Father’s Day is next weekend in New Zealand, which means we now have an onslaught of ads for hardware stores telling you to get dad what he really wants for Father’s Day this year. It assumes all men are never out the tool shed when dads born in the 80’s, 90’s and 00’s are equally likely to be car guys or gamer boys (of which neither industry rams their ads down your throat). Furthermore, since when do little kids have the money to buy $400 tools? Even as an adult, I don’t know any of my peers who’d spend that amount of money on a Father’s Day present.
I've never heard of a kid spending their own money on a parent's day present. It's usually an excuse for a spouse to spend more money on them (ex. jewelry for mother's day is pushed a lot).
Agreed. Very rarely have I heard of a kid buying their parents a gift for father/mothers day! At least until they reach their teenage years.
In New Zealand, it’s kept very small. The standard amount spent is $10-$50 with the upper range of that scale adult funded. Most kids make a card, buy a chocolate bar for their dad and expect a trip to McDonald’s. If parents want something, they just go and buy it. Kitchenware and Jewellery both get a push for Mother’s Day in New Zealand. Understandably, women are equally resentful of the implication what they dream of is something for the kitchen given it’s the 21st Century.
Here is another thing. Circumstances and situations that are originally intended (or so I am told) to be temporary, but then turn out to be permanent, especially if or when I get caught up in them.
Here is another thing that really irritates me, when people, institutions, and organizations are cheap, stingy, cut corners, put up red tape and make circumstances more complicated than they need to be. Auto insurance companies are a great example of this...
Ok, and here is another thing, working at a job where the manager gets irritated at you for asking simple questions, and when your team leader snaps at you when you ask for help. Adding to that, when the company itself is super incompetent and disorganized, also adding to that, when you feel misled by your recruiter. All that piled up can get under my skin and get my blood boiling.
Some years ago, in the Barcelona subway (where all the best things happen), some guy was listening to some hipster tunes at full blast on his phone. I went up to him and somewhat sarcastically offered him my earphones, thinking he'd stop. Instead, the guy tried lecturing me on how I was being an individualistic capitalist, and he was sharing his beautiful music with the world. However, an elderly lady chipped in, and that eventually shut him up. Everybody gangsta until granny gets mad.
There's this Youtube channel that pops up in my feed periodically where some suburban guy has fed wild deer enough that they come into his house and garage and eat out of his hand. He has up to 70 deer that will come to his house. Some of the deer are bucks with fairly good sized antlers and they have no fear of the man at all. It bothers me because this is a potentially incredibly dangerous situation both for the man and the deer. If the bucks become spooked when inside they can easily gore the man or seriously injure him and the deer are learning to associate people with food which causes them to lose their natural fear of people and become more likely to be shot, hit by a car, or spread disease. And perhaps the worst part are the thousands of comments by ignorant people lauding this guy as a "friend to animals" or a "Disney princess" or a "caring soul." It just gets under my skin when people feed wildlife thinking they're helping out and get praise for it when they're actually potentially shortening an animal's life and putting it, themselves, and possibly others in danger.
The price of healthy food compared to junk food. Yesterday a New Zealand supermarket was selling a head of broccoli for the six times the price as a large bag of potato chips. Subsidise the healthy food and add tax on the junk food. The obesity rates will plummet.
Isn't that just temporarily? In Sweden a bag of chips costs about 2.5-3 dollars and thats about 250-300 grams.A head of broccoli costs about 2 dollars and weighs about double that of the chips bag.
Personally, this one just annoys the absolute nonsense out of me. So for context, I have a plush of a Sonic the Hedgehog character named Metal Sonic. And Metal Sonic is pretty much going where I'm going, including to the zoo I work at. And I swear, the amount of little kids who keep calling him Sonic.EXE is going to drive me bonkers. For more context, Sonic.EXE is a creepypasta, and although he and Metal Sonic share the same kind of eyes and skin color? Literally nothing else about the two are the same. It's like calling a tomato an apple because it's red. Absolute nonsense, I tell you folks.
Prices do fluctuate. That same big of chips rises to $2, but the broccoli hasn’t been seen below $4 in recent months. Fruits prices are similarly stupid. An orange will set you back in excess of $1 and apples aren’t far behind. In New Zealand, yes. Oranges cost just over a dollar each. At this point it’d be cheaper to buy some orange juice and retromorph it back into the oranges it was squeezed from.
Don't get me started Although I'm far from perfect, people generally annoy me more than ever since covid having had to deal with so many in different jobs, but driving really gets my back up. So much so, that I regularly watch dash cam youtube compilations to remind me it's not just UK drivers that are idiots.
Given that were are talking about road users... Some other cyclists also get on my nerves. Stuff like driving without lights in the darkness or continuing to drive side by side even when someone is approaching from the opposite direction on a two-way bike road. Also, high-speed electric bicycles (speed pedelecs as we call them here), which unlike traditional mopeds you do not hear coming. Last but not least, people who run or walk their dogs in the darkness without a fluo jacket or anything to make them more visible, especially on a shared for pedestrians/cyclist road or if they use the bike road instead of the pedestrian sidewalk.
