Just an observation. Apple is a cool company, but, in my experience, since 1984, it seems they almost have a policy of penalizing early adopters of technology. The ones that buy later inevitably have it much better.

I think the Festivus date is a problem. Such international rebel doggery has traditionally happened on Dec. 19, not the 23, thought that is the secondary date for celebrating it.

If you think that this is nonsense, consider a political reality for which there is no good, alternative explanation. On December 19, 1998, the Congress met on Saturday to impeach Bill Clinton- and did! That's conscious rebel doggery.

I have found (very biased I am 2 meters tall) that the big deal is hamstring flexibility. If someone out there could tell us poor sedentary ganglies how to stretch them out? There would be a boom in Yoga, IMO. Kareem had it down. Speak to us master!

Okay this is a silly grievance but I absolutely can't stand the number of spelling, grammatical and factual errors on PolitickerOR.com.

I'm usually not one to complain about stuff like this but it only bothers me because they take themselves so damn seriously. How can they take themselves so seriously if they don't seem to care about getting the most basic stuff right?

Call me twisted, but I far prefer the ones that have overflow acoustics going to those that have a loud conversation going. You can't play your stereo loud on Tri-Met, why are cell (not) telephones exempt?

Hard to tell about long-dead relatives. Cartoon characters tend to become Republican candidates.

Firefox browser is the answer!

The Democratic Party sending a "season's greetings card" that solicits money.

As Governor Blagojevich might say, "Expletive You!"

And I speak as a loyal Dem.

Others: Largely untalented people, such as people playing music on the radio, who think they're important celebrities and that people care about what they might think. Those same radio assholes who talk over the music.

Bill O' Reilly....just a complete clown in every way.

People who think everyone else should move out of their way when they're walking.

Freeway drivers in the left lane going 55 or slower. What percentage of people in Oregon are competent to drive? 8 - 10%?

Speaking of Apple....that they call some of their $10 an hour smug employees "geniuses." Yes, you're a genius....as illustrated by your rockin' retail job.

Internet advertising.

As Governor Blagojevich might say, "Expletive You!"

And I speak as a loyal Dem.

That isn't a trivial point. I'm over 50 and the only time in my whole life I ever voted for a Republican was for Big Jim Thompson over Michael J. Howlett (a.k.a Al Capone). Breaking ranks with the machine is not party disloyalty but good conscience!

1) People who think that turning on their car's Hazard Lights entitles them to park anywhere they like, hazard or not. Need to block a lane of traffic while you shop? Just turn on those blinky lights and let everyone know how important your errands are!

2) Those kiosks in malls where the pushy salespeople insist that the most important thing you will ever need to hear is that they have a new way to file your nails. Has anyone seen these? It's a flippin' five-dollar nail file, for gosh sakes! You'd think they were selling nuclear secrets!

3) Playing Tetris against the computer. Okay, I know the computer doesn't really have any antagonistic emotions, but isn't it a conflict of interest that the computer I'm playing against is the same computer "randomly" selecting my next piece? (I'm on to you, you mechanical bastard!)

4) Parents who cross a crosswalk while letting their toddlers trail about 5 feet behind them. Like, it's impossible that the kid should trip or that some asshat driver wouldn't zip through the light... no no, their child is protected by the power of the crosswalk paint. Nice going, Mother of the Year!

5) "Punisher" movies. They've made the same movie, like, three or four times now. Not sequels -- they just keep on putting out another rough draft of the same stupid concept. Hey movie studios, either start sequeling that thing or get off the pot.

6) Alleged "Stars" on "Dancing With the Stars"... who ARE these people? Are they actually celebrities?

No, seriously, we should talk about Blagojevich. My question is this - do we really allow people this stupid to call themselves Democrats?

I enjoy a good basketball game, especially when the Blazers are playing. I'd sure like to watch it on TV.

But the Blazers have a contract with Comcast Sports Network. And Comcast is a very stupid company.

My cable company over here in Central Oregon can't agree with Comcast for terms to get it to where I can purchase their channel. You see, Comcast demands that the local Cable Company pay Comcast for every viewer in the system. Whatever it is, $10/mo?, they want to charge to EVERYONE! So, the little old ladies with the bare minimum 27 channels would have to pay so that I could see the Blazers.

Not only is it wrong, but its a poor business model.

Comcast has front end costs that far exceed what little if anything it would cost them to ship the Blazer games to my Cable TV provider on a extra fee or pay for view basis. All that production stuff will be there whether they have 10,000 or 100,000 viewers. In terms of my little cable market, if they could get 200 of us to pay $1 per month, they'd be ahead of where they are now - it would be ALL profit! But no, they freeze us out by way of their terms that cannot be agreed to. So, Comcast is leaving 10's of thousands if not 100's of thousands of dollars per month laying on the table when you add up all the Cable TV companies in Oregon that they are freezing out.

Stupid business model, stupid company - and I don't get to see the Blazers except for those rare times that they are on KGW, ESPN, etc.

And Jeff, in my book, this tops both your grievances.

Old women wearing too much perfume

Young men wearing baseball hats sideways

Little children getting drinks at Starbucks

Teen-aged girls talking during the movie

Middle aged men with earrings

Just about everyone in some way I guess

sorry, you asked

People who think everyone else should move out of their way when they're walking Yeah, they walk and act like you're not there. What works for me---I stop dead in my tracks and they either have to walk right into you or go around. And 100% of the time, it's been the latter. You don't have to say a word.

OK, I'll bite...

Anyone wearing too much perfume/cologne/aftershave

Anyone NOT wearing deodorant every day

Women who use dogs as accessories

Men who drives trucks so tall, they need a stepladder to get in them (for non-commercial purposes)

Servers who attempt to remove my plate before I've finished eating

The fact that the Oregonian continues to deliver their stuff to my house at least once a week, despite the fact that I canceled my subscription

People who are mean to people who don't deserve their meanness

People who talk about "Lost" incessantly

People who don't refill the printer/toilet paper roll/paper towels

People who come up and start talking to you even though anyone can plainly see you're on the phone/otherwise intently occupied

PS- Love my iPhone.

irregardless is not a word

"Freeway drivers in the left lane going 55 or slower. What percentage of people in Oregon are competent to drive? 8 - 10%?"

The LAW is 55 MPH. It is NOT a suggestion. Just because you feel it is wrong to obey the law, and you are in a hurry because of your stupidity, does not entitle you to impose yourself on others to behave in a lawlessness, and uptight, fashion.

If you feel the law is unjust, then I would encourage you to find a lawyer and write your legislator. If you feel I drive too slow, then by all means, please take me to court to air any percieved harms I have done against you to a judge. I dare you.

55 is the law - just live with it. When you come up to a person driving 55, just manage your anger, shut up, and drive around them without complaining. There is nothing you can do about it.

"People who play their music so loud that you're forced to listen to it"

I have a neighbor like this. At 2 AM in the morning no less. I ask them to turn it dowm or off, and I was labled a racist because they insisted that my beef was the type of music they were playing and not that it was loud at 2 AM. They felt it wasn't loud and pointed out that their culture demands their music at such early hours. These are the same people that are appealing their eviction on the grounds of racism (when it was really because of loud music at 2 AM)

Go figure.

People who think everyone else should move out of their way when they're walking Yeah, they walk and act like you're not there. What works for me---I stop dead in my tracks and they either have to walk right into you or go around. And 100% of the time, it's been the latter. You don't have to say a word.

But doesn't that make you one of those people? I hope you at least move over your half before stopping.

I think I'm still on such a high over the pending Obama administration that nothing really irks me - and I just had a drunk driver total my parked truck and destroy part of my new fence. And he didn't have insurance! Still hasn't phased me one bit.

Jeff--

Get a Blackberry.

Greivances:

1) iPhones

2) People with iPhones.

3) People who are bitter because they don't have an iPhone.

Sorry, one more:

4) People who can't spell "grievance" correctly.

Hey Evan, want to meet up later, say 7 or so? We can work out details later today...

About language usage/grammar peeves, I've some long-standing ones, most all media inspired or perpetrated.

"Defrocked priests" you heard so much about during coverage of the sex scandals. This one is just totally made up. "You are a priest forever in the line of Melchizadek". Even the Pope can't un-ordain a priest.

The planet Uranus always had the accent on the second syllable until Voyager went by. The logic the press uses for accenting the first syllable is that the greek word for heaven, "uranos", from which it derives, does so. By that logic any Greek proper noun that puts the accent on the last syllable is wrong. Obviously English doesn't decide where the accent goes based on the Greek. Even the second syllable accent of "baptism", from the Greek, is no longer the preferred pronunciation.

Anthropomorphizing everything. I can't watch most PBS nature shows anymore for all the metaphorical descriptions of whatever as a middle class family. It's extended now to theoretical physics, with "stellar nurseries", "goldilocks planets", "cannibal galaxies", etc.

Venusian. There is no such word. The adjective to describe Venus is venereal. "The Venereal atmosphere contains sulfuric acid droplets", not "The Venusian atmosphere is truly hell with real fire and brimstone". Had to get another anthropocentric example in.

Home Sales. You're selling a house. People make it a home. You can't buy and sell that.

"Factor of". It means a power of 10, not simple multiplication. The phrase is now useless, as when a person says, "increased by a factor of 3", you often have no clue whatsoever if they meant three times or a thousand times.

"The service". "The military", please.

Radical. It's from the Latin for root. That funny sign you put over a number to indicate you want the root? It's called a radical sign? Radical does not mean fringe. It refers to core, not tangential meaning. Radical politics would be "think global act local", not "kill all the lawyers".

Capital and Capitol. Effect, affect and affect (different accent for each of the last two). They're not variant spellings; they're different words. Flammable and inflammable are the same word.

Slow motion. It's fast motion as the Brits say it, it only makes the scene appear slow.

Protein. The word has three syllables, though incorrect use has become accepted. The gripe is that if you say it right people think you are saying protean.

PC v Mac. Neither are. "PC" originally meant an Intel processor based machine. MS made a deal with Tandy, first, then others, to put Windoze on their machines so that it didn't sit there blinking at you when you got it home. Windoze became associate with the hardware. But Windoze is an OS, not a piece of hardware. This is part of the Vista promotion to get everyone to buy all MS compatible hardware, to think of your hardware choice in terms of their non-multitasking crap. Similarly, Mac meant Motorola 68K based processor. At least a Mac was hardware. Today, there's Intel Macs, Sun Windoze boxes, Wine on Linux, etc. The whole thing is just really dumb .

Hinglish. I don't mind Hindus making up their own grammar, but I have a real, practical issue, with the way they handle English idiom. When speaking "English", a lot of native Hindu speakers will use an idiomatic expression, but say it in a way that makes it literal. It's not longer an idiom if you make it literal, it just means something else. Example: the googly, the seam bowler's inswinging delivery that looks like an outswinger. Aussies call it "the wrong 'un", because you pick it for the outswinger and it isn't. Hindu commentators will call it, with no accent or pause, "the wrong one". If you say, "He bowled the wrong one that time", you are saying he made an incorrect choice of delivery, not that it was a googly. Or just using the wrong word. "The batsman is back in the hut". It's "hutch", as where you put a rabbit (slang for lower order batsman that can't bat). Universally, commentators are saying this nonsense "back in the hut". A cricket pavilion is not a hut.

Women who add an "s" to their husband's title and use it as their own name. "Mrs. Brigadier Stanley Norton, RAF, retired", or "Mrs. Todd Palin", for example.

And I share the disgust with Atlanta Bills, from the "75 Years Since.." topic about the use of "domestic beer" in Portland to mean "mass market/produced yellow rice beer", as in "domestic is $2? Great, I'll have a Widmer. That's not a domestic".

Dropping syllables from Arabic or pseudo-Arabic words. If I hear Hy-der-a-bad pronounced hydra-bad one more time I will scream (Dean Jones!). It's Al-Qa-ee-da, not al-ky-da.

I'll force myself to stop. I've got a billion language gripes.

My grievance is fat people. Its just not acceptable anymore. Take extreme steps to lose the weight, and I don't mean pills or surgery. Sell your car and walk every where, if your partner is enabling you break up, move out of the fat people suburbs, get a job where you don't sit all day. If your obese you are literally killing yourself. Quit complaining that you can't lose weigh because you can.

Oops I mean you're not your.

My grievance is fat people.

Seriously. We really had no idea how to lose weight until you told us, right here in your little comment. What a genius you are! I'm sure fat people the world over will look to you for divine guidance and wisdom in our neverending battle against obesity. You, my dear sir, are a miracle worker.

/snark

Get over it. Fat people will always be around, if not to make an effort to annoy the crap out of you.

The assumption (the thing that irks) that it will be the mom leaving the child behind.

It's not an assumption, it happened right in front of my car on Saturday. Why did you think I wasn't speaking from personal experience?

People who are whimsical, random and erratic about apostrophes.

"Apple's on Sale"

"The house was picked up, everything in it's place."

People who omit the Oxford Comma or insist upon the fanciful idea that it has no benefit to written communication:

"People who are whimsical, random<u>,</u> and erratic about apostrophes."

A pet peeve for me, and it's not particular to this thread though it's certainly making me think of it, is when people say that what bothers them is "People who...". It's so much more productive to focus on the action that bothers you, rather than the person.

Karol posted a link to an Ill Doctrine video a while back about how to tell someone they've said something racist. Karol, you totally got me hooked on Jay Smooth. Anyway, Jay talks about the difference between what people did, and who they are, and that it's better to talk about people's actions rather than drawing conclusions about them as people.

Umm..wasn't women who decided to adopt that. It comes from the days when wives legally belonged, as property, to their husbands and no longer had a legally (or socially) separate identity. Tradition and precedent, hundreds of years in the making, and still reinforced by societal norms, is hard to break.

True enough. However, the reverse is not unheard of - the guy takes away the "s" and adopts her name as his own. I know a couple who did exactly that. He took her last name when they married. No hyphens. He just took her name and their children all have her last name too.

True enough, but irrelevant to what I said, or is the idea that if you teach me history I won't be upset by the practice? Every single time I've argued that point with someone, it was umm,...a woman defending the practice. Though I would dearly love to meet one, I have never heard a man defend it. This is an airing of grievances. The question was about what torques you and what gets me is women that still do that. I don't see why it's hard to break unless you assume the norm is herd behavior. Blacks don't seem to have too much trouble throwing out slave names. The part about the reverse is just off-topic, as no one is saying it irritates them, which is quite an accomplishment when the post topic is as broad and open-ended as this one.

Pets are still regarded as simple property, which I will add to my list of grievances, too. Only in this society can you have so many posters above criticizing what irritates people, as if it were a computable quantity and they erred in the calculations, but we can't agree on basic everyday facts. Perhaps the latter explains the former.

I know many people cannot get televised Blazer games, but for those of us who can, watching them can be pure torture. It seems there are just four different commercials that are allowed to be aired during a game, all of them really inane. Repeating these commercials incessantly makes me run from the room and do something else. And then there's Mike Rice.

Peeve No. 2: Cloying Christmas music everywhere for over a month. And I don't even to to malls ever. I've developed a defense mechanism, however. I listen to a song I like a few times and then can't get it out of my head, so it blocks out the Xmas crap. In previous years I used numbers from Pink Martini's Sympathique CD and this year, somewhere recently I heard Petula Clark's Downtown and now I know all the words.

(1.) Republicans and Democrats.

(2.) All others who only see the crimes of the other.

--People who abuse &/or abandon their pets and children.

--People who endanger others on the road by running stop signs, following too close, or chasing people down the freeways.

--People who refuse to do the job they were elected to do--this is ALL OF CONGRESS for the past eight years--no impeachment, no oversight, no enforcement, gutting the constitution, spending the country into bankruptcy, Iraq, etc.

--People who whine about mommy or daddy after they're 30.

--People who steal from the food & toy collection bins for the poor.

--People who don't vote and then complain about politics.

Sorry, Mara.

Mistakes are different than choices. Someone who hits a cat by accident made a mistake. Someone who chooses to run over a cat for "fun" is a bad person.

When you steal, abuse others, or act like a jerk, you're a bad person. There's nothing wrong with condemning people for their actions when they deliberately behave like monsters.

I agree with the very first post; this aproximeeting business is the latest in the cheapening and commercialisation of our personal space.

My gripe with this one started as a kid. The telephone was used for personal conversations, usually between my parents and grand-parents. Then can telemarketing calls at dinner. I always fealt that it was like beating on the windows and peering in during dinner.

Then, we got call waiting where folks could check to see if there's someone they would rather be talking to than you. Then we got cell phones to complete the process in the reverse; now that everyone was in your space, take your space to everyone. That gave rise to a whole new kind of rudeness, and still does, because (another gripe) cell phones aren't and don't work! Today there is something wrong with you if you don't carry a cell. There is positive hostility to not being on the leash.

Now, aproximeeting, the social version of call waiting. You queue up a number of things at the same time, in case one becomes more interesting than what you have to do. It's all about one thing. "The other" used to be more important. Most of out electronics are being used to cheapen that. You use your cell and headphones to isolate yourself from "the other" that is sitting inches in front of your face. The only consideration do "the other" is how to avoid him/her.

I agree Lani. "Being a jerk is not a lifestyle choice". There's a lot of jerks and jerkettes that really act that it's like being gay!

OK, a gripe, then. I'm going to use the one I did for the last 2 years, because I'm still pissed. That is "progressive" institutions of higher ed., achem...like Reed, that bulldoze the oldest community garden in the country to build a dorm so that students don't have to live in the apartments across the street. And close a neighborhood hospital in pursuit of the same.

-People who have to come to a COMPLETE EFFING STOP when they make a right turn -Tracy Morgan -People who think the fact that they are parents means the rules don't apply to them -The lack of a good place to get chicken after 10pm (burgers everywhere but no chicken except for the cold crap at grocery stores) -The quasi prohibitionist attitude toward booze (ads that always remind me to "drink responsibly",all the rules on booze they have at brew fests) -The idea that you are not a real american if you are educated, non-religious,live in a city, did not get married or have kids by your 25th birthday, move far away from where you were raised/have roots. -7th heaven TV show -small yap meister dogs -vegetarianism -Faux news -white suburban boys who say fashizzle or act like "they bad" -people who camp out on gym equipment when they aren't using it.

Thank you.

-People who have to come to a COMPLETE EFFING STOP when they make a right turn

People who swing out left to make a right turn, before stopping, should have their licenses revoked!

The driving age. Seen TA's "grinning" post? Would you have that argument with a sixteen year old? Then why do you give them a license to engage in the actual behavior?!?

Also, that few people say "bite me" anymore.

-vegetarianism

Bite me!

Salvation Army bell ringers that pee in a cup for their jobs because they get to keep 1/2 of the donations, without telling you. Special consideration goes to people that have been irresponsible in having more kids than they can support.

I was going to add, "queer behavior", but it isn't a behavior or a gripe. To be fair, I haven't seen any of the liberals saying "my gripe is global warming". There are some things that are an abomination against nature that don't qualify as a "gripe".

Well, no one's probably reading this thread anymore, but I did think of some recently (contrary to my earlier remarks).

The overuse of words that have now rendered them meaningless to me to the point I roll my eyes whenever I hear them:

"Hero" (Most notably in Seattle where the HOV-tattletail-hotline number ends in -HERO. Give me a break.) "Disenfranchise" "Gentrification"

Also, the MSM. It used to be just local news that I found ridiculous, but now national news (including MSNBC) is intolerable with the way they chase soap opera stories like Clinton (Hillary or Bill) "drama".

The last straw was the other day on MSNBC. They were covering the Blago scandal (when it first started - so full coverage was indeed appropriate). They cut off a guest mid-sentence to cut to "BREAKING NEWS!!" - frackin' Jay Leno's press conference about his new show! I promptly switched to CNN.

A few more annoyances from daily life:

--Customer Disservice centers. I hate going through multiple menus to talk to a human and hearing that mechanical voice saying "I'm sorry I didn't get that, please repeat..." Then after going through four or five menus they tell you to call back during their normal business hours.

--Dell is asking for money for their help line if you insist on talking to someone who speaks English as a first language because of numerous complaints from customers who can't understand the people answering their help line.

--I hate hearing "Your business is important to us" whenever I have to deal with one of these BS "help" lines.

Hindi sweatshops where H.S. kids are reading from help menus when you call the Dell center. THat is what you are getting, folks. Straight from the mouth of my benighted, gibberish coworker from India on my last job. All of her nieces and nephews were ditching the privilege of their paid-for higher ed to get out and take these call center jobs straight after graduation from H.S.

Robotic, uncomprehending, useless.

The benighted assholes who say, "Awesome".

PLEASE stop it. That was such a dignified and large-in-meaning word before the Valley Girls got their hands on it.

"There is nothing so vulgar as a policeman".

Facts do aggrieve me, Pat!

Most recent example on Blue Oregon: On the Alworth thread regarding the moral superiority of progressives, "Idler" comments with a link to the "No True Scotsman" fallacy reference in Wikipedia, which in fact destroys the premise of the entire thread.

When I saw that I was too busy to look it up and took it on your authority that it had been debunked. Sorry.

People who are whimsical, random and erratic about apostrophes.

"Apple's on Sale"

or add an 's to the end of every restaurant's name!

More shit - http://wcbstv.com/business/madoff.ponzi.scheme.2.888036.html

The socialites are being bailed out from the PONZI? What happened to the grandmothers destroyed by ENRON?

I am experiencing unhealthy levels of rage today. They finally used the word, "Pyramid", that has been on everyone's lips. Remember the last time we had that word? O yah, the FIRST Great Depression. Ponzi and Pyramid.

And now we are back there again. The bastards DID IT AGAIN. I am telling you, I feel so angry, so enraged. THis nation is so sick. The wealthy are protected, the financiers. The Fed will not tell us who is sucking at our teat. The story was buried wherein foreign banks were demanding WE pay THEM for THEIR costs here on our soil - that we are to pay them for the fact that their gambling here in the US came to naught! And since then, no more followup on that story and the Fed will not tell us who they gave our money to.

It's bad for me. This is all so bad for me. I just feel such helpless rage. I keep asking, "HOW can this keep going on? Does anyone see or get it?"... but it keeps going!