Author(s): Herb Reich

Humour

Complaining, psychologists assert, is good for the soul. It acts as a relief valve to help dispel the pent-up energy generated by our frustration. If we weren't able to complain, shrinks tell us, we would no doubt exhibit more physical violence and engage more frequently in destructive behavior. So complaining serves a social function. Our neighbors outrage us, our children mock us, strangers insult us, government agencies mistreat us, unscrupulous entrepreneurs victimize us, even inanimate objects conspire to screw up our lives. Compelling inner voices harass us, the crowd in the agora thwarts us, and irrationality surrounds us everywhere. It's enough to make someone paranoid. Yet we must remember that just because we're paranoid, it doesn't mean that no one is out to get us. But most of the things that oppress us are not idiosyncratic. We all share them. "2,501 Things That Piss Me Off" demonstrates that misery loves company, and that we are the company that misery loves. Intended as a catalogue of everything irksome in our lives, 2,501 Things ...means to review the broad spectrum of affronts, annoyances, nuisances, grievances, vexations, malevolences, mortifications, and molestations that disrupt our equanimity, that daily pervert the simple pleasures of living. It is a book giving voice to the time-honored practice of people everywhere in the world-griping. Within these pages the reader will find items of anger, reflection, humor, social comment, and even the occasional non sequitur. For its octogenarian author, it is pure catharsis, his way of getting it all off his chest without incurring severe expense for psychiatric attention. But it is also the author's intention that the reader be entertained, and, with a little luck, enriched by the realization that the demons that confound him confound the rest of us as well. That he is not alone in his Weltschmerz.