Peeves
Today, in a fit of frustration, I decided to list all the peeves I could think of. It was a therapeutic exercise, I have to admit.
Judging by the first two words of most lines, though, I apparently hate people far worse than I'd thought.
Anyway, read. Laugh. Don't take any of these things too seriously (I promise I've never lost a friendship over bad grammar). And don't judge me too harshly, either. I don't qualify for curmudgeonship until at least age 55, I think, right?
People who abuse the words 'everybody', 'nobody', 'always', and 'never'. Everybody doesn't think so, and it's not always the case, so I never want to hear it again.
People who come to a complete stop before turning into a driveway.
People who get out of their car to pay a toll, or who have no money when they get there and just sit in the tollbooth, like a dollar will magically appear in the passenger seat after a minute or two. (I promise, nothing is going to eat your tires, people.)
People who say 'comprised of'. Yes I know, this includes most announcers on NPR, not to mention J.K. Rowling and nearly every news anchor alive. I don't care. They're all wrong. I may like them otherwise, but sometimes that makes it even harder to take when I hear that dreadful phrase all of a sudden. Comprised is not a fancier word for composed.
People who think the plural of 'penis' is 'peni'. I only thought it was funny the first time.
People who frequently make unnecessary rules to govern or justify their own behavior, and then break them like crazy (see 'always' above). "I never date friends." "I don't drink beer." "I never ever go out on weeknights." If you don't make up silly rules, you'll never find yourself breaking them in the first place — not to mention, I honestly don't care very much what you prefer to do most of the time, but it's only going to make you look like an ass to me if you tell me one thing and then turn around and do the other. Major Matt peeve. Watch out.
People who write 'would of', 'should of', or 'could of'. Apparently some people of no English skills.
People who feel compelled to give you the latest fictitious advice. Um, thanks for thinking about me, but perhaps you should do your research first? And what's with everyone's sick fixation with exploding cars and birds, anyway?
People who type 'your' instead of 'you're'. (Also applies to 'they're', 'their', and 'there'.)
People who don't use their turn signal, especially if you've been waiting on them for the full duration of a green light, or they nearly just remodeled your car during a hasty lane change.
People who make up gratuitous acronyms at every opportunity, otherwise known as PWMUGAAEO.
People who didactically correct someone who correctly used 'and me' in the objective case. Think the word 'and' has any influence over whether something is a subject or direct object? Maybe my foot will have an influence on your ass. If you don't know the right answer yourself, for Christ's sake don't go correcting other people, too. Last thing America needs is one more pompous ass promoting bad grammar.
On a similar note, people who think 'whom' is simply a more formal way to say 'who'. "Whom shall buy us the frosty beverages?" Um, no. Misuse of 'thou', 'thee', and 'thy' is covered under this one as well. If you can't figure out pronoun cases, at the very least stick to what sounds relatively normal until you can buy a grammar book and straighten yourself out.
People who make a healthy income but complain constantly about having no cash.
People who incessantly complain about their kids. You made the bastards — you deal with them. Not my problem.
People who don't manage their kids in public. Same principle applies.
People who talk to me in the bathroom. It's okay when I'm to the hand-washing stage of things, but peeing and talking at the same time is a dangerous endeavor, even if there weren't any privacy issues involved. And we're not even going to go there about people who don't wash their hands after using a public restroom. (Private restroom, not so bad, but at work — how many hands are you going to shake afterward? Ew.)
On that same bathroom topic, people who totally miss the toilet. How the hell does that happen? If you really feel the need to see what it would be like to pee all over the seat and the floor, at least wipe up after yourself.
People who never quite grasped that "no such thing as a free lunch" concept. Just because something claims to be free doesn't mean it appeared out of thin air at no cost to anyone, and even if it did, it's not a cue for you to prove what an enormous glutton you are by taking as much as you can grab.
People who have no concept of personal space. Enough said.
People who make excessive use of Air Quotes™.
People who coo instead of talk. Sounds strange at first, but you know what I'm talking about: "Ohhhhh, you look sooooooooo wonderfuuuuuuuuul. Oooooh myyyyy gooooood. It's just so good to seeeeeeeee yooooouuuuu." Ugh.
People who complain about feeling nauseous. Ironically, they're usually correct. Some dictionaries are starting to document the inverted definition as an acceptable usage, but, all language purity issues aside, who really wants to risk being interpreted as saying they induce others to throw up? I don't.
On that note, people who misuse the word 'ironic'. George Carlin explained this phenomenon far better than I ever could, so I'll leave it at that.
People who have no concept of quality vs. quantity. "Sure it's a great restaurant — it's all you can eat!" Same goes for discount food warehouses: "You know you could get 10 of those for the same price at Sir Save-A-Lot's!" Yeah, but unless I can get one of them for 10% of the price, it doesn't matter — one of me lives here, and I guarantee my cat can't put away 9 lbs of coffee before it goes stale.
People who use foreign phrases to sound uppity, but then misuse them, mispronounce them, or (most humorously, of course) spell them wrong. "Come see, come saw." "Aw revwar." "Danka shane." (Don't laugh — these are all real observations.)
Stickers. Especially the kind that don't peel off without leaving adhesive and paper pulp everywhere. Especially especially on food products (like that gross annoying little sticker on top of the Hormel microwave mac&cheese tub — hate it hate it hate it).
People who abuse the word 'literally'. "Oh my God, I literally died when I heard it." Thank heavens, because at least that's one less person in the world who doesn't know how to use the damn word correctly.
People who habitually use pronouns with no reference. "What did she tell you earlier?" You tell me who, and I'll be happy to tell you what. (Oddly, there seems to be a gender element here — my mom says things like this all the time, and nearly every girlfriend I've ever had did, too, but my guy friends don't seem to exhibit the problem. Perhaps guys just don't ask questions in the first place, though. I don't know.)
People who disable their idle indicators on AIM. I'm not entirely sure how people knowing you're not at your computer is much a breach of privacy (perhaps I'm missing something), but it definitely wastes my time when I have to ask you eight times, "Are you there yet? Are you there? Are you back? Hello?"
Pre-sweetened iced tea, particularly if it was a stealth attack (looked like perfectly normal iced tea until I put it into my mouth — jeez, yeah I could have died). Corollary: People who dump as many packages of sugar in their tea as they can manage. 1. Tea is not a soft drink. 2. Last I checked you're not The Fly. I hope. 3. Just order a damn soda.
People who mysteriously place quotes around the phrases 'please' and 'thank you', among other things. Yes, I just did it, but that's because I'm quoting them — who the hell are they quoting, though? Does that mean they don't really mean it, kind of like seeing "chicken" on the menu of a shady restaurant?
When people are paranoid about swearing, but they convey the message of it anyway. Granted I do this one a lot, too (usually in terms of censoring myself), but really, if you forget to make just one single "holy moly, jeez cripes, gosh darnit to heck" substitution, are you really going to H-E-doublehockeysticks? Only you can decide.
Somewhat akin to the last one, people who get the whole swearing vs. cursing thing mixed up. 'By golly' is a swear; 'holy shit, you greasy ass-bag' is not. What this distinction may mean in context of any person's individual interpretation of moral guidelines, I'm not sure.
Wall Wart AC adaptors. Seriously folks, are the big black honker things honestly that much cheaper to produce than the cords with the AC adaptor in the middle where it doesn't get in the way?
Popup ads and spam. Yeah, it's a cliche, but I'd hate to be mistaken for someone who likes them. Especially spam — just because email is not charged per document sent doesn't mean it should be abused.
People whose argument of last resort is circular logic. For example, when in a debate, they quote biblical scripture at an opponent to prove the existence of God (or quote one scripture to justify the truth of another one), or quote their own book or article to defend criticisms about it. If I considerd the bible an infallible reference material, we wouldn't have been having the argument to begin with. (By the way, I'm not an atheist, but I'm not a blind follower of everything someone in a silly robe tells me, either.)
And on that same religious topic, people who are determined to straighten out my life or 'save' me. You can tell me all you want about why God is cool and all that, and I won't argue with you, but ultimately it's my choice how I live my life. It seems reasonable to me that God wouldn't give much credit anyway to someone who only acted the right way because some self-inflated follower of his was coercing the guy into doing it.
Last religious peeve, I think: religious texts and people who capitalize every word referring to God. Once again, sure it's kind of a nice gesture, but if it's a rule rather than an option, it becomes sort of silly. Not to mention, it seems to really emphasize the single-gendered patriarchal view of God I'm not so fond of — 'he' is sort of unassuming and allows people to gather meaning from the context, but 'He' really drives it home that this is a dude we're talking about. There are so many ways that the English language is inadequate to discuss God that getting caught up on capitalization seems sort of superficial (unless you're German, of course, and then you get caught up on capitalization anyway).
Well, no, I lied — one more religious observation, though it's more of a principle than a peeve: people who get so caught up in the ritual of it all that they forget about the point. Some people are truly merciless about this (and believe me on this one— I used to work at a church. Particularly watch out for those old choir ladies). If you don't drink your grape juice from the plastic cup this week (instead of the ceramic one) and the wafer is brand A instead of brand B, and the song is on the piano instead of the organ, I bet you that God will understand — just this once, anyway. If you don't believe me, at your next religious meeting of choice, make the suggestion to change around the words of someone's favorite song/hymn. Then run away. Quickly.
Strong wind. Let it rain, let it snow — even hot or cold are okay — but blow my hair and clothes around, and be prepared to meet a veritably pernicious Matt.
Restaurants with a long wait. I'm not above walking out the door and going elsewhere. Corollary: People who will wait 3 hours to eat at a mediocre chain restaurant (and often drag me into the ordeal as well), when we live in a city rife with outstanding unique restaurants which usually have immediate seating.
People who spell 'queue' as 'Q'. I admit it's a tricky word, but how many single letter words besides 'a' and 'I' do you really know of? And is a word comprising only consonants actually pronounceable? (See? That's the correct way to use the word 'comprise'. Live and learn, folks.)
People who get their prepositions all mixed around, duplicated, or interchanged. Examples include 'with regard of', 'to whom the letter is addressed to', and so on.
People with an utterly skewed perception of statistics and probability. I run into these guys everywhere, from the cashiers who say, "Wow, eight dollars even — what are the chances?" ("One in a hundred," I usually mutter) to the people who think they're bound to hit the lotto sooner or later, "especially if these numbers haven't shown up in a while." However, since the death of Dale Earnhardt, I now live in a city in which a couple million rednecks freak out every time they see the number 3 in any context whatsoever ("It's a sign from Dale!"). The number 3 has been around a long time, folks. I hate the South.
People who feel compelled to email me the 6MB mpeg instead of just posting a link to it. Sure I have broadband access, but even the best of us have to resort to dialup now and again.
People obsessed with cute abbreviations for things. Some multi-word abbreviations (especially when used in note-taking, informal email, or instant messaging) are downright handy, but all this "B careful cuz U R N 4 a surprise" crap has to go. Yes, this also includes words like 'nite', 'thru' (yes I know it's real — I don't care), 'kwik', and so on — a friend of mine in 6th grade got a bad grade on his spelling test as a result of brainwashing by Froot Loops™ cereal, which was proof enough that it's not only teeth that that stuff rots away.
People who are under the impression that their only purpose on the earth is to breed like crazy. While the "starving children in China" argument doesn't carry much weight in terms of me finishing my green beans, it definitely makes a solid case for adopting one of the little tykes, instead of making dozens of new ones, right? I love kids — just not yours. And regarding the more religious aspects of the reproduce-like-there's-no-tomorrow philosophy, all I have to say is that bacteria, yeast, and mold think that way, too. Still convinced it's the only reason you're here?
People who do nothing but complain. Heh heh. Okay, so, like, I guess I'm done now.
Judging by the first two words of most lines, though, I apparently hate people far worse than I'd thought.
Anyway, read. Laugh. Don't take any of these things too seriously (I promise I've never lost a friendship over bad grammar). And don't judge me too harshly, either. I don't qualify for curmudgeonship until at least age 55, I think, right?