A Partial List of My Pet Peeves

Posted today for your amusement/irritation, to be updated as necessary on future occasions.

People who walk up escalators
…especially when they ask you to move out of the way. Seriously – go take the fracking stairs, Sporty. I’m using the escalator for a reason. I don’t come over to your treadmill at the gym and hit the stop button. Don’t pester me to move on the escalator.

Passive Aggressive Bloggers
I’ve already written at length about this.

When someone paints over wallpaper
I’m invariably on the wrong end of this phenomenon – the “trying to take the paper off the wall later” end. It blows. Just buck up and remove the wallpaper first, lazybutt, for the good of humanity. Yeah, I’m talking to former house residents.

Sci-fi or Fantasy fiction novelists who deliberately don’t wrap up major plot points so they have a built in sequel(s)
There’s nothing more irritating than a deliberately unfinished story. Like I’m going to give you more cash for keeping me waiting. Just because every other writer in the genre writes a trilogy that turns into 10 volumes doesn’t mean you have to. Especially if, like Robert Jordan, they might die before they finish the series.

This is connected to another pet peeve – that practically all fantasy fiction is formulaic (farm boy turns hero, meets wizard, goes on long journey to dark mysterious mountains, defeats evil, discovers he’s really an orphan king, blah, blah, blah, Joseph Campbell, blah. Snooze).

The euphemisms “in the closet” and “outing”
I’ve written about this at length, too.

When a person uses a picture for their social networking profile that has more than one person in it.
I can’t tell if they’re trying to obscure who they are, if they’re trying to prove they have friends, or if they seriously don’t know how to crop a photo in this day and age. None of these potential explanations speaks well of them.

People who get shitty when I call my girlfriend on the cell phone from the store
Oh, I know, you’re probably one of those folks who’ve blogged about how irritating this is, so I’m probably just poking a stick right in you eye with this one, but I don’t give a shit. Get the hell over it. If there’s one time I absolutely need to call my girlfriend other than in an emergency, it’s in the damned grocery store. She’s standing next to the fridge and can tell me if we already have mustard or not. Please stop bitching about this; it’s the reason why cell phones were invented. God knows, we don’t need extra jars of mustard in our house, and although I’ve done due diligence and made a list, there’s always something I didn’t think of. I’m trying to be energy efficient in avoiding a return drive to the store.

Seriously, I don’t know what the effing problem with this is. If my girlfriend were with me in the store, I’d turn around and ask her if we needed mustard. Would you object to this, too? You just don’t like to hear people talking in the store? And if that doesn’t bother you, why does it make a difference if I’m calling her instead of talking to her next to me? You just don’t like me having a conversation with a person invisible to you?

One common bitch about this seems to be “people just aren’t present anymore; they’re preoccupied with something going on somewhere else.” Sorry to burst your bubble, Narcissus, but before cellphones, my mind wasn’t present with you when I was shopping, anyway. I was probably daydreaming about riding a unicorn in Narnia, actually. What kills me is that we have this same conversation with every new piece of technology. People said shit like this back when they invented the telegraph: “oh, woe, people just don’t write letters to one another anymore.” Try and keep up, grandpa.

Yeah, I actually considered closing the comments on this post. I might still do it, so don’t be a jackass.

Continue ReadingA Partial List of My Pet Peeves

Big List of Things I Like

Posted for no apparent reason, except that I needed a pick-me-up because it’s been a crappy week. Feel free to add your own list in the comments.

My Girlfriend

The Spikel Monster

Monkeys, especially:
– Curious George
– Hanuman
– King Kong

Board Games, especially:
Clue
Dave, the Computer Table
– from Ikea, this laptop table is awesome.
Big Things
Pirates
Volkswagen Microbuses
Tinfoil Hats
Paper Craft
Dioramas
View-Master Viewers

Recycling
Old Advertising Murals

Zoltar, and other Fortune Teller Machines

Victorian Houses
The Winchester Mystery House

Food and Drink

Diet Dr. Pepper
Bengal Spice tea
Caesar Salad from Bravo
Crab Rangoon from Mandarin House
Chicken Piccata/Chicken with lemon butter and capers
Waffles
Crab Cakes from Oceanaire
Prime Rib from Colorado Steakhouse (its all about the perfect horseradish sauce)
My Mom’s Lasagna (which is really Better Homes and Gardens)

Words and Authors

Books in General
Shakespeare
Jane Austen
P.G. Wodehouse
Georgette Heyer (a guilty pleasure)
Umberto Eco
Good Slash Fiction (oooooooooo la la)
Bad Fan Fiction (like watching a train wreck where nobody gets hurt, but there’s lots of noise and smashing)

Geek Things

Kinetic Sculptures
Old Clocks
Weather Vanes
Lightning Rods
Monorails
Compasses
Windmills and Wind Turbines

The Internets
Apple Macintosh
Think Geek
American Science and Surplus
Action Figures

Sports Stuff

Water Aerobics
Adult Tricycles (I have no idea why)

Movies

Auntie Mame
Fight Club
Alfred Hitchcock
Jimmy Stewart
Cary Grant
Audrey Hepburn
Kate Hepburn

Television

Buffy
Heroes
Veronica Mars
Grey’s Anatomy

Music

I hate to even get started, the list is too long

Continue ReadingBig List of Things I Like

10 Weird Things/Habits/Little Known Facts About Yourself

Picked up from Lisa. This is a hard meme, because, what haven’t I shared at one time of another? This site is 12 years old, I never shut up (ever), and I’ve answered all you questions, officer. But I’ll give it a shot.
1. I ate the tequila worm once at a party on a dare. I talked another girl into doing the same thing at the same time (there were two bottles) and she really wanted to chicken out, but she didn’t.

2. I know how to cook the perfect chicken gizzard. It’s very difficult to get it correct; usually they come out rubbery and tough to chew, but I can make them easy to eat. I learned the secret to doing it correctly at a little independent chicken restaurant I worked at in the summer during high school. Fried chicken gizzards and livers were two of their specialities. This restaurant was in Noblesville on Conner Street, and all of their customers were white (because I know what you were thinking).

3. I LOVE chicken gizzards (although I haven’t had one since I worked there).

4. The fact that I love chicken gizzards grosses even me out a little.

5. I make up little fantasies in my head all the time – ala Walter Mitty. I think it’s utterly retarded that I do this, but I daydream these little things up all the time anyway. From the time I was 11 years old, the subject of my weird daydreams was usually Princess Diana, and when she died I was completely devastated.

6. I can’t believe I actually wrote down number 5 and admitted it in public.

7. I hate it when the sheet and the blanket get separated from one another and one is longer than the other, or there’s more of one of the hanging off the side of the bed than the other. This will actually keep me up at night. I used to combat this by having my covers be solely a comforter covered with a duvet cover, so I could switch the covers to wash, but have a single covering on me at night that wouldn’t get messed up. But Stephanie gets too hot that way, so we have a sheet, blanket and quilt on the bed, and they drive me nuts.

8. Whenever I go up or down the stairs, I mentally count the number of stairs. This is how I know there are different numbers of stairs between floors at my work.

9. I’m fairly certain that my belly button is a different shape now than it was before my appendectomy surgery.

10. I have an unconscious habit of rubbing my hands together whenever I’m planning something. I don’t realize I’m doing it until someone points it out to me. Alternatively, I’ll rub the back of my head for the same reason. I’m obviously a total spaz.

Continue Reading10 Weird Things/Habits/Little Known Facts About Yourself

Hey, that’s my name!

I was perusing a 37 signals blog post from last week on some changes they made to backpack, and noticed in some of the screenshots, the designer Ryan Singer used my name in the mock-up of his new sharing information object. Hee!

This page has been shared with
This page has been shared with

Apparently, I’m sharing some documents with some folks.

2022-03-16 Update:
I should deprecate this page, shouldn’t I?
Continue ReadingHey, that’s my name!

My Lexicon

A handy guide to my personal idioms and their origins, because I notice that a lot of times people look at me funny when I’m talking. I’ve had this page around for awhile but forgot to transfer it into my new content management system. There seem to be some terms missing, too.

"Big Girl" Seats

The newer theatres in town have wider butt-space seating for those of us who’ve spread out over the years.

Birthday Mardi Gras

Usage: When your birthday falls on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday of the week, you get to celebrate both the weekend before AND the weekend after.

Origin: Cuzin Jim and Cuzin Mick (not my actual cousins) started Birthday Mardi Gras back in college (Ball State, late 80’s) to compensate for the drinking binges we were missing out on due to mid-week birthdays. This term has spread far and wide, and even ended up on an episode of "The West Wing" when Jed Barlett suggests celebrating his wife’s birthday in Mardi Gras style.

Evil Robot Brain/Organizational Automaton

i don’t like clutter, and I tend to get stuck in a mode of organizing things and can’t stop, because I just keep spotting more things that can be put away.

"Funny… But No"

Origin: Hallmark’s Shoebox Greetings website, where they actually post the greeting card ideas that have been rejected as offensive for one reason or another, but are too hilarious to just let go.

Grumpy Pants

When you cranky, you’re wearing “grumpy pants.” Anything is funny when the word “pants” is involved.

Kitty Television

The bird feeder I hung outside my front window that provides hours of entertainment for my three cats, who sit plot how they might get those birds if they ever got outside.

Pre-menstrual Amnesia

I manage to forget that I have a menstrual cycle every darned month until it shows up to surprise me.

Remembory

When I was a small child, I used to mix up the words "memory" and "remember." I tend to think "remembory" first, and correct myself and use "memory" before the word comes out of my mouth, but sometimes I say this when I’m tired.

Turn Into a Pumpkin

Somewhere between 10 and 11 p.m., I start getting sleepy and I stop making sense when I talk. Like Cinderella’s carriage, I become somewhat less exciting to be around.

Continue ReadingMy Lexicon

Where was I?

I can play this meme pretty easily.

Where was I ten years ago?

This post on Same-Sex Marriage I wrote May 14, 1996, just about ten years ago. I had moved into the attic apartment at Mary Byrne’s house the summer of the year before, so I was just starting my first decade in downtown Indianapolis. I was hired to work in the web design department for my current company, which was then Macmillan Publishing, or mcp.com. I believe this was about the time I quit volunteering for a local organization when I found out they were claiming to have a lobbyist in the state legislature, and raising money based on that misleading information. I also quit working for the local pride organization that April because I was pretty redundant and no one would let me do anything.

Where was I five years ago?
My first blog post from May of 2001. I went on a “Big Things” road trip the beginning of May that year, and I was busy preparing to buy a house for the first time. I was pretty well settled into my job, and still working as a designer.

Where was I one year ago?

I was recovering from heart valve surgery, so I was home from work reading and watching lots of TV series on DVD, playing with my dog and taking mandatory walks around the block, which were hard as hell, and sometimes required me to have Stephanie helping me.
Passing it on…

Oh, whoever wants the meme. I hate tagging people.

Continue ReadingWhere was I?

Movies I Need to See (or see again)

Movies that I’ve never seen, or need to see again because it’s been a long time.

  • 2001: A Space Odyssey
  • “The 400 Blows” (1959) Francois Truffaut
  • “8 1/2” (1963) Federico Fellini
  • A Bout de Souffle
  • A Room With a View
  • A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
  • Aguirre: The Wrath of God
  • Around the World in 80 Days
  • Batman Begins
  • “The Battleship Potemkin” (1925) Sergei Eisenstein
  • Better Off Dead
  • The Blues Brothers
  • Bread and Chocolate
  • Brief Encounter
  • Chinatown (1974)
  • D.E.B.S.
  • Dr. Strangelove
  • Fanny and Alexander
  • Finding Nemo
  • Flight Plan
  • Foreign Correspondent
  • The French Connection
  • From Here to Eternity (1953)
  • Full Metal Jacket
  • The Godfather (all 3 parts)
  • Good Night, and Good Luck
  • Ice Storm
  • Inherit the Wind
  • Inside Man
  • It Happened One Night (1934)
  • Junebug
  • Koyaanisqatsi
  • Lagaan: Once Upon A Time in India
  • Lawrence of Arabia
  • Lion King
  • Lost Horizon
  • Me and You and Everyone We Know
  • Meet Me In St. Louis
  • Monsters, Inc.
  • Mulan
  • On the Waterfront (1954)
  • Pirates of the Caribbean
  • Pretty in Pink
  • Pride & Prejudice
  • Raging Bull
  • Reservoir Dogs
  • Schindler’s List (1993)
  • State Fair (1945)
  • The Deer Hunter
  • The French Connection
  • The Graduate (1967)
  • The Seventh Seal
  • Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines
  • Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride
  • Walk the Line
Continue ReadingMovies I Need to See (or see again)

The Commonplacebook.com Morning Gazette

Here are many of the fine sites I read regularly.

Continue ReadingThe Commonplacebook.com Morning Gazette

Brushes With Fame

We’ve been having an e-mail discussion of brushes with fame this morning, so here’s mine:

1. I interviewed Chastity Bono for a newsletter.

2. I know Dick Wolfsie, the local news channel 8 morning guy who did a report on my “Big Things” photo gallery. Dick is friends with tons of famous people, including Al Roker.

3. I’ve been on TV at my friend Amy’s Survivor parties, also on channel 8, and Amy’s friends with the camera man and lady reporter who’s name I can’t recall. But I do have a photo with her.

4. My brother’s ex-wife is friends with Shannon Hoon’s former girlfriend, and said girlfriend did portrait photography of my nieces.

5. I have photos that will be appearing in Roadside America, a book on Haunted Indiana, and in Dick Wolfsie’s new book. Pretty cool, huh?

So I’m almost famous. Exciting, isn’t it?

Continue ReadingBrushes With Fame