It’s a bleary-eyed Friday morning here in the Proofreader’s Cave, deep in the bowels of one of the glorious metropolitan skyscrapers in fabulous downtown Salt Lake. One of my fellow proofers has been on vacation this week, so I’ve been doing the work of two, and naturally this has also coincided with a surge in output from our shared primary account. All of which means that I’ve been working my tail off, I’m fried, and I’d like nothing more right now than a window seat at the Buena Vista, a steady flow of Irish coffees, and absolutely no place to be and nothing to do for the next ten hours or so.

I’ve kept myself sane during the week by working on the following a little bit at a time, whenever I needed to tear my eyes away from the Chicago Manual of Style. Which has been more and more frequently as I’ve neared this morning. I have a feeling the rest of today is going to be an uphill slog. In any event, credit for this one goes to SamuraiFrog, who, in a display of great wisdom, chose to combine two separate but similar memes that’ve been making the rounds lately into one big one. Henceforth, my crotchety opinions on a great many things…

First up, some stuff I hate:

1. Most hated food: Hm. I honestly can’t think of any food that I dislike so much as to say I hate it. I’m not wild about beets, but I’ll eat them when my mother cooks them. That makes me either an excellent son or a martyr. Perhaps they’re one and the same.
2. Most hated person: Oh, my. The list is so long… but off the top of my head, let’s say… Dick Cheney. We damn dirty libruls spent eight years bashing on Gee Dubya, but it’s pretty clear now that Cheney was in fact the phantom menace behind a lot of the intensely disagreeable stuff that came out of the Bush White House. I imagine there probably is a man out there somewhere who is more sneaky, power-hungry, vindictive, bloodthirsty, xenophobic, and sadistic than Cheney, but I hope I never have the misfortune to meet him.
3. Most hated job: I once spent 12 months as a telephone customer service agent in the refunds division of the American Express Traveler’s Cheque operation. To say that I was ill-suited for work as a “phone drone” is an understatement; this was easily the worst year of my employed life.
4. Most hated city: Phoenix, AZ. Hell on earth, an unending sprawl of beige stucco with no sense of place, no center, and no personality. And the weather! Good god… any place where the mercury passes 100 degrees F in freakin’ May is not fit for human habitation, in my opinion.
5. Most hated band: Nirvana. I despised all of those mopey, mumbling, flannel-and-angst-bullshit grunge bands, but Nirvana earns a special place in my crosshairs because they were the breakthrough group that paved the way for all the others. I know all the cool kids consider the late-80s hair-metal bands to be the ultimate nadir of superficial mediocrity, but at least Poison and Great White were fun to listen to. Grunge just makes me want to break something.
6. Most hated web site: Ain’t It Cool News. The visually horrific, difficult-to-navigate, circa-1998 web design is a turn-off, but the real problem is that, as big a fanboy nerd as I admit I am, the folks over there make me feel like Shatner in the infamous “Get a Life” sketch.
7. Most hated TV program: It’s off the air now, thank god, but Fear Factor always set my teeth on edge with its cynicism and utter grossness. It represents to me the lowest depths of our narcissistic, materialistic, do-anything-for-fame culture.
   Runners up: American Idol and all the other amateur-hour talent shows it spawned. In the immortal words of the lovely Willow Rosenberg, “Bored now.”
8. Most hated British politician: I have no feelings whatsoever about British politicians. I don’t know enough about them to care.
9. Most hated artist: Anne Geddes. Seriously, photos of babies dressed like bugs and flowers? What is the appeal of this sappy dreck? Gives me the willies…
10. Most hated book: I remember hurling Henry James’ The Bostonians across the room in disgust the moment I finished it, but I no longer recall what bothered me so much about it.
11. Most hated shop: I’ve always thought Old Navy was pretty crappy. A friend of mine says that every time she walks into one, she recoils a bit from “the smell of cheap Indian cotton.”
12. Most hated organization: The Transportation Security Administration (TSA). It’s been almost eight years since 9/11 and travelers are still standing in ridiculously long lines, getting patted down and having innocuous possessions taken away, and generally being treated as if we’re all trying to pull a fast one just by daring to take a vacation. Personally, I resent the hell out of any situation where people assume I’m guilty of something before I’ve actually done anything. I wish airport security would just revert back to pre-9/11 levels and procedures, but since that’ll never happen — we’ve become a risk-averse society that loves our security theater, after all — I’d happily submit to walking through that millimeter-wave nude-o-scope thingie if it meant I could keep my shoes, belt, and hat on. But of course, Utah’s freshman Congressman and all-round blowhard Jason Chaffetz is trying to kibosh those things because they’re an invasion of privacy. As if the possibility of your name ending up on a “no-fly list” that’s blindly enforced by minimum-wage rent-a-cops who can’t tell the difference between a toddler and a terrorist is any less a violation of one’s peace of mind.
    Sigh. I hate the 21st Century.
13. Most hated historical event: 9/11. There are the obvious reasons, of course, but even worse than the actual trauma of that day and the horrific loss of life is the culture of fear and all the political nonsense that’s come since: the TSA, the DHS, the expansion of presidential power (and secrecy), unwarranted wiretapping of U.S. citizens, the Iraq War, Gitmo, an official policy of torture. Even if you believe these things are necessary, I don’t see how any of it can be defined as good. I’m convinced 9/11 is one of those temporal nexus things where the timeline splits, like in all those Star Trek time-travel episodes. Unfortunately, we ended up in the crappy alternate version of history instead of the cool universe where everything turns out okay.
14. Most hated sport: Pretty much all of them. I think professional sports brings out the very worst of human nature, in both the players and the fans, all the macho, arrogant, belligerent, dick-swinging, tribal, dominance-based crapola that civilization is trying to overcome.
15. Most hated piece of technology: Text messaging. I shudder with revulsion whenever I glance off to the side and see somebody’s thumbs waggling away on their BlackBerry/iPhone/whatever. Especially when they’re in the driver’s seat of the car alongside mine. Or worse, sharing a movie theater, which of course their little gadget is lighting up like a damn magnesium flare. My screening of Up last week was severely compromised by some twit who was too bloody self-absorbed to shut their damn phone off for 90 minutes.
16. Most hated annual event: Groundhog Day. Seriously. It’s just plain stupid, dragging some poor little mammal out of its nice warm den into the watery February sunlight so all the TV news shows can have their dippy 30-second feature story that’s exactly the same as last year’s dippy 30-second feature story. And anyway, what the hell does a rodent’s shadow have to do with long-term weather?
17. Most hated daily task: My morning status meeting at work. Very little of it actually applies to me, so it’s mostly just dead time spent feeling antsy…
18. Most hated comedian: He’s a little passe’ now, but I’ve still got to say Adam Sandler. Something about the dude’s face makes me want to pound him — the combination of dull, beady eyes with a smug, frat-boyish, “I’m the one who farted but you’re going to get the blame for it” expression. People occasionally try to tell me he’s really good in such-and-such, not at all “Adam Sandler-y,” but honestly I just couldn’t get past his stinkin’ face if he was being hailed as the new Olivier…

And now the stuff I love. I have to admit, the hate stuff was much easier to write about. I don’t know what that says about me… I’m not sure I want to know…

1. Most loved food: Hm. Well, you can’t go wrong with a nice, juicy bacon-cheeseburger. Or that uniquely (apparently) Utah concoction, a pastrami-burger.
2. Most loved person: The Girlfriend. Duh.
3. Most loved job: Both of my gigs as a movie-theater projectionist.
4. Most loved city: San Francisco. Cosmopolitan and urban, but not spread out like LA and much friendlier (in my experience) than New York.
5. Most loved band: Most of my favorite music acts are solo artists, so this is a real toughie for me. Going purely on the number of hit singles produced that I still consistently enjoy when they come on the radio, I guess I’d have to say either Fleetwood Mac or The Eagles. Yeah, that’s right, 35-year-old middle-of-the-road AOR. So sue me.
6. Most loved web site: This one, of course! It’s been allowing me to vent about all my outrages and obsessions for five years now. Man, that’s hard to believe…
7. Most loved TV program: All-time? Probably Star Trek (by which I mean the original series from the ’60s, of course). Current? A toss-up between Lost and Castle.
8. Most loved movie: Heh. Three guesses, one for each of my loyal readers. Oh, all right, if you insist: Star Wars. The original, unscrewed-with, non-Special Edition. You probably think of it as “Episode IV” or “A New Hope,” but in my day, we called it just plain Star Wars.
9. Most loved artist: Alberto Vargas
   Runners-up: Dave Stevens, Drew Struzan, Bob Peak, Al Williamson, and Ansel Adams.
10. Most loved book: I ought to name something Important and Great and Intellectual like The Great Gatsby or Walden, but it’d be more honest to admit to Han Solo’s Revenge, a Star Wars tie-in novel I read a couple dozen times as a kid. And it isn’t just the story I love, but the actual physical book. There’s a story there I probably ought to tell one of these days.
11. Most loved shop: The King’s English bookstore. Sam Weller’s is more geographically convenient (I get off the train right in front of it every day), but I honestly haven’t enjoyed that store as much since they remodeled and reorganized in the late ’90s. (I still shop there, of course; I just don’t like the ambiance as much as I used to.) The King’s English is a cozy little delight, with small rooms, and oddball nooks and crannies that hold all kinds of surprises for a patient browser.
12. Most loved organization: The Planetary Society. Co-founded by Carl Sagan, this is the non-profit that tried to deploy a solar-sail a couple years ago, only to lose it when the Russian launch vehicle exploded. I thought that was a wonderfully bold attempt to break new ground in space, even if it ended in failure.
13. Most loved historical event: I gotta stay with SamuraiFrog’s answer on this one: the first moon landing. We’re coming up on the 40th anniversary of Armstrong’s small step, and it’s going to be interesting to see if anyone cares beyond the usual minority of aging nerds. I never will understand how people have become so indifferent to the fact that we silly hairless apes managed to land several of our brothers on another freakin’ planet (well, a planetary body, at least) and bring them back, using tech that wasn’t much more advanced than stone knives and bearskins. (Yes, I stole that from Star Trek, and no, I’m not at all ashamed.) If you can’t think of any other reason to commemorate the Apollo missions, we ought to do it simply as a reminder of how damn awesome we can be as a species. When we put our minds to it, anyhow.
14. Most loved sport: Don’t like sports. But I will occasionally watch college gymnastics. Yeah, I know. I long ago came to terms with the burden of being a dirty old man.
15. Most loved piece of technology: The motion picture.
    Runners-up: The airplane. The rocket. The Internet.
16. Most loved annual event: Oktoberfest. Seriously. Beer and sausages, what’s not to love?
17. Most loved daily task: Showering. The day’s not right without a nice, hot morning shower.
18. Most loved comedian: Another tough one. They always seem to disappoint me in the end. George Carlin turned into a bitter old man. Eddie Murphy lost his edge. Robin Williams grew tiresome. Ackroyd got more interested in real-life ghostbusting than movies, and Murray and Martin decided they’d rather be taken seriously than make us laugh. I guess my all-time favorite comedian would have to be the late, great John Belushi, who left us before he could become lame or tedious. And currently Ron White is making me laugh, but I can’t help but wonder how long he’s going to last…

And there you have it. God, it’s been a week…