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

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

It's not so much fear of being embarrassed later as it is fear of upsetting random readers who might feel that reconstruction would be deeply important to them, and that I was calling them petty and stupid. And okay, to be brutally honest, I have to wonder about the sanity of anyone who would accept a TRAM flap procedure, which involves building a fake breast out of what would otherwise be functional abdominal muscle. I mean, hello, those muscles have a job to do where they are, and the odds of your being sorry when they're not available to do it are high. You know how I get about things like that. It's particularly silly in this case, since I feel reasonably confident that mastectomy patients are not reading my LJ by the dozens and hundreds -- but then, that's also a reason why it might be pointless to go rant about it there.

Here's a horrible admission: I can see where the history of Marxist interpretations of linguistic theory might in fact be pretty interesting. Enjoyable, even, if the writing were good enough. But something about your story suggests to me that your classmate would be unable to back up her praise in any intelligible way, if called on it.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Ah, I can see that. It is a worry: sometimes the most random things turn out to be personal for someone or other. ...I have to agree with that being a bad idea, too. Abdominal muscles have got to be more useful than breasts.

I'd certainly give it interesting. And in any other circumstances, I probably wouldn't have found the choice of 'enjoyable' so strange. But the whole concept of making yourself ingratiating in such a way boggles me. I can see not picking something utterly to pieces if you know another person in the discussion is fond of it (if not to be polite, then just because they might have thought more about it than you and therefore might have better reasoned arguments), but deliberately inventing praise seems so alien to me. And I want to believe that it wouldn't work, because surely by graduate school one is expected to do more than parrot the professors' tastes? But alas, I cannot count on this professor being put off by such a thing.