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It’s easy to be obnoxious, in fact having your whole lifestyle be obnoxious is not a hard thing to do. You can be annoying for a minute, an hour, a day or forever. You might have some kind of high and mighty ideals about how you personally never annoy people. But let’s face it. You’ve already annoyed someone. It’s impossible to avoid. Just talking about something you view as normal, or living in general is going to annoy someone. So give in, give up your moral highground, splash around in the mud and why not piss some people off while you’re at it. It’s fun, it’s stress-relieving, and best of all, it’s a good way to get back at the people that annoy you!

Now that we have come to the conclusion that you are a jerk (along with the rest of us, don't worry, I mean it in the best possible way) you probably want to know what all exactly you need to be obnoxious. One of the myriad benefits of annoying other people is that any props you might need are cheap and easy to obtain. For example, any writing utensil you already have, little bits of paper or other debris, your body, or your voice. In fact you don't really even need any props to be annoying. All of the equipment you really need has already been provided to you by the creator, or evolution or whatever you believe in.

I am now going to go off on a tangent, which some of you out there in my audience may find annoying but which will teach you a valuable lesson regarding the art of annoying people. The lesson: Not to care what other people find annoying and/or to enjoy the fact that they are annoyed. Now, after that digression from my tangent I'll get back to digressing. Scary thought: The idea that some kind of all-powerful being equipped us with the ability to drive our fellow beings insane to no purpose at all. You might want to argue that he gave us our particular body parts for a very different purpose than annoying people and that we are abusing the specialized tools he gave us for other things- but you would be wrong. I say this simply because many of my readers will find it extremely aggravating and therefore annoying. Scary thought number two: That evolution has given us the ability to annoy others. From which you can argue that annoying others is an important part of surviving as a human being. Think about it, you have tri-jointed fingers which are ideally suited to tapping incessantly on flat surfaces because, obviously, this was essential to the survival of your ancestors. Before you say it; no, it is not possible that the amazingness of our tri-jointed fingers is meant to do something other than tap incessantly to annoy others.

Alright, after having acquired (or not, as the case may be) the necessary items for annoying people you are now ready to start. Firstly you should probably have some kind of motivation. A few different motivators you might consider are hate (I personally enjoy this as a motivator especially the unfounded variety, I find it has a nice, rich flavor with undertones of oak and nuances of toast), boredom (I don't especially like this as a motivator as it could certainly be cured by something other than annoying others where as hate is probably best satisfied by annoying others as opposed to getting what that awful survey would know are the easily accessible guns in my parents closet and shooting people), love, indifference and competition.

Now that you have some motivation you'll probably want to have a target. Of course your motivation might make your target obvious. If you hate someone you probably want to let them know by annoying them as much as physically possible. I have noted that when two people are having a so-called 'annoyance competition' (or at least that's what I hope to god they are doing because if there is no reason I will be forced to kill them) you do not want to be in the same room as the two of them at once because they will do their damndest to annoy everyone in the room- you should do this as well. For love, boredom, and indifference it's probably best to go for a general audience of whoever happens to be around as in the first case you probably don't want your love interest to know and in the latter two it just doesn't really matter.

After having chosen your target it's a good idea to consider how you want to annoy them. I usually go in for a roughly four-step process. Being as I have vast experience with being annoyed by other people I can be fairly certain I know most of the major things that annoy me. Now that I want to be the antagonist I can turn around and use my list of annoying things to annoy others. Of course you have to weed out the things that are personal to you. For example, the posture of someone in the chair in front of you in class is not so likely to repulse a more general audience. The next thing to do is to narrow the list down further to things that are easy to do/ slash available to you where you are. Of course if you're going for the whole being obnoxious out of hate you can feel free to become more obsessive elaborate in your endeavors and include as many props as you want. On the other hand, if you are simply doing this out of boredom or whatever there's no need to be elaborate. Now choose from your list of annoying, easy-to-do, and viable options for how you will annoy those around you. You may want to choose a few different options in case the one you have chosen is not appropriate for your intended audience or does not seem to be having the desired effect.

A classic effort to annoy others is tapping on every available surface. Sometimes getting a rhythm going is a effect but even more effective is to tap as randomly as possible on the premise that things with rhythm are easier to tune out. I also like to vary the surfaces on which I tap because, for example, tapping on the metal filing cabinet next to me is far louder and therefore more obnoxious than tapping on, say, the solid resin desk in front of me. You could then move on to deliberately humming songs that will remain lodged in the listeners brain such as "Jingle Bells", "The song that never ends", "Mr. Roboto", "The song that gets on everybody's nerves", etc. You could combine categories and hum "Jingle Bells" (insert "The Mahna Mahna Song" or another appropriate song if it happens to be anytime between Thanksgiving and New Years) while tapping randomly or in any other rhythm than the one that actually song you're humming. When forced to speak, add "in accordance with the Prophecy" to the end of all statements.

After a good ten, fifteen minutes if no one is yelling at you- you're not doing a good enough job. In this situation you should re-evaluate your technique. For example, if you are doing all the things suggested above you should probably conclude that, in all probability, your intended targets are, in fact, deaf. You will now have to go in for some non-auditory annoyances. Begin by taking apart your pen and then "accidentally" flinging the ink cartridge across the room at the person wearing the lightest color shirt, preferably someone of the female variety as they will be far more affected by this form of annoyance than say, someone of what would generally be regarded as the male variety. Next, take out your spray-able scent of choice and give the area around you several odiferous blasts. Repeat aproximately every five minutes. Use your watch to time yourself and poke nearest deaf person exactly every two and a half minutes, saying the word poke as you poke just in case they are not deaf.

If your audience is not deaf then combining humming, tapping, and 'in accordance with the prophesy' should be more than effective. If you had to resort to ink-flinging, perfume, and light-shining then that combination of things should probably be fairly annoying as well. The formula should go a lot like this:

{{on press; do hum jingle bells; do tap; do add "in accordance with the prophecy" to all statements}
if true: no reaction {do fling ink; do spray cologne; do shine light}
if true: yelling {do repeat}
if true: yelling {do repeat}
if true: yelling {do repeat}
if true: yelling {do repeat}
if true: yelling {do repeat}
if true: yelling {do repeat}
if true: yelling {do loop to beginning}
}

The purpose of the section above this statement was simply to annoy you because well... no actually there wasn't a reason.

And now for something complete different! Oh, wait, that's been done. Nevermind then. I guess I'll just kinda be done now. Oh, wait. Conclusion. I need a conclusion. That's kind of a funny word. Conclusion. Conclusion. Conclusion. Conclusion. Cohn-clewww-shuuuun! So, I hope to have taught you two things through this essay. One is how to annoy people and that it's fun, easy and stress-relieving. Two is how a straw works. Oh, wait. That was something different. Never mind, in accordance with the prophecy.