Thursday, 20 February 2003

speaking of stuff I don't get

A refresher course. Please consult this list frequently in your dealings with me.


  • Daylight Saving Time.
  • Blue and purple M&Ms at the expense of light brown M&Ms.
  • Wearing a skirt that's wider than it is long. If you need the wide, you can't handle the short.
  • Wearing shorts whose hem is above the point at which your thighs stop touching.
  • Skorts.
  • Acid-washed denim.
  • Low-rise jeans that show the high back of thong underwear especially when the lisa-annoyer in question is seated. Please stand up. Please. Because I'm not even over the
  • Bra straps with spaghetti-strapped top look, though a pretty bra and small bosom make it tolerable.
  • Long hair with bangs or how this is different from a mullet.
  • Complicated hair processes that are allowed to grow out. Roots look worse than bland hair; weaves starting two inches from the scalp look worse than thin hair.
  • Similarly, fake nails with millimeters of real nail at the base.
  • Makeup at all, since makeup smudges and chips and flakes and wears off and so forth and looks so much worse than naked skin and nails.
  • Panty-hose.
  • Dark hose with pale shoes.
  • White leather shoes.
  • Why bare feet are illegal in public buildings.
  • Why driving in bare feet is illegal.
  • Not fumbling with your parcels and so forth to extract bus fare while you're waiting so that when the bus does come, you make the bus even later.
  • Why certain words are not struck from the language: prior, product, blouse. Ick.
  • Saying "waiting on line" instead of "waiting in line." Regionalism? Or just stupid? Maybe a regionalism. The really stupid thing is saying
  • "Where are you at?" or "Where is it at?" "Where" implies the preposition and this phrase sounds crass. Similarly,
  • "When was the last time...?" No. "What was the last time..." or "when did you last [x]?"
  • Using "shoot" instead of "send": "I just shot an e-mail over to you" takes unnecessarily longer than "I just sent you (an) e-mail" or "I just emailed you" or, in fact, nothing at all; because, since you just wrote, why talk at me?
  • Confusing "comprise" and "compose"; using either in the passive voice where the other in the active voice would do; and worse, misusing either in the passive voice.
  • "The reason why is because..."
  • Using "decimate" to mean "annihilate" or "destroy some greater portion than 10%," thereby stripping the language of a usefully specific term. I will accept "decimate" to imply "minority fraction not necessarily one-tenth."
  • Saying "reply back" instead of "reply."
  • "There is [plurals]."
  • That "literally" is becoming an intensifier instead of a modifier.
    "You'll be literally bleeding cash."
    "That last minute push for voter turnout had people literally coming out of the woodwork." People fit in woodwork?
    "On September 11, 2001, the Earth literally stood still." It did?
    "He literally dropped the ball on this project." So much for metaphor.
  • Using almost any transitive verb as intransitive.
  • Using almost any intransitive verb as transitive:
    "This action will dwindle the deficit."
    "We are going to innovate the product."
  • Which splices. (I don't know what to call this use of "which" as a conjunction: "There's a book over which I don't know what its name is.")
  • Calling gambling (wagering on the outcome of an event you do not control, such as roulette or horse-racing) "gaming."
  • Using "went" instead of "gone" for the past perfect of "go": They have went thataway. So did my delicate ears.
  • When the language evolves in any way contrary to my liking.
  • Not distinguishing between the letter O and the number 0 in speech.
  • Not understanding the difference between the letter O and the number 0.
  • Stingy tipping.
  • Counting Crows.
  • Going through a stack of photographs one by one, putting down each photograph face up, such that the stack winds up backwards.
  • Indoor pools with no natural light.
  • Preferring captive to natural water for swimming.
  • Jet-skis and most motor boats.
  • Sunscreen. I realize I am going to die of nine types of skin cancer. In the meantime, I will have sweat freely instead of having clogged pores, worn a hat, stayed in the shade, or otherwise accommodated my lack of melanin.
  • Raised ranches, the ugliest format of house and a plague in Connecticut.
  • Snow-mobiles for touring.
  • Leafblowers.
  • Smoking tobacco.
  • Smoking while on oxygen.
  • Panhandling while smoking while on oxygen.
  • My college boss watching my friend skip a department lunch to go the gym and saying "I just don't understand that kind of physical compulsion" while without irony puffing on a cigarette.
  • The person ahead of me in line once who waited until she was at the cashier to ask her companion (not in line with her, involving shouting) which of two pink baby outfits he preferred. Not at all to my surprise, he had no opinion. She lay them on the counter, pondering, and I suggested, out loud-- which, though rude, renews my faith in my self qua loud abrasive self--that while she decided I could just make my purchase. (She bought the footie pajamas instead of the sack thing. Though not quickly.)
  • The slow. If you're going to stand on an escalator or people-mover, stand to the right. If I say, "excuse me, may I get by," move the fuck over.
  • Greer Garson as Elizabeth Bennet. Wrong, wrong, wrong. (However, Laurence Olivier as Mr. Darcy is yummy.)
  • Facial piercings. (I realize this makes me a double hypocrite for my double ear piercings.)
  • Round-tipped tweezers.
  • Bumpersticker philosophy:
    "Christians aren't perfect, just forgiven" is pretentious.
    "Mean people suck"-- maybe, but saying so makes you mean yourself, see?
    "If God isn't a Broncos fan, why are sunsets blue and orange?"
  • For an expiration date, saying, e.g., "oh two oh five" instead of "February aught five."
  • Saying "Nine eleven" when you mean "September 11th," but especially saying "nine one one" when you mean "September 11th." Reluctantly, I'm coming around to "nine eleven." Most elevenths of September are ordinary days, unlike all fourths of July being holidays.
  • Outie belly buttons. I realize this is unfair, but they squick me.
  • Shoulders that start at the ear.
  • Not picking up after your dog who has just defecated in my flower garden.
  • Mowing my grass. Damn it, these twelve feet are my property; those three feet are yours. Long grass has long roots and thus needs less water. Furthermore, it's mine. Geroff.
  • Watering grass when it's not your watering day.
  • Watering your grass such that your sprinkler sprinkles the sidewalk on its way to the easement. It's called drought, people.
  • Why Noah Webster converted "plough" to "plow" but not "drought" to "drowt." Because it's ugly? But "plow" is ugly too. I didn't understand how to pronounce "draught" for years. And there are two pronunciations for "slough" as a noun and yet a third as a verb. I love this language.
  • Watering grass.
  • Sod companies growing lots and lots of sod in northern Colorado during a drought when food producers have no water left and stand to waste the water they've paid dearly for all season long if their crops die.
  • Growing lots and lots of sod.
  • "Covenant communities" that require sod and sprinkler systems in the high arid plains.
  • "Covenant communities" that forbid clotheslines for purported risk to property values.
  • Referring to potential residences as "homes." A home is a concept and cannot be bought; a house or apartment or condominium or yurt is a physical entity and can be.
  • Preferring electric-dried sheets to air-dried sheets. This is not just wrong but heretical.
  • Drying dishes with electricity.
  • Drying dishes by hand (even few enough to fit in a single rack).
  • McMansions.
  • NPR's Car Talk. I could be disowned from Charenton for this opinion, but it stands.
  • Most deejays at all.
  • Hence, commercial radio.
  • Not using the mute button, if one is available, during television commercials. Too bad such a thing is impratical for radio.
  • Automatic transmission, except I have a little bit of sympathy for you if you're regularly in stop-and-go traffic.
  • Stop-and-go traffic.
  • Traffic.
  • Strewing supposedly spooky stuff around your house and garden for a full month before Hallowe'en. Anything autumnal is fine: it's autumn. But spookiness is for one night of the year and its being around for more than the one night lessens the spook-value.
  • Decorating for Christmas before Thanksgiving. I don't know what the date should be outside the U.S.A., but the day after the fourth Thursday in November is early enough here. And take it down no later than Epiphany.
  • "Satin" string Christmas tree ornaments.
  • Fake Christmas trees.
  • Not mulching your Christmas tree.
  • Not composting your fallen leaves.
  • Not composting your grass clippings.
  • Why squirrels can't eat one tomato in five parts but instead take five bites out of five different tomatoes.
  • ", except read "pears" for "tomatoes."
  • How squirrels can be so cute yet so despicable. Couldn't they be scaled, to make hating them easier?
  • That spiders do not understand which side of the door they should stay on.
  • How Chang and Eng Butler fathered 21 children between them.
  • Legalizing hunting for the legally blind.
  • Chewing gum as a cow would cud.
  • An open resting jaw. Shut your teeth, close your lips. Thank you.
    ---
  • Wearing gear from a team you don't belong to (relatively mild, really), or from a school neither you nor anyone you know attend or care about (less mild), or with the initials of the New York Police Department or the Fire Department of New York just like that worn by those who actually have committed themselves to those departments (not mild at all, that one).
  • Articulating every thought that skitters across your brain. Didn't you ever read Little Town on the Prairie? When Laura was tactless once, Ma wrote in her autograph album something about keeping in mind "to whom you speak, of whom you speak, and when, and where, and why." I understand (and partake in) talking to yourself, but when you talk to yourself with an audience, you are not merely insane but also annoying: only the latter is a sin.
    ---
  • Calling me "Lis."
  • R-ing the latter vowel in my name.

dandelion

my new iPodBecause Dandelion tells stories and is the fastest rabbit.

Right now he's waiting to tell me "The Body Artist" and The Universe in a Nutshell. The rabbits didn't sing, but their stories are their past and lore as some human societies' past and lore are song. So Dandelion also has the various albums I've imported to iTunes since--not Gandalf, Gandalf has never sounded right, but its current name is private--I got the iBook in July.

(I changed "history" to "past" because I am such a damn elitist. If it's not written, it's not history.)

Hm. HEBD sent moonshadows to Sad Lisa when Granny died because she knew I'd be listening to Cat Stevens. Perhaps the iBook's name is Moonshadow. Is that sufficiently different than my dog's name? If so, it's the iBook's name. Jessie named hers Eloise. I just gave Olivia to soon-to-be-parents and Olivia too, because those ears! Plus, she wears an "I Read Banned Books" pin, because a pin is such a suitable gift for a newborn. I gave Emlet an Olivia counting book, I think. Some form of Olivia, whom I love because of her big mouth. Anyway, point being she's black and white and red where an iBook is white and white and aqua. So Moonshadow, not Gandalf the White, not Olivia. That took long enough.