What Bugs You?
Hello, today is the Weekend Gene Pool, where in exchange for your anecdotes and observations, I entertain you. The deal today will be risky, because I am going to give you less guidance and more choices than usual, but I am trusting your genius and originality. Also, I seem to be out of new ideas for this stupid feature, and this one seems promising, if abysmally shallow.
Tell me something petty that bugs you. It can be about anything. In my case, there are million examples, all of them trifling and petty and demeaning. For example, John Oliver, who may be the funniest and most erudite comedian on TV, says “vunerable.” I don’t know WHY he pronounces it that way, but he does it ALL THE TIME and in his sophisticated British accent, which maddeningly makes it sound definitive. Professional linguists with doctorates are entitled to hear his pronunciation and say, “well, that must be right.”
Also, women bug me.
Okay, kidding. Just trying to snap you to attention. Women are great. But what is not great is the meme “Karens,” used indiscriminately to designate pushy, obnoxious, entitled white women. I have known and befriended several Karens and not one is anything like these assholes.
So, that bugs me. Also, I don’t like the color “mauve.” It looks like the color of cheap, trashy underpants. I didn’t actually know for sure what color it was — couldn’t have picked it out of a color wheel — until I asked Rachel. Which leads us to today’s Gene Pool Gene Poll.
Okay, so send things that bug you to the glorious orange button, here:
And see you all on Tuesday.
Oh, I am also bugged by bugs with more than ten legs. It’s just … wrong.
“Q. How is the turn signal used in Florida? A. It is used to indicate to other motorists that you do not realize your turn signal is blinking.”
― Dave Barry, Live Right and Find Happiness (Although Beer is Much Faster): Life Lessons and Other Ravings from Dave Barry
Apparently turn signals are now an optional accessory. Either that, or they become inoperable with disuse. Certainly their use, that is when they are inadvertently used --- unlike the requirement to jam on the brakes every 50 feet, travel slow enough to put on makeup or text, or perhaps to view the lane pavement markings as only suggestions --- is evidently no longer part of the driving oral tradition. These remnants of the road include the single blink from a vehicle already (barely) in front of you, the "hell or high water" multiple blink initiated as the vehicle alongside decides to immediately cut you off and my personal favorite, the four-block-long continuous left turn blink. Petty you say? I say &@$% (or a similar grawlix).