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For the most part, trends are things I generally view with a mixture of suspicion and outright loathing.  But I am fond of the "Annoying Things" lists that are popping up online, probably because they sound like stuff I would write.  So, I went ahead and did just that.  After each entry, you will notice I have inserted a small icon to indicate my level of annoyance.

Facepalm
Your behavior is just plain embarrassing, and I shouldn't have to explain why.  While you aren't really hurting me, society is worse for your existence.

Fuck Off
You are being more than irritating, and you know it.  Stop it.  I can feel my blood-pressure actively rising. 

Bitch Slap
This is your reality-check.  Everyone gets a free one.

Punch
You were warned.  Now comes the pain.

Wearing chinos with white athletic shoes

You think it says, Classy yet casual, classic and versatile.  Unfortunately, what it really says is, No definable sense of fashion outside of what your overprotective, domineering mother tells you to wear.

Nothing excuses this, not even blindness.

No one, bar none, can make this look work.  Every poly-cotton fiber of it screams "loser" at full volume.  It is the defining combo for the "hip" youth pastor in superficially-accepting non-denominational megachurches, and the uncloseted uber-dork who, for whatever reason, won't wear swords & sorcery t-shirts or Domu beanie-caps.

Acting as if there is a world of difference between American light lagers

Beer was the last alcoholic beverage I came around to, and only Guinness, sampled for the first time in my third year of college, convinced me I would ever be able to down more than a pint of the stuff.  So maybe I was a born beer-snob.  Since then, I have tried many a brew, from the cheapest fizzy swill to dollar-per-ounce session beers.  You know what?  I can drink them all.  As a result, I want nothing more than to smack smug idiots who champion one American diet lager above all others, whatever their preference may be.  It doesn't matter.  Can you tell the difference between them?  Yes.  Do any of them taste much like anything, let alone good?  No.

"Ah, this remotely golden, frothy, borderline bitter corn-yeast runoff is distinctly better than that vaguely yellow, tasteless, almost odorless, slightly carbonated water byproduct."

Shut the fuck up and drink it, frat-boy.  When you can wax intellectual about IBUs and lacing on the glass, we'll talk about your "tastes."

Wearing sandals and/or shorts in December

It's not summer, and you're not a hobbit.  Trust me, I know, I am as close to being one of them as possible: short, curly-haired, bad with technology, but surprisingly tough when push comes to shove.

Pictured: not you.

So stop pretending you're "just more comfortable" with your toes exposed to testicle-retracting temperatures, which you should be well aware of, given the open vent to your crotch provided by those drafty jorts.  I don't know what you are trying to prove, but you fail.

Pet love

Your animal companion holds a special place in your heart, I get it.  I've had lots of different pets, and every one was special.  Where that affection crosses over into weird, borderline psychosis is somewhere between slapping a "I Love My [Specific Dog Breed]" sticker on your bumper and purchasing these:

Seek help.  Please.

Because, really, you are starting to creep people out.  Knock it off, or I'm calling the vice squad, Bestiality division.

"i"Crap

These are products that adopt a minimalist, white color scheme and add a lower-case "i" to the front of their name to cash in on the success of a certain faddish company.

*NOTE: If this actually was one of "their" products, they'd put the sharpening aperture in the bottom of the device, just to be different.

It says, "Hey, man, screw proper capitalization and punctuation, we're a savvy, new wave, hipster trend that all the squares still using the world's most common operating system secretly wish they had."  (1) You are not Mac, so stop stealing their shit.  (2) Don't ever try to be Mac.  Seriously.

Pop Evil

This is an up-and-coming band half of you have probably never heard of (lucky you), but I think could best be described as a heavier Nickelback.

"VRRROOOM, I'm an airplane!"

One of my biggest regrets in life is that I failed to punch the lead douche-tool in the face when I had the opportunity almost four years ago.  If I had only known the levels of bland, quasi-hardcore mediocrity they would hover at, I would have acted . . .

"Where is (insert name here)?" news

This is probably the most sickening form of exploitative, sensationalistic "news" coverage in existence.  The bottom-feeding, soulless puppy-rapists who run stations like HLN (the result of a shameful one-night stand between CNN and Fox News, aborted one trimester too late) literally scour the daily stories from across the country to find any hint of (1) a missing white child, (2) a missing, pretty white girl, or (3) some twisted combination of the two.

Your face sticks this way when your soul is sucked out via your anus by Belial, Lord of Lies.

Then, once these opportunistic parasites have attached themselves to a tragedy, the orphanage-bombing executives and hack "reporters" of these tabloid networks spin the story into absurd proportions, promote it like a summer blockbuster, and open the bidding for advertisement time-slots.

Not turning on your headlights just because it's technically day

I don't know where you live (or do I? *wink*), but my state of residence gets real winters.  That means overcast skies, some form of shitty, insidious precipitation in the air, and slick roadways more often than not.  In other words, not so much a Winter Wonderland as a Frigid, Slippery, Grayish Twilight-Land.  And you want to drive your slush-splattered silver 1996 Chrysler Seabring with the bald tires and diaper-thin break-pads at 4:30 in the evening sans headlights?  You may as well turn on the cloaking device as well, because your car is effectively invisible.

Validating social media bullshit

I remember when I first started vetting colleges.  Back then, you looked up their rankings in prestigious publications, visited the campus, talked with advisers both in- and outside the school, and perused their catalog for courses related to your interests.  Nowadays:

I kind of want to scream.

To say that I bemoan the modern state of education is like saying people were miffed when the Hindenburg went down in a fiery blaze.  For those who went to a school where the collegiate ranking was determined by their volume of web-traffic, here's what my metaphor refers to.  By this criteria, I'm practically an institution of higher learning in my own right, while several of my more-popular friends should be considered Ivy League.

The term "shorty/shawty/shaurty/sha-tee"

Justin Bieber regularly uses it, for Christ's sake.  I am declaring it dead.

KP, out.