More English Pet Peeves

What the hell is with me having the urge to be so nitpicky right now? I don’t know. But here I go again.

What is it with people forgetting the meaning of words and just using them any old way? Some people just seem to take words and throw them in a sentence as if they were a decoration that had no meaning. Like the way people say literally. I’ve heard people say, ” He was literally spitting fire.” Unles he’s one of those trick fire-eater guys, no he wasn’t. Literally means he was actually doing it. But people use the word just to accentuate what they’re saying. Or people who say, I rest my case when they haven’t proven anything. I just look at them and go, ok whatever.

And then there are words that just seem to have lost their meaning. Some people say, “Oh I could care less.” You know they mean, I don’t care. But if you could care less, doesn’t that imply that you do care somewhat because you could care less? Or, to take a shit. Don’t you want to leave a shit? If you’re taking one, I don’t want to know what you’re doing with it. And then there’s the expression “all but”. I don’t understand when people say, “the food was all but gone.” Wouldn’t that mean it was all still there? But they mean that it was pretty much gone. What the hell? Soon everything we know in the English language will be turned around ass backwards. One day I won’t know what hit me when I’ll say to someone, “have a nice day” and they’ll take it to mean, “go fuck yourself.”

Pet Peeves

There are certain little things in people’s writing that just annoy me. I don’t know why, I shouldn’t give a rat’s ass, but they just get under my skin, I guess the way people get bugged by other people’s eating habits, or the way people leave the toothpaste, etc. I just see them a lot and every time I do, I just go, god do you look at what you’re writing?

I’ll grant you I’m not the most perfect writer and speller in the world and an english teacher would probably pop out old red at least on my grammar. But some people just have forgotten how to use words. There are people who do not know when to use who and when to use whom, so to sound sophisticated, they use whom all the damn time. You’re not sophisticated, you’re an idiot. There is a time for who and a time for whom. If you don’t know, you’re probably safer to use who.

And then there are the ones who say then instead of than. They’ll say, “I like x more then y.” Maybe it’s just really evident because the thing that makes my computer talk makes it abundantly clear that dude fucked up. But it bugs the hell out of me. I understand that error doesn’t get caught by spell check. But there are some people who do it consistently! It’s like do you not know the meaning of the word then versus than? It especially bugs me when I see it in papers that I’m proofreading.

And while I’m on the subject of especially, notice how I spelled that. ESPECIALLY! no, boys and girls, it does not have an x in it! I have heard people say it as if it did, and have seen it written, and I just go, arg! I go arg whenever I see people making up new spellings of words. Expecially for especially, fermiliar or farmiliar for familiar, and this one bugs the ever loving hell out of me. Curiousity! I had someone on my MSN Messenger list who had that in their name for months. Ug. Curiosity has no second u! And they’ll insist that they’re spelling it right.

That’s the part that I guess bugs me the most. The same people keep doing it! Learn! People shouldn’t have made it through school and still be making these stupid mistakes…or at least if ya make them, you should catch them! Now feel free to pick the living hell out of that post…after what I’ve just said, I deserve it.

It’s Official, Music Is Dead

I wish I had a nickel [pun intended] for every time I heard somebody say something along the lines of “every Nickelback song sounds the same.” I’m pretty sure I’d never have to do anything ever again but that’s not really the point. The point is that I can help anybody who has ever said that prove it to anybody who ever tries to tell you that you’re wrong.

Turn up your sound and downloadthis.
It’s amazing. Not only that somebody thought to do this, but that an entire group of people could make this possible a few years and 2 albums apart without intending to.

Nothing to Wear

There’s been something that always bugs me. Why is it that lots of girls never want to wear a dressy outfit to more than one event? They’ll go out on a shopping quest, searching for the ultimate outfit. Once it has been located, like the holy grail, they’ll rave about it, wear it once and go, “oh didn’t I look good in that?” But when an occasion comes up where it would look good, they cry out, “Oh I can’t wear this. Person X will be there. They’ll have seen it before.” Ok, first of all, do you really think you’re so special that person X will remember what you wore a year ago at Bob and Betty’s wedding? “But there will be pictures!” Those are of your faces, predominantly I assume. Who in hell is photographing people’s outfits?

And my next thought is, who the hell cares? So you wore it before. People know that there aren’t clothing fairies running around handing out an infinite number of outfits. God expensive dresses and shit like that don’t come cheap. So what if you only have one or two? Do you have to project an image always of something you’re not? Just wear the damn dress and shut up. At least you do have a dress.

Plus, why would you waste all that money and time on something you’re only going to wear once? I figure all that money and time is an investment. You’re buying it so you can get a lot of wear out of it. It seems a complete shame to wear it once and then just let it collect dust in the closet. If you’re going to do that, you’re wasting your money. Go buy something you’ll actually use.

Well I think I’ve ranted enough about that already. Maybe I’ll go watch some TV. Oh wait. I’ve already done that today. Whatever shall I do?

Name That Team

So I’m taking a Goalball team to the Windsor Classic Indoor Games in March and I’m not going with my usual provincial teams. It is, in fact, an under 23 tournament so there are only two players on my usual team eligible to play and we are on different teams for competition’s sake.

There will be a few more of these under 23 style tournaments in the next few years that I will be eligible to play in before my 23rd birthday and in all likelyhood I’ll be taking teams to those as well so I need to come up with a name I can use for the next few years while I’m still playing on this team.

So, I open it up to the comment boards to try and get some ideas for creativ and innovative names. I, of course, understand that in opening it up to the internet I will get crushed with stupid stuff like “the Buttheads” or “The pilons” but if I can get one or two really well thought out names it will have been worth sorting through the garbage.

So, Vomiteers, what do you got for me? It can be the name of a junior team somewhere that is kinda catchy, or a cool name from a league not many of us know of. or something that you came up with just off the top of your head – maybe even a name from the past like an early 1900’s NHL team like the Ottawa Silver Seven. Of course that doesn’t work here, but it illustrates my point. Keep in mind it will be the Ontario Somethings or the Somethings of Ontario.

Let’s see how creative you can be, cuz frankly, I got nothing.

Looking For Love In All The Wrong Places

AMMAN – An online romance between a Jordanian man and woman came to a screeching halt when the pair discovered they were husband and wife. Separated for several months, the couple both began seeking an Internet chat room to find new loves. They had no idea that they would find each other. Bakr Melham, who went by the name Adnan, fell in love with a woman who called herself Jamila. He was in for a big surprise however when he realized that Jamila was actually his wife Sanaa. The pair talked for three months in cyberspace before making wedding plans. They decided to finally meet in person near a bus depot, but discovering their true identities was too much for the pair. Bakr shouted at Sanaa, “You are divorced, divorced, divorced” – the traditional manner of officially ending a marriage in Islam. Sanaa called him a liar and then fainted.

Who Said a Computer Couldn’t Sing Anyway?

Yep, time for some weird humour, and to prove that I am such a geek. I found this page full of mp3’s made by making speech synthesizers sing. Speech synthesizers are the things that make computers talk for us blind people. But someone who had way too much time on his hands figured out years ago that if you feed a certain synthesizer code in a certain way, you can make it sing. And then, someone else with even more time on his hands took it to the next level. Seriously, check these out. Some of them are so well done it’s scary.

Is this a Joke?

I saw the movie about Arnold running for governor in California, ya know, “See Arnold Run.” Well, I sorta had it on while I was doing other things. And I have to hope against hope that the producers were actually trying to make fun of him. The whole thing was just a little ridiculous.

First of all, the title, “See Arnold Run” sounds like one of those old Dick and Jane readers. See Dick run. See Jane follow. Whatever. And that alone makes me think they want us to think of Arnold as some kind of Tarzan-like beast. Then, they have some other guy playing Arnold. Ok, I understand they have to do that because you can’t have Arnold playing himself. But he’s so famous that you have to do a damn good job of finding an actor for him, and I’m sorry, this guy sucked. Maybe he looked like him. Maybe he was all muscle-bound and had the right height and stuff. But his accent was so fake that it was obvious beyond obvious that he wasn’t even close to Arnold. At least get someone who can do a good accent fake. Seriously, it would turn on and off at will. Come on guy, keep it on for the whole movie. At least try to convince me that you are who you’re pretending to be.

And then there were all the I’ll be baacks and Caalee-forneeas. I think you know what I’m getting at. It was more like a caricature of Arnold than a serious movie about his run.

And then the final straw. They had this interview scene where supposedly Barbara Walters was interviewing him. Maybe the chick who was playing Barbara Walters looked like her, but the only thing that sounded like her was an overaccentuated speech impediment. Ya know, Bobwa Wawtas.

Keep in mind that I noticed all of this while sorta just having it on in the background. I can’t imagine what crap I’d see if I actually had it on and was giving it my full attention.

I don’t give a crap about whether it hurt Arnold’s feelings or not. I’m not some kind of Arnold fan. I just look at the movie and don’t find it convincing. All I can say is, if it was intended to be funny, which it didn’t look like it was, ya fooled me into laughing. If it wasn’t, go back to school before you right your next movie.

Arthritis Pain? What Arthritis Pain?

I was watching some TV the other day, and one of those commercials came on for a prescription drug that comes on if you’re watching an American channel. Ya know the ones. Some music and a voice saying, “insert medical condition getting you down? Are you not able to do the things you could do before? Then you should try insert drug name here.” Then after some supposed sufferers rave about how much the drug helped them, they heave a series of side-effects at you so fast and quietly, as if they hope to sneak them past you. Well I heard one of those commercials the other day. It was for an injection to help with arthritis pain. But the side-effects were so bad that I thought to myself, who in their right mind would even try this drug. I mean, usually they’re something like headache, fatigue, dry mouth, etc. But these were killers, literally! They talked about it causing infection at the injection sites, heart failure, suppression of ability to fight infections, and even lymphoma! And then some cheery woman encourages people to try the medication. Not on your life, chief. If I had arthritis, suddenly the pain wouldn’t seem too bad next to those side-effects.

That’s Not A Sport

So I didn’t have a very good weekend. I had some plans fall through on Friday night, weather was shit on Saturday and to top it all off, the Eagles couldn’t get it done in the big game last night.

Anyway there’s something that’s been bothering me of late, and it’s small and petty, but bothersome nonetheless. I’m getting really tired of turning on TSN, ESPN or Sportsnet and seeing Poker.

Now I understand that it’s become a huge television trend and everyone’s getting in to watching it and you have to support what the public wants to see. but how can you justify having it on a sports network? Last I checked it wasn’t a sport. If you really feel the need to put it on tv, and clearly someone does, then you need to find a different network to put it on. It’s not a sport.

There’s other things on these networks that have been on for longer that I didn’t agree with. Things like Darts and billiards have been littering the sports tv landscape for a long time but you can at least make a better arguement for them. For both of those games you need a physical skill. In my opinion, sport is a combination of physical skill, physical exertion, and mental focus. Billiards and Darts require a physical skill and a mental focus but I don’t see them over-exerting themselves physically and taking huge risk of injury. (Although you could argue that anyone playing a game where sharp metal objects are being thrown is at risk of an injury, but I think you all know what I mean)

Last time I saw poker being played, there was no physical skills required and no exhausting physical exertion. Does it take a great mental skill and knowledge of the game? Sure it does. But that doesn’t make it a sport and if your network is going to be called The Sports Network or SportsNet than you need to get that shit off your line-up.

Just because there’s no hockey, football, basketball or baseball on does not mean you need to resort to card games for your programming. How about some amature sports getting some much much needed exposure? What about more downhill skiing? What about more X-Games stuff. It’s growing just as quickly as poker. How about more golf? I hate golf but at least it’s another fast growing sport.

Just keep to what your’e supposed to be doing as a sportsnetwork…. or at least show some Go Fish.