My peeve? People who are uncomfortable with silence. To the extent that they’ll fill up any pause longer than a breath with minutia.
I have a close relative who, if I call them, I have to be hands-free with easy tasks set up. Or else it’s a wasted half hour. or more.
Now I’m sure I told you about my dream last Tuesday night, so you just stop me if any of this sounds familiar. It was certainly something, I tell you, in fact, I’m wondering if it was that Welsh Rarebit which of course isn’t really a rabbit but I remember that nice Mister McKay used to say his friend Gertie would be up all night with wild dreams if she had it for dinner. Well, anyhow, my dream, I can’t call it a nightmare but it was kind of different, took place in some kind of odd, 1700’s style French Regency manor house which I saw in a magazine once. I think it was a House Beautiful that yoour grandmother had out on her coffee table. At first I was delighted with this manor house because there were baby rhinos everywhere and who doesn’t love a baby rhino? But then I went to play with one and noticed that their fully grown mothers were in the room too. And I was messing with their babies. So they attacked me, and I had to kill one of them but in the dream it was really upsetting me that I had to kill it. I just knew that if I let it go then it would kill me, so I just had to watch it die and it was really horrible. Before it died it gave me a scratch along my hand. Then the dream changed to a house in the woods. A ranch-style house with a picture window looking out on a primeval forest of old growth sequoias. The trees are so tall that all you can see out the window are the trunks and a few low hanging branches. People mill about inside sipping martinis. Two baby hippos on leashes are tethered to the leg of a table quietly chewing something. A low rumbling noise makes everyone still. I look down at the hippos who stop moving their jaws and look up at me with their big, wet hippo eyes. “It’s waking up,” someone behind me says.I look to the window, were I see that one of the trunks has a paw twitching along its side. I go to the window and look up. It isn’t a tree at all. Though I can’t see to the top of it, I suddenly realize it is a very large brown wombat standing up with its paws down at its sides. Behind me, the other people at the party start plotting. They can make a lot of money from this giant wombat, they immediately decide. “Ten grand a month?” Someone asks. “Nah, probably more like two million.” And then I was on my way to middle-of-nowhere Tierra Del Fuego, piloting a huge luxury zeppelin. When I arrived I was met by two old friends from my high school a cappella group that I haven’t talked to in about a year, who apparently had custody of a baby that I was the mother of. There was then a flash back in the dream to a middle-aged mad scientist keeping me strapped down and full of cake and then taking the baby away after I gave birth. Back to the dream-present, I was walking around with my baby, who was now a baby giraffe, thinking about whether it not I should tell my husband that I had a secret baby, since it was probably was his. My reverie was then interrupted by my best friend from elementary school (who was dressed as a punk rocker with lots of piercings even though she isn’t like that). She asked what I was doing there is a very rude way. I tried to be as nice as possible and explain that I was Gerald’s (the baby giraffe) birth mother and that Roger and Antoinette called me because Gerald was sick and they needed a blood relative. She replied by saying, again rudely, that I better not be trying to take the baby away. Then a strange-yet-intriguing UPS Man came up to us and told me that Roger and Antoinette were cooking on the roof because the food tastes better that way and that they wanted to show me an album they had of pictures of Gerald. I walked towards their cabin and was worried because I was afraid the pictures would be really ugly and I wouldn’t like them. I went up on the roof and sat down and looked through the album. The pictures were beautiful and I decided right then that I should tell everyone about my dream!
Agree with the rest (unquoted part) of your post. But this part is different. Those folks you’re beefing about are being sensible and safe.
Getting on and off an escalator or moving sidewalk is slightly tricky. Particularly for people with any walking or balance issues. Or hands full or dragging kids or suitcases or …
For people like that, it makes complete sense to get on, stand there a moment as the machine pulls their body up to speed, *then *begin walking. And at the other end, keep walking until a couple paces / stair steps before the end, then stop, then step off at the speed of the machine, not at the speed of the machine *plus *their speed of walking.
I can speedwalk to the point that getting off a moving sidewalk requires transitioning to a jog as my feet hit the stationary part. That’s not easy while dragging a suitcase and a briefcase. Better to stop for a moment and avoid an accident.
Besides, if you’ve ever seen the traffic mess that happens when somebody falls down and is injured at the top / end of an escalator / moving sidewalk it isn’t pretty. A continuous stream of people is delivered into the growing pile of bodies as folks try to jump or step over whoever is lying on the floor.
I’ve heard that Best Buy, in an attempt to bolster slumping sales, has announced that their entire franchise is going gluten-free. You know things are rough if a business is willing to go to draconian lengths like that. :eek:
Near my house is an intersection that allows left turns from the two left-most lanes. When I come to that intersection, I always take the second lane for my left turn, because, in less than a quarter mile, I’m going to turn right. Only, once the light turns green, nearly everyone in the first lane tries to get into the right lane as soon as possible after the turn. That means that all of the cars that were in the correct lane for the upcoming turn have to stop to prevent rear-ending the dick that just pulled in front of them to make the right turn that they knew they would have to make before they got into the wrong lane.
My other pet peeve:
People that buy wide-screen TVs to put in their establishment for the entertainment of their customers, but fail to spring for the HD version of ESPN or whatever they have on; when they don’t like the empty space on their TV, they set it to fill the screen anyways. This makes basketball players look like normal people and normal people look like pygmies.
There is what I’d call a little alcove just to the right of the parking garage door at work. It’s not labeled ‘handicapped’, nor is it reserved as most of the places near the door are, so by unwritten agreement, everyone leaves these spaces for people who have big boxes to carry in/out or have a walking challenge of some type. The spots are smallish. You can fit two compact cars in nicely, but one SUV or pickup takes up the entire alcove. For the last month or so, a late 20s male, fit and vigorous (always totes a big gym bag) has been parking his oversized pickup in this alcove, grabbing his gym bag and dashing in the door. I’ll see the two older ladies who typically park there, tottering in from parking spaces far from the door. One has a walker, the other has lupus. It irritates me that the chuckle-headed youth grabs that parking space without a thought.
I’m trying to decide if I have the right to speak to him about it or not. But in the meantime, it peeves me mightily.
Topics twist and turn, look how it evolved into idiotic gluten mania
Uh yeah. one of my ongoing peeves are all the tv commercials that are trying to cheat money earners stating that we need all the drugs that are manufactured in the world for whatever condition you do not have.
Danny Glover for instance. NEVER ever heard of that problem he supports on the commercials. It is an annoying dialog. Drug manufacturers out to make a buck like always. If there is such a condition, is there really that many out there with it or is it more likely that someone will develop it per his suggestion?:smack:
Re WildBlueYonder’s post about drug advertising…my pet peeve o’the day is related. First off, we pay good money to go to our physician and get diagnosed and prescribed for. Yet the drug companies want us to go in to our physician and tell them what we have and what drug we need for it. And what’s up with trying to give things like restless leg syndrome legitimacy by referring to it as RLS, as though that were a common medical term? I’m not saying that restless leg syndrome isn’t a problem, just that it isn’t a condition, it’s a symptom of another condition.
Not to mention that the only drugs they advertise on tv are the new ones, still inflated in price with R&D recoup costs, that often are not covered by insurance or are covered as third tier medications which cost 2, 3 4, or 5 times more than the usual med for the condition. But now, if we get prescribed a different drug for our conditions, we believe we are being shortchanged because we’re not getting the marquee drug that’s advertised on tv.
Why would you expect this new person knows anything about the unspoken and unwritten rule that some of you have been following sometimes?
It would certainly never occur to me that an unmarked space is somehow reserved for somebody. An open space that looks like any other open space is simply an open space. One that I’m 100% free to use without further concern.
By all means talk to the guy. He may well join your little charitable group. But don’t open the conversation like he’s some selfish buffoon. Because he’s not.
You are correct, of course, and I’m far to polite to get into someone’s face about something they couldn’t possibly know. If I do talk to him, it will be in as nice a way possible, I promise.
This is a capitalist economy; all companies need to make a profit to survive.
If you are going to attack medical products manufacturers - and god love you if you do - can’t you make it meaningful?
Do a bit of research on what clinical trials cost; lobby for Default Approval for use of de-idenified medical records for clinical research; tell your insurance provider and pharmacist you don’t want any drugs manufactured by a company with an Import Alert for any drug.
Don’t just whine because a company that has invested in development of a drug wants to reap enough profit to pay its employees.
