Why would a computer mouse make noise?

There are ones that make clicky noises when you scroll. Why? This is even more annoying than letting your iPod make clicky noises, because you're probably in a situation where other people are also doing work, and hate you.

I'm pretty sure most people can perceive when the scroll-wheel is working. Generally, it makes the page scroll. If they can't see this, in fact, they have no need for a scroll-wheel. Therefore it doesn't need to make noise. So stop.

Why is my roof still leaking?

About fifteen years ago, a tree fell on my room. Possibly twice.

Since then, the roof has been repaired what must be at least half a dozen times. It still leaks.

Something tells me that someone here is being taken for a ride, and I think it's I.

Why would anyone ever serve ribs and corn on the cob at a meet-and-greet?

Both foods are delicious. Both foods are also near impossible to eat without looking like a ravening beast. Not great first impression foods, I'm saying.

On the other hand, eating ribs with a knife and fork is an interesting experiment in co-ordination.

Why can't people differentiate things that are not even homophones?

Recently, I saw a reference to something that had been "taking a lot of slack." I don't know what that means. I suspect you don't either. I'm pretty sure they meant "taking a lot of flak." Which is a thing that aircraft do, and by extension also people.

A friend of mine brought to my attention a confusion of "grizzled" with "grisly." Those are not even remotely the same! One of them means "going grey," as with veterans; the other means "horrifying." Sometimes people go grey horrifyingly, but generally not.

Failures in homophone choice are illiterate enough. Have people totally given up on language?

Why would anyone refuse the blood drive sticker?

Where I grew up, blood drive refreshment tables are generally staffed by little old ladies of the Episcopalian persuasion who have the volunteer ethos deeply ingrained. Sometimes they struggle with opening the water bottles, and it takes them a while to get the sticker off the roll, but they're sweet and earnest.

Today, a man refused the sticker.

Now, first, why refuse the sticker? All it does is tell people you gave blood, so if you're mildly woozy it's not because you're drunk or otherwise compromised. It may be a little cutesy, but that won't kill you. If you don't want to wear it all day, take it off when you leave the building.

Also, she's a nice little old lady! Why are you being rude to her? Jerk!

Why is everyone convinced that Arthur Miller is profound?

He's not. He's also not subtle.

Witch-hunts are usually bad. Also corporate dishonesty is bad. Hating yourself is probably not optimal. Thanks, Arthur Miller! I couldn't have figured those out for myself.

He wrote great plays for high school productions. That's like being the guy who arranges actual music for middle school orchestras. Someone needs to do it, sure, but it's not what you'd call art.

His plays are fine. I don't mind having read them. They are no more than fine.

So he's got something on Aaron Copland, I guess.

Why are they making an unrecognizable film called Sherlock Holmes?

If you told me that I had to make a film of Sherlock Holmes, and the only two actors I could cast were Jude Law and Robert Downey, Jr., there would be no question in my mind that Mr. Law would be Holmes and Mr. Downey would be Watson. Rachel McAdams would probably not be in this film; if pressed I could probably cast her as Irene Adler.

Sherlock Holmes is skinny, injects cocaine, plays a Stradivarius, and has a picture of the Queen on his wall. He also hates (and/or fears) women, excepting Mrs. Hudson. He hates everyone, mostly, but women especially and irrevocably. He can beat you up, but generally he can't be bothered or does so by trickery.

Watson is steady, sturdy, and dull. In addition, he adores Holmes. He does not sneer, because he is not sufficiently clever.

Neither character is a type. Both were invented and written by a single man named Arthur Conan Doyle. They have fixed personalities and tendencies, even if Watson's bullet wound repeatedly moves from his shoulder to his leg. Holmes is not King Arthur, Watson is not Cinderella. There is no room to maneuver.

If you want to make a film about Victorian bare-knuckled boxing and Jude Law in a bowler, you are allowed to do so. But you are not allowed to call it Sherlock Holmes.

Why do people sing out loud in public?

I was in a café today and I could hear a woman singing. No, there was not some sort of open "mic" thing. Nor was she was a scheduled performer. Yes, I was wearing headphones. No, I do not believe that she has any serious mental difficulties.

What the heck?

I don't think there are any etiquette rules about this. Because, seriously, who does that? You are not in your house!

I like the Cure. I probably don't like the Cure as re-imagined by you. I almost certainly don't like the Cure as re-imagined by you cutting in on Jonathan Agnew telling me about England's latest batting collapse.

It is a public place! You owe people the courtesy of letting them pretend you are not there!

Why have conservatives turned into such whiners?

So it's tough to be a conservative journalist. And it kind of stinks to be a conservative undergraduate (or graduate student, for that matter). And even at dinner parties it may make you a pariah.

Suck it up.

People hold you to higher standards? Live up to them. Don't complain. Work harder. Be better. You're not going to win any ground back by whining about how it's unfair that people discount you just because you're a conservative. Be so good they are forced to listen to you.

If you don't have the courage of your convictions, you don't get to have your convictions. If people on the other side are allowed to be intellectually lazy, that doesn't mean you are. Bill Buckley never told you this was going to be easy, and he never told you it was going to be fair.

Why doesn't Fantine just tell the same lie again?

So, Fantine has already told the Thénardiers that she is a widow, so they don't ask questions about how she has a daughter. So far, so good.

And yet she cannot tell this lie again? And keep her job, hair, teeth, dignity, and life? It's 19th century France. No one's going to bother to check. It would be difficult to check even if they did bother about it.

If she were morbidly honest like other people in the book, or too stupid to come up with the lie in the first place, it wouldn't bother me so much. But to tell the lie once, and then not reproduce it on pain of destitution? She's not exactly a doctrinaire feminist. That's just ridiculous. And stupid. And fatal.

Why is "dubbed" ever the default option?

This post will expose some fairly major ignorance, but I'm angry enough I don't care. I was for some reason not aware, or had not bothered to consider, that Das Boot was originally filmed in German. Probably because I, unfairly, consider Wolfgang Petersen chiefly as the director of Troy, which was originally filmed in Garbage.

At any rate, I put the movie in, and the audio, rather obviously, did not match up with the picture. Also one of the main characters had the most annoying voice of all time.

So finally I check the menu, and I realize that I can choose "German" as the language and "English" as the subtitles. Now the audio matches and Herr Annoying Voice is suddenly palatable (which is strange, because apparently he dubbed his own voice--I have no idea why he is so awful in English).

Dubbing is the worst. It is for the lazy and the illiterate. It's frustrating because it doesn't match up, thus destroying any suspension of disbelief, it's generally no more accurate than subtitles, and it compromises the acting badly.

It should probably be available. But it should never be the default.

Why are we still obsessed with Woodstock?

Is there something wrong with me that I am not heartbroken that I did not spend my late teens and early twenties in a drug-addled stupor, covered in mud? It seems like not a good time.

And yet, we, as a culture, are gripped by this nostalgie, quite literally, de la boue. There are people who watch The Big Chill and are not nauseated. The media have, this weekend, engaged in a veritable love-in about the fortieth anniversary of Woodstock, and Ang Lee, never a stranger to the Zeitgeist impelling the self-hating bourgeoisie, has made a film about it. I don't remember the sixtieth anniversary of, say, D-Day getting this much press.

Look, it was a music festival. Big deal. It was also a symbol, but it was a symbol of something embarrassing--deliberate, extended, inane childishness, which has crippled at least two generations. Get over it, you daft bloody hippie.

Why does Massachusetts have so many letters?

Addressing wedding invitations when the groom's family is from Massachusetts is no fun. Not only is the word extremely long, but it also has a million (or...three) repeated letters, so you have to be extra careful.

Why can't she just marry a guy from Iowa?

Why do women still have Soviet athlete hair?

I was in Chicago this weekend, having an awesome time, when I did a spit-take on the street because Ivan Drago's wife had just walked by. The shoulder-pads weren't there, and I'm pretty sure this woman couldn't have beaten me up with both hands tied behind her back, but she had the same hair.

Now, maybe you can blame this on the Midwest. I'd be inclined not to, because the Midwest has never done anything that bad to me. Perhaps you should blame it on the eighties. But they ended twenty years ago, so that seems unfair, too.

We should probably just get some torches and pitchforks and find her hairdresser.

Why don't people write their own memoirs?

Here's a hint: if you're under fifty, you should probably not be writing a memoir. And also probably if you're not Admiral Lord Nelson or someone else actually interesting.

Also, if you're too busy to write a memoir, maybe you should hold off until you're not. You know, in your old age, when writing memoirs is appropriate, and people will mostly read them after you're dead and no longer have opportunities to sully your legacy.

If you've dictated your memoir to a lieutenant as you lie dying in your four-poster, it's acceptable for two names to appear on the cover. Probably, though, your lieutenant will not insist on this, because he has some pietas.

Ghost-written and "co-written" memoirs are fake, pretentious, and a waste of the paper on which they are printed. Shut up, the lot of you.

Why is the Newark airport monorail useless?

It would probably be exaggerating to say that one could walk to the terminals in the time it takes the AirTrain, but not by a lot. And that's even when they don't make random stops not at the stations.

What is the point of having two sides to the station when you only use one and the other train must wait? What is the point of having two rails if one car must stop as the other passes? Why were the people who came up with this on drugs?

Why do people wear pyjamas in public?

Last I checked, it was not 1993, this was not spirit week at my high school, and a coffee shop was not your house.

For these reasons, I should not see you wearing pyjamas.

It's not like I expect you to wear a jacket and tie. But I would prefer actual pants. This is not a high bar.

And definitely don't pair pyjama pants with a flannel shirt, or I'm going to go get all my sister's old Nirvana albums and start pelting you with them.

Why didn't Tom Felton learn to speak until he was twenty years old?

I know, I know, I should be grateful that at least he has, finally, learnt to speak. And at least he has always looked plausibly like Draco Malfoy.

But for the first five films, he sounded like a street urchin. He did not drawl. He spat and stopped glottally. It was appalling. And he's an actor! It is his job to speak properly! He does not even have the excuse of being David Beckham.

Oh, well. Fair play to him for overcoming his crippling difficulty. I can stop suggesting that Stuart Broad replace him for the seventh film. And in case you're wondering, Mr. Broad is from Nottinghamshire. Yikes.

Why do women ruin films (part 6)?

So, Horatio Hornblower gets a lot of ladies, for reasons obvious to everyone but, apparently, himself. There's Maria, tragically, and Barbara, excellently, and Marie, francophonically. Well, at least, in the books.

In the television series, there's a stupid French girl, in the episode variously called "The Wrong War" and "The Frogs and the Lobsters," depending on how sanguine you are about the deaths of random French people. Why is there a stupid French girl? All she does is make Hornblower maunder and whine and then be sad when she's too stupid to jump out a window properly, thus leading to a sprained ankle and eventual death.

Also she lectures him. Because, of course, he has really lousy critical reasoning skills and no sense of proportion, especially as compared to a young schoolteacher in rural France. Okay, sure. He definitely didn't notice that the comically evil Marquis was comically evil until you told him, dumb French girl whose name I forgot.

How does it make sense to take a story with good female characters, take them out, and then add bad ones?

Why do people walk in the middle of the street?

Are the sidewalks secretly booby-trapped? Are they against your religion? Do you get some sort of crazy frisson of satisfaction from sticking it to the man by being a moron?

Motorists are totally entitled to beep at you. Cyclists are entitled to give you a weird look.

Roads are for vehicles. Sidewalks are for walking. I'm not entirely sure, but I bet there's a reason for this. It might be safety. Maybe? No, surely not.