As promised, my commentary on the recent surge of pet peeves sent in by my readers: wow, we sure do get peeved easily. In fact, we not only get peeved easily, but we get excited about it, enough to rant at the hint of an opportunity to do so. More than one of you thanked me, after listing your peeves, for providing the opportunity to "let it out."

I sent in the message forum that this phenomenon is probably because we haven't had a major war in a while; our society has become too secure, and such things as freedom and liberty have therefore become taken for granted. I think that's part of it, but then, I also think people would have peeves like these under any circumstances. And I'm no different. One of my pet peeves is forgetting to remove the "New Site: Duel of the Ages" part of my mailing list letter template before sending RinkWorks updates out on the list. Aargh!

Oh, by the way, Adrien: the toilet paper is supposed to hang from the top to the front. That way it's easier to snatch as it hangs down -- it hangs in mid-air rather than pressed up against the side of the cupboard. Sheesh, get it right. :-)

The last batch of pet peeves from readers:

• From Kevin C.: "I'd a say a fairly major pet peeve of mine is when people I don't know (usually friends of my siblings) decide that they absolutely have to see what I'm doing on the computer. And since I'm often at sites like this which the average person wouldn't understand anyway, they decide to ask what I'm doing. Happened to me not ten minutes ago."

• From RVH: "I hate it when the toilet paper roll is facing the wrong way. You know, when ya hafta, like, move it around to find out which way it's s'posed to go! That drives me nuts. I hate it that Edward D. Wood Jr. NEVER won an Academy Award. To me, that makes the whole thing a sham. My wife won't give me a divorce, so I can join the circus. I can't tell you how crazy that makes me. And just when I get a decent collection of laserdiscs, along comes DVD."

• From Stephen K.: "My pet peeve is when people whine endlessly about their stupid little problems and things that bug them. Let's face it, if you're not Jerry Seinfeld, I don't care. They just keep going on and on and on and on about the silliest little things."

• From Steven H.: "I really hate it when people misuse apostrophes, especially in advertisements or any other public media. Example: Mikes prune's were wet is incorrect. The sentence should be Mike's prunes were wet. Although I'm not sure what Mike was doing with wet prunes."

• From Andy: "(1) People who seem to be incapable of telling me what they want when I ask, 'What can I do for you?' (2) Co-workers who think it's all right to carry on a personal conversation across three rows of cubicles while I'm on the phone with a client. (3) Drivers who change speeds to stay directly in my blind spot when I have my turn signal on to change into their lane. (4) Stupid people who feel it's my fault for stopping when they rear-end me."

• From "Nymrod": "In movie theatres, they play those stupid films of food: food being raked into bags and soft drinks being topped off in their cups and popcorn spilling over the edge of the popcorn popper. The admission prices are too high too. And the theatres are never clean. And the staff don't smile often enough. Dispite all this, I'm still going to see Phantom Menace. But I'm not eating their food. Unless it sings and dances; then I'll eat it just to put it out of its misery."

Comments about this pet peeve deluge phenomenon will be made in the next journal entry, thereby ending this surprisingly overdrawn thread.

And even more pet peeves:

• From Daniel S.: "The phrase, 'You talk too much.' Every time someone says it, it makes me want to shove a long, sharp length of metal down their throat, and then talk a little more just to annoy them. I don't even want to get in to what I would do to someone that says, 'You read too much,' to me. The world can be thankful that nobody has so far."

• From Howard M.: "My number one pet peeve is TV news talk shows where anywhere from three to five normal looking, well dressed people, sit down to discuss something related to the news. They begin to disagree, and then all of them talk at once, and I can't understand what anybody is saying. Thank goodness for those little buttons with the arrows on them. My number two pet peeve is that jerky motion camera that works at about 4 frames per second. ESPN2 is a major offender in this department. Why do they want to make their program annoying? Why do they want me to grab the remote? Pet peeves 3 and up are non-TV. Well, ok, just this one: I see people driving with a cigarette in their left hand. They hold it up next to the window as if to say, 'Hey, look at me! I'm smoking!' Who cares???"

• From "Faux Pas": "My pet peeve? Gosh, I've got a whole section of my web site devoted to pet peeves. A sample: Morning radio shows without music. Having to walk through a crowd of smokers to enter a building. That not using serial commas is considered ok. ('Red, white and blue' as opposed to 'red, white, and blue.') How every political scandal ends in "-gate." Random "usage" of quotation marks and improper usage of apostrophes'. Not knowing the name of a really neat piece of classical music because they're all called something like Symphony for the Flute no. 141 in D Minor instead of something memorable like 'Return to Innocence.' Anyway. If you really want more, visit http://www.myplanet.net/fauxpas/bucket/index.html."

There's one more batch to go, after which I'll supply my own comments.

Another batch of pet peeves, and there's still more to come:

• From Paul A.: "'I can't stand burnt toast. I loathe bus stations. Terrible places, full of lost luggage and lost souls. And then there's unrequited love. And tyranny. And cruelty.' -- Marc Platt.
  My own personal peeves include: (1) Intelligent people who can't be bothered getting their spelling, grammar, and punctuation right in emails and in newsletters (in twelfth grade, I sent an anonymous letter to the yearbook committee, tallying up the errors in the previous year's yearbook and warning of nasty consequences if matters didn't improve). (2) Error messages that don't actually tell you anything ('This application has closed down due to an error of type two'). (3) The way people always think I'm serious when I attempt deadpan humour."

• From "Extirpator": "People who forget the parenthesis on the right should be shot."

• From "dwymore": "(1) I used to work in a video rental store, and this guy once said that if I didn't have the video he wanted he was gonna kill himself. (2) Why is it that the hamburgers in the pictures are never like the ones you actually get?"

• From Adrien A.: "I have so many, oh so many. I dislike grammatical errors and misspelling (my own is naturally exempt), especially when it's something published or public (menus, magazines, signs, etc). I loathe the misuse of quotation marks. Example: "Fresh Fish" on sale! Twisty ties vanish from the finger tips of my boyfriend, and he thinks twirling the plastic bag around itself is an adequate substitution. He's wrong. Toilet paper must hang under. Litter and die. Note to Hollywood: regarding movie adaptations of great books: stop. Unless you can do it right, don't bother. If you own bongos, move to the country. Your neighbors don't think you are talented; they hate you. Magazine inserts be damned to hell. Don't misspell my name. Don't "Rocky" me. I was maybe four years old when the first Rocky movie came out. You are not clever. It's old. Drive over the speed limit or get out of my way. See that little stick thing on the side of your steering wheel? It's called a turn signal: use it. Pedestrians have the right of way. Please stop trying to run over me when I walk. When I asked for paper bags, I really meant it. Please don't bag my extraneous items in extra plastic bags. Oh, and stop slotting my eggs in sideways. I'm suddenly very tense. I think I will stop now."

Apparently you folks have a lot that irks you. The response to last Friday's journal entry, regarding pet peeves, has been prolific. Here are some of the responses:

• From "Darien": "Most of my pet peeves also have to do with grammar. Added to that are the following: people on television or on stage singing off-key (see several recent commercials), people who misquote Shakespeare (sorry Howard), synthesized instruments, Liv Tyler, people who refuse to believe me, people who try to argue with something I've said and want me to defend my point before they've made any attacks, people who refuse to tell me things that concern me, fourteen-year-old high school students trying to tell me all about life, roommates who do nothing but complain, people who think they know all about computers, needless bureaucracy, unrequited love, people who want me to explain my poems, Windows 95, chain letters.... Ok, so maybe it's inaccurate to say that most of my pet peeves have to do with grammar. But quite a few of them do!"

• From "Shai'tan": "I hate it when you forget to shake the ketchup bottle, and when you go to get some, that watery-ketchup hybrid leaks out, soaking your meal. YUM!"

• From Lynette: "I live in DC, and my pet peeve is people who, when I say I live in DC, ask if I live in Arlington or Silver Spring or Bethesda (all Maryland and Virginia suburbs) and then get scared when I say I REALLY live in DC. Those people and the ones who ask if I know the President."

• From "Dragonnest": "First,I greatly dislike people who abruptly end a line of conversation. It's even worse if they do this during dinner, since the only thing I hear is the sound of them chewing. I can't enjoy the rest of my meal because now my ears are tuned into the sound of their teeth mashing food, and it's really annoying. Secondly, I HATE people with hyper-sensitive hearing. There's a kid who sits in front of me in math class with this odd trait. He turns around whenever I click my pen (not incessantly! just once so I can use it!), tap my foot against his chair accidentally, or clear my throat. The worst part is that he has an extremely high pitched voice (as he is getting older, his seems to be going through reverse puberty), and he always says, 'Could you please be quiet! I'm TRYING to work!'"

More of your responses are forthcoming.

Yesterday Darleen and I went to the New England Breyer Brunch in Danvers, Massachusetts. Darleen entered the Model Horse Show and did fantastically well. The awards culminated in a Reserve Champion ribbon in Performance, Original Finish, and a Grand Champion ribbon in Performance, Custom-Made. The performance divisions are the ones where you can get quite creative with the tack (saddles, bridles, etc) and props and so forth. Pictures of her latest work, plus other set-ups at the show, will be appearing on EquiWorks sometime soon.

The responses from Friday's journal entry are pouring in; this is your last chance to contribute yours. Tell me about your pet peeves.

Got any pet peeves? I have a bunch, most having to do with incorrect grammar. I hate shirts being inside out. And idiots. Tell me all about your pet peeves, the stranger the better. Email me.

The Enchanted Forest high score list now has a "top 100" option, as of this morning. Now that there are nearly 7000 scores, it was a bit of a pain to have to look at all of them or only ten of them.

You'd think they were dirty jokes rather than just bad jokes the way he talks, but here's what David S. had to say about the new feature, Really Bad Jokes:

• "These are really nasty jokes. After reading them in the morning they just kind of give me this sick, scummy feeling. I'm not going to read them any more."

That reaction sounds about right. Heh heh heh heh.

Last Friday, besides Really Bad Jokes being released, Computer Stupidities surpassed 1000 anecdotes. We've got a ways to go before Book-A-Minute surpasses 1000 condensations.

Answers to the recent reader question, "If you could be any type of animal, what would you be, and why?" follow:

• From Daniel S.: "I, personally, would like to be a tick (preferably a very small, unassuming one, for survival's sake). Think about it. You just sit there all day, drinking blood, not moving a muscle, just letting your thoughts wander."

• From Stephen K.: "I think if I could be any sort of animal, I'd be a shark riding on an elephant, just rampaging and smashing and eating everything in sight."

• From Terza M.: "I would be a cat. Mine lies around all day and does nothing. When he's had enough, he [beats us up]. That's the kind of animal I'd like to be."

• From "Darien": "I'd definitely be a moose. Unless, of course, I was an aardvark. Actually, I should compromise: Aardmoose, baby, aardmoose!"

• From Andy J.: "I'd want to be a rat. Not a sewer rat, mind you. More like the rats you can buy in a pet store for two bucks. I think it'd be cool to run around the house at that size. Just imagine how different the living room would be if the couch was 20 feet high!"

• From Eddy H.: "I'd like to be a guinea pig. Then I could be on the winning side in the long dragged out war currently in progress in alt.guinea.pig.conspiracy."

Second call on the reader question, given in the journal entry below this one.

Really Bad Jokes was released today. This is about the fastest RinkWorks site I've ever developed. Although I conceived of it months ago, I only started actual work on it, beyond the casual collecting of jokes when the opportunities presented themselves, two days ago. I have scripts to help me update the site; I hope readers will be inspired -- by revenge or otherwise -- to contribute.

The "school paper" joke, on the first page, is a joke I made up when I was a kid, so it has sentimental value. A couple of the jokes came from the RinkWorks Message Forum -- thanks Howard!

Today's reader question: "If you could be any type of animal, what would you be, and why?" Send me your answers.

Happy Easter, everyone. Did you remember to turn your clocks ahead?

For those you didn't realize, I had a little fun yesterday for April Fools Day. First, the prices in the Site Market game were all jacked up 774 points beyond what they would have been; oddly, this inserted an intriguing element of strategy that unfortunately burned a few people who sold all their stock and got left with thousands of dollars and nothing to do with it. (The current game is a "losing" game where the object is to lose, rather than win, the most money.)

My other little joke was in the reader reviews section of It's a Bad, Bad, Bad, Bad Movie.

Speaking of April Fools jokes, I know at least one web site owner dialectized his web site for yesterday only, without telling his readers. Heh.