Things That Annoy Me, But Shouldn't

Really, LOL. That's a real interesting annoyance, since don't most Restaurants do that. Personally, I don't mind, because I like my drink immediately, since i'm always thirsty.

But, I think the idea is to get you set up while you are browsing the menu, unless your like me and go to only a handful of places and know exactly what you want.

 

We used to differentiate between red and green shitloads, but I've forgotten which was larger.

 

Loads of things, but the first annoyance that comes to mind is:
Grown adults who don't know basic facts about biology/ecology that even most children know, e.g. a ladybird is a type of beetle or that... a tree is still a plant even though it's woody (sigh). Actually, this isn't trivial as it reveals areas of severe ignorance which really shouldn't exist!

 

I ran into someone not that long ago that was trying to argue that humans weren't a type of animal. Well, if they're not a type of animal, then what are they? They're humans.

 

I shouldn't take it quite so seriously, but I'm a big proponent of increasing awareness of this. People should probably be more aware of their genetic relationships to other animals. Other animals. We're not that special. I think we ought to start looking at the little things, take an interest in the smallest weeds and the scuttling insects. Anthropocentrism/human supremacy is the bane good ecological understanding and hinders progress. Not that I'm a misanthropist or anything...


Anyway, back to Twitter, pop stars and whatever else was going on here.

 

This may be a linguistic thing, but I run into an amazing number of Japanese people who don't believe that fish or bugs are animals.

 

No, no, that's quite normal. A staggering amount of people equate animals to mammals. It's quite ubiquitous, actually. When people think of an animal they conjure up a cat or a deer, not a beetle or a worm.

 

This actually surprises me a bit because I always thought of Japan as a fairly science forward nation, but that might just be my preconceptions coming out.

 

I will speak very carefully so as to avoid creating the impression of racism, but many of the Japanese people I have met display a stunning degree of ignorance of science, history, and the greater world around them. Japan has some very accomplished scientists and technicians, but it does not seem to me that this extends to the population at large to a degree greater than that in other countries.

ETA: Some of the worse forms of nihonjinron propose that the Japanese are a separate species, and the Nazi-generated theory of blood type influencing personality is taken at full face value here.

 

By the way, speaking of linguistics, colloquialisms and misconceptions, "bugs" is another one that annoys me!
Sure, bugs is the common umbrella term for all slimy things, most usually insects, but the term really belongs to the Hemipterans who are a specific order of insect. People have the idea that taxonomy is difficult, but it's not. I care about these trivial issues because neglecting and misusing these names doesn't do justice to the wondrously complex hierarchies of life. Homogeneity makes everything faceless and misunderstood.

 

See, I never knew that "bug" was anything other than a colloquialism for all of the land-based (generally) exoskeletal types (plus worms and assorted larvae). I generally teach it to my students who are genuinely linguistically ignorant of the fact that spiders and centipedes aren't insects. The all-encompassing Japanese word is　むし (mushi), which is correct for use with everything from butterflies to millipedes.

 

Hmm. Well, the more you know.

 

the whole run up to the end of the year, i get less and less enthralled by it with each passing year, and will likly turn into scrooge before i'm 30 (I'm 24 in February, just saying...)

 

Baby talk, even if you're talking to a baby, but especially if you're not.

 

Fixed it for you

 

Thanks. I was also going to add "if you're talking to animals", but I didn't want to incur the wrath of the dog people.

 

I love my dog, and he may be a huge suck, but he's still a dog, not a furry baby and it always struck me as a bit odd when people treated their pets like that.

 

It strikes dogs as a bit odd, too.

 

No one cares that your post was sent from your whiz-bang new cell phone using Tapatalk. Please turn that off.

 

A colleague had mince (ground beef) on toast for his lunch. I expected him to explain himself, but he acted like it was a normal thing to do.

I'm outraged.

 

Denzel Washington's voice.

I don't know why, it should be a perfectly unobjectionable voice, perhaps even a nice voice, but it's just got this, shit, I don't even know, overly soothing quality to it.

And this is about his voice and his voice alone; I've never heard anything bad about him as a person, he's a talented and versatile actor, he's a reasonably handsome man as far as my straight-guy view of things goes, but his voice is just so....

Gaah!

He's the anti-Leonard Cohen, whose voice went from kind of thin and even a little bit whiny but still great to gravelly and broken with tobacco and maybe too much whiskey into something amazing but yeah I can see why some people might not like it, but Denzel Washington's voice is just so flippin acceptable and even slightly soothing that it just drives me crazy in a bad way.

 

http://mrnice-guy.blogspot.com/2008/07/guide-to-perfect-denzel-washington.html

 

Pretty funny, and did you read down to the end where someone critiqued the shit out of the blog post? Was this for a class assignment or something?

 

Now, you see, this is why nobody does a Denzel Washington impression as part of their act. He's just not that obvious or funny. Everyone does Shatner, Walken, Jimmy Stewart, and of course Schwarzenegger. Even people who can't do impressions to save their lives do Schwarzenegger. But Denzel? Why would anybody do Denzel?