Pet Peeves

I haven't done a Pet Peeve Post in a couple of years.

I not bothered by much, but SOMEtimes certain things begin to niggle at me and after a while I just can't sit on it any more.

Today's Pet Peeve is about all the eccentric, insufferable, and/or socially inept geniuses that pervade TV. 

I think it's horrible and demeaning to portray smart people in a way that makes it seem as though it is their genius that causes them to be terribly flawed.

This kind of stereotyping is bad for kids who watch this stuff. It perpetuates the idea that if you are smart you will be teased or bullied, that you will NOT be cool, that you will be disliked, misunderstood, isolated and certainly never date or have "normal" human relationships. What kid in his/her right mind would want to flaunt or pursue being smart?

Here are just a few shows that depict/have depicted dysfunctional geniuses. Some of them I actually enjoy(ed).

 

outcast geniuses one and all

 

Again, outcast geniuses one and all, particularly Sheldon.

And by the way I love this show.

Having grown up with a bonafide genius (my father) the portrayal of smart people being somewhat idiot savant-like (REALLY smart at one thing but mentally challenged in everything else) is starting to be offensive.

Besides my father, I've known many really, really smart people in my life, including Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, and not one of them was an insufferable, socially dysfunctional human being.

What shows would you add to this list? Are you getting tired of the dysfunctional genius trope too?

Pet Peeves

I don't have many, as one might discover by the number of posts I've done on the subject. But they do come up.

My latest one has to do with odors. One might think I'm going to say something about odors of the disagreeable kind, but I'm not.

I think our noses are being overwhelmed by odors of the agreeable kind. I think we are numbing our olfactory senses by being overly concerned with smelling "good."

Think about it. Here's a list - probably not complete - of the layers of smells a single human may have on his or her body on any given day.

We usually start the day with a shower. There's the soap, shampoo and conditioner. Each with its own smell. 

We dry off. Maybe we put on lotion, powder, perfume and/or deodorant. Or all of them.

We brush our teeth and use mouthwash.






Women put on make-up and each item has it's own odor. Maybe they take care of something called, "feminine odor."

Men have shaving cream and aftershave.

There's hairspray and hair gel.

That might cover the bathroom.

Now we get dressed. 

Our clothes have been washed in scented detergent and softened in scented fabric softener and maybe dried with a scented drier sheet. Maybe our clothes have come from drawers with a scented sachet or from a cedar scented closet. 

Maybe we powder or spray our feet  our with some kind of anti-fungal stuff or we put Odor Eaters in in our shoes.

If all of that wasn't enough, we walk through our home which probably has carcinogenic room deodorizers plugged in, or we've sprayed with Febreze.

I tell you, we're numbing our ability to really smell. And I think that could be bad thing.

What do you think? Are you tired of walking through certain aisles at the store and coming away with an itchy nose? Or what about walking past the open doors of a Bed and Bath store? The only time I went in one I lost the ability to choose a soap because after sniffing a few I could no longer tell what they smelled like. 

Pet Peeves

I've gotten to the point where I pretty much ignore commercials. I do what everyone else does, turn down/turn off the sound, switch to another station, or continue doing a chore I started. But there are some commercials that really annoy me and have become pet peeves.

#1. Toilet paper for bears. Really? How many of us has answered a question that had an obvious in your face answer, with: "Does a bear crap in the woods?" Of course it does. If there's TP for bears, why not for dogs or cats or... cows?

#2. Talking mucus. I can't begin to tell how disgusted I feel when I hear/see those green blobs of talking mucus. And they go and dress them up too, like that somehow makes them "respectable." Ewww.

#3.Talking food. And there are quite a few of them out there. But doesn't it kind of weird you out to think about eating something that can talk to you? Doesn't it kind of make you feel like a cannibal?



#4. Then, of course, there are all those ads for various medications that give long detailed lists of all the possible side effects. May cause: hemorrhaging, loss of vision, dizziness, ulcers, some forms of cancer have been reported, shortness of breath, your teeth may fall out, swelling of ankles, and death. Oh yeah, I wanna take that one.

#5. And what is it with those rodents driving cars? Who are they appealing to, ten year olds who want hamsters?

Do you have a pet peeve? Is there a commercial that particularly irritates you?

Thank You and Other Randomness

FIRST: A BIG THANK YOU to all of you wonderful bloggers who visited over St. Patrick's Day, left a comment, and/or became a new follower. I really do appreciate it.

SECOND: I'm a VERY excited winner. Sangu at Echoes of a Wayward Mind, offered up a SIGNED copy Talli Roland's book, THE HATING GAME (also available at Amazon Kindle) and and my name was drawn. It's coming all the way from England. Thank you Sangu and Talli!

THIRD: A while back Sherrie Petersen at Write About Now passed on to me the Beautiful Blogger Award. I like that it's lavender, kind of goes with my color scheme. Thanks Sherrie!

I'm supposed to list seven (7) pet peeves. So here goes.

1. That the English language and/or someone clever hasn't come up with a good and proper neuter pronoun so we don't have sentences like this from Ralph Waldo Emerson: No man is quite sane. Each has a vein of folly in his composition. Personally I don't have a problem with using "man, him, he, his" as a collective pronoun for all us huMANs.

But here it is rewritten: No human is quite sane. Each has a vein of folly in his/her composition. Okay, but awkward.

Or: No person is quite sane. Each has a vein of folly in their composition.

2. Which leads right into using "their" with a singular noun. As in, "The sun was shining on their back." GAK. It should be, "The sun was shining on their backs."

3. "This is arguably the best solution to the problem." People (reporters in particular) use "arguably" A LOT! But if it's the BEST solution then it stands to reason that it CAN'T be argued. Therefore what I think people mean to say is that it is INARGUABLE, in other words, that there can be no argument, it's THE BEST. The sentence should read, "This is inarguably the best solution to the problem."

4. Long ago I learned, "that" is for things, "who" is for people. Even the well known are guilty. Tim Robbins said: I love iconoclast. I love individuals. I love people that are true to themselves, whatever the cost. It should have been "I love people WHO..." I read/hear it all the time for example: "The firefighters that went to the house saved the women." To my ear it should be "The firefighters who went..." THAT is for THINGS, WHO is for PEOPLE.

5. How about this: "She's as good of a truck driver as any man." GAK again. It should simply be: "She's as good a truck driver as any man." Get rid of that of!

6. Over used words and cliches. (Of course I'm guilty myself. Forty lashes with a wet noodle.)

7. People who moan and groan and complain. Particularly now. I've had the following anonymous quote stuck to my computer for some time now: Be kinder than necessary because everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle.

And now dear little bloggers who may this blogger read, I pass on to ALL of you, The Beautiful Blogger Award.

Tell those near and dear to you that you love them. Smile at a stranger. Hug up your pet(s). And remember to be thankful for every little thing you have.

There is vs There are

I'm seeing something that's either an odd/disturbing trend or is a lack of good editing. It has become a pet peeve. I'm seeing it crop up in newspaper articles and in children's literature.

There's things going on here that aren't quite right.

Did you catch that?

There's things.

"There's" is a contraction of there is. Hence the above sentence reads, "There is things going on here that aren't quite right." That's bad English.


I'm seeing the contraction "there's" being used with a plural more and more frequently. It grates on my ear. It irritates me.


It ought to read, "There are things going on here that aren't quite right." Technically there's no contraction of there are. At best it's considered a colloquialism and is attributed to Bob Dylan: "I say there’re no depressed words just depressed minds.” I think it's a perfectly good contraction.

There're things going on here that aren't quite right.

Certainly it's better than "there's."

Have you noticed it? Got a pet-peeve you'd like to share?

(Happy Valentine's Day!)