Miscarriages (of babies and/ or justice)
Rust (how can life giving air make things decay?)
Sarah Harmer’s “Trouble in these fields”
William Blake says that the children who clean chimneys used to attract business by announcing their work, but it came out “weep weep”
Broken headlights
Lonely web users
Lonely library users
Getting a ticket for a broken headlight
Overdue fines
Children in poorly ventilated factories making anything fluorescent
Shopping at the Biway for plastic shoes
Post surgery shaved cats
Dogs with cones on their heads who can’t get their mouths low enough to eat
If golf is your biggest pleasure and chief ambition, unless your Tiger
Licking car stalactites – those slush formations under your car behind your tires
North Korea
War
Patriotism, too much of it.
Child soldiers
Child addicts
Child porn
Bullies
That the game Monopoly is popular
McDonalds
That my car tire could ever explode
Exhaust fumes
Exhaustion
One shoe in the middle of the median
Being out of gas
Children reciting things they don’t believe
Sun bleached forgotten neglected toys
Litter in space
White woolen mitten post puddle
Dirty lipstick
Vanity
Coleslaw
They burned the velveteen rabbit
Cancer
Cutbacks
Old fries
Mercilessness
Plastic packaging
Uncontrolled intersections
Not-visionary teachers
Egoism
Judgment
Viciousness
Root canal
Vomiting
Hemorrhoids
US borders
PETA ads
Hospital garbage bins
Invasive species
Black ice
I bought berries in February and they rotted
Mold on chocolate sauce
Fridge whine
Road kill
Urban sprawl
Selfish politicians
Apathy
Willful ignorance
Drinking cleaning products for the alcohol
Mercury in breastmilk
Someday Jean Vanier, Johnathan Goldstein, Sean Cullen, and Douglas Coupland will be dead
Homophobia
MSG
FGM
A widow’s first Valentine’s Day
Butter icing made from margarine
Short haired Barbie, old unloved toys
Receiving and undesirable but homemade gift
Love ending
Not forgiving
Spousal abuse that began during pregnancy
Alcoholism
Trainwrecks with dead people
Gas station washrooms
The airline broke my suitcase
Saved wine that went bad
Milk that went bad
Relationships that went bad
Cops that went bad
You have to debeak chickens to stop them from pecking each other to death
Veal production
Fox canceled _Firefly_
Moth eaten clothes
The smell of moth balls
Lose lose situations
Removing others’ hair etc. from the drain
Loudly unhappy kids at the mall
Babies on my flight
Late papers
Homelessness
Shame
People belittling themselves
Rebar
Smoke stacks were once a sign of a successful city
Traffic lights changing for no one
Never playing
Peeling paint
Mal- or under- functioning toilet
Drunk fraternity mob mentality
Wet cats
Pretentiousness
The enduring appeal of boogers to children
Peanut free zones
Traffic
Bowels that are irritated
Why couldn’t the sky dome keep its generic brand free first name?
Rejected love letters
Getting an I’m-breaking-up-with-you voicemail
Farm animals that didn’t get a year of the Chinese Zodiac named after them
Paving farm land
Date rape drugs
Moms who can’t lay off
Laid-off moms
Poor radio reception fuzz
Font mis-choice (Cartoon letters, like multiple exclamation marks should be used sparingly)
The ugliest snow endures the longest
Uncomfortable silences
Hangovers
People with hangovers
Selling dead people’s clothes
Infrequent sunlight aka cloudy Waterloo Novembers
Nuclear winter
The interest on Pay-Day loans
That people try to sell expensive cars and stuff to first nations people who just got a payout from the government
Tying ladies to train tracks
Lonely circus freaks and carnies’ teeth
General poor dental self-care
The number of murders we’ve all watched on tv etc.
I could go on and on! Well, okay actually that was 134(ish?) things to be miserable about. On the CBC Radio show _Q_, Jian Gomeshi interviewed the authors of this book/ list of _11002 Things to be Miserable About_, a parody of those _14000 things to be Happy About_ books. I thought I would make my own list. It was pretty fun. They are not AT ALL IN ANY WAY prioritized. I was driving during it, so auto-related misery inspiring things are probably over represented. They had some funny ones like the sex lives of early Puritans.
