Peeves

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Pet Peeves

1. spammers, including email and newsgroup spam.
2. 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.
   • 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.
   • feud instead of food.
   • fordy instead of forty.
   • git instead of get.
   • heighth instead of height.
   • 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.
   • wool
   instead of we’ll.
   • wuhnt instead of wouldn’t.
   • yers instead of yores for yours.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. TextSpeak when not cell-phone texting.
6. 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.
7. 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, went to meet his maker, crossed the bar, passed away, eternal rest…
8. Christians, especially ones who try to convince me of their crackpot ideas by claiming God spoke to them personally.
9. 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.
10. People who claim they have no personal responsibility for their military actions.
11. People who litter.
12. Republicans.
13. Websites that contain grammatical HTML errors so that only Internet Explorer works with them.
14. 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.
15. People who call hamburgers sandwiches.
16. People who lard their speech with fillers like “basically”, “to tell the truth”, “honestly”, “at the end of the day” and “perfect storm”
17. 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.
18. The word devastated. It means wasted or ravaged. It does not mean humiliated, embarrassed, irritated, or angry.
19. The word hoohah, the battle cry of mindless bullies.
20. Politicians who say move forward at least once every 15 seconds.
21. People who use the word challenge to mean catastrophe.
22. People who say samwige instead of sandwich.
23. People who say simplistic when they mean simple.
24. People who start every second sentence with at the end of the day.
25. 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.
26. The phrase fighting a fish. There is no way a fish on the end of a line can harm the angler.
27. Country music with its phony cowboys, phony accents, phony sentiments and monotonously similar melodies.
28. Makers of computer peripherals that stop working long before the equipment fails because they don’t update their drivers.
29. Deceptive containers that are only 1/2 full — Verbatim DVDs, cereal, coffee powder, Maple Leaf roasts (only about 1/5 full).
30. The Franklin Mint which is always trying to peddle medallions by tricking their customers into thinking they were legitimate currency.
31. People who claim that winning an award “humbled” them. Losing humbles you. Winning is an ego trip.
32. Cash back. What an idiotic incentive to buy! 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. Just lower the damn price!
33. 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 validates your warranty.
34. 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!
35. 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!
36. 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.
37. People, usually conservative Christians, who imagine they have the right to act as my parents even though I am 60 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.
38. Programs that sneakily try to install unrelated programs as part of the install.
39. People who claim they are “lucky” when a natural disaster befalls them, but they did not die.

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