There are lots of minor things that irritate us from time to time. We all have our pet peeves, be it telemarketers, shitty software, or the brain-dead driver doing 40 in the passing lane with his blinker on the whole time.

But there’s a very special list of things that annoy us to no end here at Alligators In The Sewer. These are things that are so pervasive and evil that they deserve their very own place in the annals of contempt. They should be wiped from the face of the planet with a searing, megaton flash…and a mandatory death sentence for violators.

Things we’d like to nuke. Better yet…nuke ‘em from orbit. It’s the only way to be certain.

1. Clamshell packaging. Why do manufacturers insist on continuing this product packaging nightmare? You need power tools and high explosives to open these. The music industry got rid of CD longboxes more than two decades ago. Why can’t everybody let go of this one as well?
2. Digital TV. Some of us don’t have cable. In fact, a lot of us don’t. The mandatory switch to DTV last summer has left many rabbit-ear TV viewers with (at best) stuttering TV images, and (at worst) no signal at all. My living room looks like a ham radio convention with antennas everywhere, I have a clear line of sight out my window to the station’s tower, and yet my reception still looks like a bunch of random pixels. And don’t even think of suggesting I merely get cable or satellite TV. There’s another pet peeves article just waiting to be written on that subject alone.
3. Being prompted by a robot to enter an account number while waiting on the phone, only to be asked for it again when (if) a live person gets on the line. If only the humans in the customer support department could find a way to interface with their robots…
4. The phony Brit accent used on talking ATMs. Is my cash going to come out in Pounds Sterling? Do ATMs in London talk like Texans? We’d much rather hear the ATM spew insults. Or talk with a bad German accent. Or both. “Here ees ze money, you eediot!”
5. Bluetooth headsets and the borgs who use them in public. Stop talking to yourself. You look retarded.
6. The “Engine Needs Servicing” light that mysteriously turns on in cars every 10,000 miles. You need to bring the car in so that the trained chimp at the service garage can reset it and collect $250. We need to figure a way to flip on some light and have thousands of Pavlovian morons magically stop by to give us money like that.
7. Leaf blowers. And the idiots who fire them up in their driveways at 7:00 on a Saturday morning. Get a broom, douchebag. You need the exercise anyway.
8. Those ubiquitous “mug me” iPod earbuds. They sound like trash and everyone else knows you have an expensive, easily-fenced piece of electronics in your pocket.
9. Flash-based websites. No, we’re not impressed with your pretty graphic. But your mother must be very proud. (She says “hi” by the way.) In the time it would have taken for your animated splash screen to load, your would-be web visitor has already bailed and moved on to your competitor’s site.
10. People who let their ringtones play a full four bars or more before answering the phone. We’re not impressed here either. Awww…you spent a dollar and got a cute widdle song. Put the phone in vibrate mode and duct-tape it to your head.
11. Car alarms. The devices are premised on the idea that someone else might actually respond when one goes off. They won’t, and every burglar knows that. Let the thief take it all, as far as we’re concerned. Serves ya’ right for your car waking up the whole damn block at 3 A.M.
12. Enormously obese people who fly on airplanes. If you’re so large that you counteract the tides just by walking on the beach, it’s reasonably likely you’re not going to fit into that 17 inch-wide airline seat. Truck freight: when you absolutely, positively have to get there.

We might think of more. In fact, it’s quite likely that we will, as we’re rather irritable today. Keep your distance.