My newest pet peeve – out of hundreds, as it turns out – is the overuse of the phrase "bad boy." (Not in terms of dog ownership or parenting. It's perfectly acceptable to say, "Rex, why did you shit all over the floor? Bad boy!" Or "Son, if you're a bad boy, Santa Claus won't come to your house.")
Rather, my gripe is with the use of the phrase vis-à-vis inanimate objects. "OK, let's move that bad boy over here." (It's a cabinet.) Or, "Give me that bad boy; we're just about finished." (It's a screwdriver.)
I also hear it a lot in the use of Microsoft Office. "Copy that column … then go back over to your main spreadsheet … and paste that bad boy right there." (Ugh.)
Also getting under my skin: the overuse of the phrase "it is what it is." Is it? It is. What?
What else would it be, really? Christ, it'd better be what it is, because if it is not what it is, then I think we'd all be in an existential crisis of epic proportions.
(P.S. The "bad boy" in question in the header of this post is, of course, Popeye's can of spinach. Popeye truly was who he was. He wasn't James Garfield, and he wasn't Mamie Eisenhower.
(And, while we're on the subject - was it "Bluto" or "Brutus"?)
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Now playing: Robert Pollard - Nicely Now
via FoxyTunes
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
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I've probably been guilty of using "bad boy" a time or two, and probably while giving computer instructions. Shame on me.
ReplyDeleteThe one I HATE is "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas" or any variant. So much that I sometimes walk around the house composing fake Vegas commercials based around that theme:
"So let's say you go out to Vegas for the Promise Keepers convention and you let down your hair a little, one thing leads to another, and you end up taking peyote and blowing a transvestite. That's ok. (chuckle) What happens in Vegas...stays in Vegas."