Sunny D.

Books.

You're reading a book and the main character walks into a café in a quieter neighborhood of Paris. She is extremely nostalgic - she's 30 years old and coming back to the same café that she met her recently deceased husband in back when she took a semester abroad in college.

The author says something like this:

"The air hung heavy, yet light with the memories and the conversations of years and lives and loves gone by. [The main character] thought to herself, "This is uncanny - it's like time hasn't passed a single day since the day [her dead husband] and I met here ten years ago." She was right. The quaint café held the same [italicized random French phrase that means ABSOLUTELY NOTHING unless you speak French] she had remembered so vividly." (Johnson 89)

Why do authors writing in ENGLISH feel the need to use FOREIGN phrases in a DIFFERENT LANGUAGE THAN THE READERS' when trying to establish how culturally cultural their story is? If I'm reading the book in English - and the book is written in English - then why are there totally unexplained/undefined/untranslated phrases in another language in it?

Completely counterproductive.

Public Toilet Stalls

I FUCKING HATE when I get into a toilet stall and its a goddamn 12 step maze to get myself to the toilet and have to carry and manage all my stuff and straddle the toilet super awkwardly just to shut the stall door because the stall isn't long enough and there isn't enough space between the toilet and the door to stand between the two and close the door. gets me such a huff i want to rip all the sinks out.

Containers.

I went to go make a PB&J the other night, only to find an almost completely empty container of peanut butter in the pantry.

Why do people do these things? Is the trash barrel THAT far away? Is it THAT hard? There is clearly not enough left in the container to do anything with. I couldn't even rub what's left on my nutsack if I wanted to.

Similar with empty boxes of food. Why leave the empty box of pop-tarts in the cabinet if it's EMPTY. In most cases, you walk past the trash barrel when you walk out of a kitchen. You are only setting the next person who wants pop-tarts up for utter disappointment.

Just toss it in the barrel, don't cocktease us.

Leftovers.

I cannot stand when people keep leftovers that are NOT GOOD when you go to reheat them. How discouraging is it when you look in the fridge and find left over french fries in one of those white take out containers? Reheated, they are NEVER GOOD.

Actually, most fried things taste nasty when you try to reheat the leftovers. Scallion pancakes are pretty awful reheated too.

Pizza is pretty miserable reheated too - but that's no issue because cold pizza is almost better than normal pizza.

A Little Follow-Up.

Thank you so much Allie.

This is an example of what you, the reader, can do to make the Peeveblog even more amazing.

It relates to the "Picnic Tables/Benches" entry.

Picnic Tables/Bench-type Tables.

Has anyone ever gotten up from sitting in a picnic table gracefully?

No.

No chance. It is undoubtedly one of the most awkward body movements you could make. Not only is it extremely uncomfortable for the person getting up, but it is just as uncomfortable for anyone who is sitting down next to you or on the same bench - you're trying not to get kicked it the head while your buddy is dismounting the picnic table.

And the awkwardness doesn't stop there.

Everyone has to stop and watch and that person gets up. With grilled foods en route to their mouths, they freeze in response to the unfortunate public display of physical clunkiness.

Speed bumps.

I CAN TAKE THE HINT, THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

There are SO many speed bumps at the Oakwoods, where I am temporarily staying in Los Angeles.

They are at EVERY stop sign.

And when you can't find parking, you drive over all of them at least 3 times, hunting for spots.


I couldn't even go fast in this stupid complex if I wanted to.

Pencils.

Speaking of the last entry, I have a peeve pertaining specifically to mechanical pencils.

Mechanical pencils are great, don't get me wrong. You don't have to constantly sharpen it and rotate it to avoid writing in unintentionally and annoyingly huge letters like you have to with normal wood pencils.

But I cannot stand when you click the pencil for more lead just to get a tiny, broken piece of lead that just pushes back into the pencil when you go to write into it. You've got to try and pull this tiny piece out and then spend then next hour clicking your pencil to try and get another hopefully longer piece of lead. Or graphite. Whatever. Trying to avoid being that WICKED annoying dude who won't stop clicking his pen in class.

Gah.

Pens.

So, your friend doesn't know what something looks like. Let's continue to suppose that you are on a college campus or something similar and you have a pen and paper. You decide to quickly sketch out what a toilet snake looks like. You draw one long line, then bring the pen up the page again to draw another long line parallel to it. You press the ball point to the page and instead get a massive wet blob of ink smeared down, parallel to the first neatly drawn line.

wtf.

I hate these stupid blobs of ink from drawing quick, long lines. All too often, you end up getting an unnecessary amount of ink on yourself, making it look like you just graduated 3rd grade and are learning how to write with a pen. If it's on your shirt, you cannot stop thinking about the stupid ink blob on your shirt and EVERYONE can tell.

I should buy more pencils.