Hillary Clinton.

Cripes, this blog has been taken over by Andy Rooney. The Horror...

I haven't yet read Cauldron, but I'm assuming it's yet another McDevitt "3/4s of a good book with a crappy, ham-handed ending."

The affordable power output of car stereos has increased faster than the courtesy necessary to own them.

Cashiers who put bills in your palm and then coins on top of the bills while you're holding your wallet open in the other hand. Seriously, is there some planet where this actually makes sense?

I hate the TV news adjective graphic, meaning disgusting, and also the TV news noun graphic, meaning picture.

The NYT Xword was tough this am as usual on Saturdays - had to cheat + look up Remington's first name in the Brittanica ;o)

40 U.S. military deaths in Iraq this month.

We've passed the total for the last two months, and equaled January's total.

Looks like the effect of the surge is on its way out.

The situation is intractable, because there are too many competing armed groups, willing to fight, with too many numbers and weapons. It is not a place where we can do good in a lasting way right now.

This is more than just a peeve, of course- it's a severely messed up situation.

Hillary Clinton also.

It's a beautiful day out and I've got to write a paper on Tasers. Bleh.

CNN hired Tony Snow, although he's a disgusting liar. The country is repeating the mistakes of countries that have been taken over by fascism, but people are not pissing vinegar over it- the mainstream media is so hijacked, people barely notice besides those who are really plugged in.

Instead of liberals picking up the books about the Nazi regime and about resistance to the Nazis- books that liberals of yester-year wrote so that people in the future would be able to recognize and prevent this shit- the Republicans are the ones picking up those books and are using them as manuals on how to lie, persuade and oppress.

All really peevey.

A Peeve. Not being allowed to post comments here at Washington Monthly from my laptop at home despite a relatively long history of posting respectfully here at the site. Related peeve is not being responded to when I politely asked via email what was the deal.

I do have a best guess about the comment that got me in hot water and I'd guess it must have been read on another grouchy morning if that's the one. Here it is again:

You wrote this post without mentioning the comments by Geraldine Ferraro. Do you expect it to be taken seriously?

I don't think the Clintons are racist myself. I do believe they have demonstrated they are willing to throw race out there in hopes it will reduce votes for Obama.

No, it doesn't prove the Clintons are racists when they use Obama's blackness to wedge off voters, but it certainly does give strong clues about the lengths they'll travel to win this primary.

I do see how that comment would have felt too personal if it had been directed towards myself. But I (and many others obviously) couldn't believe you were ignoring Ferraro when you wrote your post that questioned the sanity of people suspecting racist tactics by the Clinton's and their surrogates. That I had comment posting privileges revoked because I objected really rankles.

Anyway, I still read the site and find you worth reading but don't read nearly as often given the prohibition against leaving a comment.

[I can assure you that you have done nothing wrong - it is a system glitch. We have actually banned very few people. I will give you Kevin's response to another person who ran into the same problem, and it can serve as an answer to anyone who is experiencing this problem and are taken aback, in case you have missed this in the past:

This is all very frustrating. For the past couple of months I've gotten two or three emails a week from people who can no longer post comments, and in virtually every case they aren't on the list of banned IP ranges (which are mostly meant to ban spam, not trolls, anyway). Sometimes the problem goes away with a reboot, sometimes it goes away in a week or two, and sometimes it seems to be permanent. But I'm completely unable to figure out what's going on.

The only think I can think of is that somehow a different IP address is being presented to the blog (either through a router or a proxy server of some kind), so that when I look up an IP I'm not looking up the "real" one. But that's just a wild guess, and, unfortunately, I don't have the technical chops to figure out how this could be happening.

So, long story short, I'm stumped. I really don't know what's going on here. But it's a technical problem of some kind, nothing you did.

--Mod]

People who think laughing at Jon Stewart's jokes counts as being politically involved.

Ask what doesn't peeve me. It'll be a shorter list.

Everytime I watch ANYTHING about the WTC, I get horribly angry at this doing nothing administration, at the 5 maggots who put Mr. do-nothing drunk in power.

I get horribly piss off too. I get very upset at a non-journlist, lazy, complacent media that does nothing as Bush and Co destroys their collect email on the subjects of this ugly cover-up of what happened and what that allowed Bush to answer NOTHING about what happened to our WTC?

What's worse is when a group of people stop in the middle of a public walkway and start talking to each other about where to go next. Then you have to ask each one of them to please step aside.

My cat woke me up twice this morning

Rush Limbaugh, on his show, said that it would be good if Republicans would riot at the Democratic Convention in Denver.

Some Republican in Indiana who has previously said that he thinks ending segregation has been a failure, and who around 30% of voters voted for in a Republican primary there, attended a Neo-Nazi event the other day. So much for the opinion of all those who say the Republicans aren't really racist.

Annoying.

Here are two links to the neo-Nazi story:

Daily Kos

Crooks an Liars (with picture of Zirkle, the Republican, standing over a Happy Birthday banner put up for Hitler's birthday).

I'm with Blue Girl.

But beyond the petty things, e.g. endless war, creeping fascism/theocracy, and the slow murder of my home planet, mostly it's the TV news teasers that run something like "This product could really endanger your health. Watch EmptySuit News 99 at 6 tomorrow to find out what it is."

And people who post comments in the catblogging thread about how they don't like catblogging Jeebus, and I thought I needed to get a life!

"Cashiers who put bills in your palm and then coins on top of the bills while you're holding your wallet open in the other hand."

Couldn't agree more. But to make it worse, the receipt is generally put in your hand first, then the bills, then the coins. It's not so much that it's an enormous hassle, but that it can happen several times a day. Is this what cashiers are taught is the most efficient way? I generally ask them to just put it all down so I can then put it away appropriately, and no, I don't hold up others in line while doing so.

Here's my pet peeve: Why can't the Vietnamese restaurant nearby serve me a baguette with my Pho like they do in Vietnam? And why can't I get a side of morning glory stems with that?

As a shortwave listener from childhood I am peeved that the BBC long ago stopped English-language service to the US, that the Voice of America is virtually unreceivable here, and that much English-language radio consists of well-funded and high-powered stations broadcasting Bible shouters and pounders 24/7/365. Thank God for the sprightly programming from the Dutch for a couple of hours in the evening, and I must admit Radio Havana, Cuba, has hypnotic Cuban music when it is not pounding on the USA. Yeah, I know I can listen to the BBC over my computer, but sometimes the computer is not with me or is inconvenient to access.

Okay, apart from things like Bush, Tony Snow and the MSM (which are actual problems, not mere 'peeves') I'll throw in one of my long-standing peeves.

People who leave their shopping cart standing in some random place in the parking lot, rather than taking the 30 seconds of effort required to push it to the nearest cart corral.

Brail on drive-through cash machines.

Oh, I can get down with this one, People who leave their shopping cart standing in some random place in the parking lot, rather than taking the 30 seconds of effort required to push it to the nearest cart corral. It's kind of right up there with cyclists who ride through dismount zones.

pet peeves-TOO MANY TO REALLY LIST-but heres's one anyway.
People who have to talk on their cell phones while waiting in line anywhere about every inane dumbass little annoying thing going on in there lives.OR, wandering around the supermarket talkng on their wireless headsets. IF your not paying close attention you think that they'rer talking to you. And if you answer the twits they look at you like you've just been regurgitated by the alien monster from the movie alien.

Yeah, the cereal-box stupidity has bothered me for years. Why use glue that's stronger than the cardboard? The cardboard will always tear. 'That's the way we've always done it" is probably all they can come up with. Grrr...

Navamske/Andrea: Yeah, the whole "big pile o' change" thing is weird. What makes it weirder is that it's new, and it's very widespread. This means that cashiers must get trained to do this. But why? Is it related somehow to cash registers that tell you how much change to give, as opposed to the old style of counting it out backward?

Very odd. And worthy of being a peeve. As opposed to, say, Hillary Clinton and civilian deaths in Iraq, which are much too serious to be mere peeves.

1. People who use it's (it is)when they mean its (belonging to it) and vice versa.
2. Newscasters who refer to compelling stories as "dramatic" which already means something else (unless the compelling stories are staged).
3. Serial monogamists who lecture us about values after they've cheated on and then dumped spouses (see Limbaugh, McCain, Will, Gingrich, etc.).

Yellow Ribbons on SUV's.

Nationwide Mortgage ads with text "Free Money."

CNN as the default tv channel. (Cartoon Network, anyone?!!)

Pine straw.

Paying people money.

Paying people money to do easy things that you just don't know how to do.

Paying people a lot of money to do easy things that you just don't know how to do and don't own the equipment to do.

Bloody diarrhea -- ok that one was just a joke.

the alien monster from the movie alien.

With over a century of product design experience behind them, why can't breakfast cereal companies create a box that opens and closes easily?

They had them in my youth, and then stopped making them. Same thing for the bag inside.

Because I am currently up to my eyeballs in a public transit fight:

• People who trash public transit and start their diatribe with "I don't ride the bus myself, but..."
• People who charge up to the fare box and stand their fat ass between the door and fumble for change, then pass three empty seats, and try to push past ten people in the aisle who are waiting to exit.

• Bus drivers who don't tell these oafs to get the hell off the bus until the people getting off have exited.
• People who bring their damned wheeled carts on the bus during rush hour.
• Drivers who block crosswalks.
• Pedestrians who don't use the crosswalks.
• All the extra god-damned traffic on my street for the next 18 months because we let our infrastructure crumble and a bridge on one of the main arterials in this part of town crumbled.

I hate when people say, "I could care less," when they mean, "I couldn't care less." What really gets me is that they are usually college graduates.

Everybody hates me, nobody likes me, I think I'll eat some worms.

1. bugs, the annoying logo thingies on the teevee overlaid ALL shows/etc... as proof that they absolutely DO NOT serve the function teevee people *say* it does: they don't have bugs overlaid during commercials, THE ONE AND ONLY time they would conceivably serve any purpose in identifying the channel...
now, the bugs are evolving to little mini-commercials and animations that take up a quarter/third of the screen during the shows...
yet another reason to kill your teevee...
2. similar to pedestrians stopping at chokepoints, presumptuous pricks who 'stop'/park their vehicles in front of stores, banks, etc (usually in a 'no-parking' zone), who are -you know- 'ONLY going to be a minute'... grrrrr
of course, they are usually much more than a minute (usually driving a big fat SUV; huh, i wonder if there is some correlation between big fat apathetic pathetic amerikans driving big fat gashog SUVs, and the fact that they don't give a shit about anyone else but themselves?); and EVERYONE else in the world is inconvenienced (if not caused to endure an unsafe traffic situation), by the fat piggies selfish refusal to park and walk all of 50 feet...
3. censorship... not only is censorship rampant in our so-called 'free' society, but it has -in my humble estimation- led to the lying-kultur we are presently besotted with... further, MANY (if not most) supposed 'progressives' really want NOTHING to do with freespeech, it is all a pose: post a salient and telling response at huffpo or salon, and you will get censored, EVEN WITHOUT the normal excuses of profanity, etc to 'justify' the censorship...
and *THAT* is in a small bastion of (supposed) liberalism in a tiny fraction of society on the inertnet where 'anything goes'...
'normal', mainstream society/media is so suppressed as to be inimicable to the free exchange necessary for a vital democracy...
gosh, i'm sure that's not done purposefully...

art guerrilla
aka ann archy

eof

Radio voices that say:

"Stay tuned for the weather report in about 10 minutes from now."

*

Police armed with deadly force.

oh shit, i almost forgot!
those stupid little eensy-weensy sticker labels that are apparently mandatory to put on EVERY SINGLE FUCKING EGG, APPLE, PLUM, BANANA, and all other individual fruits and vegetables on the planet...

JUST.
FUCKING.
STOP.

i swear to dog, the second they start labeling each individual grape, i'm gonna start the revolution myself...

art guerrilla
aka ann archy

eof

pricks who 'stop'/park their vehicles in front of stores

That is my pet peeve.

The little sealing doohickeys on the top of audio CDs. Who's the annoying fuck that thought it was a good idea to place that little feature inside of the already-difficult-to-open cellophane wrapping?

mhr, shut the fuck up.

I have virtually stopped going to movies because I'm tired of having to listen to everyone in the audience talking to each other and taking calls on their cell phones during the film! And don't get me started with all of you who talk on your phones while you're driving and don't pay attention to the road, and don't signal when you should because you're too busy on the phone and don't have a third hand to do it so you just cut me off. I'm not being hypicritical -- I don't own a cell phone, and I don't eat/drink/put on make-up/change CDs/read the paper or anything else while I'm driving.

People who say "momentarily" when "in a moment" is what they really mean. Because if the train is leaving momentarily, then it's probably just going a few feet down the track and coming right back. Unfortunately, this bad usage has become so widespread that it's now accepted. But honestly, it's just wrong, and I will brook no argument on this one.

Cashiers who ask "Did you find everything you were looking for?" in the tone of voice one would use to say "How are you today?" If I answer, No I did not find a couple of things, they do a double-take and are at a loss for a response.

Try Target's store brand cereal. It comes in the coolest, most practical containers ever.

Using Brojo's comment at 3:23 as a jumping off point - assholes who drive around the parking lot at Costco for 20 minutes, looking for a spot by the door. WTF? They're going into a store that is over an acre! They can't walk 30 extra feet???

Oh, and the "Support the Troops" ribbons:
1. Is that a command or is it your position?
2. I suspect that most of these goons don't have loved ones over there. As for those of us who DO -- we just want our people back out of that hell and home safe.
3. We all know they really mean "Support the War" right?
4. They're usually driving SUVs. The irony is lost on these F'ing A'holes.

I'm assuming most people mean *I* support the troops, but maybe not. If not, wouldn't "Defend the Constitution" be a more apt command? And if that's what we should all be doing, wouldn't we all be storming the White House and hauling Bush/Cheney out to the hastily erected gallows on the front lawn to hang by their necks until they were dead? Just sayin.

Kevin, thank you for this. Inviting a rant is guaranteed to up your ratings.

Every single telecom commercial on t.v. Do they make them ALL suck on purpose? Plus the car commercials (what the hell is a kid whispering "zoom zoom" supposed to mean?). And don't even get me started on Geiko.....

Speaking of people who stop and ponder, have you ever been in line at a fast food place, deli or other service counter behind the person who waits until he or she gets to the head of the line before looking at any of the choices?

My pet theory is that these are also the people who start thinking about who to vote for when they get to the voting booth.

Untimed stoplights. How much fuel/time get wasted each year?

Liberals as PERSBEPOs (perpetual state of being pissed off).

hillary continuing to act like the michigan and florida votes count for anything.

republican politicians who have it in for sex toys. this is from tony zirkle's website.
"I'm considering discussing divorce aids and my plans for a "Derrenger's for Dildos" policy to put guns in American women's hands instead of divorce aids. Presently, when a criminal is arrested for a weapons crime, the prosecutors seek orders to destroy those weapons. What a waste! Put our criminal prisoners to work modifying those guns to be smart-guns that can only be fired when the female owner is holding it so that children don't hurt themselves and so that criminals can't use them (unless they use the woman's hand). When a women turns in her stash of divorce aids, then give her a free gun to defend America when the jihadists follow us home.

I may also call attention to the fact that one of the biggest commercial frauds is that divorce aids market themselves as being for "novelty purposes only" so that they can avoid all consumer safety inspections; yet ,they then go to court and claim they have a 1st Amendment so called right to privacy to abuse their bodies. Who knows what toxic chemicals these women are inserting into the most intimate areas of their bodies and how many men chase children because they can not find comfort from an adult women.

By giving our soccor moms guns, they will be better able to take out the suicide bombers once they start following us home. Isn't that what the republicans are saying will happen if the deomcrats get elected and even dare to withdraw our troops from Iraq prematurely?

Breathless news teasers that imply we may all be doomed, and they are going to tell us what we absolutely, positively need to know to continue our tenuous existence on this hostile planet - Next Thursday during the ten p.m. newscast.

Achilles.

Pet Peeve Locutions:

My Philosophy on this is [followed by drivel]

Do the math [foolish computation follows]

It's just semantics [For chrissake' if it weren't for semantics it wouldn't mean anything]

I can't parse this [That's syntax buddy]

Mediawhore [Prostitution (by mostly women) is an economic fact or a personal choice not a moral judgement on the practioner]

a close relative of the cereal-box peeve: any package that's labeled "easy opening." invariably they're not, and i have to get out the scissors.

split infinitives.

football announcers who feel obligated to add position to positions, as in "the zephyrs need help at the quarterback position" or "he's the best ever at the quarterback position."

the use of former as in former first round draft choice (did the team, years later, change its mind?)

dropped first references

firefox (it invariably hangs up at the most inopportune time).

people who have no clue about basic history or geography ("oh, you're from west virginia! i have an aunt who lives in richmond!").

And while I'm going all classical on your asses:

I can't fucking stand military morons who speak admiringly of the Spartans and their "culture," in total ignorance of the fact that in the ancient world were mostly famous for:

a) Buggering little boys to toughen them up. Every male citizen went to live in the barracks in his early teens, and was assigned an older soldier toe "mentor" him.
b) Enslaving their neighbors. Some historians suspect that they became hyper-militaristic out of fear of their slaves. (Sound like any country we know about?)
c) Worshiping death.

Other people. Whenever something goes wrong, you can be sure that somehow, somewhere, other people are involved.

People ahead of me in line buying lottery tickets.

Apparently they're incapable of checking their previous numbers via the local newspaper or the internet, so even before their purchase actually begins, they make the cashier check their previous tickets (all 20 of them). Then they pull out their customized 'leatherette' lotto ticket wallet & you know you're screwed.

Next they've got to fill out their "numbers" (which, after thirty years playing the same damn "numbers", they still haven't memorized) on all 20 tickets, pencilling in each number with the slow determination of a person who knows this one's the one that's gonna win.

And to finish it all off with some kind of twisted white-trash aperitif, a handful of Scratch-N-Win tickets, but of course, one of each of the many tickets on display & not the one on top...oh no, but the one five tickets down & then proceed to scratch all those tickets while still standing in front of the cashier.

If you're one of these people & you're reading this, please take no offence the time you're in front of me in a line & I punch you in the throat. It's nothing personal, it's just that you're a douchebag.

Very courageous to come out against cereal boxes like that. Keep up the hard hitting reporting.

lazy professors who make their students give presentations in class just because they don't feel like preparing a lesson plan.

To David Bailey--there are a group of unreconstructed Luddites, one of whom I work with, who won't return carts as a matter of principle because they don't want to take work away from the "courtesy clerks" (formerly known as "box boys" a millennium ago out here in California) whose job it is to collect them.

Similarly the CPUSA member and Plumber father of a friend of mine always told his kids that when the movie was over they were supposed to dump their popcorn on the floor because it made more work for the ushers and janitors. Yeah, the theory's a little thin, but illustrates the point that it's not always thoughtlessness, stupidity or self-absorption that causes people to do the things that drive other people nuts.

Michael Josephson once made this the subject of one of his five minute radio sermons, in which he quoted a father who used returning shopping carts as the way to divide the world into the "good people" and the "bad people." Now that drove me crazy. I suggested he read Robert Burns' poem "Address to the Unco Guid" before he passed judgment on another group in that fashion. We all could benefit, in fact.

My current pet peeve? I'm down to seeds and stems again...

The warped thinking that went into paying Katie Couric $15 mill a year and hoping the big price tag would somehow hide the fact that she is absolutely dreadful at her job.

I wish to add a "fuckin-A!" to raff's comment at 4:13.

it is a system glitch. ...

Thanks for the explanation. I did miss Kevin's post about the problem and appreciate you reposting it.

I nominate Stefan at 4:13 PM for winner of the thread.

New Hampshire and Iowa getting the first shot every four years. It serves the DNC right that they now have to deal with the Florida and Michigan problem, but it doesn't serve the rest of us right that it serves them right. Wimps.

Journalists using the word exponential and exponentially incorrectly. It is a sure sign of technical ignorance. Here is an exponential progression: $500 in 2007, $505 in 2008, $510.05 in 2009. That's my savings account, and it is growing exponentially, and if I hold onto it for 120 years, I'll have a pretty good nest egg (well over $1600).

People who save seats at busy "order-up-front" then "sit-down-and-eat-places" - thereby reducing the restaurant's carrying capacity and increasing average wait times for seating. (Solution: signage pointing out that it's rude to send one person to sit down while the rest order.)

The failure collectively to agree to stand several feet back from the baggage carousel (of the circular kind), stepping forward to retrieve one's bags. Bigger radius = bigger circumference = more people in the first row = less hassle getting bags. (Solution: paint a line on the floor several feet away from the carousel.)

Try the Cerealtop for you problem. (Also, watch those carbs.)

http://www.gizmag.com/go/5646/

Me

I felt the same way about Michael Swanwick's 1991 Nebula award winner, Stations of the Tide. Yes, it had some technical merit, but it was absolutely uninvolving.

45 mph speed limits on roads that were apparently designed for autobahn traffic.

High speed collisions at intersections on roads that were apparently designed for autobahn traffic.

To Thersites at 4:02: Actually you were cheesed off at Agamemnon, not Achilles -- you thought Achilles had a point about how some people do all the work and other guys get all the stuff. Then Odysseus beat you up because you're ugly. Some heroes!

TV ads for prescription drugs.

For my money, via Kos, Hunter has the best pet peeve.

Hell is getting stuck next to Peggy Noonan on the flight from NY to LA.

RE: mroberts: "I hate when people say, 'I could care less,' when they mean, 'I couldn't care less.' What really gets me is that they are usually college graduates."

This drives me insane, as well. How the hell did this get started, anyway? I also hate that Cooking Light magazine includes "extravirgin olive oil" in their recipes instead of "extra-virgin olive oil." People who just pull "creative spellings" out of their asses make me crazy. AARRGGHH!!!!!

The disappearance of the word "from," as in "He graduated college in 1964," or "With the sixth pick the Jets chose Vernon Gholston out of Ohio State."

Everytime I hear about an athlete "out of" some university or city, I think of Athena springing fully grown out of Zeus's forehead. Maybe that's the point; it sounds more warlike.

raff at 4:13, are you the Ohio raff?

When someone say they are going to "borrow you" some money.

Clara -- quite true, but some time later (after the Iliad) Achilles killed me. That was really annoying!

That crossword puzzle is a tough one. I have put an unusually large amount of time into it and am about 80 percent home (missing northwest corner). But then the challenge is why I look forward to the Saturday NYT.

ohioblue
raff at 4:13, are you the Ohio raff?

Nope, sorry.

those cialis etc commercials saying if you have an erection lasting four hours or more contact your doctor -- like it's a big problem or something.

presumptuous pricks who 'stop'/park their vehicles in front of stores, banks, etc (usually in a 'no-parking' zone), who are -you know- 'ONLY going to be a minute'.

While I'm on the subject, I'm also peeved at people who place only in the wrong place, thereby failing to convey what they actually mean. She meant to say, "I was going to be only a minute."

People who use this bizarre construction: "We could be eating dinner now if you would have left on time." What's wrong with the perfectly good "if you had left on time"?

The fact that I can't surround this posting with [rant] and [/rant] tags because the HTML won't display what's between the angle brackets.

Damn, it seems my pet peeve is people who have some of these things as pet peeves.

* People with stupid grammatical pet peeves. It's called changing language, and most of these things sound like pure snobbery to me. Besides, most of them are actually sensible, if you acknowledge the existence of things like sarcasm ("I could care less"), words with more than one meaning ("dramatic","momentarily","former"), and grammatical rules that can be different from Latin (split infinitives).

* People bothered by cashiers putting change on top of your money. This is the way I like it; that way you can scoop the change out first and into your pocket, and then fold the bills separately. I'll agree that the receipt is annoying, though.

* People who automatically assume that if you have a "support the troops" magnet, you're a Republican SUV-driving moron. I have one, my two siblings served in Iraq, I'm a lifelong democrat, and my support of the troops isn't limited to the damn magnet but when my sister came home from her last tour she smiled when she saw it, and giving that overt show of support matters to me.

* People who complain about trivial problems with the service offered by minimum-wage workers. You're annoyed by them asking if you've found everything you're looking for? Gimme a break. That's what they're trained to do. And they probably don't have the mental or physical energy to be annoyed by petty things like that, what with trying to survive on a below-poverty-level salary and all.

* People who complain about lazy professors who make students give presentations in class. I'm a professor, and I do it because it's a damn good way to make students really engage with some aspect of the material. And unless the presentation is for more than half an hour, it's easier for me to write my own lecture for that amount of time than it is to coach my students about how to do a good presentation. Laziness isn't why I do it.

I agree about:

* People blocking intersections as they try to figure out where to go, or park their cars right in front of entrances.

* Lack of BBC America

* Shopping carts in random places in the parking lot.

And I'll add a few non-reactionary of my own:

* The default of putting any purchase, no matter how small or already-carryable, into a plastic bag.

* People who try to chat to you in coffee shops and then get offended when you want to read your book or work on your computer. Especially when they then go on rants about how unsociable everybody is nowadays.

* People whose entire conversational repertoire consists of repeating lines from TV shows and movies, on the mistaken assumption that this is somehow witty.

* Commercials. They are vile.

* People who are proud of their ignorance and think it somehow makes them cool.

I think you must be mistaking boxes of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese for cereal.

And as a card-carrying latte-drinking wine-and-cheese-and-crackers liberal, shouldn't you be buying white-paper-wrapped bags of delicious muesli imported from England? (Or created at the nearby farm of your local cooperative in a low-carbon-emissions process?)

Using impact as a verb.
Confusing affect and effect.
Sports announcers who can't seem to remember the game is on TV. I can see what's going on,STFU Jim Nantz.
Kids who choose a full price school instead of one of the three that offered scholarship help. I admit this is more expensive than a peeve.

Thersites -- oh, well, yeah -- if you're going to believe everything you read in Pseudo-Apollodorus' Epitome. But then where will it end? Me, I'll take Homer any day.

I also agree with a) the its/it's thing; b) the change on top of the bills thing; plus c) "hopefully" in the sense of "I hope that" (a lost cause); d) "I" instead of "me" in sentences like "Speak to Thersites or I later" (an almost lost cause: I've even seen Kevin make this mistake); and e) when SOMEBODY who luckily never reads this blog takes ice cubes out of the tray without re-filling it with water!!!!!!!

Turn signals. Use them.

You're waiting at a red light to turn left (north) onto Oak St. Across the way, another driver, Charlie, is also stopped at the light, waiting to turn right (north) onto Oak. There are two northbound lanes. When the light turns green will you turn into the northbound lane closest to you, or will you swing wide into Charlie's lane? The answer is, you'll swing wide, not to shaft Charlie, but because you've forgotten that Charlie exists.

Dane Cook.

People who use comments at blogs to demonstrate that they are either (a) old and curmudgeonly, or (b) whiny.

Oh yeah. And the asshole who stops his car in a parking lot while I'm behind him, waits for no apparent reason, and then decides to go when I've gotten tired of waiting for him and am right next to him.

The checkout line at the supermarket: the person ahead of you (almost invariably involving a woman) has been watching the clerk scan the items, pack the bags, total the bill and is standing there staring at the person for evidence that they intend to pay. Finally it hits the person that that they actually have to pay money (or credit) for their purchases. So, then the purse gets opened, and a multi-minute perusal of the purse contents ensues - including, often, coins scattered around in the bottom of the purse, with the wallet checked for cash (and, often, not being present in sufficient quantity), then the hunt for the 'club card' through the purse and wallet commences, and finally the purchaser decides to use a credit card, which they cluelessly don't know how to swipe properly, and have forgotten what the pin number is.

It is like they have never shopped for groceries before, and it never occured to them that they have to pay before the transaction is over.

What I can't figure out is how this syndrome occurs, and why it infects such a high percentage of female shoppers.

When parents won't let you use the words you want.

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=12978187

people who try to merge onto a highway at 45 mph.

The phrase "much less" being used in a sentence like "I wouldn't trust George Bush to run a war, much less walk a dog" rather than "I wouldn't trust George Bush to walk my dog, much less run a war."

And don't even get me started on Geiko.....

Geiko is mixed... the caveman thing was the exception as being truly awful.

BUT, nothing is as asinine as ANY Capital One commercial.

I have one of their cards, and I'm too embarassed with the association with them to ever take it out of my wallet. What's in your wallet?

People bothered by cashiers putting change on top of your money. This is the way I like it; that way you can scoop the change out first and into your pocket, and then fold the bills separately.

People who omit the second (required) part of the idiom "as far as [blank] goes," as in, "As far as George Bush, he's the worst president in history."

Those people that stop in their grocery cart in the middle of the aisle then stand next to it in the center of the aisle.

Whats up with that? I know nobody likes an aisle hog so why do the anti-aisle hogs do it? To get even?

Grrrrr.

Heh.

stupid little eensy-weensy sticker labels

CalRAB, the California Raisin Advisory Board, had a wonderfully silly ad campaign about how they couldn't get the stickers on the raisins, but would be happy to send one to you if you asked (along with a bunch of other marketing material). I think it came before the "I heard it through the Grapevine" campaign.

I prefer coins first, but it appears most do not, since all cashiers seem to do paper first.

I can't tell you much about bad television ads since I've seen so few lately.

Now, to the gripes:

Stupid drivers. Anywhere, everywhere, deadly or just annoying. We seem to have about 200 million idiots behind the wheel in this country.

College textbooks that aren't proofread. You ask kids to pay $100-150 for a book and it has factual errors in it? Why? Of course the vacuous textbooks that are barely fit for a high school class but are claimed to be college level are much worse.

Andy Rooney.

CBS's decision to remind us of its own idiocy by having Walter Cronkite do the voice over intro to Katie Couric's show.

Financial products that don't help anyone but the brokers and investment bankers.

The fact that But Where are the Customers' Yachts and Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds are not mandatory reading in High School.

Curt M, many ISP's use proxies. As well many ISP customers may share one IP address because the same IP can be differentiated because of the MAC address of your computer.

I dont know if your on a Mac, Linux, Windows etc OS, but you can release and renew your IP address and hopefully get a new and different one assigned thru your ISP.

Some people prefer to use internet based proxy servers, such as here: http://www.fastproxynetwork.com/ which has some 27 proxy servers to choose from.

Here's a nice little modest peeve: The End of Civilization as We Know It: Link

The cereal box question: search for patents.

Somebody mentioned Target - I've seen cereal boxes in 14 different countries and they were all identical. (I've seen better packaging for some products in countries other than the US prior to arrival in the US, and visa-versa.)

Years ago I wondered if an ant product had been invented that kills every nth ant, with the theory that one could bleed a colony dry by rewarding it just enough to return to the same food site, but killing more ant calorie energy than the ants where obtaining from the food site. (You would place the food in a watery solution and have an electrocution wire connected to a timer.) Anyway I searched for a patent for it and - Oh My God - there are gazillions of patents for inventions related to killing ants.

OK, more down to earth and this is more damaging to clear thinking than you realize: people saying "All X are not Y" when they really should have said, "Not all X are Y." The former has a specific logical meaning quite different from the latter.

navamske: <rant>you mean like this?</rant>

navamske: &lt;rant&gt;you mean like this?&lt;/rant&gt;

Kevin, I am speaking to you from the location in Iowa where about half the entire world's supply of breakfast cereal is manufactured, and I am happy to say that your wish has been granted. There IS a convenient cereal container. I've seen them used by Walmart on their bigger packages of generic cereal.

It's a big Ziplog bag. People hate the packaging.

Brojo.

So, like are you really still eating mainstream, Big-Brand breakfast cereal?
If so, don't even ask. Just munch the trash they give you.
There is some real good cereal out there. But the emphasis is on real. If you find it lacking, I s'pose you can supplement it with a good bit more than several grams of sodium and sugar. If that's what it takes to feel normal.

For about 20 years I felt like getting through a grocery store check-out line quickly was a skill- an art- a collaboration of man and technology.

Man, I was all over that sh*t. I had the cart perfectly aligned so the cashier could pull through with her little finger. I had the check made out and signed, ready for the amount, faster than she could ring up the goods.

And then one day I thought, what is the hurry? If I want to spend less time in the check-out line, I should go to the store less often. I stopped sprinting for the 'next available cashier' to save 10 seconds. I even started chatting with the cashiers so they could get a little break from putting stuff in bags. Who knows, maybe we can even get a laugh or share some local news.

So, if you're behind me, and you're tapping your feet about 120 times as fast as the techno music on your ipod, and you're late for work (as usual), look down at what you have in your hand- that's right, the bottle of water and puffed up corn sugar treat. Kill a few moments calculating how much of your life you've spent buying something that comes free from the tap.

Who knows, you might learn something.

#1. My husband's green card request being in limbo with the INS after 8 years of marriage.

#2. My husband's green card request being denied after being in limbo after 8 years of marriage.

#3. Having to spend a huge amounts of money to file for reconsideration of my husband's denied green card request after 8 years of marriage.

#4. the INS.

Cereal solution:

1. Select a suitable A (e.g.,3-4 quart plastic drink with large dispenser opening)
2. Empty contents of cereal container B into container A
3. Discard/recycle container B

Also, why does Raisin Bran, one of the heaviest cereals, no longer glue the bag to the bottom of the box, unlike most other cereals that are lighter than air to begin with and don't need it? You try to pour and the whole bag kinda half falls out and the tiny bran flakes go everywhere. For the love of God, why?

Mebbe cause Raisan Bran doesnt have a secret decoder ring buried at the bottom?

Growing up with 4 siblings, that glue could ruin a kids day.

In New England, we have Hannafords. They offer cereal in bulk - container is a plastic bag which you empty into your own canister at home. Works well. I would think, Kevin, that California would be way ahead in the bulk seeds/grains/granola/nuts etc type offerings. No?

Thanks for the McDevitt wave-off. You've done best-books lists before, but I don't remember if you've done a worst-books list. I would nominate all Robert Ludlum books for that list, but I just finished another of Ludlum's (ok, ok, but I was desperate) that is in a whole 'nother world of awfulness -- Apocalypse Watch. If you see this book on a shelf somewhere, drive a stake through it and burn it before you succumb as I did.

People who refuse to park their shopping carts in the corrals! I worked part-time for a Wal-Mart for several years and was sometimes called on to push carts. I wish the people who just leave the carts anywhere could be sentenced to pushing carts into the store for about 2 hours!

Pick up trucks that are too long and large for the typical commercial or public parking lot or parking structure. I don't know if this is just a Southern California problem, but if you try to park anywhere there are hundreds of these long-bed F-150/F250 truck all over the place. The traffic lane is now too narrow for vehicles to pass by each other, and when when one of these behemoths goes to back out of or into said parking place, he has to do a 22 point parking maneuver, while you get to watch each one of them End of rant. Thank you.

I only have one pet peeve:

Other people.

If cereal came in a Quaker Oats type cardboard container, round with a tight fitting top, I think that would be a cure for the sorry flimsy flap-lock [insert tab here] cro-magnon technology we have today.

And Quaker Oats canisters are non-food re-usable!!

"People bothered by cashiers putting change on top of your money. This is the way I like it; that way you can scoop the change out first and into your pocket, and then fold the bills separately."

If you're male and keep your change in your pocket.

Many women keep change in their pockets.

Gender specifics:

Women who park themselves at the ATM machine, usually on a Saturday morning with the line snaking onto the sidewalks, and rearrange their ginormous purses after they've gotten their cash.

Women who do their makeup -- or worse, whip out a stinky bottle of polish and do their fingernails, which I've seen that more than once, on the subway. I swear, they'd shower on the train if they could get away with it.

Women who act as if you are a child-hating ogre if you say "Excuse me" ever so politely as you valiantly try to inch past the double wide stroller they've parked in the middle of the narrow aisle of a crowded store, or when you must step over their brood sitting in the middle of the aisle.

Chick lit written by pretty but talentless self-promoters who have nothing to say.

Men who feel like they absolutely have to sit with their legs spread as wide as possible -- as if they're giving birth -- on the subway during rush hour. And then get cranky when you ask them to move it on over.

Men who snap their fingers for waiters.

Charlie Rose talking over someone you'd like to hear way more than you want to hear Charlie Rose.

Oh, and similar to the cereal-carton thing: paper milk carton tops that stay stubbornly glued together until, by the time you get it open, it looks as if it's been gnawed by wolves.

Ditto for CD packaging.

And clamshells. Hell, I'll pay extra to make up for the shoplifting if you'll stop using those damn things.

People who are both stupid and condescending -- a really irritating twofer, often found in upper management.

I want to know why, after 30-some years in the coffeemaker business, Mr. Coffee can't make a coffeepot that pours without spilling.

I think serial catowner has it right. I hate shopping. Not to mention the time and energy required to deal with the subsequent detritus. Otherwise, I have little to add to the previous posts, other than a few minor items...

1. People who wait 5 minutes for someone to vacate a parking space while blocking traffic (or drive around endlessly looking for something closer) in order to save a 2 minute walk.

2. People who try to get on the elevator before the people exiting.

3. Change/donation containers at checkout stands that make you stuff your change in one coin at a time.

4. Expensive hotels that nickel-and-dime you (especially for stuff that comes at no extra charge at many cheaper hotels), and that everyone at those hotels seems to expect a tip for anything and everything they do for you.

Whoa. Did everyone give up coffee AND cigarettes at the same time? There's a lot of crabbiness going on.

Most of this stuff is pretty minor, you know. Except for Charlie Rose talking over his guest. I mean, you just want to slap him.

And - Yes! - Dane Cook. What an annoying, unfunny asshole.

I get quite peeved when the msm and most blogs just take a campaign bulletin and print it as fact.

Headlines: Clinton Proposes a Lincoln-Douglas style debate.

Uh no - Clinton has proposed a series of dozens of 2 minute sound bites. She's desperate for free airtime and hopes to score a gottcha or two and would roundly criticize any approach Obama takes. If he stays the gentleman he'll be "too docile and unable to fight back" if he fights back he'll be a sexist meanie.

You're in the "fast" lane on the freeway, already going 10-15 miles over the limit. You're likely OK though because every car at that time of the day travels that fast and has for all the years you've driven to work this route. Now you've got some idiot on your ass, swear to God 2 feet from your bumper, and evidently he wants to go 20 mph over the limit. To do what, force you over and get on the next guy's ass? No, even worse. As soon as you give way he passes you on the right, then signals (maybe) and cuts in front of you and the next two or three lanes to the right to get off an exit 1/4 mile ahead. He rode your ass for a mile KNOWING he was exiting soon but by God he was gonna make you move out of that lane if it took getting 10 people killed doing it.

The guy on the damned radio commercial for cars that speed reads in four seconds two paragraphs of fine print about lease terms and limitations as if you fricking understand three goddamned words of what he just spewed out.

If you missed your turn and think you need to Stop And Get Over, YOU DON'T! Go down to the next one, turn around and come back.

Oh, and if the cereal is easy to open, it is easy to open and contaminate, so that's the name of that tune.

Humbug.

People who mistake Homer for history. ;-)

But I'm with you on the "Clara and I" thing.

Peeved Out: Insistence on proper use of the English language isn't always snobbery. Sometimes it seems as if language is the only weapon we have against the gathering darkness, and we're damned fools if we don't keep it as sharp as we can.

And who in their right mind writes checks in public for a purchase where a line of people waiting to pay in some more sensible manner looks on? In disgust. Wanting to field gut you like a deer dragged out of the woods.

People who drive round and round the parking lot at the health club looking for a space close to the door. To avoid a long walk into the facility. Where they're going to run two miles, do a few minutes on the stair climber, a few more on the elliptical and then knock out some free weights. WTF? Park your goddamned car, anywhere, and get out of my way.

People are crabby - and with good reason!
- Gasoline is up over 100% since the Bush coup in 2000.
- Food prices up by a similar amount.
- America's status in the world in steady decline.
- The climate is messed up and getting worse - unpredictable storms and erratic weather patterns.
- Pollution bad and getting worse.
- America's road and bridges crumbling and causing traffic gridlock.

Things are way-y-y fucked up and we don't even have Dan Quayle to kick around any more....

Businesses with automated answering machines offering a menu of "Press 1 for this" or "Press 2 for that" and whatever the hell it is you've called for isn't offered as an option. Nor is a live person offered. Like a pet store that sells every damned domestic animal you can think of and there's no number for "Dogs". WTF? Or a fricking Sears with no number for home appliances. I kid you not. But a fricking number for women's shoes.