ClearType
Microsoft's *answer* to making text oh-so-readable. Their marketing blurb rants about tripling monitor resolution using sub-pixel rendering to make small text readable.

All my eyes see is colour artifacts like a heavily over-compressed JPEG image. The blurriness plays merry havoc with my eyes, sending my brain into optical spasms.

Reaching for the off-switch (ooh, the 'ClearType Tuner') turns only a small proportion of it off; many popups, messages and menus still defiantly appear in blurry-type, seeking to ridicule me for being one of so few that actually don't want this MS-imposed intrusion into my optical happiness.

But no, despite countless people voicing their dissatisfaction, despite numerous posting on MS-engineer's blogs, despite constant filing of bug issues on MS's own Connect website, the twats still come out with lines such as "Try the ClearType Tuner", or "MS Applications respect the system settings for ClearType", or my least favourite "I don't see what the problem is.".

Never more have I wanted the ability to rip the spine out of a person (like on Predator II) than with this.
( brown-wings Made with three kinds of butter, Wed 6 Apr 2011, 9:59, 5 replies)

An interesting part of psychology and counselling is that it often transpires that
Things one rages against are often qualities in oneself one is unwilling to face or accept.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Wed 6 Apr 2011, 9:52, 18 replies)

Tennis
Not the game, that's tolerable, but the people who play it. Up their own arse cunts the lot of them.
(Hoaxy The only living boy in new cross, Wed 6 Apr 2011, 8:31, 3 replies)

The upcoming Royal Wedding.
As an ex-pat, yeah, I think it's great that William and Kate are getting married. But what drives me nuts is that BBC America constantly has TV programmes about them, and it drives me even crazier that the news channels I watch here in the US are constantly harping on about it.

I can't even read the two newspapers we get (British Weekly and Union Jack) without reading about the upcoming nuptials.
In my apartment complex, they want to do a "street party" to celebrate the big day, and I'm apparently the main consultant. But I'm going on a fishing trip on April 29th so I'm not going to be around to make sure it goes to plan.

Fairytale wedding my ass, look how the last one ended.....grrrr....
(nolongernuts, Wed 6 Apr 2011, 7:10, 19 replies)

Oporto
Of course I fucking want chilli on the burger, that's what a Bondi Burger should have. To all the bastards who used to order them and not read what it contained, thanks a lot.
(squirrelysquirrel, Wed 6 Apr 2011, 3:18, 3 replies)

It is NOT an enormity
Listen, you ignorant spavined fuck-turtles: An enormity is an atrocity. It has NO OTHER MEANING. It especially does not mean "immensity". Is that perfectly clear? Seriously, you're idiots.
(mudskipper, Wed 6 Apr 2011, 2:22, 30 replies)

Jo Wiley
Eight hundred years old, marginally less withered than Mumm-Ra's mother in law, and still on Radio 1, doing her very best to be 'down wiv da kids'. I especailly hated the 'rocks and sucks' feature - in which, very unimaginative people would phone in two completely unrelated items, one of which they liked, the other, they disliked. And this banale, worthless crap would then be broadcast to the nation.

I hate her for that. I hate her for being the catalyst - along with some creepy Irish fellow who was continually making distasteful single-entendres towards his ugly Scottish co-host, including one memorable occasion in which he intimated he'd like to sniff her contraceptive cap - of my abandoning Radio 1 in favour of Radio 2, thus cementing my decline into middle age. And I hate her even more for finally being booted from Radio 1, and subsequently sloping off to infect Radio 2 with her bland, queasily sycophantic shit.

What's the frequency for Radio 4?
( Happy Phantom has been to Hastings, Brighton, and Eastbourne too, Wed 6 Apr 2011, 2:03, 14 replies)

Litter louts
Well theres certainly been a lot of responses of irrational hatred to this QOTW
Ive had a think about this and disregarding my petty irritants involving chewing gum and ketchup, the best I can come up wirh is littering.
Perhaps its not an irrational hatred, maybe its quite justified?
But when I see people just casually drop their fast food wrappers/ cig butts/sundry rubbish onto the pavement, my blood boils.
Even more so when someone throws their litter in the vague direction of a bin as they are passing by, like they are too fecking lazy to actually stop and put it in.
Sadly my days of confronting such ignorant twats are over, after being threatened with serious bodily harm when I picked up the rubbish that had just been dropped out of a car stopped at traffic lights and popped it right back through the open window.
(insomniac-surfer oh go on then, just this once, Wed 6 Apr 2011, 1:10, 15 replies)

500 miles
or indeed anything rendered by those awful scrotes. Mindbleach now!
Although I do not consider this an irrational hatred, it is the best (or worst) I could come up with. Apart from people who walk to another room for some nefarious purpose and then start a conversation with you knowing that you cannot hear them.
Joke:
Little boy shouts upstairs: "Mum help...."
Mum says "I am not talking to you whilst you are downstairs, come up here and talk to me"
Little boy upon reaching "upstairs" : "I have got dogshit on my shoes and I can't undo the laces"

no apologies will be made for any punctuation errors or typos. It's late and I have polished off the rest of the Lagunilla Rioja which the BF kindly left...........
(Purpledoris I've got afeckin' job, Wed 6 Apr 2011, 1:03, 2 replies)

Cling-film.
Not entirely sure if I hate it, or it hates me.

Forty-mumble years old, and I still cannot tear a decent shaped piece of the hateful stuff to cover my sad left-overs for tomorrow's lunch.

Even worse is dear-wife's (TM) ability to grab the package and with one deft swipe tear off a piece that fits perfectly, and even more aggravating is that it does not attempt to stick every molecule of clingfilmy badness to every other molecule.
bah!
(WaveyDavey, Wed 6 Apr 2011, 0:34, 7 replies)

I like to think I don't hate
much of anything. It takes a lot to rile me up, but I guess some things do.

Tins of Tuna: can't there be a tin that doesn't involve a fucking briney/oily mess as you try to open them? Squirting all over the place, making your hands proper stink, put's me right off a tuna mayo butty every time.

Tiny doors in Loft conversions. You know if you stay in one there will be a teeny tiny door to the eaves. One that you need to block up with all your pillows so that the loft monster can't sneak out and kill you while you sleep. But still stay awake all night with a hammer just in case it comes to get you.

Any kind of light while you try to sleep: TV lights, alarm clocks, hall lights, watches, DVD players, iPods, anything that glows in the dark. It shines like a lighthouse into my soul and burns holes in my retinas thus stopping me from proper sleep.

Young at Heart by The Bluebells. The creepiest song every recorded. makes me shiver with fear every time I hear it.

bono:The most offensive hateful cunt on the planet. My hate in this respect is only irrational in how much I hate him, according to some, which has led to one of my groups on Fuckbook (yes fuckbook) being quoted in the press and being asked to appear on TV to talk about how much I hate that fucking cunt. Mind you, he is a cunt.
( Herb Alpert's Taxi Driver I have very beautiful lips, Tue 5 Apr 2011, 23:47, 12 replies)

Actually I've thought about this too much...
Very simple, and borne entirely of working in retail:

People who don't put things back properly.

To begin with this seems like a churlish annoyance of someone who hates their job, which is partly true. To me though it exhibits the kind of thoughtlessness and sociopathy which makes me genuinely think that we are doomed as a species (not to destruction, necessarily, but certainly to unhappiness).

It's very simple - you are in a book shop, a clothes shop, a record shop, whatever. You pick something up, you should put it back where you found it, to the best of your abilities (which, frankly, should include having mastered the fucking alphabet by now). You are not a child. We do not expect children to put stuff away because they are children, and are idiots. You though should be capable of the following simple thought: 'The reason they are in order is to help people find things'.

That's why there are systems of order. To help people. So if you are too lazy, or stupid, or thoughtless to put something down at the other fucking side of the shop, or to put it in sideways so that it gets damaged or falls down the back, you are causing a degree of hassle for someone else. This could range from the employee finding it, tutting to themselves, and putting the item back in the right place, or it could result in someone not getting what they wanted, to the knock on effect of that person not going back to that shop, to that shop going out of business. In smaller shops that's not that unlikely.

If you think this is petty, then let me extrapolate a bit. If people are this thoughtless on a general basis in shops then they're not likely to be any more thoughtful and considerate outside. It's not like people are any better behaved elsewhere, and will usually come up with some bullshit bravado about how people should expect a bit of this sort of thing. It's basically how Frankie Boyle justifies being a cunt to people, how FIFA manages to get away with being hideously corrupt, corpulent and ridden with scary old men whose banknotes are probably as ridden with smegma as they are cocaine, it's how that complete cunt down the road manages not to realise he's a complete cunt - a complete lack of basic empathy.

Leaving something in the wrong place is basically saying that it's somebody else's problem. You're busy, you've got bigger fish to fry.

We all know that isn't true. You're just becoming a cunt, increment by increment.
(thePontificator, Tue 5 Apr 2011, 23:36, 9 replies)

If the new guy at work says someone or something is 'safe' once more,
I'll have him rendered 'safe' by means of a controlled explosion.
And 'cool beans'. Seriously, what the flying fart flaps is that supposed to mean? How does adding 'beans' to the end enhance anything that could have just been said by 'cool'?
Nice enough chap, but bloody hell...
( Colonel Boris "...a desperate Buzzfeed imitation...", Tue 5 Apr 2011, 23:18, 3 replies)

The artists who call themselves LMFAO.
Two wacky big-haired pricks with a drum machine and a broken-sounding synthesiser who name themselves after a bit of AOL-speak wouldn't normally be a threat to anyone's sanity, but there's some truly inexplicable quality about them and their music that makes me want to kick them and their stupid synthesiser down a flight of stone stairs.

If you're not familiar with them, they were partly responsible for such masterpieces as NING!noonoo noonoo NING! noonoo noo noo and dah dah dah dah dah dah dah dah (they did the wacky, bleepy, slightly less smug bits.)

Also, I'll bet they're the kind of wacky big-haired pricks who'll try and sue anyone who says anything remotely negative about them. So yeah, LMFAO are brilliant, buy all of LMFAO's records now, LMFAO definitely don't deserve to be hit by a train, LMFAO have been known to cause cancerous tumours to go into remission as part of a course of combination therapy, etc. Hooray for LMFAO!
( The Mock TurtIe ™ --- Thinks you are a cunt, on, Tue 5 Apr 2011, 23:01, 8 replies)

bananas
just looking at them makes me nervous. the smell is enough to make me dry-heave. i couldn't pick up a ripe banana if you paid me.
it's so bad that, when my nephew was about 6, he chased me around my own house with a banana, until i locked myself in the bathroom, screaming at him to go away.
the unripe green bananas aren't as bad, for some reason.
( Smash Monkey lowering the tone of the whole internet, Tue 5 Apr 2011, 22:58, 9 replies)

In the office...
People who talk REALLY LOUDLY on the phone. It's got to the point with one particular colleague now that I'm either going to have a word with her, or punch her repeatedly in her stupid face.

PS any tips on how to approach this subject with said colleague? I have obviously already tried "Would you mind talking a little more quietly on the phone as people find it distracting."
( Sculpture of Man Putting a banging donk on it since, Tue 5 Apr 2011, 22:43, 8 replies)

Just been reminded of one via Facebook
Brought being used instead of bought.

"I've just brought that new album."
"Where from, Tesco?"
"No, iTunes."
"How did you bring it from iTunes? Did you travel through optical fibre to their server, collect it and then come back?"
"Eh? Why are you being stupid?"
"You're the stupid cunt for not using the right verb. You might as well say you've 'skidded' the new album. Both make no sense. Say what you mean and don't have a go at other people for your own ignorant idiocy."
"..."
"Is it any good?"
"Nah, it's shit."
(ThatNiceMan thought he was being funny, Tue 5 Apr 2011, 22:36, Reply)

It's not so irrational really,
but I detest "txt spk".

I always write text messages in reasonably grammatically correct English, to the extent that I have been known to use a semicolon in a text.
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Tue 5 Apr 2011, 22:23, 9 replies)

Wandering bollocks
Sometimes, when a bloke is a bit warm his scrotum doth became baggy. Sometimes in this situation, you can sit down, your trousers pull a bit tight and the crotch seam bisects your knackers leaving your scrotum cleft in two with a plum either side.

I hate it when that happens because I know that inevitably, and without warning, one testicle will ease itself across to be with the other one, which can be bloody tender to say the least as it slips behind the seam. It's worse when you're wearing jeans because the seam is quite robust and doesn't yield much to the occasionally nomadic clockweight.

It's just happened to me and I let out an involuntary noise which caused my missus much merriment.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Tue 5 Apr 2011, 21:56, 3 replies)

Clare Balding
The boat race was on telly a couple of weekends ago. Our Clare goes up to congratulate Simon Hislop, one of the victorious Oxford crew, right after the race as he was dragging the boat out of the water. Instead of "Well done! How do you feel?" which, although lame, makes for a happy interview, she comes out with, "Simon! As a testicular cancer survivor, how do you feel about winning the boat race?"

The poor chap handled it well, but what a smack in the pods. Never mind that he WON THE BOAT RACE, all she wanted to do was make him talk about his missing nuts in front of a million people.

Not cool, Clare. Let the man enjoy his win for at least a minute before reminding him how his happy sack nearly killed him.

PS anyone else notice the Rocky IV-style training sequences they showed? Oxford were all robotic, working out in perfect synchrony in a high-tech gym while the Cambridge lunks were mucking about in the park. My judgement might have been clouded due to Massive Drugs, but I thought it was pretty damn funny. Obviously the lovable underdogs were crushed by the vicious Soviet machine, so well done all round, BBC.
( Scrumper, Tue 5 Apr 2011, 21:49, 7 replies)

Feet
Fuck your feet. They're wrong.
(mymilkshakebringsallthemongstotheyard poison hearts, poison minds - joining hate, Tue 5 Apr 2011, 21:49, 2 replies)

Facebook grammar
I know complaining about it achieves about as much as shouting at the tide for coming in every day.

Yet I still feel like I'm being pack-raped by monkeys, all of whom have the leering head of Wanye Rooney with a face like an elbow sucking a lemon flavoured cock.
(mymilkshakebringsallthemongstotheyard poison hearts, poison minds - joining hate, Tue 5 Apr 2011, 21:46, Reply)

Thinking about it,
clowns, Redditch, Scotch eggs, being chased by a clown with a Scotch egg in Redditch.
(wimbley is feeling hungover, Tue 5 Apr 2011, 21:11, 1 reply)

my bad
your bad what? back? face? grasp of the english language?
fuck off and die!
( Smash Monkey lowering the tone of the whole internet, Tue 5 Apr 2011, 20:46, 2 replies)

Albert
I'm a geordie (save the stereotyping please). One of the nuances of my lovely accent is the pronunciation of "I" as "A".

"A'm going to the shop."
"A love quotation marks."
"A've got a first in economics"
"A'll tear ye a new arsehole, ye cunt."
Etc. Etc.

When we were younger (around 10 - 12) my brother developed a nauseating habit of overusing the affirmation "I'll bet". When it began to get really annoying, my dad would start to rip the piss about this Albert bloke. Why was he always referred to? Was he an imaginary friend? Has he touched your willy at school? It was so funny and effective that I copied the technique to cure my brother of a later expressive habit "A turned around and..."

I've since accepted my brother for who he is. In turn, he's never had a moments doubt that I'm an utter cunt.
(Greencloud Wanted to go fishing on, Tue 5 Apr 2011, 20:06, 2 replies)

The incorrect pronunciation of tortoise.
Irrational because I don't mind regional variations otherwise.
( Blind Meach Cautiously optimistic, Tue 5 Apr 2011, 19:36, 10 replies)

Women who pretend to be thickoes.
This really fucks me right off.

They're the kind of women who have the brains to read, write, add-up and park a car but seem to spend their meaningless, thrush-itchings of lives protesting utter fuck-witted-ness. Why don't you all twat off and crap on someone else's gender?

You know who you are. You're the girl who claimed you didn't know what 'a Tony Blair' was, or why Eastenders was bollocks, or how there had to be a boy dog and a girl dog to make baby dogs, or how something other than the relationship your aunt has with gelatin could be interesting, or why no one could give a feral cat's midnight shite about the colour of your nails today, or that spending your life chatting loudly in a feigned lahndan accent on the train is far from cool.
,
I know you can get Mr Idiot Slave Lackey Jockey to put up that shelf for you, but really, get off your gargantuan arse and try doing it yourself. Stop making the rest of us look pathetic.

You make me want to grow a cock so I can thwack you in the face with it. You have some fucking brains in there. Use them!

*feminises off into milly-tant huff*
irrational because I frequently pretend to be too pathetic to lift things... and in reality I couldn't give a flying tampon about my gender
(KeenBean objects to this comma, Tue 5 Apr 2011, 19:19, 3 replies)

Tall, arrogant blokes.
They think their height means they are, somehow, more masculin and tend to behave like oversized teenagers.
They assume that their stature will result in immediate acceptance and subserviance from anyone they meet.
Oh, and they seem to have big penises.
(Me, I'm not... in any way intoxicated, Tue 5 Apr 2011, 19:02, 4 replies)

completely rational actually
What's the date today? April 5 huh? No it's knobbing well not, it's April THE 5TH you absolute twit
(buzzlightweight, Tue 5 Apr 2011, 18:55, 7 replies)