Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Pet Peeves

A. Please don't take this too seriously.
B. These are in no order. Here we go.

1. Not giving turn signals. Especially when the drivers are coming at me from the opposite direction and we're at a stoplight or stop street. And then turning left, nearly colliding with me as I try to go forward.

2. Smoking in the air I breathe. (I'm a recovering alcoholic but I am a reformed smoker. Oh do I wax sanctimonious about the kind of thoughtless behavior that I indulged in all those years.)

3. Caviling about no-smoking laws as an infringement of the "right" of people to smoke in the air others breathe.

4. Yawning without covering one's mouth.

5. Drinking beer from a bottle. We've got the Europeans doing it now. (We've got the English saying "ass" instead of "arse" and the French eating Big Macs and the Germans listening to atrocious music. That last is OK just as long as they don't listen to and sing along with the "Horst Wessel Song" (atrocious and a pretext for genocide).

6. TV commercials for prescription drugs, ranging from those for ED (look it up) to urinary incontinence to the little cartoon gremlins representing foot fungus, mucus, and migraine pain. (The cartoon characters are at least an improvement upon the actors reciting side-effects of the drugs. Give me more of the elephant dancing to "Singin' in the Rain"!)

7. Talking on cell phones in cars (especially SUVs) and public buildings.

8. SUVs.

9. Blog comments full of grammatical, spelling, and typographical errors. (Nothing said about errors of fact.)

10. Buzz words and catch phrases as substitution for clear thinking, reasoned argument, and fresh speech. Here are a few (again, in no order):
a. "It's right out of ...'s playbook."
b. "...on a slippery slope"
c. "...within the parameters" (especially when the speaker means "perimeter," i.e. boundaries)
d. "arguably (the best, etc.)" (You can make a cogent argument that it's the best? Or that it's easily disputed?")
e. "That's history"
f. "That's a no-brainer"
g. "That's a slam-dunk"
h. "win in Iraq" = "stay the course" = "don't cut and run"
i. "No problem."

11. People sitting in their recliners pontificating about everything and using the internet for broadcasting their bulls.*

Have a nice day! Be adequite! (This was written with my blackbury jam while I was tird and in a hurry to meat my fans.)

This list was not meant to be exhaustive.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

My personal dislike is "Have a good one". Now, if you were a gas station attendant, as I once was, and I were on the way to the restroom, that would be funny. Otherwise, a good what?

JT Evans said...

Then when you come back they say, "Everything come out all right?"