What Pisses Me Off: Predictive text, CAPTCHA, falling dirt and bird poop

Glasses perched on the end of my nose, I hastily key in a sentence on my phone, iPad or laptop with my stiff fat fingers. I mutter and glare at the screen as the text decides that what I want to write is not possible, it wants to finish the word for me – I’d actually like to finish the word myself, because then it would be the word that I want, not something totally obscure and completely out of context to the message I am sending. I override it, over and over. No, I do NOT want to write what the phone is telling me to write, I want to write the message that I want to write. Thanks for your help but I’ve been spelling since I was five so I’ve got it now. Then Facebook, you go to write a comment and the first few letters of a friend’s name comes up and you have to back space to get past it. Annoying. It really pisses me off.

Then there is CAPTCHA. You would have encountered it when filling in an online form at some time in your life. You fill in all your details and get to the end. Phew, then there is a little box called CAPTCHA which is designed for you to fill in some letters so you can prove you are not a scamming bot (that’s a robot with bad intentions) Well, it would be OK if the letters were actually readable, but often they are not, and in fact are a squiggly line of unreadable hieroglyphs with a line through them. No wonder bots can’t read them, I can’t either. So after four or five attempts, I give up and just don’t bother trying any more. How do you argue with a computer? You don’t. Now that really pisses me off too.

This morning I was walking on the beach and happened to look down. I’d done it again. Somehow my clothing is a memory map of my morning activity. The spak filla that is also called light foundation always seems to drop from off my face into a little smear down my front. And I never notice it till I’m out. And it does not respond to spit on a hanky either. Neither does the turmeric that I reluctantly swallowed this morning and somehow managed to transfer itself to the hem of my shirt. Sadly it is a very bright yellow reminiscent of a babies nappy and is also impervious to spit. I will just pretend it is tie dye or artistically drape my handbag over it to hide it. It quietly pisses me off I can tell you.

Then there is the bird poop on my left wing mirror. I recently got my very first new car and I like it being shiny and clean. However, in the night something seems to nestle in the rafters of my garage and strategically poop on my left wing mirror. I look up, nothing but a naked rafter, no critter up there at all. But, morning after morning, my left wing mirror is artistically festooned with a bit of elegantly splattered poop. Even if I park the car more to the right, it still gets it. I picture this little creature perching, getting my wing mirror in it’s cross hairs and then propelling its bum with it’s carefully prepared liquid missile into the right direction. I think it must feel very happy and content after that. I drive out, hose it off with my malfunctioning hose and squirt myself in the face. It really pisses me off.

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