Shhh... I'm trying to listen to your friend sing!

Okay, this annoyance is a common complaint of the people, but for some reason it isn't getting any better. People talking in the audience during a performance. Now I know there is some talk out there that this is a generational thing and that younger people don't have proper audience manners. Not sure about that, but in my latest run-in with talking audience members it was not a young person. In fact it would be fairer to describe this person as old rather than young.

I was attending a concert fundraiser and had paid $25 to see my son's high school R&B band play as one of three acts in the event. The first act was a local amateur gospel choir. They were putting on a pretty good show, but two women sitting in the row in front of me had periodic loud conversations through the second half of the choir's performance. It was very distracting. Then to my surprise when the choir finished these two women got up and left. Clearly they were there only to see the choir and were not interested in the other acts. Apparently they weren't really interested in listening to the choir either as they spent at least half the time listening to each other. What's up with that?

Jack is Back!!!!

Hello any loyal readers who have wandered back to my blog that has been in an extended hibernation. What, you may be asking yourself, has finally compelled Little Jackie Showers to once again share his frustrations with the less than perfect thing we call civilization? I'll get to that soon enough, but first let us celebrate the return of "Jack".

This summer I read that in 2010 the name Jack made it into the number 20 slot of most popular baby names for boys born last year here in British Columbia. Who could have foretold of this wonderful event? The long dead name of Jack is back. Of course for me it has been a bit confusing to have youngsters with the name Jack because I have long known that when I hear the name Jack spoken that someone is talking to me (as there are virtually no occasions except around my Uncle Jack when there are any other Jacks around with the one other exception years back of a friend who made the unfortunate choice of obtaining an ill behaved dog named Jack and I had to suffer with hearing my name yelled in a scolding voice only to realize soon after cowering that it was being directed at the dog and not me.), but in this new era of "Jack is Back" I turn to see who is saying my name only to see some young tyke being spoken to by his parent.

Meanwhile back at the annoyances department I must have a word with all the men and perhaps young Jacks our there. Women you may stop reading now. You see men, I have a concern with the state some of you are leaving public washrooms in after you do your business. Specifically some of you are keeping the toilet seat down (certainly an unmanly thing to do by the way) and then leaving the evidence of your poor aiming skills on said seat. It's one thing to miss, but it's a totally unforgivable thing to not clean it up. It is behaviours like this that you wouldn't do in your own homes (or maybe I'm assuming too much there) but you figure it is okay to do when it doesn't affect you personally that lead to the demise of civilized society. That might be overstating things but the frequency with which I am faced with this annoyance is frankly pissing me off.

Dog Poop Ain't All That's Crap

Hello again my little bloglodites. Alert reader, Lisa, correctly points out that dog owners sometimes leave their dog's crap behind instead of stopping to pick it up. Curious that this, like a number of dog related issues, is actually something that has changed over time. Used to be that nobody picked up the poop back when I was young. Or at least that's how I remember it. Am I right? At least now the person who doesn't scoop the poop is the exception. And I pity the fool who tries this around our vigilante hero, Guy, who is wiping out this kind of crime one dog owner at a time.

My take on this issue is that while I would prefer to not have to worry about "land mines" at any time, I especially take umbrage when the deposit is left in an area where people will be running around. If a dog poops on the boulevard that's annoying, but when people let their dogs crap on a sports field or a children's playground or school yard, well that's just plain irresponsible, rude, and unfair.

Digressing into an anecdote for a moment, back in Little League tryouts when I was a kid, I picked up a grounder that went right through some poop. I knew that ball was covered in the stuff, but I was being graded for the tryouts so I just threw it back. Don't know if that helped my score or not, but now there was poop not just on my glove but on one of the coach's gloves as well. I figured the evaluators watching would be impressed with my concentration.

While I'm pointing out irresponsible behaviour, here is another obvious one that is damn annoying and many others have taken umbrage at I'm sure. It's the leaving of furniture on the boulevard. This can be just as unpleasant and certainly more unsightly than some dog poop. C'mon people, don't be leaving your crap lying around for the rest of us to deal with!!

Friendly? I'll Show You Friendly!

Time to pick on the dogs again or I guess it's the dog owners. Hands up if you've ever had this happen. A dog comes running at you barking ferociously and trailing behind it comes the owner saying, "Don't worry, he's friendly."

Now I could accept, "Don't worry, he's harmless," or "Don't worry, he won't bite," but you can't tell me that a dog that is running up to me and being threatening is friendly. Friendly? Yeah and Don Rickles is sensitive. Donald Trump lacks self-esteem. Some of my readers are big believers in positive reinforcement. I could go on, but I've got to take some bottles back to help pay for my next poker game.

Yes, Little Jackie Showers has been uninspired in 2011, but have no fear, there are still things out there annoying me.

O Canada? What do you think?

Here’s an item I’d like to put up for discussion. Do we really need to have the National Anthem before sporting contests? Sometimes it seems to fit, but mostly it seems like a silly tradition. Maybe I’m missing something here, but I think not. It’s not really an annoyance, but it does strike me as odd.

For instance, who decides at what point a game rates having the anthem or anthems played before it. I bring this up because they played it before the final game of the B.C. boys’ basketball championship. They also played it before one of the semi-final games I attended. Yet, it was not played before any of the consolation games I attended in the tournament or games earlier in the year. So, at the high school level it has to be a really important game before we stop for the anthem? It also gets played at Little League baseball games, but not until you’re past the regular season and into the tournament playdowns leading ultimately to the Little League World Series.

What is the purpose of this tradition?

How Out of Shape Are We?

It's time for Little Jackie Showers to weigh in on "voter fatigue". Yes, it is asking a lot of people to take a half hour from their day every year or so and go to the polls. I mean you've usually got to go a few blocks out of your way to do it. What are they thinking??

If anyone is seriously tired of voting, then I suggest they get themselves a stairmaster and/or starting exercising their mind each day with Sudoko or crosswords, because they must be seriously out of shape. This voter fatigue thing is got to be some kind of media myth. Can this really exist on the individual level? And if it does, can these individual voters really give two cents? Who needs their vote anyway.

The Conservative candidate in my riding came knocking on my door today. Seemed like a decent fellow and when I explained I wasn't likely to vote for him (in this election that's putting it politely) he came up with a pretty slick sales pitch based on strategic voting. He suggested if we give his party a majority it will give the other parties four years to get their act together and then knock his party out of power. Who knew Yogi Berra was running for the Conservatives?

Here in Canada we are going through one of our favourite seasons. It is Roll Up the Rim to Win time. The iconic Canadian coffee shop, Tim Horton's, is doing their 25th annual contest in which customers can unroll the rim of their paper coffee cup (after drinking the coffee works best I find) and win fabulous prizes. This year I have won three coffees and two "donuts" to date.



I'm keen on this marketing gimmick, but I do have a bone to pick with Tim Horton's. If you order in or bring your own coffee cup then one of two things happens. Either you don't get a cup and don't get to roll up to win (which is clearly unfair or at least biased heavily in favour of people who like paper cups over ceramic mugs) or they give you an empty paper cup along with your non-paper cup so you can roll the rim (which is clearly wasteful). It would seem that there must be a simple solution to this and you'd think after 25 years someone at Tim Horton's would have come up with a way to give us a little Roll Up the Rim game piece without having to give us an empty cup.