Saturday, August 11, 2007

My hit-list

When I am elected emperor, the following things will be outlawed.

Baby-on-board signs. As if the knowledge that there is a baby on board will somehow give me the added strength I need on the brake pedal to avoid slamming into your SUV at the stoplight. But for a moment, let's assume that because everyone knows there's a baby in your SUV (and it's always an SUV), they actually try extra-hard not to crash into you. Do you take the sign down when there is not, in fact, a baby on board at that particular moment? No, you do not. So you're lying, at least half the time, and that makes me want to crash into you more. So really, what the sign should say is, "Look at me, I have successfully reproduced!"

Pennies, nickles and dimes. My hatred for them was honed to a sharp, bright, angry blade by this CBC story, from which I learned that when pennies were initially minted in 1870, their purchasing power was equal to 27 cents in 2005, and there has never been a coin worth less than one cent. Why, then, do we need coins worth 1/27, 1/5, and 2/5 the absolute mimimum value a person considered worth carrying in 1870? But we're still making over $8 million a year in pennies, because people aren't returning them to circulations, they're throwing them away.

Use of the words "I'm like," instead of "I said." Alright, when you say "I'm like, whatever," does that mean whatever is what you actually said? Or did you say something similar to whatever, such as wherever or what the hell? In which case your story makes no sense. Or did you not actually say whatever, but somehow pantomime it, and if so, how and why?

All commercial radio. My 2 GB Nano can carry enough songs to repeat less frequently than any commercial radio station in Calgary. And they get their music for free, don't they? (Not like me, I pay full retail price for every song I listen to, yes sir.) Get a few more CDs, why don't they? And when they get one, they ought to listen to the whole thing, rather than just play the one song on it that everyone knows until everyone hates it, and then cut to a Sleep Country Canada jingle.

Jingles. I'll start with Sleep Country Canada. Why buy a mattress anywhere else? I'll tell you why -- and I did tell them why, in an email to SCC president Christine McGee that I never did hear back from. Because your jingle makes me want to hang myself.

The towing of SUVs behind motorhomes with sattelite dishes. All three nouns in that gerund are offensive to me, but taken together, steaming down the highway towards the lovely natural beauty that they're wrecking, it's a bit too much. If I spot a baby-on-board sign in the SUV, violence will ensue.

The imperial system of measurement. For excessive stupidness. Now if you'll excuse me I have to go figure out my weight and height in metric.

Pictures of Olympic athletes biting their medals. I put up a graphic a few weeks ago at the local ski hill, showing a picture of a figure skater biting her medal in about 1922. That's a minimum age of this cliche. What are they doing, checking to see if it's real gold? They're not. They're gold-plated sterling silver. Going to give it back now? Or did you think it was chocolate? But it's not just the gold medals, it's silver and bronze too. I can imagine some prospector biting a rock to determine whether it's really gold or just iron pyrite, but I don't think it would for silver and bronze too.

Saying something is "out of this world" as a pun to coyly imply it has something to do with space. That phrase is always implying things have something to do with outer space. It never implies anything else. Therefore it's not a pun, nor is it coy. I issue a challenge. Find me a published instance of "out of this world" being used to do anything but coyly imply that something is spacey, and I will let you write a guest blog entry about how stupid or I am.

That's all I can think of right now, but I have a feeling that I'm going to add to this list from time to time, and I invite your suggestions.

6 comments:

Unknown said...

I know this is a little late in coming, but today, for the first time, I had somebody tell me that internet should be spelled with a capital 'I'.

That led me to the information superhighway (some call it the internet) to find some answers.

It seems that many seemingly intelligent people and a host of notable publications seem to think it should begin with a capital.

They defend their stupidity by claiming 'internet' is a proper noun. Since when did we consider 'internet' a proper noun? Is it a country now?

If you'll excuse me, I have to go turn down my Radio because there is something I want to watch on Television about Computers.

Balls!

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