Breaking The Annoyance Barrier

There’s a chick who works here who almost never shuts up. Throughout my time here I’ve noticed this, but it just hasn’t registered deeply enough in my consciousness to bother me in the way that some of the other people who never shut up annoy me.
That is until Scott pointed out how annoying she is and how she never shuts up. Now I can’t help but notice. In fact, I have difficulty thinking about anything else.
I really appreciate him pointing it out, because as we all know, there aren’t nearly enough things in life that annoy the living shit out of me.
It doesn’t help matters any that yesterday someone else who never shuts up finally broke the Annoyance Barrier.
This is the barrier that I put up between myself and the world, a sort of force field that shuts things out. Once something breaks through, though, the Barrier serves to trap it inside, where I can’t help but notice it, and, in fact my senses will actually seek it out in much the same fashion that one pokes and prods at a sore tooth with his or her tongue.
What helped this particular person finally force his way through wasn’t just the fact that he talks incessantly and seems to be a self-proclaimed expert on everything, it’s the fact that he frequently pauses and lets out a loud and lengthy “Ummmmm....” as he collects his thoughts in order to begin another assault on my consciousness.
What makes it more annoying is that it isn’t really an “Um” sound; it’s this deep, frog-like “Ohm” sound.
It actually kind of reminds me of Nicole Sullivan’s character on Mad TV when she and Debra Wilson would play those Hispanic girls.
Anyway, that was what pushed him through, and now his voice has been added to the cacophony of endless inane chatter that hangs in the air like white noise, only instead of being soothing, it drives me up the fucking wall.
*Sigh*

New Useless Ability Department:
The walls in the various hallways here at work are usually adorned with movie posters which periodically get replaced with more current posters as time passes.
Yesterday I mentioned to someone that it was about time they put up some new posters, as most of them were for movies from last summer.
Sometime later I was heading to the bathroom and saw some people taking down the old posters and putting up new ones.
So the question that came to mind was, is this a demonstration of some new lame ability to predict the future, like my ability to predict which episode of The Simpsons will be on (Usually my oracular abilities in this regard manifest in me reciting a line from the show and then finding that that the next time I watch The Simpsons the episode the line came from is on. It’s rather uncanny, if less than useful.), a new ability to actually influence the future (Like my apparently lost ability to make my car’s “Check Engine” light come on just by thinking about how it isn’t on..), or is it, you know, just a coincidence?
Nah, it couldn’t be a coincidence. I mean, if it is some sort of supernatural ability, it would be just lame enough to be one that I would possess, and I will take a supernatural explanation over the more likely coincidence explanation if said supernatural explanation tends to add to my overall lameness.
I attempted to see if this newfound ability to either predict or influence the future could be put to non-lame use by saying to myself, “It’s about time that I go home to find Jessica Simpson waiting for me wearing nothing but a whipped cream bikini,” before I left work.
Sadly, the ability only seems to extend to the posters, confirming my lameness.

This new shift is going to take some getting used to. I’m having difficulty, for example, accepting that today is Friday rather than Saturday.
Last night I woke up with a heavy feeling in my stomach that I managed to convince myself was merely hunger pains, thereby managing to get back to sleep. However, after I got up and had eaten something, the feeling hadn’t gone away and recognized it for what it was (I knew all along, but didn’t want to admit it, hence the “hunger pains” lie I told myself.): anxiety.
Anxiety about what, you ask? I have no idea, which is why it bothers me that I’m feeling it. If I knew what was bothering me I could deal with it (or ignore it, as the case may be), but when it’s just a vague feeling of impending doom, the anxiety actually worsens, as I begin to feel anxiety about feeling anxiety.
My best guess is that I’m just worried about what a pain in the ass next week is going to be, with having to get up early every day and deal with traffic, trying to learn stuff, and then, inevitably, failing the test.
Here’s hoping that’s all it is and that I’m not developing some non-lame ability to predict a future catastrophe…