Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Nat's Big Book of Grievances

I was inspired the other day when I was watching the Friends episode "The One Where Heckles Dies" while on the gym treadmill. First and foremost, I want to declare to the world that Friends is one of the best sitcoms that will ever grace our TV screens, and I vow to always find parallels between six 20-somethings living the life in NYC and one 20-something existing with her dog in pondunk Louisiana. Anyway, Mr. Heckles' "Big Book of Grievances" reminds me of my copious beefs. To call them pet peeves seems overly kind...most of mine are things that make me want to Cut. A. Bitch. I actually acquired the friendly nickname "Grievance Girl" while at a Festivus party last year. The guy who thought of it was drunk and on crutches and royally pissing me off, so I'm pretty sure I tried to tackle him (I may have also been drunk). I should probably consider being more tolerant of others' stupidity...in the meantime, just know that every time I come across these things, I die a little.

In no particular order (because I can't say that any of these infuriate me less than others):
  • Uggs
    • Uggs with skirts...if you need to wear an entire sheep on your foot, you probably need to wear pants
  • bad tippers (once a waitress, always a waitress)
  • Nickelback
  • people who think Nickelback is hard rock
  • songs about how much the singer's girlfriend is a whore/freak/skank (see Nickelback)
  • British people (this is slightly inconsistent, as I love Harry Potter, the Beatles, Frank Turner, etc...more appropriately, mean British people)
  • monkeys/bitchy cats
  • people who aggressively push their beliefs on others, be it religion, politics, vegetarianism, etc. If I want to eat cows and be pro-death and whatever, let me be! I won't tell you you're an idiot if you do the same for me.
  • iPhones...get over yourself, Apple
  • poor grammar, including, but not limited to:
    • using apostrophes for pluralization
    • inconsistent grammar...if you're going to be wrong, at least stick to your guns and don't contradict yourself
    • sporadic capitalization of words...goes along with previous beef
    • you're/your, it's/its...come on now, break it down and sound it out
    • "ya'll"..."y'all is obviously a contraction of "you all", whether you accept is as a real word or not. So why on earth would you put an apostrophe halfway between the second word?
    • "between you and I"...NO! Prepositions are NEVER followed with "I"!
  • public signs with poor grammar...I can't bring myself to give patronage to a business that can't proofread
  • conformity for the sake of fitting in; conversely, nonconformity for the sake of being different...just be you, whether you fit in or not
  • bars with bad beer choices
  • misuse of "irony"
  • sports cars/Jeep Wranglers with automatic transmissions
  • reality TV shows that are also competitions...I'm talking to you, American Idol

This is a pretty good beginning to my book, if I do say so myself. Hopefully I don’t come off too much as a raving lunatic. But hey, if it looks like a duck and sounds like a duck…


4 comments:

Unknown said...

I am fairly certain my list of grievances would be at least double your list. Therefore, I declare that you are not a raving lunatic. I also think you should have tackled said man on crutches. I am sure he deserved it.

(P.S. I reread my post like 6 times to avoid grammatical errors, but I probably still fucked it up.)

Behind the Couch said...

I think I've decided to make this a multi-part series, and I'll post as things come to me. I didn't want the post to be overwhelming, you know? I did actually try to tackle him...that's how I bashed my head on a keg.

That Kind Of Girl said...

Oh man. FISTBUMP! We're not on the same page about iPhones (I did feel that way until I got my own iPhone, which I now cannot go ten minutes without checking), and I don't know enough about beer to get het up over it, but other than that, this is blow by blow my pet peeve list.

Another grammatical error that irks me to no end? People over-using "myself". Oh, you want me to give that form to Tom and YOURSELF? YOURSELF and Bob like Nickelback? Way to make yourself sound like a complete doucher.

Behind the Couch said...

The iPhone issue may be just due to the fact that I'm too poor (although it seems that iPhone users can't wipe their own butts without needing an app for that).

Doesn't it make you cringe when you hear someone butcher the English language so mercilessly? If only I carried a Taser...