Pet Peeves

Over six years ago I wrote about my pet peeves.  Here is an updated version of same:

Pasteurized Cider -- Every fall for many years I had purchased cold, dark, sweet, unfiltered apple cider locally. I would then leave it overnight on the kitchen counter until it started to ferment slightly. Finally, after a day of rechilling, I would then drink my slightly-carbonated, libation to autumn in New England. Now, due to a one-in-a-billion food-processing accident in California, all I can find is a pale, insipid, pasteurized product called “apple cider,” but much more like apple juice. Once again, the food Nazis have made my world a little smaller.

Anonymous Phone-Mail Messages -- It is quite grating to have placed an important and expensive call to an unfamiliar person in Saskatchewan only to get a terse phone-mail message that says, “Hi, it’s us. Please leave a message.” Now, these provincial putzes at least could include their phone numbers so that I know I haven’t called a bordello in Biloxi. (By the way, to be grammatically but annoyingly correct, it is “Hi, it’s we.”)

Magazine Inserts -- My main motivation for becoming insanely rich is so that I can hire a “magazine valet.” This would be one who, dressed in full livery with white suede gloves, would riffle through my newly-delivered magazines and remove all those loose solicitation cards. That way, when I read these periodicals, my lap would not be constantly littered with such detritus.

Friendly Phone Solicitors -- My systolic blood pressure soars rapidly when I answer the phone, then get that tell-tale electronic pause, and finally some boiler-room boor who flippantly says, “Hi, how ya doing today?” As if he cared? I now even get these solicitations after getting on the Do Not Call list. A friend of mine solved this problem with the following dialogue: He quipped to this opener with, “What do you care about me? You don’t even know me.” The solicitor then retorted, “Of course I care. It’s important to us here at Smarmy Credit Cards how you are.” My pal then parried, “But you’ve never met me. I could be a child molester. How can you possibly care for my well being?” In frustration the caller responded, “OK, I don’t care how you are.” With that, a third person (obviously, someone monitoring the call) came on the line and growled, “You’re fired!!” My friend hung up sporting an ear-to-ear grin. We need more of this kind of social protest.

Prolonged Voice-Mail Messages -- Frequently overly conscientious business people feel compelled to leave elaborate and up-to-the-minute phone messages, “Hi, this is Fred Mertz and I am in the office today, Thursday, July 23rd, but may be in a Board of Directors meeting or lunching with the Sultan of Brunei. I am interested in returning your call but, if it is important, you may want to contact my Executive Assistant, Siegfried Sassoon, the fourth, on extension 34895 ... or, if he is unavailable, my Executive Secretary, Nancy Drew, on extension 34897. If this is an emergency, you may call my beeper at 888-555-2345 and then enter 678-999. On Tuesday, my daughter had a bouncing baby boy, Mergatroid, weighing eight pounds, six ounces. We plan to vacation in the Barbados in September. My father’s gal bladder has stopped acting up. Thanks for your call. Please leave a message after the eighth beep.” I have reproduced the whole message here, but I generally hang up somewhere around the Sultan of Brunei.

Neat Litterbugs -- What possesses people to be fastidious while they are trashing things? There is a brand of urban slob who will reach down and carefully place a Starbucks latte cup right-side-up beside his/her car before leaving a parking space. Or neatly wrap a used diaper and put it under the nearest park bench. Do these teeny fits of tidiness really mitigate such gross slovenliness?

Architectural Food -- It seems these days that every dish I order in a fancy restaurant comes piled high as a tottering pilaster ... defying gravity and good gastronomic sense. Has the measure of culinary merit now become altitude and not sapor? Another paradox to ponder -- why are all our newly-built civic monuments flatter than the proverbial pancake?

Public Grooming -- In olden days it was considered impolite to comb you hair or put on your makeup in public ... hence powder rooms. It’s not that I don’t enjoy inhaling clouds of dandruff on a plane, but need I also sit on the finger-nail clippings of others? I suppose public tooth brushing or face shaving are just a whisker away.

Plastic Thread -- There should be a new place in purgatory into which the inventor of clear plastic thread and its users would be hurled. Garment manufacturers, in order to save a few pennies by not having to change thread colors, now torture their wearers with the constant scratching from the cut ends of this filament. This purgatory locale would a briar patch filled with nettles and razor wire.

Big Word Users -- Few scholarly artifices engender my trenchant passions like those literati who espouse antiquated synonyms whilst composing expository prose. These inane and erudite accouterments generally bequeath naught to their reader’s comprehension other than an acute discernment of their author’s ego-inspired hyperbole.

Compulsive Call Screening -- Due to such things as the previously-mentioned friendly phone solicitors, some people never answer their phones.  Instead they screen all their calls. This, of course, is understandable, but can sometimes cause extreme frustration. For instance, like when you know that they are at home and you need to reach them in a hurry ... say to tell them that someone with a hockey goalie’s mask and chain saw is jimmying their cellar door.

Airline Lies -- Every time a flight is canceled, airline counter personnel offer the same lame excuses: “Your plane is experiencing mechanical difficulties.” or “Weather at your plane’s feeder airport has forced the scrubbing of this flight.” Just once I would like to hear: “This plane is not fully booked, so we are canceling it and cramming you into a later one so we can generate higher profits.”

Call-Forwarding Hell -- Most of us have had that exasperating experience of calling the “service” department of a company and then entering a maze of call-forwarding message from which there is no escape. My advice is, “Don’t get sucked in ... hit “0” immediately!” or, better yet, hang up. As soon as you hit the first response key, you have made an investment ... an investment that becomes more difficult to abandon the further you go. If it weren’t for that wonderful background music (generally some local radio station blaring either rapper, Ice-T, or napper, Barry Manilow), this process could justly be compared to the Spanish Inquisition. But the worst is, after you have spent 15 minutes of careful call-forwarding navigation, you end up back at the initial message. Uggggh!

Loud, Ostentatious Cell Phone Users -- Need I say more? Come the revolution, these boorish boobs will be vying with overrated movie stars and snotty TV anchor persons for low numbers in the firing-squad lottery.

Ham Rind -- Why is it that many hams and ham steaks now come with a layer of plastic welded to the outside? Ham used to have nice soft tasty fat on its outside, not a cuticle of a non-organic nature that reminds me of the cellophane rind on bologna. And why do U.S. consumers tolerate such nonsense? And while we’re at it, let's get rid of the huge brine injections that meat processors give hams to bulk them up for higher profits. This thumb-on-the-scale trick adds nothing to the taste of ham ... it only causes water to exude during cooking and dilutes the resulting flavor.

“Jumbo” Eggs -- Has anyone noticed that jumbo eggs aren’t often “jumbo” any more? Jumbo egg cartons have “jumbo” compartments, but the eggs you often find there are frequently one or two sizes too small. As an educational exercise sometime, compare the largest egg of a “Large” egg crate with the smallest egg of a “Jumbo” egg crate. Your eyes may be opened.

Strange Names -- Weird spellings of common names is an irksome trend. Novel spellings like Jessye, Eriq, and Alisyn I guess are meant to set children apart ... but they unnecessarily slow the pace of life. How many times a year do people with such nonsensical appellatives have to stop and spell their names during introductions and applications? It’s not just a waste of their time, but also wastes the time of those on the receiving end. It even forces everyone to ask for spelling of those with normal names ... just in case. I suggest that parents endow their offspring with uniqueness in some other, more enduring but less trivial way ... say with character or selflessness or piety or honor. Even common spellings of weird names don’t ensure that the children so named will be so endowed ... witness Chastity Bono.

Commercials on Public Television -- Public television is supposed to be funded by individual and corporate donations and, disputably, the government. So why is it that corporate donations engender what increasingly appear to be commercials? Public television is slowly morphing its segment breaks into product commercials. First, just the name of the company was mentioned. Then a corporate image statement of one sentence was added. Then two sentences. Then product names were introduced. Then favorable attributes of these products were added. And through it all the length of these segment breaks keeps increasing. It won’t be long before public television is as commercial as network TV. Then perhaps we might wean them from our government’s funds ...

Free Handicap Parking -- Now I don’t have any problem with physically handicapped people having special parking places. However, why is this parking free? What about a nabob who has a bum leg? He gets gratis parking (near the action) while a destitute schmo who happens to be physically able must feed a ravenous parking meter. Why do we equate being physically handicapped with being fiscally distressed?

Mothers with Infants Parking -- The other day I saw a sign reserving a parking space in a supermarket lot that said “Mothers with Infants.” Now, since we already have handicapped parking and loading zones, this new category of privilege is a little disturbing. What about “Fathers with Infants” parking? What about “Cars with Faulty Mufflers” parking? What about “Parents with Whining Children” parking? What about “Munchausen’s Syndrome Sufferers” parking? When will it all stop?

Homophobe-Phobes -- People who find in-your-face homosexuals uncomfortable or even offensive are quickly labeled “homophobes” and are automatically criticized or even ostracized by many ... sometimes with a good bit of vitriol. Can we, in turn, stamp those, who rail against “homophobes,” as “homophobe-phobes”?

Trite Expressions of Grief -- A smoldering trend that once erupted into a conflagration with Princess Dianna’s death was the trite expression of grief -- a Teddy Bears tied to a chain link fence, a plastic balloon with a maudlin message, a rubber duck with a [blue, red, pink, black] ribbon around its neck, one rose packaged in Saran Wrap, etc. Such anonymous crepe hanging is like chalk on a blackboard to me. In Princess Dianna’s case, the sheer volume of this banality became a public health hazard. Please, please, please ... when I pass on to that place where there are no more pet peeves; let no one memorialize my death with a plastic balloon of any type with any message, however heartfelt.

Diagonal Parking in Parallel Spaces -- “I’m so important and rich that I get two parking spaces while you get none.” This is the kind of ludicrous thinking that causes people to park their new expensive, usually foreign, cars diagonally across two parking spaces ... denying others the extra spaces. Greed and anal retentiveness trump neighborliness in this ostentatious power play by these boobs. If I were a miscreant, I would “key” their shiny news, but I am not. However, I shall find no real fault with those that do.

U.S. Female Correspondents Wearing Hajibs (Islamic Head Scarves) -- I find it profoundly offensive to see non-Muslim female TV correspondents (CNN, MSNBC, etc.) reporting from the Mideast wearing hajibs or keffiyehs (usually black and white checked) as though they are Muslims and have sided with the terrorists.

Conspicuous Consumption -- Take a few hours off one afternoon and watch some of the teen-directed cable channels (such as MTV) and gag your way through their presentations of the newly rich and famous (rap stars, professional athletes, etc.) giving us a tour of their McMansions ("This is my video game room." "Here are my paintings on black velvet." "This is my large collection of high-performance cars and motorcycles.") And see if you can find any redeeming social value in such lurid displays of conspicuous consumption.

Turkey Pastrami -- pastrami needs to be made from juicy beef and marbled with copious fat … otherwise it is just spiced cardboard. Making pastrami out of turkey is like constructing Manhattan skyscrapers out of Tinker Toys.

Multi-colored Kids’ Plastic Outdoor Stuff -- I don't mind these toddler contraptions hidden away IN THE BACK YARD! But increasingly brain-dead parents are placing them in highly visible locations so that many houses are taking on the appearance of a McDonalds' playpen.

Child Car Seats -- I understand the need for infant car seats … but now we must place children up to their Sophomore years in college in contraptions that cost too much and do nothing but take up sitting space in our cars. Parents with more than two small children are therefore compelled to buy huge SUVs or vans just to hold these child cages proscribed by our nattering class.

"American people want …" -- Politicians who aver (usually on Cable TV) that "The American people want … blah blah blah." James Carville started this smarmy trend … now followed by such luminaries as Al Sharpton and Chris Matthews. How these morons (usually liberal) know what the "American people want" is beyond me? I usually DON'T desire what is claimed of me and strongly resent such words being put in my mouth.