Gas Prices

Gas prices are a bummer. They are especially a bummer if you normally don’t even care about gas prices, except in the abstract, since you live in a city and riding in a car, let alone driving one, is such an infrequent occurrence that it’s basically on par with pony ride and rollerblades as a means of transportation. But when you’re preparing to actually leave the city on a jaunt up the east coast, gas prices suddenly become a very real bummer, because holy shit it’s gonna cost like $100 just to get to fucking Massachusetts? Why hasn’t anyone done anything about this?! Also a bummer: Opec’s iron fist. Not a bummer: Vay-cay ‘08!

Parental PDA

Parental PDA is a bummer. It’s a bummer regardless of whether it’s your parents, your friend’s parents, or just two oldsters smooching on the street who you can only assume have had some ill-advised progeny at some point. Catching parents being all lovey dovey is disgusting because no one wants to be made to think about his own conception. Plus, all parents who make out in public are reminiscent of Morticia and Gomez Addams, which is to say over-sexed creeps and probable necrophilia fetishists. Sorry parents, but when you had kids you basically signed an agreement to hide your humanity under a bushel, permanently. Not a bummer: Anjelica Huston as Morticia Addams. Spooky unbummer: how great is the Addams family manse on a scale of one to tricky funhouse?

First Dates

First dates are a bummer. It’s pretty much impossible not to be filled with nameless dread when faced with the prospect of having an awkward hang out with a stranger. Even if the two of you have established a jokey rapport, you have to try so hard to act normal that the exertion almost isn’t worth it. Because face it, you’re never gonna make it to date two if you let your real personality roar and, say, mention that your greatest fear is that a bird will one day fly into your face while you’re walking down the street. That would be classified as “a weird thing to say.” Also a bummer: A FUCKING BIRD FLYING INTO YOUR FACE!!! THINK ABOUT IT!!!

Business Casual

Business casual is a bummer. Having to dress business casual sucks. Even thinking about a business casual outfit is a bummer, because it basically turns you into someone who would scan Marie Claire for suggestions about how to put together an ensemble that works for office AND evening (it involves a lot of flirty tops), and that turns you into someone who is quietly sobbing. In fact, the entire concept of business casual sucks because business is not casual. It’s business. If it was at all casual, it’d be hanging out. And as much as you’d like your job to be hanging out full time, that is something that’s never going to happen (or at least not until one of your get rich quick schemes pays off). Not a bummer: Keeping it cool with a nonchalant jacket pose.

Losing Your Passport

Losing your passport is a bummer. If you’re in a foreign country this is a major major bummer, bordering on total crisis. Because not only will you miss your flight back to Les Etats Unis, you’re also gonna have to deal with locating the embassy, shelling out 100 precious USD for a new one, and arranging to get another flight. And contrary to what you’d expect, U.S. embassies in foreign countries aren’t pleasure palaces where your countrymen offer you a scone and invite you to take a load off in a lushly appointed suite while they solve your problem. In fact, they’re actually like DMV’s but full of even surlier people who are smirking at you behind your back because a Russian prostitute is probably already en route to America with your identity. Existential unbummer: being alone and adrift in a foreign city makes you feel like Ernest Hemingway.

Broken Shoe

When your shoe breaks it’s a bummer. It’s a bummer because what are you, a hobo? You’re wearing things till they literally wear out? Not to sound like your mom, but have some common sense. Now you’ve either got to just take the thing off and walk down Canal St. with one shoe on, or shuffle along like a schizophrenic Vietnam vet until you can duck into a Payless and rectify the situation. Confusing bummer: What are you doing on Canal St. anyways?

Nervous

Being nervous is a bummer. Being nervous turns everyone into a sweaty-palmed, thick-tongued idiot which only compounds with the nervousness to turn whatever the situation is into a farce that would make the Monty Python guys jealous. Plus, have you ever gone in for a handshake knowing your hands are clammy? It’s game, set, match for the other guy right off the bat. Saving grace un-bummer: Being kind of nervous on a date is totally cute. Hilarious anti-bummer: Calling someone a Nervous Nelly.

Cleaning Out The Refrigerator

Cleaning out the refrigerator is a bummer. Sure, you’re going to feel all spic and span when you’re done, but while you’re in the process you’re going to have to contend with the fact that you are the kind of person who still has milk from March. State of matter bummer: The questionable solid/liquid status of milk from March.

Left The Windows Open

Leaving your car windows open is a bummer. It’s a double bummer actually because the realization that the inside of the car is getting soaked hits you first, and then later you have to deal with sitting on a wet seat, which in itself is a bummer. The only way to fight this bummer is to just accept it into your life and realize that all your school textbooks are eventually going to succumb to The Wet. Opposite bummer: When your automatic windows break and get stuck closed and it’s really hot out.

Gawker Won’t Link To Your Blog

Realizing that Gawker is never going to link to your blog is a bummer. Especially because, face it, you’ll never get a book deal unless they do. Even if your blog exists mostly to distract you and your friends from the desperate vale of tears that is full time office employment, some part of you will always hope that a stranger will one day swoop in and offer you 50 G’s for your earth-shattering anecdotes about your dog. Without Gawker’s recognition, you’ll basically be relegated to that corner of the internet reserved for the weirdest, most obscure shit, where no one ever goes. Scatological bummer: you’ll never obtain the notoriety of “2 Girls 1 Cup.” Slightly consoling unbummer: no amount of Gawker coverage is going to make Emily Gould not suck.