The 'R' Word". Well, this is stupid. I don't make fun of retarded people, nor do I ever use the word "RE-tard" when referring to someone who is mentally disabled. At the same time, I think it's extremely stupid to take yourself so seriously about any word that you have to refer to it by it's first initial. Same thing goes for "The 'N' Word", "The 'F' Word", and any other derogatory slang that grown adults seem to allow themselves to be reduced to infantile nimrods over when uttered in any context. I've got news for you, words are not racists, words are not bigots. The particular usage of certain words is bigotted, and those who use it in a derogatory manner are the bigots. So, please, would all the idiot newscasters out there act like responsible media (and "grown-ups") when reporting the news and pretend like adults can hear something like "The 'N' Word" and know that the guy reading the teleprompter isn't a member of the Klan? Last I checked, the news isn't aimed at children, even if we're so obsessed with them that we've begun to believe it is. That, by the way, brings me to:

Child Obsession: Someone will email me and report that, because I'm not a parent, I simply don't understand what I'm saying and have no right to complain. Well, you're wrong. That's just empty rhetoric made up by parents to dismiss their unhealthy obsession with their children. That's like saying because I'm not a Barista at Starbucks that I have no right to bitch when my coffee sucks and the washroom has shit on the walls. I understand that you love your children, and I applaud this. But there's a time and place for everything, and not every time and place was meant for your children to infiltrate. For instance, the aforementioned Starbucks is a coffee house that serves non-alcholoic beverages aimed at adults. The music isn't from Radio Disney, and the furniture isn't plastic or neon orange. So, please, if you must take your screaming child to a place where you can have coffee, remember that McDonald's is aimed at children and has great coffee, too. Same thing goes for the ass who brings his child (under 10) to the midnight movie, the schmuck who lets his child play hide-n-seek in the bookstore, the ramrod who allows his offspring to order dinner at the Drive-Thru Window. You know who this is directed at? The crotch-rash who, in the middle of Mr. Pita the other day, let his daughters loudly act out selected songs from High School Musical while I was trying to eat lunch.

Adults with Cell Phones Who Think they are Teenagers: If you are over the age of seventeen, there is absolutely no reason why your voicemail should be thirty seconds of the latest Jonas Brothers tune or Kanye West sereneding me before you, in your best effort to deny your age, proclaim "Wassup, y'all? Leave me a message and I'll hit you back, yo. Peace out". First of all, music on voicemail annoys everyone, including teenagers. Secondly, I already have to wait for the computer-recorded bitch's voice to tell me that "after the tone, please leave a message" and "when you have finished recording, hang up or press 'one' for more options". Between her and your personal mix-tape, I've wasted four minutes just trying to leave you a message. Chances are, I was only returning your call in the first place and wasn't really that eager to talk to you anyway. Thanks for wasting even more time.

Country Music Catching Slang Too Late: There's a country song out called "Holler Back". That would've been very clever about four years ago, but comes out now almost as if it's a retro novelty. Country music has been doing this for years. This is the genre that brought us a song called "Here's a Quarter (call someone who cares)" about six years after even CBS sitcoms had stopped spewing it, as well as "Been there, Done That" about a decade too late. I imagine that, somewhere in Nashville, some guy in a Stetson is currently writing "Oh, Snap!" or "I'm Audi" for a 2009 release. For all we know, "I Let the Dogs Out" is already on the next Brooks and Dunn CD.

Laptop Bangers: This sounds like I'm talking about people who try to somehow molest their computers. I'm referring to people in public areas (computer labs, cafes, libraries) who tap so hard on their keyboards, you'd think they were actually banging away on a manual typewriter from 1956. If a person can hear your fingers slapping the keys even when listening to Iron Maiden on his iPod while wearing BOSE earbuds, you're typing too loudly, Mr. Faulkner. It's not a stone tablet with a chisel, it's a very sensitive piece of equipment and the year is 2008.

People Who Bitch About People's Typing: Yeah, I'm a dick. I admit it.

The Zombie at the "Self Checkout" Lane: That 200-pound box you've got in your cart, with the HD TV in it? The one with the UPC barcode on the bottom, facing your 237 cans of spaghetti sauce? Please, for the love of God, take it through the regular checkout line. Yes, you'll have to wait a bit longer, but at least you can go home and eat your pasta in front of your new TV. It's bad enough watching you stare at the Checkout Touch-Screen like the RCA Dog staring at that phonograph, but that "Self Checkout" Lane was designed for people with easy-to-register items who are in a hurry. I'm standing there waiting to purchase my whipped cream, condoms, and squirt gun. Could you please let me go first? If you have time to kill and want to amuse yourself, I suggest watching the other mouthbreathers in the "Self Checkout" lane who argue with the computerized voice telling them to "please place the item in the bag".

The Guy Who Shushes People in a Bookstore: It's not a library. It's a bookstore. It's a retail location designed for people to browse and then purchase literature. Yes, there are sofas and chairs all over the place, but that's just someone's idea of great customer service. The idea is that you'll get an idea as to whether or not you actually intend to buy the book you've got and then take it home to read it. The fact that they serve coffee there too is only for them to make more money and get you so wired you'll skim through even more books and hopefully buy more than one. I'm all for people being polite in the library, but you have no more business telling me to whisper in a Barnes and Noble than you do telling the kid in Best Buy not to talk about video games. Which brings us to:

The Jackasses Who Play "Guitar Hero" at Best Buy: I never see anyone at Best Buy plaing the Demo version of "Guitar Hero" who doesn't obviously already own the damned game already and play it at home. If so, I'd see a lot more people making mistakes and generally looking confused while trying to figure it out, as people often do the first time they play a video game. Instead, I always see guys who look like they designed the goddamned thing twirling that plastic guitar around their necks and yanking on that little whammy bar like they were auditioning to be in The Knack. Sometimes there are as many as four of these cave-dwellers jamming at one TV in the store, showing off how well each of them has mastered "Sweet Child o' Mine" by pressing colorful buttons in sequential order. Once again, it's a retail store. If you already own the game, why the need to play it in public at the store? To show off? Wouldn't that be much more impressive if you were playing an actual goddamned guitar? It ends up looking as if your mother kicked you out of the basement and told you to "go play outside"...only for you to skip down to Best Buy and keep playing the video game anyway.

I'm sure, as always, that there are more signs of Armageddon on the way. I'm waiting for something blatantly obvious, of course, such as a sequel to the Bruce Willis movie Armageddon. Hell, that might just be the biggest sign that the end is near. Until I read that it's in production, however, I'll have to keep compiling lists such as this one, just so we know how much time we have left to share this mortal coil. Now I'm off to the bookstore. I want to play "The 'G' Word" on my laptop as loudly as possible. Oh, Snap!