, at your Gail's Most Recent Five Pet Peeves
{I just voted in the Locus online survey, have you?}
I tend to collect pet peeves the way computer geeks collect cables. But five have recently come to the fore as particularly annoying:
1. The Hollywood on-screen injury. You know it, you've seen it a million times ~ it's that stylish cut right above one eyebrow on the side of the forehead. Looks lovely bleeding slightly (although never too much), looks even better and more dramatic with an ostentatious white bandage. The soap operas started it, now everyone does it. You'd think beautiful people had no other body part to get injured than the side of the forehead. It's a red flag for a bad show.
2. Anything with superfluous or hard-to-open packaging. Including but not limited to: all items from Costco, most items shipped from online stores, anything from the Apple store, CDs and DVDs, old-style milk cartons, and bags of crackers. My solution, if possible, is to have the clerk/teller open the package for me. Let them suffer.
3. Insurance companies. Period.
4. Men (and those few women) who jiggle their legs when seated. Sit. Flipping. Still. For. The. Love.
5. People who are only capable of answering one question per email. This is particularly prevalent in the publishing industry wherein one sends one's agent/editor/publicist/fellow-author/con-organizer a carefully worded (apparently paralyzingly complex) email with four well thought out questions of import and receives back one terse answer, chosen from the four at apparent random, and usually addressing the least important question. Result? Turrets-style emailing of one question at a time, which clutters up one's inbox and drives those of us who are slightly OCD absolutely bug-nuts.
Gail's Daily Dose
Your Infusion of Cute:
Kinekt Design Gear Ring
Your Tisane of Smart:
Steampunk goggles tutorial
Your Writerly Tinctures:
Confused About Steampunk? Let Cherie Priest Explain
Blameless: Done, happy dance.
Super Secret Project H: treatment submitted to agent. Paused.
Super Secret Project F: notes stage, need to consult betas
CAKE in Space: Trunked for the moment.
Non-fiction short: (can go up to 3000) scheduled for next week
Not-so-secret fiction short: (can go up to 13,000) Yes, it's true. This is for the Mammouth Book of Paranormal Romance 2. For once, my British fans will get something first. I'm warning you now, it may not be what you expect.
Quote of the Day:
"Nature requires five, custom gives seven, laziness takes nine, and wickedness eleven."
~ C. Stevermer on the subject of sleep.
