It’s really exciting to see protests going on across the world. Not because of the unrest or the violence — that’s scary — but there’s this awe-inspiring wave of people who are starting to take a stand for freedom, security, and their rights. But — and I know this is a ridiculous leap — it reminds me of a revelation I had one day listening to Pandora: I’m sick of putting up with things that merely OK. There are lots of songs that are OK. If I’m busy, I’ll let them play because they’re not horrible, but if I had the time, I’d skip them. So one day I vowed to aggressively thumbs-down any song that was mediocre, and, very quickly, I started hearing only good songs. I decided to expand this concept from Pandora to the rest of my life.

And now I’d like to expand it a bit further. I feel like the society I’m living in is kind of like my Pandora music stream before my micro-revolution: full of potential, but a blend of good and bad things that averages out to something that’s merely OK. I would like to thumbs-down the following:

• The continuation of DOMA, or any other laws which discriminate against same-sex couples.
• Donald Trump running for President.
• Mike Huckabee running for President. Actually, just Mike Huckabee in general.
• The entire situation in Wisconsin, including the entirety of everything both sides have done.
• People who drive slow in the left lane and won’t get over.
• Twenty-first century McCarthyism
• Stricter prohibitions on marijuana than on alcohol, despite the latter being much more dangerous. (Sidenote: I feel oddly compelled to disclaim that I’m not a pot user. It just makes absolutely no sense to me to arrest people who are.)
• The piles of junk mail I get every day and am obliged to dispose of.
• How messed up the main page of the blogs is.
• Having to care and feed for the server hosting the blogs and such.
• No one caring about the deficit until Obama was elected, when suddenly it was a crisis.
• Politicians who won’t work with each other to compromise. (Which is to say, all of them.)
• People who have decided that global warming is a myth.
• Cold weather.
• The stupid stiff-plastic bubblewrap that everything you buy is encased in, rendering it an enormous headache to open.
• ISPs that don’t provide IPv6 by now. (Which is to say, pretty much all of them.)
• That my car is entirely dependent on gasoline to function.
• People who think God’s message was one of hate or favoritism towards a select group. (This goes a lot of ways.)
• Hearing about Charlie Sheen on the news.
• Hearing about Lindsay Lohan on the news.
• The condition of the economy and my investments.
• The amount of work I have to exert to do my taxes when the government has already taken my money.
• Blog posts that are long lists of things people dislike.