Peeves

• You are here :
• home
• contact
• Peeves
•  

I don’t have pet peeves; I have whole kennels of irritation.
~ Whoopi Goldberg (born: 1955-11-13 age: 53)

Pet Peeves

1. 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 willful ignorance as virtues. It is a 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.

2. spammers

   including email and newsgroup spam.

3. Sloppy pronunciation

   This was my Mom’s biggie too, so I came by it honestly. Speech is for clear communication. 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 grate. Shifting vowels slightly cause no problem, but dropping letters or collapsing two letters onto the same sound does. Some of the common errors that set my teeth on edge include:
   • axe-i-denl instead of accidental.
   • ay-yend, two syllables, instead of and.
   • bawdle instead of bottle.
   • air-ee-ahhhs’ instead of air’-ee-as for areas and other valley girl isms — extending a vowel and trailing off the pitch part way through, especially grown women affecting the accent, and even worse professional announcers pretending to be ditzy preteens. My ears bleed when I hear that affectation.
   • kewpon instead of koopon for coupon.
   • koent instead of coudint for couldn’t.
   • dennis instead of dentist.
   • dint instead of didn’t.
   • Febuary instead of February. Even professional announcers like Jim Lehrer blow this one.
   • femily instead of family.
   • feud instead of food.
   • fordy instead of forty.
   • git instead of get.
   • heighth instead of height.
   • ar-je like the French je, instead of hours.
   • eye’-rack instead of ee-rack’ for Iraq.
   • key-yids instead of kids.
   • lil instead of little.
   • lawndrymat instead of lawndro-mat for laundromat.
   • lookin instead of looking, and all ing words.
   • lugzury instead of lucksury for luxury.
   • mah instead of my.
   • new’-kew-lur instead of new’-klee-are for nuclear. Dinosaur enviro-cretins George W. Bush and ex-Alberta Premier Ralph Klein share this mispronunciation.
   • senner instead of senter for centre.
   • ser-yus-ly instead of ser-i-ous-ly.
   • ta instead of too for to.
   • stow-ah instead of store.
   • toadally instead of totally.
   • chooseday instead of tiuseday for Tuesday
   • wadder instead of water.
   • samwige instead of sandwich.
   • wool instead of we’ll
   • wuhnt instead of wouldn’t.
   • yers instead of yores for yours.
   • People who pronounce toon and tune the same way, or food and feud the same way.

4. 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.

5. Nutrisystem spokesperson Marie Osmond’s voice

   could be used to pulverise concrete. She goes out of her way to butcher the pronuciation of nearly every word.

6. Grammatical errors

   Some of the common errors that grate include:
   • if I was Prime Minister instead of if I were Prime Minister.
   • I seen the dog instead of I saw the dog.

7. 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.

8. TextSpeak

   when not cell-phone texting.

9. Ambigutity Denial

   When I write to an author, perhaps of a computer program, 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 is this light). The reader, not the writer, is the expert on what is confusing.

10. Death Denial

    The use of vocabulary than tries to pretend people don’t die, e. g. rest in peace, laid to rest, no longer with us, has gone to be with Jesus, gone to heaven, passed over, crossed over, went to meet his maker, crossed the bar, passed away, passed, left his body, eternal rest…

11. Christians

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

12. 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.

13. People who claim they have no personal responsibility

    for their military actions.

14. People who litter

15. Corporate Liars

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

16. Car ads

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

17. Republicans

18. HTML Syntax Errors

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

19. 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.

20. People who call hamburgers sandwiches

21. People who lard their speech with fillers

    like “basically”, “to tell the truth”, “honestly”, “at the end of the day” “move forward” “step up to the plate” and “perfect storm”

22. 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 remotely apply, while refusing to apply the terms to themselves, even when the definitions fit precisely.

23. The word devastated

    It means wasted or ravaged. It does not mean humiliated, embarrassed, irritated, or angry.

24. The word hoohah

    the battle cry of mindless bullies.

25. Politicians who say move forward

    at least once every 15 seconds.

26. The phrase one child at a time

    This is nonsense since every school, hospital, camp etc. serves multiple children at once.

27. People who use the word challenge

    to mean catastrophe.

28. People who say simplistic

    when they mean simple.

29. At the end of the day

    People who start every second sentence with at the end of the day.

30. 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.

31. The phrase fighting a fish

    There is no way a fish on the end of a line can harm the angler.

32. Country music

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

33. Planned Osolescence

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

34. Telus

    that sells cell-phones and cell-phone 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.

35. Deceptive containers

    that are only ½ full — Verbatim DVDs, cereal, coffee powder, Maple Leaf roasts (only about 1/5 full). Astro yogurt undefills 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.

36. The Franklin Mint

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

37. I am humbled

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

38. 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!

39. 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 foregoing these “free” changes invalidates your warranty.

40. 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!

41. 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. They increase prices. Just lower the damn prices!

42. 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.

43. 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.

44. You are not my mother

    People, usually conservative Christians, who imagine they have the right to act as my parents even though I am 61 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.

45. Fathers who make their children address them as Sir

    Who do they think they are? Sir Paul McCartney? a drill sargeant? 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.

46. Programs that sneakily try to install unrelated programs

    as part of the install.

47. 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.

48. American

    Politicians who use the word “American” at least twice in every sentence.

49. 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.

50. toenails

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

51. origins

    Europo’s Best frozen berries are grown in Chile. Belgian chocolate made in Canada. Canadian bacon from Iowa. Souvenirs of Canada from China.

	You can get the freshest copy of this page from:	or possibly from your local J: drive (Java virtual drive/mindprod.com website mirror)
	http://mindprod.com/contact/peeves.html	J:\mindprod\contact\peeves.html
	Please email your feedback for publication, errors, omissions, typos, formatting errors, ambiguities, unclear wording, broken/redirected link reports, suggestions to improve this page or comments to Roedy Green :
	Canadian Mind Products
	mindprod.com IP:[65.110.21.43]
view	Your face IP:[38.107.191.108]
Feedback	You are visitor number 4,688.