If On a Winter’s Peeve a Shoveler

Winters where I live are rainy and chilly, but nothing like the cold, snowy winters I grew up with. In my current city, people get excited if there is even a quarter of an inch of snow. In my hometown, people would be happy if there was only a quarter of an inch of snow.

So one of the loyal readers of this blog, who lives in my hometown, has asked me to post a winter peeve -- people not shoveling their walkways. If you don’t shovel, the piles of thick snow make it difficult for others to walk past your property. Not only that, if temperatures drop below freezing, as can often happen, the snow may turn to ice, creating a dangerously slippery path for pedestrians or cyclists.

Yes, shoveling takes some time and effort. But it is quite unneighborly not to do so, and it can even endanger people’s well-being.

--Curly

Good Birds Gone Bad

This peeve will undoubtedly reveal me as the true curmudgeon that I am, in case that wasn’t clear before. Here, I am actually complaining about birds and their sweet little chirping.

When I was a toddler, my parents claim that I would wake up bright and early and say cheerfully, “The birds are singing to me!”

Well, Curly isn’t quite the eager morning person anymore, but I have no problem with birds singing in the morning or during the day. However, the birds who live outside my bedroom window chirp at odd times, namely in the middle of the night.

When you’re trying to sleep and it is dark outside, the loud, joyful noises that the birds make can suddenly seem creepy, menacing, and very, very annoying. At two or three in the morning, you do not feel that these birds are singing to you. On the contrary, you feel they are deliberately taunting you with their happiness, knowingly keeping you awake.
Half-asleep, you start to imagine that you are in a bad remake of a Hitchcock film.

What are these birds doing during the witching hours? Why are they singing when all respectable little birds should be in bed? Why have these good birds gone bad?

--Curly

Holiday Travel Etiquette

For your reading pleasure: a timely rant disguised as helpful hints on holiday air travel, courtesy of M. LeBlanc over on Bitch, Ph.D.

--Prunella

There are Jews in the Middle East, Right?

Last week, I was reading a food magazine that I usually like. The issue featured foods from the Middle East, which is a cuisine I tend to enjoy. Imagine my surprise and dismay, then, when I had read through the entire magazine and found that not a word about Jewish people and their cuisine had been included.

The last time I checked, Israel is a country in the Middle East, and many of the other Middle Eastern countries have had or currently have Jewish populations. So why were the Jews invisible in this food magazine? Is it a political statement? That certainly is possible, though disappointing, since the magazine is published in a country that tends to support Palestinians and to be somewhat anti-Jewish (and/or to be ignorant about Jews).

What is additionally interesting about this is that around four years ago, I wrote to the editor of the magazine. I mentioned that it was odd that I never once saw a Jewish recipe featured, even in the annual holiday issue that included references to Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, and Hindu traditions and dishes. He wrote me back and said they would rectify that at some point, especially since one of the magazine’s regular writers and recipe-creators was half-Jewish.

So, years later, the same magazine has once again ignored a group of people who, while undoubtedly a minority in the world, nevertheless should be included at the very least in an issue about food in the Middle East, and perhaps at other times, too. If it’s meant to be a statement of sorts, the editors should be upfront about their policy, though a food magazine doesn’t seem to me to be the best or most appropriate place to boycott a group of people (especially a group that makes good food!).

Time for me to go eat a bagel and bake some mandelbrot!

--Curly

I Wish You a Cranky Christmas

I hate to be the Scrooge here and ruin our recent spate of festive, optimistic thinking, but you know me –- not a week goes by without me feeling peeved about something!

My annual winter holiday peeve is as follows: why do people assume everyone celebrates Christmas? It is true that many people, even if not necessarily religiously Christian, do buy Christmas trees and exchange presents and cards and so on, but not everyone does. I am not quite crabby enough to not appreciate the thought when others wish me a merry Christmas, although I would rather people use a generic “Happy New Year” or “Enjoy the winter break” or even “Season’s Greetings” if they don’t know for sure that someone is Christian. However, what is especially annoying is when people know me and therefore know without a doubt that I am not Christian and that I don’t celebrate the Christmas holiday but they nevertheless send me an explicitly Christian card or tell me to have a happy Christmas. It is one thing to not be sure of someone’s religion and to err on the side of the majority, but it is quite another to know and still get it wrong.

So I’m sorry to be a curmudgeon during this holiday season, but I do wish we would all be a little more aware and respectful of others’ beliefs. Sure, send a card to those who don’t celebrate Christmas, but don’t send one decorated with a baby Jesus or with a fancily trimmed Christmas tree; and, of course, wish even non-Christians a relaxing day off or a healthy and successful 2008. But try not to offend people by making assumptions or by blatantly disregarding their religious beliefs (or lack thereof).

--Curly

An Essay of Praise--Not Peeves

I don't know. Maybe it's the holiday season. Maybe there's something in the water. Whatever the reason, Curly and I seen positively un-peevish at the moment!

Sustaining the spirit of my collaborator's most recent post, I want to highlight an example of someone who had a forum to rant (most likely subject: his students)--but used it instead for a very different purpose.

--Prunella

Positively Grateful

Here on Peeves and Rants, we tend to complain (hence the name, right?). Sometimes, though, it’s worth reminding ourselves and our readers that we aren’t just pessimistic, cynical whiners. We also can find the good in people (occasionally) and we can appreciate when things go well (which they only do once in awhile anyway).

So I am happy to relate a pleasant experience, as I have once before on this blog. Often, people send me emails to ask for advice on the field I work in. I always respond to those emails, frequently taking quite a bit of my time to consider the questions they have posed, to find relevant links or book suggestions, and to give a thoughtful answer. Most of the time, I never hear back. A simple “thank you” would suffice, because that would show that they are aware that I actually don’t need to spend my time helping people I don’t know. But at this point, I have more or less given up hope on being thanked, and sometimes I wonder why I keep helping people who don’t seem to recognize or appreciate my efforts.

However, not long ago, someone wrote me back immediately to thank me. That was nice enough. She went further than that, though, by keeping me posted on how the situation was developing for her and how my suggestions had helped her. A final email I received from her this week updated me on how she had gotten the job she had wanted and negotiated an excellent salary, which of course made me happy to know. Also, she once again thanked me for my time and my knowledge, and she said she hoped to one day be able to offer me the kind of help I had given her. Frankly, it was repayment enough to be thanked and to hear that I had been of use, but the way she handled the entire situation was gratifying. Naturally, I expressed my appreciation to her for that.

If someone does something for you, why not thank him or her? It’s simple enough and it can help keep even the most cynical of people (like me!) willing to help you, and others, again in the future.

--Curly

Compose, Send, Do Not Repeat

Today I received multiple messages--that is, several individual copies of the same message--from the editors of a literary magazine. You see, when you submit to the journal electronically, you are automatically added to the magazine's mailing list. That's a fair deal (if you don't want to know what's going on with a particular journal or magazine, you probably shouldn't be submitting to it in the first place).

However, that doesn't mean the journal should add your e-mail address to its list anew EACH time you submit. I've now encountered this situation more than once (meaning with more than one publication). Which, I've decided, makes the problem rant-worthy. Editors, please heed the peeve!

--Prunella

Something’s Funky in the Olde Curiosity Shoppe

Here is a seemingly delightful way to spend a day off: first go to the Funky Craft Fayre and then have a cup of tea and some scones at Ye Olde Tea Shoppe.

I am sure some people enjoy buying treats at the Wee Candy Shoppe or eating some chippes. It seems quite historick, no? Personally, I avoid these kinds of places. I find these “archaic” spellings quite annoying. They seem affected and forced, not cute. And they aren’t always authentic or historickal anyway.

--Curly

If You Can Read This…

A friend of mine (who is a loyal reader of this blog!) works at a library and she asked me to post this peeve for her: people not reading signs. For example, she says, last winter, the library wanted people to use the revolving door because of the snow. My friend put up signs on the other doors asking people not to use them. She then watched the doors for about ten minutes, but many people didn’t even bother reading the signs, and therefore didn’t use the revolving door. My friend also saw one person who actually read the sign but still used the door she wasn’t supposed to.

I too have seen people blatantly ignore signs (either not reading them at all or reading them but ignoring them). They push a door when they should pull, they toss paper into a recycle bin only for glass, they smoke where they aren’t allowed to, and so on. In my office, for example, people eat, drink, and use cell phones though there are big signs asking them not to. What is the use of the signs, then?

So read signs and pay attention to what they say!

--Curly

(POL): Two for One

It's your lucky day, folks. I'm going to present two peeves in this rant!

Something I appreciate about a certain listserv I subscribe to is most members' adherence to a practice of labeling any "political" posts (it's not an explicitly "political" listserv) as such by prefacing subject lines with the letters "POL." This helps me avoid reading a number of posts that I, personally, may find boring, in the best case scenario, and pain-inducingly political correct, in the worst. What peeves me is when posters neglect to include the "POL" warning in their subject lines. As happened today.

Worse (and this gets me into the second peeve), I'd bet that the poster in question wouldn't even see her post as "political." After all, the fact that she simply named the magazine she writes for regularly (with no prefatory adjectives attached) while deriding a magazine known to be on the opposite site of the political spectrum as "arch-conservative" and "anti-feminist" has no political implications, right?

Wrong. Just because you're a liberal (or a conservative; and I should note that I really dislike the all-or-nothing mentality that seems to prevail these days--I just find life too complicated to split every last thing into one or the other camp) doesn't mean that yours is an "objective" default position, and that you somehow see things with a clarity the "other" is simply not capable of possessing. So admit it. If you're going to label others, label yourself. Be honest. Then I might have a little more respect for you--and might take your (political) arguments more seriously.

--Prunella

As Winter Approaches

I know I'm not alone with this one. But living here in North America, I find myself complaining a lot about something very basic: light. Or the lack thereof.

Quite simply, it's getting darker earlier every day. The sun has long since disappeared by the time I leave my office (and I don't leave late). It's incredibly depressing.

Every year I tell myself that I just have to make it to the Winter Solstice. After that very short day, daylight hours lengthen. Slowly, yes. But they do lengthen. Help is on the way.

And while I'm offering some seasonal reflections, let me address something else. This is probably a good time to issue a polite request to the dog-owners in my neighborhood: Kindly do "curb" your dogs. Please take them to the sidewalk's edge to relieve themselves so that I'm not challenged to weave between those charming frozen pools of dog urine as I go along my merry way this winter, too. Thanks.

--Prunella

A Peeve Between You and I

Lately, I keep hearing people say things such as, “So my mother said to my brother and I…” or “They took a picture of my wife and I…” You would never say “So my mother said to I…” or “They took a picture of I…” You should, of course, say “me”.

But since people know it is wrong to say, for example, “My friend and me are going to the movies”, they tend to get confused about when to use “I” and when to use “me”. “I” is the subject form and “me” is the object form.

Using “I” when you should use “me” is known as hypercorrection. Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day recently explained the problem:

“Some people learn a thing or two about pronoun cases, but little more. They learn, for example, that it's incorrect to say “It is me” or “Me and Jane are going to school now.” But this knowledge puts them on tenterhooks: through the logical fallacy known as “hasty generalization,” they come to fear that something is amiss with the word “me” -- that perhaps it's safer to stick to “I.” They therefore start using “I” even when the objective case is called for: “for you and I [read ‘me’]”. These are gross linguistic gaffes, but it is perennially surprising how many otherwise educated speakers commit them. Many writers and speakers try to avoid the problem by resorting to “myself,” but that’s another error.”

So don’t incorrectly mix up “I” and “me” in front of I, er, me.

--Curly