Small peeves
 

I just realised I really wanted to make a small complaint, but I had nowhere appropriate to do it, so I thought I'd set up this thread for people in a similar dilemma.

So, this is my inaugural small peeve:

I really dislike the modern use of the word 'hack' meaning something like 'handy tip' or 'shortcut', obviously taken from computer-nerd slang. There's something about it that exemplifies to me everything that has gone wrong with the world in the last decade.

Well, that's my peeve.

Thank you.

Re: Small peeves
 

Just a few off the top of my head:

Commercials that shamelessly and cynically pander to my generation's 80's nostalgia. I mean, Skeletor shilling for Honda? Come on...

On that same note, I really dislike Muppets nostalgia as well. And I hate all these videos I always see on social media where they have the Muppets lip-singing to Queen, the Beastie Boys, and so on. Even more galling is that they're constantly trying to bring the Muppets back... just let them rest in peace. Still can't believe I actually sat through all two hours on the goddamn Lady Gaga Muppets special a few years back.

Commercials that try to mine humor by contrasting everyday situations with something "outlandish." Google "Grinch tries yoga" to get an example of what I mean by this.

The blurbs one often finds on the back of American humor books (usually ones written by comedians), said blurbs often trying desperately to appear funny/twee/clever but usually just coming off as stupid/irritating.

Humorless Christopher Nolan fanboys who are so enthralled with his work it's as if they can't even conceptualize a reality in which people may not see things their way. These are the types who sent death threats to film critics who didn't fall over backwards praising his Batman films. On that same note, I find that Rockstar fans are kind of like this as well, always demanding perfect review scores for the latest Grand Theft Auto game or whatever.

Wiley Miller's Non Sequitur. I find its cynicism both cheap and ham-handed.

My friends on social media who used to either insult or ignore Bruce Jenner all the time. But now that she's a transgender icon they can't stop praising her to the heavens and saying how inspirational she is.

Re: Small peeves
 

In the past months (or is it years?) when I've assumed the most hermit-like of existences, shunning the dubious delights of sites I used to frequent, I've become the surliest of grumpy old men. So I should be able to manage a peeve or three.

I believe that people who throw half-full cups of coffee into recycling bins at work should be shot on sight and their bodies recycled as compost.

I hate idiotic messages that appear on my TV screen telling me what the next program is (or, worse still, messages that tell me what I'm watching). Just in case I wasn't sure...? Gods, I long for the days when the worst we had to expect was Match of the Day over-running when we're sitting up bleary-eyed to catch a showing of The Innocents.

I hate FaceBook. I just logged in for the first time in an age to find messages from people I don't know and an information box telling me I can't reply to them anyway. I just don't 'get' FaceBook. It's too 'busy'. I can't follow the conversations - I can't work out who's replying to who. Am I meant to?

Today someone asked me if I'd give some answers to a questionnaire. He asked did I use an eCigarette because I didn't like the smell of real ones, or because smoking was unsociable, or too expensive, or resulted in social exclusion? I said No, none of those. It's because real cigarettes can kill you. He said he didn't have a box to tick for that... but he did write it in the margin.

I hate living in an age when enormous technical advances are used by the least competent people. I hate it when books 200 pages long are reprinted on thicker paper (or with larger text) so they occupy as much space on bookshop shelves as 500 page books next to them (really).

I hate that Google Chrome is right at this moment updating the terms and conditions of my privacy whatever... I mean, do I really give a ####! Right now it's somehow preventing me from posting this.

I could go on but I'll miss Gogglebox - the only program worth watching.

Re: Small peeves
 

I would post, but mine seem so miniscule in comparison.

Re: Small peeves
 

Oh go on, put your heart into it. Don't you know how infuriating people can be when they don't seem to have any real heart-felt grudges against anything?

Re: Small peeves
 

This isn't so much a peeve as it is something, if given the right couple, will probably induce a stroke.

The melding of names of super or "power" couples.

"Bennifer" for Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez

"Brangelina" for Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie ( I think a few small blood vessels popped upon reading this one)


https://unhookedbooks.files.wordpres...110_tomkat.jpg

"Tomkat"

Re: Small peeves
 

If you insist...

1) Those ignorant assholes that throw garbage out of their automobile windows. WTF is wrong with you?! This has been socially unacceptable for what, 40 years?! Get your #### together.

2) Self-appointed Police of the Highway. Driving in the passing lane at a speed identical to the car in the lane next to you, enabling the line of thirty drivers behind you to push their blood pressure dangerously close to the STROKE level while waiting for an opportunity...oh, just one, to get NEAR enough to you so that they can scream their bloody lungs out! GET OUT OF THE WAY!!!

3) F&C(ING CELLPHONES. Everywhere I look, on television, people walking on the street, PEOPLE DRIVING IN CARS, people eating in restaurants . . . staring, I mean HYPNOTIZED by that stupid plastic case of nonsense. AS IF what they had to say about their cottage cheese and peaches for lunch makes a difference to anyone anywhere.

4) 4 . . . 4! I knew it just seconds ago. Forget it I'll go to 5 . . . no 6! I'll go to 6. Why not go right to 10? Maybe I should write this down in Word then copy and paste . . .

Re: Small peeves
 

People who have extreme opinions on EVERYTHING. "There is a right and a wrong way to fold clothes!!!" or "Vanilla is the BEST ice cream. F*#k chocolate!!!"

People who pull out fast in front you on the highway then proceed to go 10 miles below the posted speed limit.

Re: Small peeves
 

I am sure this is going to be unusual to some of you, but I have a thing with odd numbers. If you pay close attention, every time I post here I post two times (one in one thread and one in another) in order to have an even number of posts. Oh, and the number thirteen is to be avoided at all costs, not because I am superstitious, just because.

Re: Small peeves
 

Otherwise educated people who think The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho is a good or even "life-changing" book. The worst part is that they often don't drop the Paulo bomb until after some level of mutual respect has been achieved, making it difficult to immediately sever relations. Even worse is that it's often dropped at extremely inopportune moments, such as when I'm throwing back a drink and can't immediately vomit in alarm.

"So I was rereading The Alchemist the other day..."

It's like if you were walking in public with a friend and they started randomly molesting a small child and then went back to discussing trivial matters from work with no sense of discontinuity. How exactly are you supposed to react? 

Re: Small peeves
 

I absolutely despise this "me me me" culture we seem to have nowadays.

Decent manners appear unfortunately to have gone mostly out the window.

That and mobile phones, I hate seeing "mobile phone zombies" everywhere. Even when people are sitting together in restaurants etc. one of them is usually glued to a phone, how about having an actual conversation with the person who has taken time out of their schedule to physically be with you?

Oh, and automated phone help-lines which ask you for a million security details, then you finally get to talk to an actual person (sometimes) who asks you all the same bloody details all over again! And at the end of all that you are no better off because the so called "helper" at the end of the phone really knows not much more about the product than you already know yourself!

Re: Small peeves
 

The automated phone lines thing brought back a disturbing memory...

My wife was doing a transfer of funds over the phone and the bank was asking her a bunch of the security questions. At one point I heard her say, "What?" and then the call ended shortly thereafter. I asked her how it went and she said, "Alright, until they asked me (a personal question that they never would have known the answer to) and then, confused, I answered, and they said, "Correct. The funds have been transferred." But how did they know the answer?"

She was adamant that she had never given them that information.

I didn't know what to think. I mean, she married me, so there could be some undiagnosed illness there, but . . .

Re: Small peeves
 

This movie has 90% of my pet peeves. It's awesome.


"People who use 'rock star' as an adjective." "The Kardashians" . . .

Re: Small peeves
 

I'll quote George Carlin.

"I don't have pet peeves I have major psychotic hatreds."

For me, red lights and traffic.

Re: Small peeves
 

Brian Yuzna's Society springs to mind.

Re: Small peeves
 

How every culture embarces and perpetuates mediocrity and then wonders why it collapses.Our bloated sense of entitlement.How fast our techology is moving ahead of our ability to control it.Note to world: you are not a friend if you sit across from me and spend the majority of your time on your pad or phone. If I am out with you thats because I choose to engage with you here and now. If you don't want that, move on. Understand??Anyone who knocks on my door unexpected.That thing with the tentacles that keeps trying to push through my floor boards.

Re: Small peeves
 

Extravagant and breathtaking editions of any book that scarcely merited the cheapest paperback treatment in the first place. For example, Brother Odd by Dean Koontz bound in sapphires and the oiled skin from a virgin’s unsullied breast. Meanwhile, I can only buy Torture Garden printed on the shoddiest paper imaginable next to toilet tissue. When will there be a leather and silk clad edition of Les Chants de Maldoror? Not until two weeks after I’m dead, that’s when…

Re: Small peeves
 

nil

Re: Small peeves
 

People who ask "Where are you going?" or "What are your plans?" like you're supposed to know :) I'm going nowhere, hahahaha.

Re: Small peeves
 

Receding hairlines, especially mine. I am currently taking pills that prevent hair loss.