You'd think this one would be easy...

Today I have to find a picture of something I hate. You can see why I held off from doing this for Valentine's Day yesterday (By the way, I got the most awesome Valentine's Day gift ever- a professional knife sharpening station, which is almost as cool as ninja stars and a DIY sodium thiopental chemistry set).

Back to today: I had a hard time narrowing this one down. My list is extensive. Things I hate include (but are not limited to):
bad drivers
willful ignorance
whining
morons
any animal with more than four legs
rapists
spiders (they deserve their own category of evil)
the Fox television network for canceling Firefly (among other things)
people not doing their fair share of work
insomnia
peoples who cant rite english 2 good
cheaters
allergies
natto
people who complain about all the things they hate... ;-)

I thought that natto deserved the picture of the day. I hate natto. Natto (pronounced naht-toe) is Japanese fermented soy beans with the consistency of sick snot and the smell of rotting garbage. It comes in convenient easy-open snack packs with hot mustard and soy sauce. I suppose putting spicy mustard and shoyu sauce on the foul stuff is meant to help your poor olfactory cavity drown out the assault on your taste buds, but the slick goo going down your throat will guarantee that successful consumption won't last long.

Japanese assume that foreigners can't do anything "Japanese" well. Just go to Japan and use chopsticks correctly, perhaps say "thank you" halfway decently, and you will almost certainly get a standing ovation. Try natto? You're an instant celebrity.

This happened to me in the church dorm I lived in. One of the women was eating natto and asked if I wanted to try some. Not one to back down from a challenge, I told her I was willing. I took a bite. It wasn't bad. Of course, I had no idea it was choked in mustard and shoyu. I even went to the grocery store and bought a 3-pack (mostly to eat it in the communal kitchen and show everyone that, yes, an American CAN eat and even enjoy Japanese food, even disgusting ones). There were serious flaws in my logic.

So I opened the first pack of natto one morning. I added the condiments and took a bite. Ugh. I smiled bravely, choked down most of it, and discretely threw the rest away when no one was looking.

Two mornings later I was ready to have another go. This time even the smell of the stuff made me retch. Into the trash it went. I gave the last pack to the woman who first introduced me to it.

The Japanese claim that natto keeps you looking young, kind of like Botox for your intestines. You want to skip the natto and stick to regular exercise and chemical injections. Trust me on this.