Rant Time! Things I Dislike.

Time for an annual (or more often? I don't know yet!) rant on things I do not like. I always find it entertaining to see what drives people up a wall, so perhaps others will think this is entertaining as well! If not, too bad. Suck it up, buttercup, you CHOSE to come to this blog! :)

I don’t understand why some girls put up pictures of engagement rings with the caption “I said yes!” I mean, I get why they are excited and taking pictures, of course!

But shouldn’t it really be:

“Duh. Of course I said yes. Why else would I be wearing the ring, silly? No, no, you misunderstand, I said no, but then asked if he’d mind if I played dress up for awhile. Shiny!”

Other things I hate:

-Being in Times Square for any length of time. Unless I'm on my way to a Broadway show, in which case I can stomach the crowds because the reward is so worth it. Listen closely, tourists: Times Square is for you. If you visit NYC, and all you do is go to Times Square and Central Park, you cannot at all accurately state that you "did New York" or that you're a "real New Yorker now!" Just noooooo!

-People my own age calling me "dear" or "hun" or "sweetie," especially if we've just met. Or if they are younger than me. Or for any reason at all.

-I HATE horror movies. I don’t even like to watch the trailers. But, I can watch Dexter and Criminal Minds and Bones all the live-long day. I had this sudden realization, when a horror trailer came on TV and I ignored it as hard as I could, when a thought popped into my mind: “I wish this was for Criminal Minds, because I’d totally watch it.”

-Misspelled tattoos or ones with incorrect grammar. Especially if they say “No, it’s MEANT to be like that…” Of course it is. Of course you meant to misspell “mom” on the indelible ink on your body. I’m sure it has a crazy deep meaning. Or perhaps that apostrophe is just adding SYMBOLISM, dude.

-Intentional ignorance.

-That the key pad on my work desk phone is right side up and the number key pad on my computer keyboard is upside down. One or the other, people!

-My reliance on caffeine!!

-Random whistling or tuneless humming. It's just so intermittent and annoying! Whistling especially. I cannot adequately express how I feel when I hear random whistling. It feels like I have developed a twitch and and some sort of brain-stutter, and then I can't focus on ANYTHING else until I locate and eradicate the sound. Same with random dings and bells from people's computers at work, haha!

-Oh! I just thought of another thing. I strongly dislike those "like and share this for our troops/world peace/little kid's surgery/jesus" posts. Is there ANY recorded time in the history of facebook where a bunch of people "like and share" something and then something positive comes out of it? 
"Oh, hey a ton of people liked the US troops on Facebook. I shall give them more funding and proper equipment and full pay pensions. I am the President, let it be so!" 
Or "Awesome, 4 bajillion people shared that picture of the 5 year of with a cleft palate, time for me to scrub up and fix that! If only 3 bajillion had shared it, I would've just moved on to the next kid, you know." 
Or maybe God is like "Rad, half the world's population just liked a picture of Jesus. Time for me to show myself!" (That last one....that would really answer a lot of questions for a lot of people....)

-People who claim that the world is infringing on their right to freedom of speech if others disagree with them. The whole point of free speech is that you have the RIGHT to say anything you want to anyone. You DO NOT have the right to be free of the consequences of your actions and words. If you say something super racist and your employer hears you and fires you, that is NOT infringing on your rights. You are free to say whatever you want, just as your employer is free to have rules and codes of conduct in place in the workplace (and they are paying you to be there and follow these rules). If you do not follow these rules, which may include not being racist or sexist in the workplace, you can be fired. Because you have a right to free speech, not a right to employment with that particular company. This is just a single example.

-Random lights or blinking lights in a dark room. I need my bedroom dark, silent, and cold for me to get optimal sleep. A random blinking light or like those old flashing lights on VCRs and stuff, I cannot handle it. I have to face away, or unplug the offending thing. It's so weird. Once I realize there is a light there, I still think about it even when my eyes are closed. I'm a weirdo, I know.
(In answer to your question: My mother. My mother still owns a VCR.)

I can't really think of any more. This actually took a lot of thinking to come up with a bunch of things I dislike! I tend to genuinely like people and things, and find most of life pretty delightful.

So there it is, a list of things that a happy-go-lucky person doesn't like. What do you hate?

Word Facts & Words That Amuse Me

I am a reader. I love reading, I love books, and I love words. I write songs, poems, and stories, as well, so I actually spend a fairly significant amount of time thinking about words and phrasing and waxing poetic about analogies and metaphors and the like.

Here is a cool list of fun word facts about the English language, and just some words I love. Do you have favorite words, the way some people have favorite or ‘lucky’ numbers?

Here are some interesting word facts!

-A fact I’ve found to be fairly common is that “dreamt” is the only word in the English language that ends in “mt.”

-The word "triskaidekaphobia" means "extreme fear of the number 13". This superstition is related to "paraskevidekatriaphobia", which means "fear of Friday the 13th". Try saying that 3 times fast!

-The longest English word that can be spelled without repeating any letters is 'uncopyrightable’.

-Due to a printing error, there was a word in the English dictionary from 1932 to 1940 which didn’t have a meaning.  The word was ‘Dord’ and it became known as ‘ghost word’. (I'd never heard this one before!)

-Some words exist only in plural form, for example: glasses (spectacles), binoculars, scissors, shears, tongs, gallows, trousers, jeans, pants, pajamas (though clothing words often become singular when we use them as modifiers, as in "trouser pocket").

-The word 'checkmate' in chess comes from the Persian phrase 'Shah Mat,' meaning "the king is helpless."

-We pronounce the combination "ough" in 9 different ways, as in the following sentence which contains them all: "A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed."

-Approximately one new word is added to the English language every two hours and around 4,000 new words are added to the English dictionary every year.

-This symbol: # is called an octothorpe. Also known as hash, pound sign, and number sign.

-Los Angeles's full name is "El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncula" and can be abbreviated to 3.63% of its size, "L.A."

-The word 'testify' was based on men in the Roman court swearing to a statement, made by swearing on their testicles. (I'm not 100% sure on this one. Some sites say yes, some say no, but they seem to agree that the root word for testify is the Latin word testis, which is the Latin word for 'witness' and also was a figurative way of referring to their testicles.)

-According to Oxford English Dictionary research, an ‘x’ was first used to represent a kiss in a 1763 letter written by naturalist Gilbert White.

-‘Sarcasm’ comes from the Greek word ‘sarkazien,’ meaning ‘to tear flesh.’

Words I like because they sound funny:

Flapdoodle - nonsense, a fool (Can be pluralized as flapdoodles!)

Flapjack - more fun of a word than “pancake,” though of course “pancake” does explain what it is a little better. A small cake made of batter in a pan. Life would be easier is more things were named in a way that actually explained what they were. Instead of “shoe," we might say "foot insulator" or something!

Cattywampus - not straight or centered.

Crapulence - when you get sick because you eat or drink too much (is it a real word!)

Gobsmacked - surprised or astonished.

Skullduggery - deception or trickery.

Flabbergasted - to be overcome with surprise or bewilderment

Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis - a disease you get from inhaling volcanic dust -- they probably could have simply used the word “disease” here...

Brouhaha - excited public interest, sensation, or discussion; HULLABALOO. (or a really hilarious coffee!)

Kerfuffle - a fuss or commotion.

Onomatopoeia  - the formation of a word by imitation of a sound (buzz, cuckoo, meow…).