pet hates - an ongoing saga

Over at Sir Humphrey's Adolf has revealed his pet hates (well his top four anyway).

I've been meaning to post on this myself for a while. Getting these things off your chest, sharing them with others who can commiserate or take you to task for your pettiness, seems to somehow soothe me.

1. bad covers of good songs - including bad originals that radio stations continue to play despite their obvious inferiority eg Funky Town (Pseudo Echo's being of course the pre-eminent version)

2. phone-in "polls" - I could (and frequently do) rave about the evils of phone-in polls for hours. In fact I already have. They quite simply have no statistical value and should never be used for questions of serious import. Click-in polls are just as bad and I was disturbed to see the Sunday Star Times does actually report the results of its Stuff polls in print. Reserve them for the "Paul Holmes is most like a..." variety of queries (inspired question About Towners!).

3. drivers who are incapable of indicating - to indicate or not to indicate; folks, it is not about taking a moral position - failing to indicate will not bring down the State, it will not bring about World Peace, it will not mean NZ goes back into ANZUS. It could well mean that you have a car accident that will be Entirely Your Fault. Similar disdain attaches to those who refuse to wear seatbelts, but at least they will probably only kill themselves, not others.

4. writers who are killing the apostrophe - sometimes i am lazy with my apostrophes, but i am not a signwriter. i am not the director of an English school. i am not the NZ Herald. Proper apostrophe use is one of the few things I learnt from School C Latin and I'm damned if I'll give it up without a fight! It is Mothers' Day people - the day of the mothers.

5. writing off someone's opposition to racism, sexism, homophobia etc as being "politically correct" - this is a whole post in itself.

6. spam - hate really is not a strong enough word. Suggestions for better words, that still retain the same ability to be spat from the mouth, would be much appreciated. But again i've ranted about this one before.

ok that'll do for now - enough glass half empty for one night!