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Peeves


I don’t have pet peeves; I have whole kennels of irritation.
~ Whoopi Goldberg (1955-11-13 age:62)

Pet Peeves

Peeves are personal irritations out of proportion to the provocation. Here are mine.
  1. Wall to wall Christmas music the whole month of December, on the radio, in the stores.
  2. If anyone says either narrative or moving forward, my ears have an overwhelming urge to flap closed.
  3. Breweries

    To me a brewery smells like a beach littered with dead wildlife. Beer smells like a clogged sink crossed with a clogged toilet. It absolutely baffles me how many people like these odours. Perhaps they would eat dog feces too if they were laced with ethanol.

  4. Country music

    It all sounds the same. It is so phony, people faking stupidity, hillbilly accents and mindless hillbilly concerns. In particular, I hate Canadian country music where well-educated Canadians mimic the way uneducated American southerners speak. The songs are mindlessly repetitive. The performers pretend to be drunks who engage only in abusive relationships. It is just so phony.
  5. Ardent Christians

    Other than people who kill, torture and maim children, the people I find most repulsive are ardent Christians. Everything about the religion is revolting. To start, its bible is almost completely false. It is a giant multi-generational con, where charlatans bilk money out of the poor, ignorant and gullible with kitschy magic trinkets and hollow promises. It teaches intolerance and wilful ignorance as virtues. It is an institution whose primary purpose is physical, sexual and mental child abuse. It a celebration of stupidity. Then there is the irrational homophobia and the persecution of gays. Even its music is treacle (except classical and black gospel). This goes well beyond a peeve. It is white hot fury. I would like Christianity to vanish from the face of the earth. People should be kind to each other, not just pretend to be one day of the year. Christianity is like tobacco, filthy but addictive. It exploits every human failing.
  6. Spammers

    including email and newsgroup spam.
  7. Touch screens you have to whack hard to make them pay attention.
  8. Music made up of a single phrase repeated endlessly without variation.
  9. A Tribe Called Red. They are indescribably awful like cats being tortured. I created a genre for them I call gitmo.
  10. Vocal frying. Often affected by teenage females. They use a low pitch fracking register. The net effect is like some octogenarian dying of throat cancer. It is often combined with emphasising and elongating random syllables. These affections have now reached 30 year olds. I can barely stand to listen to an under thirty females on the radio.
  11. Sloppy pronunciation

    Defence

    As a poet, there is only one political duty and that is to defend one’s language from corruption.
    ~ Wystan Hugh Auden (1907-02-21 1973-09-29 age:66)

    This was my Mom’s biggie too, so I came by it honestly. Speech is for clear communication. The rules of pronunciation are arbitrary and there is no reason they should not change but changes should enhance intelligibility and they should not create exceptions to phonetic spelling without valid justification. As English becomes the world international language, it is especially important to work toward standard pronunciation with as close a match between written and verbal forms. When people pronounce sloppily, dropping or changing letters, they are attempting to evolve the language in the opposite direction into incompatible regional dialects, with ever more complex pronunciation rules. I think one should endeavour to enunciate clearly. In particular, errors in pronunciation that make English even less than phonetic that it already is grate. Shifting vowels slightly cause no problem, but dropping letters or collapsing two letters onto the same sound does. Perhaps when people are just learning to speak they mispronounce words and parents encourage them to err because they think it cute. Some of the common errors that set my teeth on edge include:

  12. People who talk through their nose, especially when they elongate random words, especially when they affect boredom or contempt.
  13. Websites that solicit comments from the public, that demand authors use an ad-hoc, hare-brained, proprietary markup language instead of HTML (Hypertext Markup Language).
  14. Using the word inform as a generic meaningless verb, or to mean influence rather meaning to provide information.
  15. Pantene model Maria Menounos’ voice

    It makes my ears bleed. It is the audio equivalent of gum chewing with your mouth open. She is beautiful to look at but excruciating to listen to.
  16. Reality TV

    These are boring, cheaply made and taking over. I mean shows like Celebrity Dumpster Diving, Closeout Shoe Sale, The Biggest Garage Sale In The World, World’s Filthiest Bathroom, Let’s Paint That Fence, Trash Talk Yo Mamma, Bimbo Pajama Party, Competitive Lawn Mowing, Christian Drug Dealer, Tail that Whore, Breaking Stuff, Blowing Stuff Up, Killing Things, Tupperware Party, Let’s Bully Some Poor Blacks…
  17. Dodge Truck voice

    The Dodge truck announcer sounds as if he has a cold. He sounds like a little boy trying to sound big and tough by running his voice through a frequency shifter. He reeks inauthenticity.
  18. Nutrisystem spokesperson Marie Osmond’s voice

    could be used to pulverise concrete. She goes out of her way to butcher the pronunciation of nearly every word.
  19. Irregular Spelling

    Spelling requires memorisation. It should be phonetic. Modify the pronunciation to fit the spelling or vice versa. Failing that at least be consistent, e.g. According to the Oxford dictionary the proper spelling is: erasable, writable but rechargeable, replaceable.
  20. Online stores

    Online stores refuse to tell you that they will not ship to Canada, do not take PayPal, only sell to businesses… only after you have filled your shopping cart and filled out your billing and shipping data. They gain nothing by this. It is pure spite.

  21. Commercials

    I detect nearly all commercials. There are a few exceptions such as the brilliant, original delights from J.G. Wentworth, Geiko and Hyundai Sonata. The problem is primarily the lies, general phoniness, non-sequiturs and deception. The mindless repetitive proto-music drives me nuts. The deliberate mangling of grammar and pronunciation tempts me to go postal. The actors behave in ways that would tempt murder with their grossness, mindless fretting and petty concerns if we encountered each other in person. Commercials for lipstick, hair dye and cosmetics are extremely obnoxious because the models mindlessly screech, primp, flounce and sneer contemptuously, as if to say I’m beautiful and you’re not. I can’t stand the women with those pneumatic collagen lips that look like a twitching hemorrhoidal anus. Truck commercials are even more obnoxious with the implication that trashing the environment in a truck proves how much testosterone you have. They are so silly like little boys playing tough by faking deep voices.
  22. The growling accent

    Affected by young women in commercial such as Dr. Scholl’s flats and Serta iComfort mattresses. A variant is the raspy throat cancer accent, which, I think is supposed to be perceived as sexy.
  23. The Manic Loon

    airhead who shrieks in Clairol Nice ’n Easy commercials.
  24. The Mud Lady

    airhead conceited bitch in the Swiffer commercials. I have many a time fantasised her untimely end.
  25. Depictions of women

    especially in commercials. They are almost always depicted as stupid, or pretending to be stupid, obsessed with trivia, with a moth-like attraction for shoes and clothes. I could not stand to be alone in room with such a person. Why do straight males find these idiotic mannequins appealing?
  26. Room mate

    My biggest peeve with my roommate is repackaging partly used comestibles in small unlabeled containers squirreled away randomly somewhere in the kitchen wherever there is room never to be used again.
  27. Grammatical errors

    Some of the common errors that grate include:

  28. Baby talk

    between strangers, e.g. i wanna and gimme. I have no problem with it between lovers who create a bond with special pair-only vocabulary. I cringe every time I see that word wanna in the newsgroups. The police once sent me a man who was molesting his 10 year old son to see if I could talk him out of it. No matter what I said, he just whined, but I wanna. He had the emotional age of a 4 year old. Katy Perry affects an infantile idiot way of speaking as do perhaps 10% of women under 30.
  29. TextSpeak

    when not cellphone texting.
  30. Ambiguity Denial

    When I write to an author, perhaps of a computer program, a website, or a map explaining that some of his wording is ambiguous and his hence confusing, with suggested clear wording, 90% of the time they write back and tell me what they intended, (which I already figured out) and leave it at that. What is more upsetting is they assert that the original wording is perfectly clear (if you look at it in some idiosyncratic light). I try to explain that the reader, not the writer, is the expert on what is confusing. Sometimes they point out I am the only one who wrote to complain. They see this as an indicator of my stupidity not that other people presumed the author was too clueless and sloppy to bother with.
  31. Death Denial

    The use of vocabulary than tries to pretend people don’t die, e.g. at peace, bit the big one, bit the dust, burning in hell, checked in to the Hotel California, climbed the golden staircase, crossed over, crossed the bar, departed, eternal rest, expired, fallen, gave up the ghost, gone away, gone to another plane of existence, gone to the unknown country, gone to be with Jesus, gone to heaven, gone, got his halo, had a good death, had a peaceful death, has left the building, he cashed in his chips, his body wore out, his heart gave out, in eternal sleep, is enjoying eternal rest, is in paradise, is in the loving arms of Jesus, is with Jesus, kicked the bucket, laid to rest, late (as in the late Fred Phelps), left his body, left this earth, met his maker, no longer with us (this one is accurate), passed (like a kidney stone in the urethra of life), passed away, passed on, passed over, passing, paid his debt to nature, pushing up daisies, R.I.P., reached the end of the line, rest in peace, rests in eternal peace, returned to dust, rode off into the sunset, shuffled off this mortal coil, was taken, we lost him, went the way of all flesh, went to meet his maker…
  32. TV Interviewers

    who refer to distinguished female guests much older than they are as you guys
  33. Christians

    especially ones who try to convince me of their crackpot ideas by claiming God spoke to them personally.
  34. Christians who thank god

    when they win an athletic, talent or beauty contest, as if God were petty enough to rig these trivial contests, play favourites and pick vain twits like them for special favour. Those that survive a tornado and thank their god for killing their neighbours but sparing them make me sick.
  35. People who claim they have no personal responsibility

    for their military actions.
  36. People who litter

  37. Fake Texans

    Singers who pretend to be illiterate Texans.
  38. ATVs (All Terrain Vehicles)

    ATVs, motorcycles, SUVs (Sport Utility Vehicles), outboard motors etc. in wilderness areas.
  39. Gave His Life

    People who claim a serial killer who went to the middle east to hunt and rape children gave his life when some parent puts a stop to his crimes. The expression only applies when you take a severe risk for a noble cause and are killed. That soldier took only minimal risk and his cause was personal sadistic pleasure. His actions in no way protected the lives of anyone but his fellow war criminals.
  40. Corporate Liars

    Corporations that tell outrageous lies even when they are caught, e.g. FOX and Shaw.
  41. Car ads

    that convince people to buy overpowered, oversized cars and/or to drive dangerously.
  42. Republicans

    They work for destruction of the environment, taking from the poor to give to the rich and more war. They are all criminally insane.
  43. HTML Syntax Errors

    websites that contain HTML syntax errors so that only Internet Explorer works with them.
  44. Humbled

    I gag when somebody says I am humbled to receive this prestigious award/appointment. No they aren’t! They are humbled when a 8-year old child knows more about how to use computer than they do. They are humbled when they can’s persuade an ATM (Automated Teller Machine) to give them some cash. They are humbled when they can’t figure out how to fasten their seatbelt. Receiving a prestigious award is the exact opposite. It is a first class ego stroking.
  45. Songs Promoting Gambling

    Frank Sinatra singing Luck Be a Lady Tonight is probably my least favourite song.
  46. People who confuse hung (possessing a large penis) with hanged (executed by rope).
  47. Barney the Dinosaur

    stupefying entertainment for children that insults their intelligence and seeks to destroy their musical taste. It teaches children, male and female, to behave like airhead valley girls even before they can walk.
  48. People who call hamburgers sandwiches

  49. People who Lard their Speech with Fillers

    such as: and, and stuff, as it will, at the end of the day, basically, big in size, eh, cruel in nature, honestly, I mean, if you will, in nature, like, literally, lot of, move forward, perfect storm, really, red in colour, step up to the plate, to be honest, to tell the truth, yeah, yes, you know, you know what I mean, you know what I’m saying, uh, um, very. For example, Gary Kasparov, the chess master, inserts the phrase you know at least three times into every sentence. It is so distracting, I have not a clue what he is talking about. All he would have to do is remove that one phrase from his vocabulary, and he would overnight become coherent.
  50. Ritual Language

    It bugs me when caller after caller takes time out at the beginning of each call in a radio phone in show to request after the health of the host, and to volunteer they are fine, even if they sound at death’s door.

  51. Creationists

    Creationists repeat the same lies over and over.

  52. Deliberate Misuse of Language

    Propagandists who apply the terms such as terrorist and insurgent to those they wish to tar, even when the terms don’t even remotely apply, while refusing to apply the terms to themselves, even when the definitions fit precisely.
  53. Texas

    As a child I liked all things Texan, but as an adult, Texas has come to be associated with George W. Bush, his wars, bigotry toward gays, Muslims and Hispanics, the Tea Party, creationists and anti-environmentalism. Any time I hear that accent, I cringe.
  54. The Word Devastated

    It means wasted or ravaged. It does not mean humiliated, embarrassed, irritated, or angry.
  55. The Word Hoohah

    the battle cry of mindless bullies.
  56. Politicians who say Move Forward

    at least once every 15 seconds.
  57. The phrase One Child at a time

    This is nonsense since every school, hospital, camp etc. serves multiple children at once.
  58. People who use the word Challenge

    to mean catastrophe.
  59. People who say Simplistic

    when they mean simple, synchronicity when they mean synchronised.
  60. At the End of the Day

    People who start every second sentence with at the end of the day.
  61. The phrase Up To

    as in guaranteed you will lose up to ten pounds. This weasel phrase sounds as if it were making a commitment, but it actually promises nothing.
  62. The phrase Fighting a Fish

    There is no way a fish on the end of a line can harm the angler. It should be called tormenting a fish.
  63. Percent

    People who claim they are 100% certain of something, usually a very dubious assertion, or that they give 110% effort in some athletic contest, a logical impossibility.
  64. Combustion engines

    I could spit that we are still using 19th century combustion engines that waste fuel, pollute the air and make unnecessary noise. The people who really burn me up are those drive deliberately noisy, oversized or polluting cars and motorcycles, or who take powered vehicles into wilderness areas. They have the same fuck-you attitude as cigar smokers who enjoy stinking up entire city blocks just to annoy people. Another in the class are those that decorate large rocks with chewing gum.
  65. Fashion

    I don’t like fashion because it elevates the unimportant to life-consuming. I don’t like it because it encourages discarding perfectly good clothes. It is the pinnacle of consume/discard anti-environmental culture. To me clothes are old friends. I hate it when they die. If I had my way, clothes would last a lifetime.
  66. Country Music

    with its phony cowboys, phony accents, phony costumes, phony sentiments, phony stories and monotonously similar melodies.
  67. Planned Obsolescence

    Makers of computer peripherals that stop working long before the equipment fails because they don’t update their drivers.
  68. Intros

    introductions to songs that play the same few notes over and over and over without any variation.
  69. Telus

    that sells cellphones and cellphone plans that don’t let you make or receive calls. That is a bit like new selling cars that don’t actually move. You are supposed to just sit in them and press the buttons.
  70. Deceptive Containers

    that are only ½ full — Verbatim DVD (Digital Video Disc) s, cereal, coffee powder, Maple Leaf roasts (only about 1/5 full). Astro yogurt underfills the containers by 3 cm to try to fool you into thinking you will get more than you do. They excuse themselves by claiming what they are doing is legal, since they sell by weight. It is still a deliberate attempt to deceive. Further, it is anti-environmental to use more packaging than necessary.
  71. The Franklin Mint

    which is always trying to peddle medallions by tricking their customers into thinking they are legitimate currency.
  72. I am Humbled

    People who claim that winning an award humbled them. Losing humbles you. Winning is an ego trip.
  73. Junk

    TV shows about people buying, selling or burying themselves in junk.
  74. Cops

    Reality TV shows about police who break into black people’s houses and abuse and bully them.
  75. Cash back

    What an idiotic incentive to buy! Why bother paying money only to have some of it refunded? It just makes you pay more sales tax. For an item like a car, it just makes you borrow more money and pay interest on it. In small items the cash back is 90% of the time a fraud. No money comes back in the mail, or comes back 6 months later or they claim the offer expired, or just ignore the request. Cash back jerks you around making you send a letter with sales slips, proof of purchase etc. etc. — all manner of hassle and delay. Just lower the damn price!
  76. New Car Dealers

    who offer free oil changes for X years, only to discover they replace your oil with oil that costs 5 times as much as the going rate and forgoing these free changes invalidates your warranty.
  77. Super market member cards

    People willing to give their name, address, phone number etc. get a card that gives them a discount on certain items. This just slows down lines as customers fish for debit and supermarket cards. It takes extra processing thus raising the prices. It makes it harder to verify the checkout receipt. Just lower the damn prices!
  78. Coupons

    Some inconsiderate woman will hold up the supermarket line with a fist full of coupons, each of which much be individually manually checked for expiry, conditions etc. Coupons increase prices. Just lower the damn prices!
  79. Commercials

    Some commercials seem cleverly crafted to be maximally annoying such as Swiffer’s that turn mops into sex objects, Drew Barymore Cover Girl Cosmetic where she gloats, Nice N Easy Hair colour and the insane woman with fingernails on a blackboard voice, Katy Perry for Proactive, Nationwide Insurance. Commercials often accurately the depict the utter vacuuousness of modern corporate-controlled life. I also find irritating those gravelly voices that try to convince young men if they spend sufficiently on a truck no one will notice what tiny penises they have. I write the companies to no avail. Some commercials tickle me, particularly J.G. Wentworth, Geiko and sometimes Campbell’s soups.
  80. Voices

    I react to some voices with primal pain. I just have to get away. Some of them include: Nelly Furtado, Meredith Warren (pronounced wur-ennnn) and Katy Perry.
  81. No Payment for two years

    This jacks up the price of the goods for everyone by the interest cost of borrowing the purchase price without repayments for two years. Nobody needs a loan like that. It is unfair to people who want to pay cash or pay off the furniture or TV in six months. I won’t buy anything from a store that offers this silliness.
  82. Ad Hominem Addicts

    people who, in debating a point, spend 90% of their time insulting, attacking and humiliating their opponent. They have no points to defend their stance, so they try to win by intimidation.
  83. You are not my Mother

    People, usually conservative Christians, who imagine they have the right to act as my parents even though I am 70 years old by controlling what I should read, what movies I should attend, whom I should have sex with, what religious beliefs I should subscribe to and what I should wear. Surely I am as qualified as they to make those decisions for myself.
  84. Fathers who make their children address them as Sir

    Who do they think they are? Sir Paul McCartney? a drill sergeant? Doing that bullies children into unconditional, unquestioning obedience and surrender. That sort of treatment conditions children to accept physical and sexual abuse as their natural lot. It brainwashes them to consider themselves inferior and impotent to have any effect on the world.
  85. Programs that sneakily try to Install unrelated programs

    as part of the install.
  86. People who claim they are Lucky

    when a natural disaster befalls them, but they did not die. Or those that thank god when dozens perished but they did not, as if they deserved life but the others did not.
  87. American

    Politicians who use the word American at least twice in every sentence.
  88. Background Music

    Commercials use maddeningly inane music in the background, usually about 5 notes, repeated over and over. Apple is even worse, pounding the same note over and over.
  89. Drew Barymore

    This woman makes my skin crawl. She is spoiled, simpering, conceited, condescending, shallow, concerned with trivia. She embodies almost all the possible female vices in one body.
  90. Toenails

    People who display their deformed toenails in public, especially when they paint them in garish colours to draw attention to them.
  91. Tattoos

    I can’t believe how bad the tattoos people get for themselves, randomly chosen, crudely-drawn, randomly placed, meaningless symbols. They make people look brain-damaged.
  92. Origins

    Europe’s Best frozen berries are grown in Chile. Belgian chocolate made in Canada. Canadian bacon from Iowa. Souvenirs of Canada from China.
  93. Least Favourite People

    Here are the people I wish most fervently had never been born:
    1. Dick Cheney
    2. George W. Bush
    3. Stephen Harper
    4. The Koch Brothers
    5. Rush Limbaugh
    6. Robert Mugabe
    7. John Boehner
    8. Rick Santorum
    9. Rick Perry
    10. Michele Bachmann
    11. Glenn Beck
    12. Adolph Hitler
    13. King Henry VIII
    14. Scott Roeder
    15. Bill Vander Zalm
    16. Ronald Reagan
    17. Binyamin Netanyahu
    18. Donald J. Trump
    19. Others
    It is astounding how much misery these individuals were able to create with their blind ambition and wilful stupidity.
  94. Forms

    Fill in the blanks form have set data entry back to prior to the invention of the punch card. The most infuriating forms complain about some picky mechanically-correctable problem, then erase the whole form or large parts of it. Some complain and about ( - or space in phone numbers arbitrarily, either they want them on they don’t. For heaven sake, it takes only a couple of lines of code to remove them. Forms that ask for a date but give clue to the order of the year, month and day fields. There should be no need for name and address forms, only hitting a button to send a business card in standard format.
  95. George Gershwin. I have disliked his music ever since I was a preschooler. He is like some little brat who loudly shouts the same words (cheap little theme) over and over.
  96. Uninterests

    These are not peeves, just things I have no interest in. I find it odd that others find them fascinating.

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