I have been seeing this little language device on forums more and more, and it's just making me want to shoot myself--when somebody will say something that's supposedly embarrassing to them, and then will follow up with this:

*shuffles feet, looks around shyly, kicks toes in the dirt, blah blah...*

And I hate it, y'all. HATE. I don't know why it makes me so nuts, but it does.

What makes you want to pull somebody's hair out? Go to town, kids.

-- Anonymous, September 19, 2001

Answers

This is what I HATE more than anything. It's like an alarm goes off every time I see it. Let me do it hypothetically in a sentence.

"My husband did the dishes last night. Such a blessing, that."

Or

"My coworker won $1,000 in the lottery. A bit of good luck, that."

WHO! WHO talks like this?!?! Do you know ANYONE who sticks a "that" on the end of his sentence just for the hell of it? It's so freakin pretentious. Gawd.

-- Anonymous, September 19, 2001

Aidan: it's a Britishism, I think, putting things such as "what," "that," or "yeah" unexpectedly at the end of a sentence. My London-native co-worker does it all the time, as does the Naked Chef.

I hate it when people list three things and forget to put a comma after the second. This is also a difference between American and British English, but we Americans are supposed to treasure the second comma, and I refuse to give it up in any way, shape, or form. See?

-- Anonymous, September 19, 2001

Oh! I hate that too! Uh, that.

Also, what's up with "The mind boggles"? I don't know of one person, ever, in real life, who would say that. Why not say, "I don't understand" or even "What the fuck?" Get to the point, people.

Now everybody is going to think I'm a big old meanie. That sucks, that.

*gives them the finger, shyly, while pulling out their toenails, one by one, with some needle-nosed pliers*

-- Anonymous, September 19, 2001

Okay. Can the mind even "boggle"? I imagine you could say, "My mind is boggled by her complete lack of tact or taste." But to say, "My! She's so tasteless and tactless! The mind boggles!"

The hell? I mean, yeah, if you're a neurologist or a psychiatrist, you can certainly say, "My, that Andrea Yates, her mind boggles mine." But for anyone else? It's absurd.

-- Anonymous, September 19, 2001

AB -- Oh if they want to hate me, they can go ahead. I'm saying, it bothers ME. By all means, don't let my little ole opinion stop you from indulging in your pretentious Britishisms. Play on, player.

Okay, British people can get away with the "thats" because it's a cultural thing. However! If you are NOT British or Canadian, don't have the fancy accent to pull it off, or don't ever use it in conversation, you are pretentious. And that goes for the freaky misspellings of "favour," "colour" etc. too. Every time I see an American person doing that, I KNOW they're the kind of person that will fight you tooth and nail over the most retarded, inconsequential crap.

-- Anonymous, September 19, 2001

And I sometimes slip and use "honour" or "centre" because I work for a British company. Damn, Aidan, I'll make sure to stay out of your way while I'm proofing.

-- Anonymous, September 19, 2001

Oh no, Aidan, I'm totally with you. I hate the "that" thing, too. And ALSO, the British spellings from Americans. Favourite. Colour. Honour. I think it's totally unnecessary. And you know what else? I catch myself doing it sometimes, because I see it so much. I hate that, too.

I'm just going to start putting an extraneous "u" in all my words. I mean, I'um juust gouing tou stuart puutting aun extrauneous "uu" iun aull muy wourds.

-- Anonymous, September 19, 2001

Damn! Already I've offended somebody! WG, if you're doing it accidentally because you're seeing it all the time, that's one thing. And I don't know, your company might actually WANT you to spell it their way for work. But if you're an American who has been through the American education system, and you're willfully using the British/Canadian spelling of words in your everyday life for no good reason except you think it's cool or you like to be contrary -- I got no love for you.

-- Anonymous, September 19, 2001

Y'all know we'll all be Canadians soon anyway, right?

-- Anonymous, September 19, 2001

And I don't know, your company might actually WANT you to spell it their way for work.

I will say this: I hate it when my magazine applies their spellings onto our words. Say it with me: it never was the World Trade Centre.

This is also why I got annoyed when our favorite Kitchen Stadium reporter is identified as Shinichiro Ohta, when he'd know himself as Ohta Shinichiro. And while I'm on that, why is Chen's name last-name- first when all the other Iron Chefs have their first name listed first?

-- Anonymous, September 19, 2001

it never was the World Trade Centre.

Thank you, YES.

-- Anonymous, September 19, 2001

Because he's Chen Kinichi, dammit! And that's all you need to know.

WG, I can see why your publication's style manual would dictate the extra "u." When it comes to people who use the extra "u" to be alternative, or whatever, it's just silly. The same goes for people who write "grey" rather than "gray," or "realise" rather than "realize." If you were taught how to spell in an American school and there's not a speck of British or Canadian in you, then spell like an American, dammit! Come on, now - let's embrace that patriotism, y'all!

-- Anonymous, September 19, 2001

In a totally different vein of hate... Hotmail. I hate the dumb shit who decided to make it take EVEN LONGER to load. Plus, while Princess Hotmail decides to take her sweet time loading, she brings everything else on the computer to a screeching halt. The world just sits and waits while Hotmail sucks up every ounce of energy the computer has, leaving the other programs paralyzed by her greedy ass. Hate.

Seriously, the MSN page alone sometimes takes so long to load that my computer at home times it out. That is just wrong.

Say it. It's okay. I should just use a different client. But I've had this stupid hotmail account forever.

-- Anonymous, September 19, 2001

Oh my god, I'm right there with you. I've had Hotmail since 1998, but I switched to Yahoo mail mainly because of Hotmail's long ass load time. That, and the fact that they let every porn teen in America spam the living daylights out of us. The Bulk Mail folder does nothing to alleviate the junk mail.

-- Anonymous, September 19, 2001

T, I'm with you on Chen. I just don't know why the others aren't Sakai Hiroyuki, Morimoto Masaharu, and Kobe Masahiko, which is how they're known in Japan.

-- Anonymous, September 19, 2001

So I work for an (apparently) pretentios theater chain which calls itself Something Something Theatres. So I type that a lot and that's how I spell it now, so hate me, whatever, that's not the point of this story. (Although I was always taught that it was "theater" for movie and "theatre" for film.)

So I write this HUGE email to a list-serv a while ago. Like three pages. Explaining the ins and outs of how film buying works, competitive zones, bidding for films, etc. Kept talking about how "if the theatre advertisises the film before bidding" and on and on, must have used theatre 80 times.

And I send it and the spell check comes up and says "theatre" is wrong so I click a word and click "change all" and send it out.

And it turns out I clicked "theatric" instead so the whole thing made NO sense. Not that I ever make sense but it made less sense.

Point is, my big language hate is the damn spell checker.

-- Anonymous, September 19, 2001

Although I was always taught that it was "theater" for movie and "theatre" for film.

Okay. People who call movies "films." They're usually the same Americans who spell all British while they smoke their clove cigarettes, or whatever.

-- Anonymous, September 19, 2001

Word up, T. Speaking of which, I read on 3WA, I think, that some people hate when people say "Word." I like it.

At the other end of the spectrum, I've been trying to get my mother to stop saying "THEE-ay-ter." Bless her heart.

-- Anonymous, September 19, 2001

Word, AB.

-- Anonymous, September 19, 2001

Um, I meant "theater" for movie and "theatre" for plays. Not film.

Sorry, I'm always doing this shit. I really gotta stop trying to light the clove cigs and type at the same time.

-- Anonymous, September 19, 2001

Geez, Slickery, watch out or you'll be hacking up lung on your keyboard.

-- Anonymous, September 19, 2001

damn, yo! *hides*

I use the british way of spelling...um, it's a habit. I sort've mix british/ghetto/and err other stuff all together. I'm cool! really, y'all!

-- Anonymous, September 19, 2001

Now I'm going to have to start calling you Aumber. Or Staurlight. Hahahaaah!

-- Anonymous, September 19, 2001

I know it is going to irritate the bejeesus out of everyone, but (so?) I've decided to start exclaiming, "Crikey!" to replace, "Holy shit!". A la Croc Hunter. So it's not really "Crikey" so much as "Croykey".

I'm one of those people who do the that thing, I guess. It comes from learning speech patterns from reading books.

I cannot stand "Huzzah!" or "Wassup!". Or "Wasabe!". You may as well say, "Hi, I'm a big train jumping dork."

-- Anonymous, September 19, 2001

Does anyone actually say "Huzzah!" in real life? The only place I've ever seen it was in the old editor's columns at The Onion.

-- Anonymous, September 19, 2001

Ooh, crikey is a good one to say. Or criminey. God, I wish I could remember what it was that Tom Hanks and Conan O'Brien said they were going to start saying all the time. It was hilarious.

I hate "Huzzah!", too, but it's more because the person who always said it got on my last nerve. Aside from that, it's not so bad.

-- Anonymous, September 19, 2001

Self proclaimed American Anglophiles drive me nuts. Nuts! Mostly because stuff like grey/gray, or colour/color is so fucking trivial that it pains me to see people make it an affectation - I mean, if you have to be Affectation Annie, make your 'thing' be casting rock star's penises in plaster or raising llamas, or something. Americans who add little 'u's to their writing are just losers who don't quite get hot to perform a decent act of rebellion.

What drives me the most nuts is on 3WA - where people write this phrase out in their posts:

(insert forbidden smiley here).

That is about a zillion times worse than just typing out this :)

-- Anonymous, September 19, 2001

I'll tell you one thing that drives me nuts.

I have a very common first name. VERY common. It's in Shakespeare, it's in your baby book, it's everywhere.

It is not "Jennifer." And yet 10% of people I speak to hear "Jennifer." People. It's not like I have some weird first name and you're trying to mainstream me. You know my name. You shouldn't have to look up the number.

-- Anonymous, September 19, 2001

hah hah AB! actually once, when I was in probably middle school, I made everyone call me Omber ("O" said with an 'ah' sound..I dunno either). I was always one pretentious kid. 'want a spot of tea, yo?" heh heh.

and is anyone annoyed by anime emoticons? (^_^,o_0,^^;; ,etc) just wondering cause I do that too. I'm probably about to be massively hated. hee!

---

really, the few grammatical things that bug me are 'anyways' (I hate the adding on of the 's'..I can hear the valley girl speak...I just HATE it HATE it! and my boyfriend does it, but I don't correct him though I may be bubbling inside..haha.) and 'your/you're'.

also hate the phrase "cool beans" ...can't staaaand it. it started cause this girl I hated (she was coming on to my internet bf at the time) said it to me over and over again and I wanted to shove that bean where it doesn't belong...haha

-- Anonymous, September 19, 2001

You can hate me all you want for using British spellings, not that I really post here all that much, but there are three good reasons for it:

1. I was born in Australia and I've lived here all my life. 2. My parents are both from England. 3. Three of the five words I ever got wrong on spelling tests (I was a good speller) were "grey", "waggon" and "recognise" because I put "gray", "wagon" and "recognize".

I'm so used to seeing American spelling that I have to stop and think when I write words like "diameter" because I want to write "diametre". I still wrote "World Trade Center" in my journal, because that's its name, and it pissed me off when someone called Captain Cook's ship the "Endeavor".

I can live with spelling differences, and I can even live with "how r u 2day? i m @ home" and other *creative* spelling, but every time I see "2K1" for "2001" I want to punch someone out.

-- Anonymous, September 19, 2001

Also I hate the forum stuffing up my line breaks.

-- Anonymous, September 19, 2001

Cal, you didn't know we make exceptions for Australians? It's true. You can read it on the internet.

-- Anonymous, September 20, 2001

Thanks, AB! I don't feel like such a loser now. :)

-- Anonymous, September 20, 2001

Some confessions:
I have actually said in conversation, "the mind boggles." I don't do it terribly often, preferring "it staggers the imagination," usually when referring to someone who just did or said the most inane thing I ever saw / heard. But now I'll quit.

Also, along the lines of not-really-cursing expletives that could sound affected, I don't use "crikey" but often say "bugger!" when something has just frustrated me. It will be hard to quit that, so I won't bother.

Kristin, word (hee) on the (insert forbidden smiley here) over at 3WA. It's just such a suck-ass gesture, and I often wonder if it makes S&S want to reply with something like (insert forbidden middle finger here).

Can I 'fess a drives-me-crazy that is particular to having a journal? This is going to get tricky, so bear with me.

There are lots of phrases that have become part of journalspeak, just little turns that have become part of the vernacular regardless of the origin of them - "I'm just sayin," would be a good example. And I don't care about that really.

And, I can't rightly complain about saids appropriation since I cannot stop from using "what had happened was" and other random pointless insertions of the word "had" in my conversations now - in fact, all my friends here are doing it, and laughing hysterically. And I completely blame Anna Beth Chao and the Chao Famiry Experience.

But... and here's the point, finally... when someone e-mails me about my journal, and the entire message is filled with my own comments and nicknames and lingo and GAG!! As if the person has nothing to say, and as if I will be endeared by hearing someone trying to sound like my own self.
And not in a quote sense either! But, in a conversational manner!!! (are you getting it yet, with the exclamation points?) I actually had someone e-mail me and ask if the Beav and I were having a great afternoon since El Jefe was wheels-up. I was speechless.
what. thefuck. are you saying to me?

-- Anonymous, September 22, 2001

Hate me if you must, but I had Brits in my family (all dead now) and grew up reading Brit Lit. So, unless I'm writing for pay, or, back in the day, for a grade,I spell things all Anglocentric. "Grey" and "gray" also sound different, and I SAY "grey". And I say things like "The mind boggles" (albeit usually facetiously). I am known to end sentences with "that" (but not "what" or "yeah", or, to the great relief of Canadians, with "eh"). I use extraneous "u"s and reverse "re"s and say "aluminium". I use "dead" for "very" sometimes. I cross my fucking sevens (and my zeros, but that's a computer nerd thing).

The thing is, I am working hard to break lifelong habits, habits I was rised with, since my family is Anglophilic / British and I grew up in Savannah (grossly Anglophilic to the point of having elevenses/ high tea in certain hotels). I'm not acquiring Un-American language inconsistencies just to annoy / impress anyone or put on airs. I can't deliberately fake a convincing British accent, but I damn well sound Brit at times whether I want to or not, and I gett shit for it ALL THE TIME. Nowadays, I'm somewhat sorry my old accent is disappearing, something I have worked on (specifically not to be accused of being pretentious), but I slip sometimes. When I travel, people think I'm a Brit. I set them straight, I don't try to pass. It's also unfortunate that I LOVE LOVE LOVE Britpop music. So okay, y'all have a lot of hate for me and my natural (I swear! look at some old creative writing papers I wrote when I was, like, eight! wake me up from a dead sleep and talk to me, catch "off guard"! ask my mom about trying to cure me of saying "f" for "th"...something I still mess up on...etc.) mode of expression, and it's not like it's something new to me. I get tired of being beat up on about it.

Because I did NOT grow up with these terms, I do not say "zed" for "zee", or use "lorry", or "flat". I do occasionally say "wanker", "sodding", "pardon" and "lift", and when I'm very tired (forced myself not to type "knackered", groo!), I say "me" for "my", but I'm really, truly trying to cut it out. (I also have tried to omit "y'all" from my vocab, but that isn't going to happen if I keep lurking here...and I do live in the ATL.) Because I'm tired of people thinking I'm a git. Honestly, I'm not. Hey, I do not drink beer or worship the footie or give two shits about The Royals and their corgis and dorgis and big ears and silly hats. Marmite makes me gag but I love me some properly made tea. Or I did do, before my lingering unemployment and nearly non-existent dole guilted me out of enjoying this non-work-finding / scone-scarfing ritual. If I hang around people with strong Southern accents, which, duh, is also half my background, I am going to be fine, as I'll mimic them and blend like Stoli Vanil and The Real Thing [tm]. But god help me if I slip or happen to get re-infected by brief exposure to the BBC (or "go hongry agin").

So, okay, you will all definitely hate me (I mean, "alla y'all will be hatin' on me, yo...dazamn!"), because I also smoke clove cigarettes. Yes! It's TRUE! I smoke cloves AND I've said "bloody hell". I like them. They taste yum. I'm smoking one now. While typing. I like cursing. It is fun. Even if it sounds estupido sometimes. (I'm not cursing at the moment, though.) I am a bad, bad, irriterate MATH+1 groupie person. I mean, clearly, by MATH+1 Standards re: Online Hateful Habits I am the Ultimate Undesirable Annoying Person. Can't get no love, right? *sob!*

Oops! Oh no! The dreaded language device whereby I describe my actions and use asterisks to set said language device apart from less offensive bits of my writing! Oh well. There is no hope for me. Send hate mail if you MUST. Meanwhile...*shuffles off sighing sadly, all depressed-like*

Shite.

Er. I meant, "poop". Right.

-- Anonymous, July 03, 2002