# Tiny, unimportant things that folks get all bothered about **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [April 22, 2022, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tiny-unimportant-things-that-folks-get-all-bothered-about/963271 "2022-04-22T19:24:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![keeganst94](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/a6a055/32.png) [@keeganst94](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/keeganst94)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2022, 11:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tiny-unimportant-things-that-folks-get-all-bothered-about/963271/141 "2022-04-28T11:04:58Z")
Wait, is it Will-am-mitt? Or Will-am-met? Or do we pronounce dammit differently? ---
**Author:** ![wolfman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/a8b319/32.png) [@wolfman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfman)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2022, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tiny-unimportant-things-that-folks-get-all-bothered-about/963271/142 "2022-04-28T13:08:12Z")
The people who go apoplectic about breaking spaghetti to cook it in a smaller pot. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2022, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tiny-unimportant-things-that-folks-get-all-bothered-about/963271/143 "2022-04-28T15:14:39Z")
I’m not angry, just confused - why not buy shorter pasta? You won’t be able to wrap broken spaghetti around your fork anyway, so why not use fusilli or farfalle? ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2022, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tiny-unimportant-things-that-folks-get-all-bothered-about/963271/144 "2022-04-28T15:37:34Z")
Broken spaghetti is still about 6" long, and does wrap around a fork and basically looks and works and holds sauce like spaghetti. I don’t generally break it, mostly because I’m kind of lazy that way, but I would probably be happier if I did. ---
**Author:** ![Horatius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horatius/32/3572_2.png) [@Horatius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatius)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2022, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tiny-unimportant-things-that-folks-get-all-bothered-about/963271/145 "2022-04-28T15:40:03Z")
> [@Thing.Fish](#): > > Just remember that this rhymes: “It’s Willamette, Dammit!” …but that _doesn’t_ rhyme… _\>ducks&covers\<_ ---
**Author:** ![Thing.Fish](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thing.fish/32/9168_2.png) [@Thing.Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thing.Fish)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2022, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tiny-unimportant-things-that-folks-get-all-bothered-about/963271/146 "2022-04-28T18:57:34Z")
I didn’t know there were multiple pronunciations of “dammit”. I use a long A and a strong accent on the second syllable. So it would rhyme with “camel” if you replaced the l with a t and said “camet”. ---
**Author:** ![Thing.Fish](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thing.fish/32/9168_2.png) [@Thing.Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thing.Fish)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2022, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tiny-unimportant-things-that-folks-get-all-bothered-about/963271/147 "2022-04-28T18:58:20Z")
No, no, it’s _\>ducks&beavers\<_ ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2022, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tiny-unimportant-things-that-folks-get-all-bothered-about/963271/148 "2022-04-28T23:12:26Z")
> [@Thing.Fish](#): > > I didn’t know there were multiple pronunciations of “dammit”. I use a long A and a strong accent on the second syllable. So it would rhyme with “camel” if you replaced the l with a t and said “camet”. This challenges my notion of how “camel” is pronounced. ---
**Author:** ![JaneDoe42](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/janedoe42/32/14104_2.png) [@JaneDoe42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JaneDoe42)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2022, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tiny-unimportant-things-that-folks-get-all-bothered-about/963271/149 "2022-04-28T23:21:00Z")
Yeah, I know lots of words by sight, not sound. Please correct me gently when I say it wrong, I promise I will try to remember. ---
**Author:** ![carnut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnut/32/3531_2.png) [@carnut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnut)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2022, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tiny-unimportant-things-that-folks-get-all-bothered-about/963271/150 "2022-04-28T23:32:23Z")
What Jane Doe says. There’s lots of words that I see and then hear differently. In one case, it took over 20 years to match them up. One of my besties, from India speaking the Queen’s English has some very odd pronunciations, too. We can amuse ourselves for hours with medical terminology, which we both can be wrong on. ---
**Author:** ![P-man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/p-man/32/3606_2.png) [@P-man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/P-man)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2022, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tiny-unimportant-things-that-folks-get-all-bothered-about/963271/151 "2022-04-29T00:38:04Z")
I only left the toilet seat up one time since my wife and I have been together. Unfortunately, it was at night when she was hugely pregnant. Our first dog was a toilet drinker, so we had to leave the lid down. Second wasn’t, so we stopped leaving it down. Now we’re getting ready to meet a dog who is big enough to drink out of the toilet if she so chooses, so we may have to leave it down again. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2022, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tiny-unimportant-things-that-folks-get-all-bothered-about/963271/152 "2022-04-29T00:58:25Z")
When i go away for a weekend, and leave the cats alone, i flush the toilets a couple of times and leave the lid up. I also leave water in their water dishes, of course. But there’s absolutely no chance they will overturn the toilet. And i want to be really really sure they have access to water. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2022, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tiny-unimportant-things-that-folks-get-all-bothered-about/963271/153 "2022-04-29T02:37:11Z")
Kitty hint- leave a faucet dripping. Unlimited water, and also something to keep the cats amused. ---
**Author:** ![commasense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/commasense/32/3017_2.png) [@commasense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/commasense)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2022, 11:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tiny-unimportant-things-that-folks-get-all-bothered-about/963271/154 "2022-04-29T11:53:47Z")
Accent on the _second_ syllable?!? You say dam-MIT and ca-MEL? I pronounce them the opposite way, and have never heard anyone else pronounce them otherwise. ---
**Author:** ![Machine\_Elf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2022, 1:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tiny-unimportant-things-that-folks-get-all-bothered-about/963271/155 "2022-04-29T13:05:57Z")
> [@TokyoBayer](#): > > As a Mormon, there were so many things we got worked up about. I think easily 80% of what I learned was absurd self-congratulatory nonsense. “We are special because we don’t poison our bodies with caffeine! Yea for us!” > > I see that a lot among Americans, Japanese, Taiwanese, golfers, hikers, photographers, etc., etc. All these are groups I’ve been in or been around. Paul Graham had a good essay about **[the lies we tell kids](http://paulgraham.com/lies.html)**. One segment focused on cultural identity: > Telling a child they have a particular ethnic or religious identity is one of the stickiest things you can tell them. Almost anything else you tell a kid, they can change their mind about later when they start to think for themselves. But if you tell a kid they’re a member of a certain group, that seems nearly impossible to shake. > > This despite the fact that it can be one of the most premeditated lies parents tell. When parents are of different religions, they’ll often agree between themselves that their children will be “raised as Xes.” And it works. The kids obligingly grow up considering themselves as Xes, despite the fact that if their parents had chosen the other way, they’d have grown up considering themselves as Ys. > > One reason this works so well is the second kind of lie involved. The truth is common property. You can’t distinguish your group by doing things that are rational, and believing things that are true. If you want to set yourself apart from other people, you have to do things that are arbitrary, and believe things that are false. And after having spent their whole lives doing things that are arbitrary and believing things that are false, and being regarded as odd by “outsiders” on that account, the cognitive dissonance pushing children to regard themselves as Xes must be enormous. If they aren’t an X, why are they attached to all these arbitrary beliefs and customs? If they aren’t an X, why do all the non-Xes call them one? ---
**Author:** ![Procrustus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/procrustus/32/2994_2.png) [@Procrustus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Procrustus)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2022, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tiny-unimportant-things-that-folks-get-all-bothered-about/963271/156 "2022-04-29T15:10:26Z")
Apparently it’s still 1964 and people get worked up about the length of a student’s hair. (and some racist rules as well) > The school’s student handbook, where the district’s policy on hair is spelled out, states that “Boy’s hair may not extend below the eyebrows, below the tops of the ears or below a conventional standup shirt collar, and must not be more than one-inch difference in the length of the hair on the side to the length of the hair on top.” [https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/28/us/texas-high-school-east-bernard-braided-hair-ban/index.html](https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/28/us/texas-high-school-east-bernard-braided-hair-ban/index.html) ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2022, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tiny-unimportant-things-that-folks-get-all-bothered-about/963271/157 "2022-04-29T16:52:33Z")
Wow, that’s horrible. ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2022, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tiny-unimportant-things-that-folks-get-all-bothered-about/963271/158 "2022-05-01T22:09:27Z")
> [@Dandan](#): > > I could be misremembering, but I seem to recall Shodan as once posting something like “regards might not mean what you think it does”. Your recall is correct, and once he came right out and said “I usually use _Regards_ as a way of saying F\*ck You.” ---
**Author:** ![BrickBat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ac91a4/32.png) [@BrickBat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrickBat)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2022, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tiny-unimportant-things-that-folks-get-all-bothered-about/963271/159 "2022-05-01T22:32:37Z")
> [@digs](#): > > Your recall is correct, and once he came right out and said “I usually use _Regards_ as a way of saying F\*ck You.” I recall some years back on another message board/forum this one poster having a reputation making lots of “just asking questions” posts and uncloaking as a shit stirrer. The ending of his posts, at the bottom, his signature was “Peace”. ---
**Author:** ![SmartAleq](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smartaleq/32/163_2.png) [@SmartAleq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmartAleq)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2022, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tiny-unimportant-things-that-folks-get-all-bothered-about/963271/160 "2022-05-02T00:33:55Z")
Might be getting whooshed here, but when pronouncing the name of the river, it has three syllables with the emphasis on the second syllable. Wil-LAM-it. Which is why “It’s Willamette, dammit!” does actually work as a mnemonic. I’m gonna borrow that one! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tiny-unimportant-things-that-folks-get-all-bothered-about/963271.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tiny-unimportant-things-that-folks-get-all-bothered-about/963271.md?page=9)