Things That Annoy Me

You would think by the long list of things that annoy me that I am a crusty old curmudgeon.  Maybe so, I did turn 28 this week.  Here is a short list of things that have been annoying me more and more lately:
  1. The use, by Americans, of "Cheers" at the end of emails annoys me a little bit, but is frequent, so it made the list.  I know one guy who is British, so he gets a pass on this one.  Everyone else, clean up your act.    
  2. The use of "Fail" in the place of "Failure" drives me absolutely insane.  Seriously, how did this abomination become so common so fast?  I'm not a grammar Nazi.  My spelling is atrocious (thank you spell check and Google when spell check doesn't understand me). I split infinitives, end sentences with prepositions, am completely confused about whether to use "who" or "whom" in any given situation, make nonparallel lists and write run-on sentences like it's going out of style. But, I do not commit this transgression and will not suffer fools who do.   
  3. The overuse of the adjective "Epic", especially preceding the misuse of "Fail" troubles me as well.  Please tell me why young people today want to describe everything as "Epic"?  I have nothing against the moderate use of the term.  It can be very appropriate in certain circumstances, but folks please start mixing it up a little bit.   
  4. People who converted from Johnny Cash haters to fans after he died have a certain place in my heart next to my schoolmates who started liking Star Wars when the digitally remastered versions came out.  
  5. Last but certainly not least, that type of magical, Utopian, primordial thinking that can best be described as Statism annoys me to no end.  What is it that frightens us so as a society?  Violence, of course!  So what is the solution?  We systematize the use of violence and give the power over those institutions that wield it to the people who seek it most vigorously and reserve to them the responsibility of deciding its appropriate use.     



3 comments:

  1. "Epic fail" is from World of Warcraft, leading to both "Epic" and "Fail" individually. There are missions, and then there are "Epic" missions, or Epics, which are really long, difficult, and rewarding missions. Failing is self explanatory. So "Epic Fail" is both a failure of grand proportions and/or a failure of something grand or that could have been grand with successful completion. I don't think it was meant to be proper English. It's more like something that pops up really large on your screen to shout at your for personal failure. I hope you honestly needed an explanation and weren't being snarky.

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    Replies
    1. Thank you for the origin story of the phrase, and my quibble is not specifically that the phrase is improper English. It's overuse in everyday speech is what annoys me personally. That and the shift from failure to fail.

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    2. Well, I would suspect that if a majority of daily internet users are 35-40 or less, and a significant number of people 35-40 or less have played World of Warcraft at some point, then the common use (or overuse) of "Epic", "Fail", and "Epic Fail" may be a sign that it will officially become a part of English language at some point if popularity does not decrease. I'm sure all new words and phrases were offensive at inception to some people. I'm sure not knowing the origin would have made the use of fail exceptionally annoying. I think I have just accepted it as net-speak.

      World of Warcraft has been around about a decade so far....The magic 8 ball would say "outlook not good" to the decline of "Epic Fail".

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