StephanKinsella.com

I’ve discovered you can pepper many sentences with “at least” to really change its meaning and annoy someone. For example, if you are going to walk the dogs and baby and the wife is upstairs, you could say, “Could you please drop the baby’s socks down?” or you could say, “Could you at least please drop the baby’s socks down?” The latter can really annoy someone.

Three comments.

1. There is a little town north of Houston, named Humble. For some reason it’s pronounced the Eliza Doolittle way, ‘umble. It’s disconcerting to hear Houston truckdrivers refer to ‘umble. I just can’t say it. I have to say Humble. It sounds like too much an affectation to say ‘umble.

2. In movies when someone finds dead body with the eyes open, they do this weird wave of the hand where the open hand closes they eyes. What the f*** is that? When were we supposed to have learned this trick, right after we catch flies with chopsticks?

3. This stock scene in movies is annoying: where a repressed or unable-to-state-their-true feelings repressed conservative Hollywood stereotype is hugged and is unable to return the hug… his hand sort of cups into an “I want to hug you” motion but just can’t complete it. What nauseous Hollywood crizzap. (Sorry, Jesse, I guess I’m still “bitter and hate-filled.”)

4. Just saw Angels in America. It makes me realize, liberal homosexuals think it’s all about them.

It is mind-boggling that there is not an easy way to convert a huge, memory-sucking color-scanned PDF file into a black and white file.

Another annoyance: pregnant couples who refuse to find out the sex of their baby during the pregnancy. They want a surprise when the baby is born. Give me a break. This glassy-eyed, grinning-idiot, happy-shit granola crunching crap is more than I can stand.

Daddy forgot what he was gonna write. Too much Knob Creek.

Being discussed on my law blog.

I mean ones that have staying power, that are very enjoyable, and that you like to watch multiple times. Off top of my head, these are:

4 Stars

Sound of Music

Godfather 1 and 2

Star Wars IV, V, VI

Raiders of the Lost Ark

Groundhog Day

Terminator 2

Aliens

Moonstruck

Matrix 1

Dr. Zhivago

ET

Annie Hall

The Graduate

Finding Nemo

3.5 Stars

some of the Star Trek movies, like 1, 2, 3, 4

Ordinary People

Poltergeist

Tempest

Life of Brian

Manhattan

***

Some of these were suggested by Paul Comeaux, along w/ some others I didn’t include, such as the pretentious black and white ones everyone pretends to like but never really watch (like Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, All About Eve, even Clockwork Orange, which is dated and almost laughable now in some ways, etc.).

Any more obvious ones I’m missing? (Roger Ebert has a list of great movies, I need to check it out…)

A turnoff: When yuppies and bobos (bourgeouis bohemians) are portrayed by Hollywood as ordering Chinese food and eating it with chopsticks right out of the little box off of a coffee table. I have never in my life seen this. Rather, every normal person I’ve ever seen order chinee food puts the little containers on the kitchen counter and everyone gets a plate and takes what he wants, buffet style. Everyone uses a plate. And no one ever uses chopsticks.

If you ate right out the box, how would people share? What, do you eat a whole box of panda fried rice on your own, with nothing else? And right out the box? With chopstix? Getting little rice thingies all over your den/carpet/coffee table? Please. This is even more annoying than the laugh track in sit-coms, or when characters in sitcoms enter someone’s house and leave the front door open.

Another cool word–hapless. And in that vein–witless, and half-wit.

Now: Chris Powers (or so he calls himself) wrote me re my list of Annoying/Pretentious Terms. I agree on all his annoying terms. Re his cool terms: I don’t find many of them especially cool (but road salt has potential), but don’t find any of them annoying at least. Re the 6 am words, not sure what the criteria are. but I would agree that you don’t want to hear fungus followed by plump or cackle.

Chris’s letter:

I enjoyed reading your Annoying/Pretentious Terms page while looking up “Götterdämmerung” this evening, and thought I’d offer a few of my own.

Annoying:

“having said that” or “that said” instead of still or nevertheless

“going forward” instead of “from now on”

“fair question” as in “That’s a fair question”

whilst instead of while

wordsmith

Cool:

gun camera

orbital

mechanics

cognitive style

carbolic

acid

road salt

phasic

Words you don’t want to hear at 6am because they just sound annoying:

ilk

smigden

fungus

plump

cackle

filtch

snickerdoodle

torso

participle

That’s it. Enjoyed the links, too, especially the physics and libertarian ones.

Things people do that instantly persuade me they are fricking morons and technically illiterate:

1. They tell me they can’t open a PDF file I created. It’s usually because I save it in 6.0 format and you have to have Acrobat Reader 5.0 or above to view it. The person usually has 4.0 and does not even realize it. IDIOT.

2. They tell me an URL in an email I sent them does not work. They are too stupid to realize the URL was broken in two and they are too clueless to paste it together.

3. Their email is sent to me in plain text. Meaning they are too fucking stupid to turn on the HTML.

4. People too fucking stupid to configure their email to send their proper name plus their email address.

5. I send them an email with a file attached and every time they reply to me they send me the file ack.

6. People who have never learned CTRL-C, CTRL-X, and CTRL-V for copy, cut, paste, and instead use the stupid mouse to drop down the edit window to cumbersomly cut and paste.

7. Also annoying, but not necessarily “stupid,” is the habit of some people putting their names in email messages in a large, stupid script font, sometimes in a different color. People: LESS IS MORE.

8. Ryan McMaken also pointed out to me–“I’m suspicious of anyone who uses one email for the whole family — i.e. ‘Jones Family.'”

“Behest”. And I frankly, without shame, admit that I feel a cold burning hatred for anyone who uses this word.