NYT writer Ian Urbina has written a new book about people fighting back against life's little annoyances, called Life's Little Annoyances. He's also got a blog to go along with it. Do people who get in your way in grocery aisles frustrate you? Sneak some super expensive, tiny product into their shopping cart, like vitamins. Been hit with a bill that you don't feel you should have to pay? Pay it in pennies.
It is a compendium of human inventiveness, by turns juvenile and petty, but in other ways inspired and deeply satisfying. We meet the junk-mail recipient who sends back unwanted "business reply" envelopes weighted down with sheet metal, so the mailers will have to pay the postage. We commiserate with the woman who was fed up with the colleague who kept helping himself to her lunch cookies, so she replaced them with dog biscuits that looked like biscotti. And we revel in the seemingly endless number of tactics people use to vent their anger at telemarketers, loud cellphone talkers, spammers, and others who impose themselves on us.A celebration of the endless variety of passive aggressive behavior, Life's Little Annoyances will provide comfort and inspiration to everyone who has ever gritted his teeth and dreamed of sweet retribution against the slings and arrows of outrageous people.
