Things That Are Annoying Me Currently

[brigdh]

1. People, if you are going to post to a community which has a membership in the thousands and which is orientated towards somewhat vaguely polished products rather than off-the-cuff remarks, maybe you could... I don't know... run fucking spellcheck on your posts. Particularly crack_van. I cannot believe anyone would attempt to recommend someone else's work with an incoherent, punctuation-less run-on sentence.

2. I've read two historical books in a row now where characters were described as "cousins" and who I therefore assumed were not suitable romantic partners for one another. In both books, of course, these characters ended up in love.

Oh, changing definitions of incest. How you freak me out.

Also, I could do without the random antisemitism, you same books.

3. Sitting around before the-class-that-really-annoys-me started, I vaguely listened to two classmates discussing some of the articles we'd read this week, but didn't pay much attention because I was doing something else. "Oh, I hope you didn't criticize that article too much in your paper! The professor really likes him; I've heard her go on and on about him previously," one said. "Really? That's good to know," the other replied.

I didn't think much about this until around an hour later, when the same article came up in discussion. When prompted by a request for any other comments on it, the second girl replied, "I just enjoyed reading this article so much. I found his writing to be utterly clear and comprehensible, and his ideas were so interesting. I just... really enjoyed reading it."

PEOPLE. I AM PRETTY MUCH QUOTING DIRECTLY. I JUST- WHAT. First of all, who even says something like that? Secondly, I wonder if such express obsequiousness causes one to hate themselves. I can only hope.

Things That Are Not Annoying Me, But Are, In Fact, Awesome: I have a new coffeshop with free wifi! And it is way closer to me than the previous ones I've been going to. Hooray!

Comments

[childofatlantis.livejournal.com]

*until very recently -_- sleep deprivation does not good comments make

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

It's okay, I knew what you meant. I'm actually not sure it would be illegal here, either, or that it would be illegal in every state in the Union even if it's not permitted in Massachusetts. But there's a strong social norm against it, enough to cause the instinctive huh? and oh, ick responses when you first run into it in books.

Either way, though, if there's a cultural difference on the point it would be just as fair to say that Yanks Are Weird. In fact, I can see it all too easily: They don't see the difference between their sisters and their cousins, right? And in some of those towns everybody's everyone else's cousin, so they wind up marrying, you know, sheep. Which only works for one generation, because after that the sheep are part of the family and no one can marry them any more. Which is how they wound up with George W. Bush as president, right?

[childofatlantis.livejournal.com]

*dies laughing*

When we were all children (I was twelve, everyone else was younger) we were absolutely adamant that my younger sister was going to marry our cousin and they were going to live in a big house while I had a little cottage on the grounds where I wrote books. True story. But there was some competition from his cousin on the other side (not related to my sisters and me), which led to Family Tension in the younger generation of the who-gets-to-sit-with-who-at-birthday-parties variety. ^_^

As I said - the idea of marrying one of _my_ cousins squicks me out, but the concept in the abstract doesn't. It helps that I grew up on historical fantasy type books where people frequently marry their cousins. ^_^

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

I have to agree with you: the idea doesn't actually squick me, I just am surprised to see it. I certainly wouldn't sleep with any of my cousins either, but I wouldn't sleep with them even if we weren't related.