How to Be Annoying
- Adjust the tint on your TV so that all the people are green, and insist to
others that you "like it that way".
- Drum on every available surface.
- Remove every line of someone's .newsrc file except the entry for
alt.sex.fetish.hamster.duct-tape.
- Staple papers in the middle of the page.
- Ask "800" operators for dates.
- Produce a rental video consisting entirely of dire FBI copy warnings.
- Sew anti-theft detector strips into people's backpacks.
- Specify that your drive-through order is "to go".
- Set alarms for random times.
- Learn Morse code, and have conversations with friends in public consisting
entirely of "Beeeep Bip Bip Beeeep Bip...
- Order a side of pork rinds with your filet mignon.
- Leave your Nine Inch Nails tape in Great Uncle Ed's stereo, with the volume
properly adjusted.
- Honk and wave to strangers.
- Dress only in clothes colored Hunter's Orange.
- Change channels five minutes before the end of every show.
- Tape pieces of "Sweating to the Oldies" over climactic parts of rental
movies.
- Rouse your roommates from slumber each morning with Lou Reed's "Metal
Machine Music".
- ONLY TYPE IN UPPERCASE.
- Buy a large quantity of orange traffic cones and reroute whole
streets.
- Pay for your dinner with pennies.
- Tie jingle bells to all your clothes.
- Light road flares on a birthday cake.
- Wander around the restaurant, asking other diners for their parsley.
- Leave tips in Bolivian currency.
- Demand that everyone address you as "Conquistador".
- Push all the flat Lego pieces together tightly.
- At the laundromat, use one dryer for each of your socks.
- When Christmas carolling, sing "Jingle Bells, Batman smells" until
physically restrained.
- Wear a cape that says "Magnificent One".
- As much as possible, skip rather than walk.
- Stand over someone's shoulder, mumbling, as they read.
- Leave your turn signal on for fifty miles.
- Pretend your mouse is a CB radio, and talk to it.
- Drive half a block.
- Name your dog "Dog".
- Inform others that they exist only in your imagination.
- Ask people what gender they are.
- Lick the filling out of all the Oreos, and place the cookie parts back in
the tray.
- Sculpt your hedges into anatomically suggestive shapes.
- Follow a few paces behind someone, spraying everything they touch with a
can of Lysol.
- Deliberately hum songs that will remain lodged in co-workers' brains, such
as "Feliz Navidad", the Archies' "Sugar" or the Mr. Rogers theme
song. ("Copacabana" is also useful for this.)
- While making presentations, occasionally bob your head like a
parakeet.
- Lie obviously about trivial things such as the time of day.
- Make beeping noises when a large person backs up.
- Leave your Christmas lights up and lit until September.
- Sit in your front yard pointing a hair dryer at passing cars to see if they
slow down.
- Invent nonsense computer jargon in conversations, and see if people play
along to avoid the appearance of ignorance.
- Ask to "interface" with someone.
- Sing along at the opera.
- Mow your lawn with scissors.
- At a golf tournament, chant "swing-batatatatatata-suhWING-batter!"
- Ask the waitress for an extra seat for your "imaginary friend."
- Ask your co-workers mysterious questions, and scribble their answers in a
notebook... something about "psychological profiles."
- Incessantly recite annoying phrases, such as "sticky wicket isn't
cricket."
- Stare at static on the TV and claim you can see a "magic picture".
- Resend humourous e-mail messages to the person who sends them to you.
- Leave all headers and footnotes on forwarded jokes.
- Sing the Batman theme incessantly.
- In the memo field of all your checks, write "for sensual massage".
- If you have a glass eye, tap on it occasionally with your pen while talking
to others.
- Amuse yourself for endless hours by hooking a camcorder to your TV and then
pointing it at the screen.
- Speak only in a "robot" voice.
- Start each meal by conspicuously licking all your food, and announce that
this is so no one will "swipe your grub".
- Leave the copy machine set to reduce 200%, extra dark, 17 inch paper, 99
copies.
- Stomp on little plastic ketchup packets.
- Sniffle incessantly.
- Leave your turn signal on for fifty miles.
- Name your dog "Dog".
- Insist on keeping your car windshield wipers running in all weather
conditions "to keep them tuned up".
- Reply to everything someone says with "that's what YOU think."
- Claim that you must always wear a bicycle helmet as part of your "astronaut
training".
- Declare your apartment an independent nation, and sue your neighbors
upstairs for "violating your airspace".
- Forget the punchline to a long joke, but assure the listener it was a "real
hoot".
- Practice making fax and modem noises.
- Highlight irrelevant information in scientific papers and copy them to your
boss.
- Erect an elaborate network of ropes in your backyard, and tell the
neighbors you are a "spider person".
- Finish all your sentences with the words "in accordance with
prophesy."
- Wear a special hip holster for your remote control.
- Do not add any inflection to the end of your sentences, producing awkward
silences with the impression that you'll be saying more any moment.
- Signal that a conversation is over by clamping your hands over your
ears.
- Disassemble your pen and "accidently" flip the ink cartridge across the
room.
- Give a play-by-play account of a person's every action in a nasal Howard
Cossell voice.
- Holler random numbers while someone is counting.