Unjustified rants

[ladyofastolat]

What is an LJ for if not to launch totally unjustified rants about trivial things that really don't deserve your vitriol? My chosen target for today is umbrellas. Now, I'm sure that many people here are habitual umbrellas users, and many more dabble in the umbrella sub-culture every now and then, and yes, yes, I know: unreasonable, but I refer you back to the whole "trival things" and "really don't deserve vitriol" etc. etc., and I will rant away.

Umbrellas. I don't like using them. Within that simple construction of fabric and metal lurks a monster of extreme willfulness. Nothing delights this monster more than to buck and lash around, forcing the hapless person who wants to subdue it to fight it every step of the way. When it's mildly drizzling in a strong wind, I look out and watch hordes of people fighting an enormous battle to win one small foot of land at a time, and I think, "why bother?"

Most of all, though, I hate falling foul of other people's anti-social umbrella use. There you are, watching a nice joust or a ritual burning, when two drops of rain fall from the sky, and everyone on the front row immediately erects enormous umbrellas large enough to protect an army, totally heedless of the fact that no-one behind them can see a thing.

Then you have those people who put umbrellas up in crowded shopping streets, and charge ahead in their protective little bubble, not caring that they are leaving a train of people with poked-out eyes in their wake. Worst of all are those whose umbrellas are broken, due to the epic battles described above, so that they become a deadly aedifice of impaling spikes.

And then you have people who insist on sharing their umbrella with you - and, yes, yes, I know that they do so with the best of intentions, but when you genuinely say, "no, honestly, I'm fine, please, no, don't, please, please, no, anything but bring me within the deadly shadow of the deadly umbrella," they still do it, meaning that you have to walk with your neck at an angle of 45 degrees to avoid having a waterfall land on your head.

So I bring you umbrellas, subject of my unjustifed rant. Anyone else want to rant at an unjustified and trivial subject?

Comments

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

Nope, all my rants at the moment are major, and completely justified!

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Well, my rant was, of course, completely justified, too, but I was being tactful, since I know that some people on my Friends lists, shocking as it might sound, are Umbrella Sympathisers. ;-)

[alitalf.livejournal.com]

You're just an umbrella denier.

[segh.livejournal.com]

"Shut up, an umbrella is an unmanageable walking-stick; open, it is an inadequate tent." (Chesterton)
My mama always told me that it is unlucky to share an umbrella with somebody you've known for less than seven years - try that as a get-out.

[thecatsamuel.livejournal.com]

I once had a lovely umbrella with cute pictures of cats chasing mice all round the edge. But cannot have umbrellas as (like my gloves) I leave them behind on trains, buses, in shops &C and am better off with coat with hood. Currently my nice blue gloves are all alone on a train between Charing Cross and Tonbridge which is not relevant to umbrella hatred, but still annoying.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

One of my nice gloves is on the passenger seat of the car. The other is I know not where. They wander off with alarming frequency.

Back before I saw the light, I used to have a rather nice umbrella with a pig on the handle. It was called "Surprisingly", for reasons that made sense at the time. (Something to do with someone saying that since it had a face, it needed a name, and a random opening of the dictionary providing said name.) I wonder what became of him...

[king-pellinor.livejournal.com]

Possibly the surprise was that the pig looked like a duck? :-p

[phoebesmum.livejournal.com]

Shoelaces.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Oh! I'm so glad you said that! It reminds me that I need to buy some green shoelaces for my clogs, since one fragmented dramatically at the last performance of the summer, with dramatic results for the 9 bells that were threaded into them, and rather drastic results for the dancer (me) who proceeded to stand on the scattered bells while wearing clogs.

Apart from when wearing clogs, I avoid shoelaces wherever possible. Velcro and elastic are my shoe-related friends.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

Coathangers.

(With you on the subject of umbrellas by the way.)

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

What's so rant-worthy about coathangers?

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

They never seem to be the right shape to hold onto the item of clothing you want them to; they break; sometimes they fail to grip the item of clothing; sometimes they refuse to let go of the item of clothing when you want to wear it; they get tangled up with each other...

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

I think you need to deal with a better class of coat hangers. Due to Pellinor's fondness for bulk buying, we have about 60 identical coat hangers bought from a dry cleaners'. They're sturdy yellow plastic - just a simple triangle with no fancy bits - and they never break, are large enough for anything you want to use them for, and never refuse to yield their grip on an item of clothing.

[king-pellinor.livejournal.com]

Not bought, they came free with the dry-cleaning back in the days when I needed regular dry-cleaning of suits.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

Do you not wear a suit now, or do you wear washable ones?

[king-pellinor.livejournal.com]

Rare suits. Only when meeting clients, and as I'm no longer client-facing... :-)

Though I notice that in London "Business casual" means "suit but no tie", although down here it tends to mean "casual trousers and a shirt (probably blue and checked).

[sigisgrim.livejournal.com]

Umbrellas are awful things. *hates*

Hats, on the other hand, do pretty much all that umbrellas are supposed to do and more, and succeed where umbrellas fail. They can keep your head warm, for example, find an umbrella that can do that! (No, on second thoughts don't waste your time!)

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

Seconded!

[skordh.livejournal.com]

I want to rant unjustifiably about unjustifiable rants. Why oh why are we subjected to so many unjustifiable rants on LJ? What we need are more well-researched, peer-reviewed, justifiable rants! Down with the unjustifiable rants! According to a recent study, over 95% of them are completely evidence-free while the other 5% make use of spurious facts that are just made up on the spot. Ban the lot!

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

Someone should rant about the blatant misuse of statistics. Did you know that approximately 66.825% of all statistics are completely made up?

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

I think we need the statistics to back that up ...

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Hmm... I've been waiting for some peer to review your rant against unjustified rants, in order to confirm that it's something worth reading, but as yet no duke or earl has wandered through my journey to give his review.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

I'll see if I can find one ...