A Gringo in Rural Mexico: A Potpourri of Observations and indirect contributions...

Thursday, 9 April 2020

A Potpourri of Observations and indirect contributions...

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It was my intention to make a few salient remarks about the mixture of air, Joe Biden, Democrat / Leftist hubris, the arrogance of supposed grandeur and superior intellectual and pertinence held by the Leftist Cabal.

My laziness and sense of not really being able to force the rudder of the ship of state to maintain a straight and forward motion, without veering of into the New Deals, the New Compacts, the New Frontiers, the Great Societies, and all the Great Plans formulated by the Internationalist Leftist Progressive "Dreamers" sometimes causes me to remember that there is little I can do to save the Planet.

The array of Utopian Socialists wandering around, pushing candles into the darkness in order to bring light and goodness to the common people…without burden or concern of how to pay for such things without destroying a nation continues to confound.

We seem to cleave unto false leaders, frequently, seeming disposed to erect what becomes essentially a totalitarian State, controlled by a few dunderhead dictators who wind up transferring their own personal wealth, finally, to some back alley bank in Central Europe or wherever.

The wealth, of course, is derived from the abolition of most of the upper-middle class and the "hoi polloi". Oddly, that term now includes the poor slobs who sweep the streets for Chairman Mao and, over the years, the slobs who feign high position and import while looking down at all the little people wearing rags who will never taste 100 year old French wine. Perhaps democracy does have a levelling effect, after all.

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A FEW POINTS OF INTEREST:

(1) A Special Message to Donald John Trump, President, United States of America -

To begin…please, oh! please! refrain from railing against the obstreperous Communist Chinese machine and then turn to the camera and say, "Premier Xi and I have excellent relations…he's really a great guy." Our Faithful Leader lauds another faithful leader from the other side of the world when it is patently evident that Xi Jinping (the "elected" Czar of China) wishes to use American children as organ donors for the ruling class of Commies who rather effectively are standing on the necks of 1,350,000,000 "citizens" of that massive country.

It would be so much more pleasant to refer to the current "duly elected" tyrant and his apparatchiks as bloodthirsty, brutal, and corrupt ghouls. They would not mind, there would be no offence, because they perceive that such a description is a complement.

We take this time and space to remind our the OROGs Community (Order of Readers of the Old Gringo) that Red China is not the "biggest" economy in the World. It is thus, as published in a reputable economics and political journal -

The “trade war” has been one of the most important influencers of markets this year and will likely continue to be in 2020.

An agreement could greatly benefit both countries, but it’s not surprising a deal hasn’t been reached, as both sides want more than the other side is willing to give.

There is much at stake, as the two countries have the world’s largest economies.

“The U.S. has retained its position of being the world’s largest economy since 1871,” according to Investopedia. “The size of the U.S. economy was at $20.49 trillion in 2018 in nominal terms and is expected to reach $21.35 trillion in 2019.”

China’s nominal gross domestic product (GDP) is $13.41 trillion, making it second to the United States.

The Red Chinese Dragon's only true desire is to eat the American Great Bald Eagle for breakfast. For many years they tried subversion, illegal invasion, flocking to American universities where they learned little beyond the same marxist bilge preached in Red Chinese "universities". The "education" provided by American colleges and universities has been degraded after a couple of generations of obtuse marxist-oriented indoctrination…coupled with a huge dose of racial/ethnic "payback" propaganda from the lectures of America's finest professors…80 per cent of whom are dedicated marxists.

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(2) A CITIZEN ADVISES THE POPULACE…WITH WISE WORDS:

Almost all of the aforementioned "prestigious" collegiate and university operations are absolutely committed to graduating folks who believe in "a liberal and modern understanding" of human and collective social organisation. A certain Roberto Luna apparently did not go to Harvard or Columbia…perhaps he went to Texas Lutheran College, or Texas State University (previously known as Southwest Texas State University as did El Gringo Viejo) or some other not-so-pretentious campus.

Mr. Luna launches forth on the Letters to the Editor's page of the daily, McAllen Monitor;

"There are many people here who protect illegals because they are married to illegals. They probably get a share of things like food stamps.

"It is just like the stupid man who had been deported five times in California who killed a girl. A family man who used to work for the Border Patrol to protect us , who on his day off was killed in front of his family in Monte Alto (Texas). One of the guys mentioned at the trial said he wanted to be famous. He should have killed his partner and himself instead?

"One officer was shot here with his own gun by an illegal he had been chasing.

"I don't want to talk about George Washington or Columbus discovering America. If we go into that subject, I was one year old when my dad died. I was picking cotton at the age of 7 and we used to eat for supper jackrabbit and crow. You don't mention about the people who are eating T-bone steaks and have their taco stands to make cash money with the food stamps.

"There are a lot of people who have been living here for twenty or more years. Their parents brought them here (as) illegals when they were small. They had their chance to become American citizens and they never did apply to become legal, and now they are crying because they are being deported.

"Again, let's not talk about things that were done before you and I were born.

"One thing I forgot to mention. An illegal lady on the bridge in Laredo had her baby. There is no hate in the part of me. I am just trying to let them know the reality.

"One thing for sure: They can get in line for hours for benefits, but they can't spend 10 minutes to vote. If you want to eat…WORK!!

"I just mentioned a few crimes, not the thousands that illegals do. Again, Mr. President, Donald Trump, please take the food stamps away right now!!"

Robert Luna
Edinburg (Texas)

(El Gringo Viejo celebrates the words of a cowboy-type, using simple and complex words and phrases to formulate simple and complex thoughts and truths that are worthy of all men…and women…to be received. dcn - 12 April 2020)

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(3) SENSELESS PROJECTIONS - POOR DIAGNOSIS:

We have been hanging around here in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, oddly enough, playing the roll of "The Man Without a Country". At my last return from Mexico, I was fumbling around with the radio trying to find some information about the status of the bridge lines…in order to find a quicker path to the Gringo Side of the Rio Grande.

It was also weighing in on other matters, especially the suspension of people coming into the United States from Mexico…the White House had invoked a suspension of people coming into the United States from the southern areas of the Western Hemisphere. That included Mexico and Canada. I learned that Canada had sealed the border with the United States some days before.

Crossing over and waiting in line for two hours was fun…at least Rush was on. The crossing guard actually had his inspector's cubicle radio…tuned really low…also on Rush's programme.

There has been several modifications to the new rules…and we find newer new rules coming through about every day concerning how to cross the Rio Grande in either direction. It is something we have never seen. The assassination of John Kennedy resulted in a total shutdown for between three and four days back in November of 1963.
We had a bit of a hoot that day because several of the more thuggish bully-boys had skipped classes at McAllen High School (aka - McHI) and gone to Reynosa to drink beer and make other people miserable. They got to "sleep on the sidewalk" for three nights.

In any regard, we are now watching some of the most serious matters to have faced the American Nation, and we have watched the demagoguery and hysterical, deranged blather flushing up from the Democrat Leadership and from the oh! so professional! mainstream press. Their well tooled, convoluted

explanations about any issue…major or minor…was always turned into an attack on Donald John Trump. It ranged from the hilariously ridiculous to the infuriatingly insulting.

I was intending to write about all the errors committed by the combined outlets on the left, and our travails and misery during the almost complete stand-down of human activity (or so it seems). We are in almost totally complete dry-dock. We cannot drive around aimlessly, we can only enter the HEB as a single person or two at the most.
Diana normally works…in her 40 hour workweek…about 60 to 80 hours per week. That is about what she is putting in her at the apartment. She had to jerry-rig a computer battery in our bedroom (our main computer, tied in to with a lap-top from the school district, a new and independent WiFi, etc.) and from here she handles literally tonnes of accounting and procedural matters…all very full of fine print, rules, time limits, etc. She also has to "check on Mom", no complaint…just necessary. The good thing is that we are about 10 blocks apart. But, howsoever, Diana is still putting in 60 to 80 hours per week, and this should continue for the remain part of the academic year…late May. That will mean almost two and a half months with the school district essentially shut down and the students receiving their instruction via computer…and returning their required work via computer email, etc.)
The only people at the schools are a skeleton technical group and a cleaning crew at each school…no teachers, no coaches, no band, no debate, choir, etc. etc. Everyone is working at home and electronically posting the appropriate entities.

Moving into the matter at hand, it was my certain conviction that the estimates being made by the "experts" concerning how many people would succumb to the coronavirus were wildly off.

Another point is that we shall never really know or understand who died from what. Just during the preceding 36 hours, it began to be leaked out by the drop that Geezers were the ones who were having the worst of the count. Problems with that group, of which I am one, there are complications such as weight, cardiac involvements, pulmonary difficulties, renal and digestive problems. All of those things make a bit of pollen from a contaminated Communist Chinese "accidental" release of radioactive material at Wuhan slightly more lethal…but the fact is that older people and people with serious health compromises (as mentioned above) make up 96 per cent of the body of people who have succumbed.

Without the radioactive, strange bee pollen that made it around the world, literally, the rate of mortality would have been lower, but most of the damaged to the people is as I have described in the preceding paragraph. There is every probability that the more virile characteristics of this episode will fall off relatively quickly, perhaps even in time to allow people to return to their normal rounds and affairs.

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We, personally, lament the huge cascades of possible thunderstorms and even some hail but due to a Tornadic and hail-bearing storm arriving to us in the next hour, I shall have to retire from the field of battle!! More later!!

EL GRINGO VIEJO

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Click to visit our little Adobe Hideaway…

This is our rustic, but very comfortable place, out in the rural area to the northwest of Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas…the State's Capital. From a bustling city of 400,000, we placed our domicile a bit more than 20 miles into the scenes of mountains, citrus groves, spring-fed creeks and rivers with crystal clear waters, and an abundance of bird species that make veteran birders shake their heads in wonder.

We are all but adjacent to the venerable Hacienda de Santa Engracia (about 500 yards away), which dates to the 1720s and has ancient structures still in use, very elegant, and mystical in many ways. It has operated as a guest hotel since the 1970s.

Our little place rests on three and a fraction acres, fronting on the Rio Corona, which is lined with over-1,000 year old cypress trees. The nearby Sierra del Cautivo…a major segment of the overall Sierra Madre Oriental that dominate most of eastern Mexico, lies to the west by about three miles. guards the many springs that maintain the almost perpetual flow from those heights (up to 12,000 fasl) while our place is situated right at 1,000 feet above sea level.

Give us a call, come by and visit…it is truly a different venture in the most positive sense. We can be reached by our email - privatouring@gmail.com - which is our preferred method of communicating.

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What is an OROG?

Once a person lands on our page, that individual becomes a member of the Order of Readers of the Old Gringo, (OROG). There are no dues or assessments to pay, no meetings, no requirements. We are not associated with the KKK, the WCTU, the French Masons, or the Global Warming Glacier

Protection Committee.

We do have a distant connection with the Knights of the Golden Circle and hold the maps to the internment sites of 34 tonnes of Confederate Gold, and 1,000 tonnes of Mexican Imperial Silver (bar and coinage) derived from the collapse of the Reign of Maximillian von Hapsburg, Emperor of Mexico (1863 - 1867). I think we can remember where we put it.

All kidding aside, we are acerbic, but we do not bite. We do believe in our antiquated philosophy, but we try to not impose our quirks and beliefs so far as to be disrespectful.

El Gringo Viejo

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Wise Words

Communism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy. Its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.

Winston Churchill

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Be sure you are right, then go ahead.

I bark at no man's bid. I will never come and go, fetch and carry, at the whistle of the Great Man in the White House, no matter who he is.

I told the people of my district that I would serve them as faithfully as I had done. But, if such was not to be, then you may all go to Hell, and I shall go to Texas!

David Crockett

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And on and on it goes. The more the Government gives away, the more it takes, and the less Americans do for themselves, until finally, like Europe, there is nobody left to do anything, and there is nobody left to pay for, the nothing that is not done.

And, yes, Virginia, there truly is a Santa Clause, and he and Mrs. Clause and their helpers care greatly for the good children of the Planet. So long as there is happiness, kindness, charity, generosity, and the Spirit of Fellowship, Santa Clause will be there, representing those noble things, and he will always move in a spiritual way so as to provoke humankind to goodness.

El Gringo Viejo

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“There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.”

Booker Tallaferro Washington

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It is impossible to make a poor man rich by making a rich man poor.

Abraham Lincoln

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El Gringo Viejo: a fair description

Life for El Gringo Viejo began on the Texas-Mexico frontier, near McAllen, Texas literally on a real, live farm. The farmer, as one might imagine, was his father, who had moved with his parents from Gwinner, Sargent County, North Dakota in 1915 - 1916 period, down to the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas. (And yes, Virginia, that is the way Sargent County is spelled.)

His parents farmed in an area close to the new community named after its founder, called Ed Couch, in Hidalgo County of Texas. My grandfather is buried in the Weslaco Municipal Cemetery about 10 feet away from his friend, Ed Couch.

After studies, and a stint in the 1st Cavalry, 12th Regiment (mounted), Headquarters Squadron of the United States Army...riding warhorses back and forth along the Rio Grande from the late 1920s and early 1930s. He did not speak much about his service, but we determined that he apparently made rank of 1st Lieutenant.

El Gringo Viejo's Father established his farming and citrus grove-care operation just north of McAllen, Texas. Mother was a housewife and a professional woman....a learned, eloquent, well-read woman.

They were educated people, my father winding up as a Superintendent of a major school/facility of the Texas Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation in Austin, Texas after a twenty year career in education at the secondary level. He had degrees in History, Psychology, and Education Administration.

El Gringo Viejo is the last of three children, all males. Number one was Milton Birchard, Jr. who was born in 1936 and died in a vehicular incident in 1988. He was narcoleptic. He held a doctorate in geography from Louisiana State University and was head of the Department there for a good while.

Number two is Norman Francis, who was born during the WWII situation in 1942 and became an important Republican political engineer and fundraiser. He served as Executive Director of the Republican Party of Texas during the late 1960s and early 1970s and as Senator John G. Tower's immediate Executive Assistant. The Senator is the Godfather of Norman's first son.

Norman died at age 77 in Austin, Texas and I was one of four eulogists who was chosen to speak at his en memoriam at the Austin Club in downtown most Austin…within sight of the State Capitol.

It was a personal duty and very rewarding

in every way.

My arrival was in 1947, and I was destined to confound my parents and all those around me. Educated entirely in public schools in McAllen, skipping the third grade, and stumbling out of my high school in the upper 90% of a class of 606. I

attended and graduated from Southwest Texas State University (now named Texas State University, unfortunately), being one of the few conservatives to graduate out of the School of Sociology, although my treatment at the hands of my tormentor-professors was not so unpleasant in those days. Emphasis of studies were social demography, and Latin American Affairs with a concentration on Mexico's history and current political evolution, with a minors in History, Geography, and Political Science.

El Gringo Viejo is one of the old, unreconstructed high-church Episcopalians. Politically, he is very fundamentally conservative. He prefers Baseball to football, and considers that baseball with a designated hitter for the pitcher should be called "poofy-ball". Favourite major league team of all times? The Brooklyn Dodgers of the 1950s. It will never be the same again.
El Gringo Viejo's father was born to a Hudson Valley-type girl and a man who had lost two older brothers who served in the Pennsylvania 96th Regiment of Volunteer Infantry during the War Between the States.

The surnamed line (Newton) originated from East Anglia, not far from a place called Washington in northeastern England. They came into Boston Harbour, Massachusetts in 1642 (the 1st voyage of the Mayflower had overbooked), and settled there and in Maine as well as spreading out to Vermont, New York, and Pennsylvania, over the generations for the first 220 years.
Another batch of folks, mainly Anglo, settled in the middle Hudson Valley. There was another group of Celto-Teutonics types from Saxony and Prussia, establishing and settling along the Hudson River from around what is Catskill County northward to Duchess and Rennselaer Counties around a place named Red Hook. The main group came in during the early 1650s.

My mother's people were another English line of long-term Southern and Tennessee people, from the Eastern part of that State, who originally came in during the 1660s through Virginia and North Carolina, and finally into Eastern Tennessee, settling in and around a county to be named Franklin, and helping to establish the city of Winchester. Almost all of these people originated from southwestern England, near the frontier with Wales.

Only recently did we verify that she had many people involved in the service of the Confederacy. One died in northern Mississippi, another Captain Asa Grant, 2nd Tennessee Volunteer Cavalry, was severely wounded and succumbed to his wounds finally in 1869, and another hung around in an Ohio POW camp (Camp Chase) for about 13 months, while three others were either wounded or died in action, including David Limbaugh, Lieutenant, 42 Tennessee Infantry. Another five made it through relatively unscathed.

Almost all were, oddly enough, related to the great-grand uncles and gggg-grandfathers down to gg-grandfathers of Rush Limbaugh. The gggg-grandfather came into the Colonies in the early 1740s from a Prussia and Saxony background, and served in both civilian and military capacities to the Continental government and Army. He was the XO of a Militia Battalion of 3,000 Pennsylvania effectives. They honed their military readiness under the supervision of Gen. von Steuben and someone named Washington at some place called Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.

A grandson of his, Isaac, settled in Tennessee after the War for Independence against King George III. So Rush and I share grandfathers, four generations deep on the American Continent.

It should be stated here that were I to be called to declare, my allegiance would still be with the Southern Cause, although I bear no rancor against those who feel the same about their instinct to maintain the Union. Oddly enough, both my mother (a Southerner) and my father (a true Yankee by blood) believed that we would have remained closer if we had separated, and each side gone the ways of their own yearning, but amicably.

The last of the English (El Gringo Viejo's) line came during the time between the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. They left County Wicklow, where they had been involved, apparently, in that peculiar Anglo - Scots/Irish practice of making whiskey by the use of peat for fuel. They were also involved in the business of production and processing of various types of grains as well as the production of whiskey, gin, and beer. By their surnames one would know that, while coming out of Ireland, they were actually English, one with the surname of Christian and the wife, Webster. They had, in fact, married in Christ's Church Cathedral, Anglican, in downtown Dublin in 1796. They landed in New York, set up shop in the City among previously arrived relatives, and then in Albany. We have some record that this Christian who married the Webster had actually lived in the colonies, but travelled several times back and forth between the Spirits businesses in England and Ireland and the New World. They wound up as the generations progressed in and around Minneapolis (St. Anthony) & Saint Paul, Minnesota, and Racine, Wisconsin. My particular line went from New York to Alabama, then North Carolina, and then Wisconsin to join up with the rest of the extended family, finally in Minnesota, before the War Between the States.

The Time Line of entry of all lines of my children's blood ancestry on their mother's side in the New World begins in 1578, when Spaniards of mixed Hebraic and Iberian peoples, and others of ancestry from Portugal, Galicia, and southern Spain entered into what was to become Monclova and Saltillo, Coahuila. They are brought under the auspices of the Explorer, Conquistador, and Colonizer Jose Luis Carvajal y de la Cueva, with elements settling in Lampazos and Cerralvo (Nuevo Leon), in Palofox (Texas), and Revilla (Tamaulipas) on the Rio Bravo.
Also, the Count of the Sierra Gorda, Col. Jose de Escandon brought another group of mainly Spanish, Portuguese, and Azoreans in the early 175os, settling along the Rio Bravo (Grande), and then on the north (Texas) side, spreading up to what is now Yorktown, Texas (near and southeast of San Antonio de Bexar, more or less) before and during the Texas Republican period.

My children and theirs are qualified to join the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Sons of Liberty, The Sons of the Grand Army of the Union, The Sons of Confederate Veterans, and the Daughters of the Confederacy. By my side they are 16th generation English Colonial - American and 6th generation Texian. By my wife's side, my children are 23rd generation northernmost New Spain, Texian, and American. Isolating Texas alone, my grandchildren are 15th generation Texian.

LIKE?

Cats, and then dogs.

Fishing, even a bit of bird watching, now and then.

Really good music..antique, old, 1950s and early 1960s rock and roll, classical - Hayden, Mozart, Beethoven, both Strauses, and many others, African tribal sounds en chorus, Mexican bolero...mariachis when they play out-of-doors, some country and quite a bit of the old western (Sons of the Pioneers, the Texas Ploughboys, Marty Robbins "Gunfighter Ballads, for instance.), even some of my own piano works, bagpipes, Enya, marimba, Caribe.

The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess always seemed to me to have been, and remains, a true masterpiece of Americana.

Well maintained Firearms, smooth running small equipment, old autos that respond to repair and upkeep and keep going. Used to have BMWs and so forth, but being old helps tone things down a bit.

Antiques, and antiquities...Meso-American archeology...and religious history. Formal religious services among the Orthodox..as in Anglican, Roman, Orthodox and Conservative Jewish services and celebrations. Hard to find, now.

Overnight radio, rightwing talk radio until it becomes overly tedious and repetitive.

Weather and climate.

And strangely during the past few years,cooking. Not just barbequeing...but actually dishing up gourmet-type stuff...and gardening to a purpose.

We grow a lot of our own spices for our little bed and breakfast and we specialise in flowerng plants, bushes, and trees that attract bees and literally hundreds of species of common to extremely rare birds to our place.

Lifelong Republican, honourably discharged - United States Army (conscripted).

Now drifted into the position of favouring the amicable withdrawal of Texas from the American Union. My grandchildren are 15th generation Coahuila/Texas by my wife and 8th generation Texas by me and my will is to have them answer for the debt of Texas and not for the debts incurred by the National Socialists who have taken possession of the central government in Washington, D.C.

DISLIKES?
Any kind of socialism...bolshevik, national, marxist, social democratic, Trotskyite, progressive, ....and any kind of socialist.

The Ku Klux Klan and such types who figure that they have to hate somebody because of how he/she was born. They are just role players, resucitated by the Communist Party USA in the 1920s, whose members are fueled by a well deserved sense of inferiority.

And almost all social activism.

Almost all labour union officers and almost all labour unions. (There are some exceptions.)

Public assistance of any kind. All welfare and/or charity should and must be privately handled in order to avoid the trap wherein we have fallen, that being the multigenerational slide into the abyss of forlorn hopelessness that is government slavery and dependence. That slide is cheerfully supported by politicians who love to buy votes with other peoples' money.

Lotteries operated by governments.

Litter, filth, graffiti, gangs, and waiting in line for people using food stamps whil'st they argue with the cashier about how they "need" this or that to be covered...when they have three carts with 450 USD of snacks and things we cannot afford because we are in an 'upper income" category.

Church reformers who want to change my church instead of them going to another church and just leaving me alone.

Medications for boys who are over-active, and medications in general.

Lite beer, lite Coca Cola, fat-free, lo-cal, artificial sugars and sweeteners, anything marked "healthy" on food packages, sugar-free, margarine, and driving 23 miles to buy gasoline over there because it is 2 cents per gallon cheaper.

Any government programme designed to help anybody; 94% of the time the programme winds up morphing into some kind of monster. Then liberals and do-gooders will propose another programme, twice as costly, to cure the ills caused by the first cure-all.

Officiousness, and the term "non-profit", as if there is some kind of moral superiority in the failure to produce wealth.

Physical abuse of an animal, an extraterrestrial, a child, slave, woman, or anything like a tractor or power tool, firearm, sewing machine, or an auto, etc.
Loud and/or sharp noises, especially when such noises have no particular purpose.

Wasting anything, from paper towels to Clorox to cake and cookie batter...anything. And....waiting in a line.