Posted in Me

I know that the burning question in your heart is, "What annoys Jeanne?"  So I decided to answer that question so you can move on to more important topics!

My list can be broadly categorized into Radio, Sports, Commercials, Technology, Languages, and Other.  You may think then that I spend my time watching sports and listening to the radio, surrounded by electronic gadgets while speaking German and Spanish.  But  I don't really.  Honestly! 

Radio would not even appear on this list if my van had a CD player or even a cassette player!  But because it does not, and because I live miles from anywhere, I have a lot of time during which radio can be my pet peeve.  The biggest one is morning radio.  Where did radio stations get the idea that people want to listen to strangers talking in the morning?  I don't.  You can give me the weather, the time, the news if you must (and by "news" I don't mean Britney Spears' latest escapade), and I do recognize the need for commercials.  But I hate practical jokes, off-color jokes (told when many parents are driving their children to school), or vulgarity in any form (and they really can come up with a lot of forms of that).  Also, in this age of the Internet, no one needs summaries of what was on TV last night or what will be on tonight.  I really just don't want to hear it!  PLAY SONGS!

My second pet peeve with radio is playing songs out of season.  Just as summer clothes get put away in the fall, and Christmas songs aren't played in May, obviously summer songs should only be played in the summer.  For example, country stations should not currently be playing Alan Jackson's "Summertime Blues" or "Red Neck Yacht Club" or whatever Kenny Chesney's "Summertime" song is actually called.  A couple of days ago I heard Justin Timberlake's "Summer Love" (a song my oldest can't believe I like!) and it's just really hard to enjoy it when I am sitting in my van with the heat on trying not to freeze because my children insist on playing outside at ballet when it's 35 degrees!

This brings us to Sports.  Most people who know me know that I love football and watch it, as my husband would say, religiously.  I love the commercial for the NFL where the lady says, "I pledge to only watch football on Saturday and Sunday (pause) and Monday (longer pause) and sometimes Thursday."  That would be me (if I had cable, but more on that later!)  So what could possibly annoy me about my favorite sport?

The biggest one is ignoring the proverb "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush."  Why do things become proverbs?  BECAUSE THEY ARE TRUE!  Ignore them at your own peril!  I have been a Panthers fan since the team was created in 1995.  The worst season ever was in 2001 when they set the NFL record for most consecutive losses in a season (15) with only one win.  So your comment is, "Well, they must have been a really bad team!"  But they weren't a bad team.  Seven of those losses were by 5 points or less.  But George Seifert, then head coach (a name I cannot type without grimacing), desperately chased those birds in the bush, despite having one of the best field goal kickers in the league.

Let me explain for anyone who might be football-challenged: you have 4 tries, which are called downs, to go 10 yards. After you get that 10 yards, you get another 4 tries to go another 10, and so on down the field until you are near the end zone. There are two main ways that a team scores: they get the ball into the other team's end zone, thus scoring 6 points and getting to kick an extra point to make it seven.  Making the extra point is pretty much assured. However, if you need more points, you can go for two instead of kicking.  That means you have the ball into the end zone again. If you get close to the end zone, but haven't gotten in, and you only have one more try, you can kick a field goal.  The closer you are, the easier it is to make it.  That's worth 3 points.  Usually that is what teams do.

But what Seifert did repeatedly that season was decide to go for it on fourth down instead of kicking easy field goals.  Then they wouldn't get the yards they needed and the other team would get the ball.  Or, after they scored a touchdown, he would decide to go for 2 instead of kicking and then not get it.  And then they would end up losing by a couple of points, when if he had kicked the field goals and extra points, they would have won.  I'm surprised I didn't actually attack my TV watching those games.  They drove me crazy!  I would tell my son repeatedly (and he was very glad I fell asleep during Pittsburgh's playoff loss a couple weeks ago, because they did the same stupid thing and lost), "The only time you should go for it instead of kicking is if there is less than 2 minutes left and you are losing!"  Remember, coaches, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.  With my kind of coaching wisdom, I'm expecting a call from Atlanta any day.

Now, the Panthers are my first football love, but a close second is the Green Bay Packers. Why?  Well, besides Brett Favre's great playing and looks, this is why: "Today the Packers are currently the only non-profit, community owned major league professional sports team in the United States" (wikipedia).  I truly believe that the cities should own the teams that use their names.  They bring in huge revenues that could help our cities greatly.  Instead, they are held hostage by greedy owners who threaten to move the team unless the city bankrupts itself building them a new stadium when they already have a perfectly fine one. And then, the stadium gets named after some corporation.  Like in Philadelphia, the old Eagles stadium (which - gasp! - they had to SHARE with the Phillies! How did they ever manage?) used to be called Veterans' Stadium, thus honoring those who fight for our country.  The new stadium is Lincoln Financial Field.  Let me tell you, Lambeau Field (the Packers' stadium) will never be called "Kraft Cheesehead Field."

Which brings me to my next sports-related pet peeve.  EVERYTHING is sponsored by some company!  We used to just watch a football game.  It may have been "brought to you by..." and then featured that company's commercials predominantly.  I'm OK with that.  But now we have the "Toyota Halftime Show", the "UPS Leaderboard" where they tell us who's playing well, like we couldn't figure that out for ourselves.  Every little petty detail of the game is now sponsored by somebody! ARGH!

My final Sports Pet Peeve is the newly created "Sunday Night Football."  What happened to Monday Night Football?  Oh, it still exists, just on ESPN.  Did I mention before that I don't have cable?  But don't worry, Al Michaels and John Madden moved to NBC to do Sunday Night Football.  Well, honestly, I don't care who commentates the game - I just want it to be on Monday night!!!!  I may love football, but I can't watch 3 games on Sunday!  I mean, who can watch 3 games in a row?????  Not having Monday Night Football on ABC means I don't get football on Monday.  And then, they also started having occasional Thursday and Saturday night games on - you guessed it - the NFL network.  Did I mention that I don't have cable????  How many wives tell their husbands that they need to get a satellite dish so they can watch more football?  Not many, probably.

I have two pet peeves related to Commercials.  MESSAGE TO COMPANIES: If I remember the ad, but not what the product was, YOUR AD HAS FAILED.  Go call your ad agency and fire them!  The whole point of a commercial is to get me to buy your brand of whatever it is you're selling.  The brand name must be an integral part of the commercial.  After writing this part yesterday, today a perfect example came up.  I mentioned to my son how the dollar was not strong against the euro, and he said, "But the dollar is looking strong."  This reference was about a commercial that is currently airing, where a bunch of coworkers are sitting around bemoaning the falling dollar.  Then another guy comes in with a double cheeseburger and they all start saying how the dollar is looking good, looking strong, because the cheeseburger cost a dollar.  So I knew immediately what commercial my son was referring to, BUT I DIDN'T REMEMBER WHICH FAST FOOD RESTAURANT IT WAS FOR!  My first guess was Wendy's but I should have realized it wasn't them because they are currently running horribly disturbing ads with red braids superimposed on guys' heads.  It would have been so easy to work McDonald's name into that commercial (my son told me they were the culprits in this case).  Just have them say, "Wow, the dollar is looking strong at McDonald's!"  I'm just going to state it again for all my Madison Avenue readers: the point of a commercial is to sell your product, not your product type in general!

And, now, my last pet peeve relating to commercials (ok, these are just the commercials that REALLY annoy me - I had to limit it in some way!): animals are not interested in beer or soda.  OK?  A Dalmatian is not going to jump off of the fire truck to go chase a beer truck (and, no, I can't remember which beer that commercial is for either! and neither can my son LOL!) and bears do not drink soda, etc, etc, etc.  Can we please just put that whole genre of commercials to rest????  Robert is arguing that the polar bear and Coke should be allowed, but I don't agree.  The only animal drinking a beverage that could possibly work for me is a commercial for milk where the cats prefer it.  But there aren't any milk commercials on TV.

As you know from previous posts, I am technology-impaired.  Thankfully I have two resident tech support guys!  But the thing that REALLY gets my goat (who is drinking water, BTW) is when the computer switches fonts on me for no apparent reason!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  WHY DOES IT DO THAT??????????

The foreign language dictionary is about as low-tech as you can get, but I even have problems with that.  I constantly look in the other language section for the English entry and the English section for the other language entry!  And this was not helped by the fact that last summer when I did the immersion program, they gave me a Spanish dictionary that has the English first and the Spanish second, the exact opposite of every other foreign language dictionary I have ever looked at!

Actually, since I love languages so much, there are very few things I find annoying about them.  One problem I do have is only being able to think of a word in German or Spanish.  I need the German word, and all I can think of is the Spanish word for that same thing (or vice versa)!  Aggravating!

And finally, Other.  I am not a big fan of using the father's name and adding Junior to it (just ask my husband!).  I am not a big fan of naming your children after yourself in general.  It always seemed kind of egotistical to me, and also just not a very practical idea. I had a friend in high school who was a Junior , and he was always complaining about not knowing who the mail was for, him or his father.  It just gets confusing!  But what further annoys me about the whole thing is when people always leave the Junior off, like with Martin Luther King, JUNIOR!

And there you have the lead-in for an upcoming entry that will commemorate Martin Luther King, Jr.  I hope that you enjoyed my list of pet peeves, and have had your eyes opened to the rightness of my positions on all these important issues!