Why did Rebecca need to be written?

I'm not missing anything, am I? It's Jane Eyre, isn't it? Except with slightly more irritating crushing self-doubt? Wow, what an added bonus!

Even if you accept that Jane Eyre had to be written, which I don't, it certainly didn't need to be written again. Badly.

Man, Daphne DuMaurier, hire a monkey armed with a red pencil, and save me all this grief.

Why is Billie Piper's jaw so alarming?

I like Billie Piper. Rose is my favorite new Companion. She made Fanny Price not hateful! I even generally think she's a nice-looking young woman. But then, BAM! Horrible angle, and her jaw looks like she could bludgeon a mastodon to death with it.

I don't think there's anything to be done. I'm kind of sorry for bringing it up, for that reason.

But it scares me.

Why do all the idiots who send videos to CNN aim the webcams up their noses?

My first issue is that we put these people on television, but I'll let that go for now.

The camera can see you if you are more than four inches away from it. I promise. You do not look better in close-up. I am not interested in your nostrils. I am also not interested in what you say, but I am even less likely to listen if I am simultaneously being repulsed by your distorted face.

If you want people to listen to you, looking not insane is a good start. I would suggest not leading with your schnozzola.

Why can't people tell the difference of "queue" from "cue?"

For starters, one of them has a Q in it!

You cannot "take a queue" from someone. Well, you could, but only if you were mean and had some sort of guerrilla hair-stealing brigade. One "takes a cue." From a cue card, perhaps.

"Queue" is British for "line" and old for "ponytail." It is not something you wait for if you are an actor. It is not something you hit into the other billiard balls. It is not social.

Homophones are really not that hard. If you are a blogger on a site for pretentious hipsters, I would suggest you learn them. Idiot.

Why are cereals so sugary?

Even the so-called healthy ones list sugar as their third (or so) ingredient. You know, of the ones not actually made from cardboard. There has got to be something in between, for adults who are real people.

I'm not Calvin. Sometimes I wish I were, but the chocolate-frosted sugar bombs have never been appealing, even when I was six.

The freeze-dried fruit is fantastic. It is also sweet. It is sufficiently sweet for a breakfast cereal. Additional sugar is merely sick-making.

It's granola, for the love of Pete! It shouldn't taste like candy!

Why do people wear giant headphones?

I would hazard that, maybe, one in ten of those people in their ironically striped sweaters with their giant headphones actually care about and notice the difference in sound quality. Many more of them will tell you that they do. They are lying.

Yes, tiny headphones are super annoying and don't stay in your ears and have pretty lousy sound quality as a rule. There are solutions to this that do not take you back to a 1980s stereo ad.

You don't look musical. You look like a poseur. Because you are one.

Why does all-female a cappella exist?

It's not as good as all-male, or even as good as co-ed. This is for several reasons.

First, they don't have the bottom. This is just the way it is. Not much helping that. Then, the repertoire is smaller (and lamer). And, if they try to sing songs that are not, strictly speaking, in a female vocalist's repertoire, they sound stupid. I realize that "Beautiful Day," by U2, is sort of a stupid song anyway. It's worse when sung by a woman.

If you consider, also, that most female popular singers do not have particularly "girly" voices, all-female a cappella is really a losing proposition.

Please, please make it stop. Go join the Glee Club.

Why can't people pronounce "Xavier?"

How could that possibly be pronounced "Ex-avier?" What is an "avier," and how can Patrick Stewart play an ex-one?

Did we not all learn in kindergarten that the initial X is pronounced just like an initial Z? Do you say ex-ylophone? No, no, you don't. That would be stupid.

Or, if you are, say, Basque, the X is more like a "ch" sort of sound, with the result that, for all of Euro 2004, I thought that Xabi Alonso was overweight. If you're not Basque (but still Spanish or Hispanophone), the X is like a J, and so you get something like "Hah-vier."

None of these is "ex-avier."

I realize he's "Professor X." And that they are the "X-Men." However, you might call Dr. Nesbit "Professor N." That doesn't mean you say "En-esbit."

That would be absurd.

Why don't people hate Helen?

In a nutshell:

Step 1: Marry Menelaus.
Step 2: Leave Menelaus for Paris.
Step 3: Ruin everyone's life.
Step 4: Go back to Menelaus.
Step 5: Profit?!

Helen and Paris are not one of the great love stories, people. (And I mean even aside from how stupendously lame Paris is.) I don't care if she "loved" him, I don't care if she was forced to marry Menelaus. How many lives is that worth?

I'm thinking zero. Definitely zero.

What a tramp.

Why do people scatter cigarette butts on the ground?

There are these things, and they are sort of shallow and round, and they are carefully designed not to combust when you put a cigarette butt in them.

They are called ashtrays. They often come on top of trashcans, in order to avoid the giant conflagrations that result from chucking a lit cigarette into a pile of trash.

If this object is between you and the door, that's where the end of your cigarette should end up. Even if it is not, that's where the end of your cigarette should end up. I don't strew about my candy bar wrappers or my beer caps or any other markers of my minor vices.

Because my aims for life do not include "be a slovenly jackass as often as possible."

Why are there extended Minis?

The point of having a Mini is so that you can pretend you're in The Italian Job and feel mildly smug. If your purpose in owning an automobile is to move large numbers of people or amounts of cargo, it is the wrong automobile for you. For those purposes, they make actual cars.

Minis are meant to be adorable. You know what makes them less adorable rather quickly? If you take one end and pull. Then they just look stupid, and disproportionate.

What message are you sending to the world by driving one? As I see it, your options are:

1. "I am so tragically misguided that I actually think this car is attractive. Please shoot me at your earliest convenience."
2. "I want to own a Mini but I also need to transport children, so I have bought a car that effects really neither of these things."
3. "My other car is a giant turnip."

Why do people mis-use "decimate?"

It means to reduce by a tenth, not reduce to a tenth. It refers to the actual disciplinary custom of decimatio employed by Roman generals against mutinous soldiers. Ninety percent of one's forces remains.

The word you're looking for is "devastate," moron. They're not the same.

Why did our organist blow "Salve festa dies?"

There's a hymn that is sung at Easter, and it has eight verses, and a refrain, and the even numbered verses have a different tune from the odd numbered ones. It's sung every Easter (and every Ascension, and depending on one's high churchiness also at other feasts), every Episcopalian has known it from the womb, and it's really not that complicated.

So why did the organist miss out an even verse, thus ruining the whole thing? I don't know. Why did he not then stop at the next refrain, since there was really no possibility of re-grouping? Again, I don't know.

He also played everything much too fast, and chose a really ghastly motet. Thanks, guy. There's nothing people like more than being unable to sing their favorite hymns.

Why are DVD menus interactive?

And why do the manufacturers think that we will like them?

They're awful. They waste my time, they make noise, and sometimes they have cutesy options for playing the movie. That's right, James Bond Collector's Edition, I'm talking to you and your damn "initiate mission" or whatever total garbage you ask me to select so that I can suffer through The World Is Not Enough.

Also, I hate the Rome music. I don't ever want to listen to it. I certainly don't want to listen to it on a loop. And I shouldn't have to. I also should not have to wait for the crimson curtain to unfurl, or the display to cycle through to its nifty futuristic lay-out, or the swooping camera to settle on a picturesque background.

DVD menus should be silent, they should take zero seconds to load, and they should have no transitions. No one would miss the noise or the stupid effects, and I wouldn't be as far along my road to psychotic rage.

Why is Maturin such a whiner?

I have not read the books, preferring my naval adventures unambiguous and Horatian. So if you are an O'Brian devoté, you can merely condemn me for my lack of taste, and not take out after me for besmirching the name of your dear author. My complaints are limited to what I have gleaned from the film.

If you are a doctor on a British frigate (sorry, Scharf) during a time of war, it seems to me that it would be unsurprising if everyone else on board were unwilling to let you use it as your own personal exploratory vessel. If this bothers you, perhaps you would, you know, not take a posting as a ship's doctor in the Royal Navy?

The Galapagos Islands are quite interesting. I don't deny it. If I were a naturalist, I, too, would like to explore there if I were in the vicinity. Unless, perhaps, it were my job to stay on a ship and patch people up when they were wounded in the effort to maintain my country's sovereignty.

Crises of conscience can be intriguing. Or they can be tiresome and asinine. This would be one of the latter cases. Shut up, Stephen. Just shut up.

Why do people have no concept of mobile phone etiquette?

Emily Post may be dead, but manners are still important and they still cost nothing.

Who among us has not checked the time on his phone during an interminable church service, or maybe a cricket score during a particularly stultifying sermon? The first is merely checking one's pocket watch; the second is perhaps reprehensible but, since silent, mostly harmless.

You would not conduct a conversation on your phone in a quiet public place. Most of us go outside when our phones ring in a restaurant or a library. You would not talk on your phone during a movie at the theatre. That is rude. There are injunctions against it before the film starts.

So why, in the name of all that is holy, and most things that are not, would you talk on your cell phone during a church service?

I actually saw this happen. On Palm Sunday. In a large metropolitan parish. The procession had begun, the boys were singing, and the chap in the pew across from me was actually talking on his phone. Not texting, not checking the time. Talking.

It was so startling and appalling that I actually gave him a dirty look. I would cheerfully have shot him in the kneecaps.

Why does Penelope take Odysseus back?

One is taught, as a child, that Odysseus is brilliant, and clever, and steadfast, and admirable. He invents a stratagem by which the great walls of Troy are brought down, and he manages, though beset by many obstacles for many years, to return to his loving and loyal wife. Odysseys are spoken of with wonder and approbation. What a man!

This is hogwash.

For starters, it's not really so impressive to take Troy when her great hero is dead. Especially by cheating. And it is cheating. It might also be clever, but it's definitely cheating.

Also, how much did he really want to get home? You can blame all you want on the gods, but quite frankly he could have made a little more effort. He's just not convincing. And Penelope may have brought up a sort of whiny kid, but she did astoundingly well, considering. She is so much too good for Odysseus it's a bit depressing.

Oh, yeah, and all his men die. Way to go, jackass.

Why don't people understand hyphens?

It's called a "make-up" session. But what you do is "make up." Or, similarly, a brown-noser is a "suck-up." What he does is "suck up."

Basically, in the verb, you can put, say, the object in between the "make" and the "up." For instance: "Are you going to make that test up?" But nobody has ever called it a make-that-test-up session. Seriously, I mean. The hyphen is, I believe, a nod to that.

Yes, they are compounds. Yes, they were made up, rather recently, of the component parts, which still obtain on their own. However. There are places where the hyphen is correct and places where it is not.

This isn't one of my great moral stands on linguistics. This is just judging people for ignorance. Deal.

Why does Wayne Rooney look like Shrek?

Strikers should be cute! I mean, even Alan Shearer was decent to look at.

Raúl is cute. Thierry Henry is pretty cute. Rafael van der Vaart is cute. Andriy Shevchenko is very cute.

And what have you got to offer, England? Peter Crouch? Thanks for nothing.

Only center-backs should be weird-looking.

Why do men wear ridiculous jeans?

If you want tight jeans, buy a pair of 501s. They are flattering, they are only mildly pricey, and--and this is the best part--you may still be able to have children!

Why aren't the Atlanta Braves either better or worse?

When I was growing up, I hated the Braves. They were better than the Phillies, and they won the NL East like clockwork. And then all their elderly pitchers retired or left, and they stopped doing that.

But they aren't awful. The Nationals are holding their own in the basement of the NL East, so I don't even have the opportunity to revel in how epically terrible the Braves are.

So what am I left with? Hating the Mets. How lame is that? The Mets are a punchline. Well, or they should be. Sometimes they are. I want the hateful powerhouse from Atlanta back!



I will be so sad if the Phils lose on Sunday.