Top Festivus Grievances of 2009: 21-30

I realized this weekend that Seinfeld has been off the air for a full decade, so I should stop assuming that everyone knows what Festivus is. Hop on over to Wikipedia if you want the full explanation, but the basics are that it’s a holiday celebration created by one of the characters on Seinfeld that involves an aluminum pole (in place of a Christmas tree), an airing of grievances (telling people how they’ve disappointed you over the last year), and feats of strength (which happens off screen on Seinfeld, but it seems to involve wrestling).

Six years ago, I decided to host a different type of holiday party. A Festivus party. My party would be a little more fun than the original Festivus, as the grievances–written on pieces of papers scattered throughout my apartment–would be jovial and fun, not incisive and bitter. There would be feats of strength in the form of a drinking game and an aluminum pole in the form of a lamp.

The first one went over so well that I started holding a similar party every year. The only real deviation has been the type of drinking game. This year I created a new game called Beer Square (originally Beer Four Square) which is similar to Beer Pong, but without the nastiness of shared liquids. I’ll go into those rules in the comments section or a later blog post.

The other tradition that has evolved has been compiling and ranking the grievances. I’d say there were over 100 grievances this year, with 72 of them qualifying for the ranking (basically, grievances that anyone could understand. Like, someone grieved about me wearing Under Armor, which kind of works, but it’s mostly an inside joke).

To make the selection of the top grievances impartial and unbiased, I sent out the list to my friend and fellow blogger Josh (who happens to have an exciting visual entry on his blog today) to pick the top 30 grievances from the 72 and rank numbers 21-30. I have already passed on the remaining grievances to Neeraja (who ranked last year’s top 10) to select and rank 11-20. I’ll post them tomorrow, followed by the Top 10. Perhaps I’ll even seek your input for the top grievance of 2009.

Without further adieu, the Top Festivus Grievances of 2009: 21-30

30. Dudes wearing skinny jeans…not cool

29. Those creepy Ford vans with no windows.

28. No more lists! Top ten lists! Top anything lists! Stop it!

27. That swine flu doesn’t turn people into pigs.

26. That “Thames” is pronounced “Tems”

25. The poker gods—worst worship cult ever.

24. When the drier sheet gets lost in your clothes when you’re doing the laundry.

23. When all your interactions with friends are on Facebook.

22. People who think liking a newly famous band before they made it big makes them a part of the band.

21. People who use the subject line of an e-mail as the body—it’s friggin’ annoying.

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