People aren’t happy today unless they’re angry. The more we seethe, the more invigorated we feel.

From a box of doughnuts, which you didn’t buy in the first place, someone else snatches the Boston cream that your taste buds demanded. Why quietly settle for the chocolate sprinkles when instead you can sidle up to everyone else in the office and snarl venom about “some people” who hold no consideration for the righteous preferences of others?

That’s how we make friends today — we bond over the situations and suckers who irritate the ever-lovin’ snot out of us.

Allow me, dear friend, to shroud myself in my cloak of irascibility and vent.

• I am furious that I received a text message that my Netflix subscription is expiring and that I’ll be locked out if I don’t click this link TODAY to pay up! It’s an outrage!

I would have been more upset if I had had a Netflix subscription in the first place. The effrontery to kick me out of a club I never belonged to really grinds my gears.

• I’ve had it with crotchety old men bemoaning the good old days. Listen, geezer, I WAS THERE! Clean your rose-colored granny glasses.

When I fell off my bike, my parents refused to sue anyone! Instead, Mom slathered my scraped knee with liquid fire called mercurochrome (which since has been banned in all 50 states). Dad barked, “Walk it off. Stop being a baby,” and went back to removing a gas tank with a cutting torch.

No one cared about your right to entitlement in the “good old days,” and coddling hadn’t been invented yet. Can you imagine that kind of behavior being tolerated today?

• Abuse one more apostrophe and you’ll be blistered by a writer’s wrath like you’ve never endured.

Listen up, you thick-headed Neanderthals, an apostrophe does not make anything plural! Cut it out! O’r I’ll’ st’art slam’ming in’approp’riate apos’trophe’s al’l ov’er th’e pla’ce’! Got it? Good. (Was I too gentle on that one?)

• I am up to here that someone sent me a note that “it may be that your sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others.”

Oh, like said others couldn’t be forewarned by studying other bozos? It’s an injustice to single out my incompetence. If my purpose is to serve others, what are the others here for?

• Is there anything as senseless as sensible eating?

My wife, a well-meaning, intelligent woman, actually packs raw carrots and cucumber slices in my lunch. No, I’m serious. She does!

I am beyond enraged that anyone who claims to love me commits such a deed during Christmas candy and cookies season.

• It is completely maddening how all my clothes shrink in the wash. The washer and dryer irk my dander something fierce.

My wife proposes a different theory on why my shirts grow tight, but it has nothing to do with the laundry and therefore should be disregarded. In fact, what she suggests swells me in fiery indignation. (My wife also holds another theory about what causes those button-popping bulges. I tell you, the woman, her theories and celery stalks are insufferable.)

Wow, this anger thing is pretty awesome. I’m so much happier vexed, huffy and otherwise ill-tempered. Now everyone will flock to me to thrill at my every rant of indignity.

Hey, where’s everyone going? I’m not done spreading ferocious cheer. Oh, and get off my lawn!

• Vent at burtseyeview@tribtoday.com, the Burton W. Cole page on Facebook or at www.burtonwcole.com.