My Pet Peeve

This afternoon I ducked out of the office for lunch and saw a guy (not the dude pictured, he's just a mere representative of my ire) running shirtless down the street.

It's fucking 28 degrees outside and this Ivan Drago wannabe is suddenly the strongest, bravest man on the planet? Sorry, I'm not buying. And my bigger gripe is that I really hate shirtless runners.

It makes no sense, people. Only if you are literally running on the surface of the sun am I OK with shirtless running. And it won't matter if you're wearing a shirt or not because you're on the fucking sun and probably have bigger problems to worry about. I'll allow it on beaches because it's a beach and shirtless movement is expected. But come on, shirtless in downtown DC?

It has nothing to do with going bare-chested in the winter, I'm against the practice in all seasons. We live in a world where Nike and Adidas and so on make fabrics that wick sweat and weigh less than a single Kleenex but you're worried about being too hot? We live in a world where I'm going to with full confidence that no girl, not one, is suddenly glancing at you and either stopping the car to talk to you or remembering you more than 30 seconds later. Plus, no matter how good you think you look, your behavior is only encouraging less-attractive joes from nixing the shirt and scaring us all for life.

We live in a world where not even Rocky and Apollo would run shirtless (and they're on a beach in one of the most homoerotic scenes in cinematic history), and if the man who single-handedly crushed Communism runs with a shirt on, you should as well.

So stop with the shirtless running, fellas. It's a waste of time, it's accomplishes zero for you other than looking like a prima donna jackass, and it's a pet peeve I really hate having.

My Pet Peeve

While I love living in Takoma Park, there is one aspect to Maryland life that I just cannot get over. It's the incessant need for everyone to back into parking spaces. This ludicrous practice is based on the notion that by backing into the space, you can depart faster from the hell that is the Whole Foods parking lot. Of course, this holds the same logic structure as the movie "Speed." It takes these fools nearly three times as long to navigate the reverse-parking act as it would to just back out of the space in the first place. In reality this practice is a time loser, but these jagoffs don't know any better so they create more traffic and waste more time. Drives me nuts. I hate it. What a bunch of idiots.