This was a new one, even to me...

Well amigos, I never thought the Universe would grant me such entertainment, but it did. Forget all the stories you've heard about idiot convenience store robbers who leave their wallets behind. Forget about people who hang-glide. Personally, I can even forget about the 5 truly bewildering months I had former Dallas Cowboys' Quarterback Quincy "Good With Football, Bad With Everything Else" Carter as a student in one on my classes back at UGA. Nope, none of that compares to the dude I saw on my way home from the tennis courts the other night. He is a dude that will forever rest in my mind as the dumbest motherf***er I have ever seen.

As I approached the red light at the intersection of Clairmont and Scott Blvd, I moved into the right lane so as not to end up behind the El Camino that was idling in the left lane. I had my windows down and as I got closer, I noticed that I could hear Julio Iglesias blaring from said El Camino. Now, I know Julio Iglesais. I mean, I don't know Julio personally, but I used to travel around with Erik Estrada (that Erik Estrada) and he spent a lot of time raping my car stereo with Julio, Ruben Blades, Selena, etc, so I'm not just saying this for effect. It was Julio. And it was f***ing loud. In fact, once I got directly beside the Camino, I could have sworn Julio was riding bitch with me. I was about to freak at this dude in true Gripe Guy style for playing that sh*t so f***ing loud, when, what to my wondering eyes appeared, but a giant f***ing a**hole sitting there in his driver's seat oblivious to everything - EVEN JULIO - because he had a set of headphones on that were plugged into an i-Pod mounted on his dash. And I don't mean ear buds. I mean the kind those guys at the airport wear to protect their ears. Can you say sock full of burro dung? I sure as f*** can.

Now look, I'm not going to go the cheap laughs route here...sure, it was an El Camino and sure, he was playing Julio and all, but that ain't what this is about. It's about how I tried everything to get his attention. Blaring my horn. Yelling. Flashing my lights. Whatever, nothing worked. So, naturally...I turned right and got the f*** away from that crazy guy as fast as possible. The Gripe Guy ain't eatin' it to the tune of Julio Iglesias, I don't care how many chicks he's gotten into the sack with that velvety voice of his.

Headphones and a maxed car stereo? Damn!

I find your lack of a thank-you gesture disturbing.

If it's happened once, it's happened a million times: you'll be cruising down the road and encounter a person that needs to get out of a parking lot onto a congested street and being the nice, courteous person you are you'll help them out by allowing them the opening they need only to be rewarded with...nothing! Nada! Bupkis! There's no friendly thank you wave. There's no Maverick-like thumbs up. No polite look in return. Just, apparently, an assumption on behalf of the inconsiderate prick you just helped out that it was your obligation to let them in front of you.

Why these people don't have enough common courtesy (or spare energy) to simply raise their hand to acknowledge your helping gesture puzzles me like Rubik's Cube. Seriously, is it really that much trouble to wave your hand? The last time I waved my hand to someone who extended me some help on the road it took, uhm, one second and - really guys - it didn't tire me out at all. In fact, it made me feel good.

But, I guess I've forgotten in all my warm fuzzies and naivete that the rules are different for pricks of this order. They just sit there in front of you, waiting for the awkward moment to pass, peering at you through their rear-view mirrors with an expression that says "if you gave me enough time, I would have put sugar in your gas tank too you gullible f***." Damn! Could you be a bigger prick?!

People like this make me wish I carried a sledgehammer in my car just for special occasions.

I want to shove your vanity tag up your a**.

Vanity tags. Vanity plates. In Georgia, they're even called, ahem, "prestige plates" (what a f***ing joke!). Whatever, you know what I'm talking about. Personally, I prefer to call them a**hole banners. You know why? Cuz I've never encountered someone that had one that wasn't - you guessed it - a giant a**hole. There isn't a sock big enough on the face of the Earth, nor enough nails to fill it with, to knock some sense into these douche bags.

Of course, given the a**hole factor, the little annoying messages conveyed on a**hole banners have zero merit (with the exception of letting everyone on the road know their owner's an a**hole). Nope, instead of something that might be worthwhile for the rest of us to see (e.g., HELLO) we're instead exposed to the sort of self-centered comment you'd expect from a total a**hole like: LVRBOY, IMHOT or SUPRFRK.

My personal favorites are the plates that incorporate the make of the car such as MYBWM or LNDROVR. The dipsh*ts possessing these plates are actually paying extra money to tell you something you could deduce by just looking at their f***ing car. What in the hell is wrong with these people?! Oh what it must be like to exist in their world of self-importance and excitement!

You know what would take actual balls? Taking the $100 per year you waste telling people the obvious (i.e., that you're an a**hole) and instead donating it to something like the American Cancer Society. That would help transfer some of your obvious self-worth to those struggling desperately to deal with real issues that are a bit more important than figuring out how to squeeze the lofty impressions you have of yourself (or your car) into 7 characters or less.

I wish I had a battering ram...for RVs.

You will find nothing more annoying on American roads that those moving roadblocks otherwise known as Recreational Vehicles. They're the Shaquille O'Neals of the motor vehicle world; they're super-expensive, resource guzzling lane obstructions. The only difference is Shaq, at least when he's not taking shots from the foul line, gives off the impression that he knows what he's doing. Not RV drivers. F*** no! Most of these dipsh*ts went to the Ray Charles Driving School where they specialized in: driving below the speed limit, riding the left lane and creating the general impression that they have absolutely no motherf***ing clue where they're going through a series of uncontrolled weaves, unexpected braking and a failure to signal.

And, if all that sh*t combined isn't a big enough pain in the a**, one need only look at the names these things are given to take frustration to a whole new level. They're always pretentious-as-f*** names that "stand" for something tough, resilient and expeditionary like "Adventurer" or "Sunova." Hey, RV owner, how 'bout "Sh*twagon" or, perhaps, "Roadturd?" Those are way more descriptive of the actual product.

Personally, I can't think of anything that emotes qualities like toughness and resiliency less than an RV, but then again, I'm not a retiree whose sole purpose in life is to f*** every other driver on the road.

Anyone out there know how to affix a battering ram to the front of a Honda?

Leave your dog in your car, get your balls deep fried.

Let me ask all of you dimwitted dog owners a question: Why in God's name do you do it? I mean, would you want spend extended lengths of time inside a super-heated green house (say, in the middle of August) not much larger than a coffin (note the irony) with a window cracked barely enough to pass a piece of paper through? My guess is a resounding NO. And that's minus all the hair you'd have covering your body. So why the f*** do I see so many of your dogs stuck in cars desperately panting for air and water whenever I walk though my neighborhood shopping center parking lot during those blazing days of summer?!

The answer is simple: You're all a**holes and, apparently, you're all too f***ing stupid to figure out that if the grocery store doesn't want Fido wandering around with you while you shop, the smart thing to do is to leave him home instead of subjecting him to a daily dose of microwave-oven testing. You know what would be great? Waiting at your car with a motherf***ing flamethrower so I could show you a thing or two about heat. I bet a little touch up like that would go a long way toward you getting the message. That and maybe a sock full of Ol'Roy to the nuts. Damn, I hate stupid people!

Unless your name is Dick Cheney, you have no business torturing animals, especially those we consider "best friends."

You suck and so does your kid.

Sleeping on planes is tough enough with all the variables impeding any actual sleep: tight seating, that nasty recylced air, no more blankets to use as pillows, the knowledge that, at any second, you could f***ing die...Nothing, however, will prevent you from getting shut-eye on a plane more than some annoying-as-sh*t toddler that's sitting anywhere within 5 rows!

They might make a ton of noise. They might stink. They might throw tantrums. Or, in the case of the last flight I was on, they might kick on the back of your seat like it's a motherf***ing trampoline. Every 5 seconds, BOOM! And what was mom doing the whole time? Other than having her thumb up her a**, she retained complete oblivion while talking to grandma and reading her Oprah magazine. Oh, occasionally, I'd move and glance back after which "Junior" would get a warning about kicking my seat that was straight outta the UN Resolution Playbook, but, she never dropped the hammer. They never drop the hammer. The gymnastics training would start all over again as soon as she buried her nose back in her magazine.

Attention parents and toddlers the world over, The Gripe Guy is going preemptive. That's right, b****ez, it's Bush Doctrine all the way. I'm gonna take a sock of chicken beaks and just start knocking you both the f*** out before we take off. That way, we can all rest easy.

Turning signals...have you ever heard of 'em?

Let's face it, driving is a huge pain in the a**. Between gas prices, traffic and a**hole drivers, it's totally not worth it if you have options. Those are some of the reasons I switched to mass transit about a year ago. Unfortunately, I do still have to drive to work on occasion, like this morning for example. Man, it was a beautiful morning - the birds were singing, it was cool but not chilly so all my windows were down and I was thinking to myself "this isn't so bad." And then, like getting hit in the face without warning by a sock full of paintball pellets, some Royal C***s***er had to go and piss on my rainbow by not using his turning signal!

C'mon folks, how much motherf***ing effort does it take to flick that lever next to your steering wheel? How much brain power could you possibly consume remembering that by doing so, you're going to help out everyone, pedestrians included, within 200 feet of your car? Apparently, on both counts, way too much for this guy today. It was one of those sneak attack jobs too. You know what I mean. He got right up onto the intersection looking like he was going straight (thus preventing me from turning left) and then, simultaneously, he hits his signal and turns to his left! That maneuver in particular really makes my blood boil. It's like a slap in the face. It communicates, "Oh, sorry I didn't have enough common courtesy to do the right thing, so now I'll take prickdom to a whole new level and half-a** it after it's too late."

If he'd been driving a Ford Pinto, I'd have followed his a** and rear-ended the sh*t out of him just to have the last laugh.

Hey a@%hole, the big red hand means don't walk!

Here's the scenario: You're driving along on, say, a road like Piedmont Road here in Atlanta where there are literally a million things going on that distract you; shopping centers, billboards, restaurants, hundreds of other cars, strip clubs, road signs, entrance/exit ramps to the Interstate, etc...and the next thing you know? Boom! Some clueless dipsh*t decides to cross a major intersection on the big red hand and almost causes a huge accident. This is truly a special breed of idiot. They're right up there with idiots that think the Ford Pinto (aka "The BBQ That Seats Four") got short-changed in the 1972 Motor Trend Car of the Year voting. I don't know how many of these losers I've almost sent to the Big Casino, but I get the distinct impression they think urban planners put up cross-walk signals for everyone but a**holes like themselves. Oh what I wouldn't do for a sock full of nails!

For all of you single-digit IQs out there, let's take a quick refresher course:

When you're crossing a street, unless you see the symbol above, you should be thinking hard about whether to proceed...

And when you see this symbol; the one above with the open, upright extended palm facing you (it's even in the color red for Christ's sake!), don't f***ing walk!

If it didn't mean a few years in the fun house for vehicular manslaughter, I would gladly thin the herd of these dimwits by hitting the accelerator every time I saw one of 'em.

WTFIGOW...servers that don't write down orders?

The next time I order some lo mien with tofu, and I, instead, get some sort of crazy f***ing vegetable stir fry cuz the hipster-doofus server taking my order didn't write it down, I'm going to turn the son-of-a-b*tch into my own personal sock puppet. For f*ck's sake! I don't exactly remember when this ridiculous practice started, but I do know I first noticed it at normally-crappy-but-universally-adored-for-some-inexplicable-reason-trendy-eateries and now it's spread everywhere, even to my local pizzeria!

I can't remember the last time I had an order completed in its entirety without something getting f***ed up or something getting left off. It's absurd. Hasn't the restaurant industry ever heard of stenographers?! Or perhaps those little things called date books?! Surely, someone with responsibility at Rock Bottom Brewery has experience with history books! All of these things exist to provide a written record of everything from the critical to the trivial! That the same logic doesn't apply to a process that screams for accuracy like taking down made-to-order food requests mystifies me to no end...

You know where The Gripe Guy gets the best service? Motherf***ing Waffle House. You know why? Cuz they write that sh*t down! And, seriously, with all its contingencies and intricacies, the Waffle House menu is 10x more complicated than the menu at some trendy dump like Apres Diem here in Mid-Town Atlanta, yet there I'll shell out $10 for a crab cake appetizer from a server with a memory that's allegedly like a bear trap and get the calamari instead! Damn!

So, to all the restaurateurs on planet Earth, please go back to the tried and true practice of writing customer orders down. If you don't, there's only one word I can think of: hostages.

Phones on trains = The Double Bird

Hey! Guess what? Well, apparently, Marcus came home last night around 1:30 AM sauced up on some Wild Turkey and woke up Charlene. If that wasn't bad enough, after Marcus was unable to convince Charlene that she needed to get out of bed and help him feed his bender more, he went into the kitchen and caused an even larger calamity by flipping over the garbage can and knocking a bunch of bottles and glasses off the counter-tops! Naturally, Charlene was up until all hours of the night because of the insensitive interruption and is seriously thinking of finding a new place of her own cuz she's sick of "sh*t" like this...

I know what you're thinking: "Boy, that Marcus sure seems like an inconsiderate a**hole!" Well, let me tell you amigos, he's not half the inconsiderate a**hole Charlene is. At least that's what I was thinking when, while making my way to work this morning, I was forced by proximity and circumstance to listen to Charlene tell, presumably, someone who cares (along with everyone else on the train) about Marcus and his hijinks.

For all you idiots out there like Charlene, here are some scenarios under which using your cell phone on a commuter train is permissible:

a) Spotting an escaped-from-prison O.J. Simpson
b) Spotting Osama bin Laden, especially if he's just chillaxin' eating a corn dog or something
c) Spotting an unidentified fireball in the sky that's about to wipe out civilization
d) Spotting me, coming at you, with a sock full of wet cement to end your annoying-as-sh*t conversation

To all of you who insist on making life miserable for the rest of us: if you're on a train, keep your phone where the sun don't shine, that way we won't have to put it there for you.

Excuse me...where the F%$@ is the grated Parmesan cheese?

Whenever I figure out who the stupid son of a b**** is that stocks the grated Parmesan cheese, he better wear a football helmet to work to protect him from the sock full of ball bearings I have waiting for his dumb a**.

I'm constantly punished with a veritable Easter egg hunt every time I need this sh*t because I don't buy that fancy "shredded" Parmesan cheese (usually found in the cheese section, which makes perfect organizational sense). Apparently, grocery stores across the land call on Stevie Wonder to stock the grated Parmesan cheese. I can see them now...blindfolding Stevie (just to be on the safe side), spinning him around and then cutting him loose. "Greeting card section, beverage aisle, automotive needs...hell Stevie, we don't care where you put the sh*t, we just want to piss off every dude that comes in here looking for it."

Grated Parmesan cheese is never in the pasta section. Nor is it ever in the cheese section. Why? I have no motherf****** idea! My guess is the security staff enjoy kicking back in front of their CCTV watching guys like me slowly become irate as they wander aimlessly around the store looking for any aisle comprised of cylindrically packaged products.

The beauty of stocking grated Parmesan cheese is that, thanks to the Chernobyl-like quatities of potassium sorbate they put in the stuff, you don't even need to refrigerate it while it's sitting on the shelf. So, why in God's name don't they put it near the pasta the way they do with pasta sauce?! Damn!

I don't have time for...bike people.

Bike people really get under my skin. For example, those clothes have to be some of the most pretentious, revolting and offensive fashion statements ever made. I mean, damn, what's up with them clothes?! What's that s**t all about?! The last thing I want to see while I'm trying to navigate Atlanta traffic on, say, the frighteningly claustrophobic corridor otherwise known as DeKalb Avenue is some poser cyclist's a** encased in spandex!

Throw in their whole "share the road" mentality and the silly hand signals, and I tell you what you've got: people with way too much time on their hands. It's amazing more drivers just don't arbitrarily mow some of these dipsh*ts down for sheer amusement, sorta like mailbox baseball or something. So, I have but one message for bike people:

With those ugly-a** clothes and that attitude, you better be able to pedal at least 50 MPH if you want to share the road, motherf***er, that's all I've got to say. If you can't, I'm not responsible for what happens.

I've got a hand signal for you, Lance, and it's real easy to decipher. It's right here along with a sock full of marbles that has your name on it.

People who celebrate unforced errors...suck!

I play a lot of tennis. I watch a lot of tennis. I read a lot about tennis. I even go to the US Open every summer to hang at the National Tennis Center. Basically, I dig the sport. Taking a nod from pros not named Marat Safin, I try to comport myself in a sportsmanlike way and, despite being a grumpy bastard, have gotten quite good about not going atomic if I'm playing poorly. Add to that one additional level of sportsmanship: I never engage in gamesmanship, especially celebrating, rooting myself on or pumping my fist when my opponent commits an unforced error.

Unfortunately, in the dregs of 3.0 league play, not everyone feels it necessary to adhere to this code. Every once in a while, I'll play some prick that will shout out "Yeah!" or pump his fist if I double-fault or dump a gimme forehand into the net. This annoys me to no end, and, even though it's designed to, it still means the individual engaging in such antics is a total ********** that deserves to have his tennis racket shoved up his a**.

Here's a note just for you Celebration Guy:

Outside of showing up on time for the match, you've done nothing to earn those points so keep your histrionics in your own mind or else you'll be on the receiving end of a sock full unboiled kidney beans!

WTFIGOW...people who can't tell red from orange?

Have you ever stumbled across some chump who can't tell red from orange? I have. In fact, they seem to gravitate toward me, most likely because the universe knows people that can't tell red from orange annoy the s**t out of me. If you're color blind, The Gripe Guy gets it. But if you're not, maybe you should go back to pre-school for a refresher course on the color wheel. I mean, really, how hard is it to discriminate between apples and oranges (it's even called an orange!) and apply that logic in everyday life? Let's try...this jacket, for example, is orange:

Whereas, the trim on this box of GoLean is red:

It would be different if these people approached the mistake with malice, at least I would know they've got an ulterior motive or something. Usually though, it's some hayseed that thinks those orange highway construction signs are red. When I correct them, they actually tell me I don't know what I'm talking about!

What I wouldn't give for a sock full of nickles the next time I come across one of these people.

I have a beef with...losers that "ride" the escalator.

Don't get me wrong...if it's Woodley Park-Zoo Station or some crazy train station like that, or if you're disabled in some way, escalators are great. The losers I'm referring to are the ones in prime physical condition you see just "riding" along on the escalator like it's a ride at Disney. These are the same chowder heads that just stand there on those moving walkways at the airport. Naturally, escalator "riders" don't discriminate between which side of the step they ride on - left, right, it doesn't matter to them. They seem to especially gravitate around steps occupied by fellow "riders," in effect creating a clog for those of us that aren't scared to use our legs and maximize the effect of moving while moving. The fog surrounding their everyday existence is so thick, you'd need a sock full of manure as big as a basketball to beat into them the concept of letting people pass on the left. There's nothing more gripe-worthy than missing your train in the morning cuz a bunch of "riding" douche bags in front of you decide to read the paper or, more frequently, stare downward or upward toward the escalator's destination without moving a muscle, forcing you into their bleak existence for an excruciating 30 or 40 seconds.

My guess is these are the same tool bags that drive 55 in the left-hand lane.