(Not Cute) Pet-Peeves

1. When your and you're are used interchangeably.
Hey, your cool. Is that you're dog? I think your my new best friend. Can I be you're valentine? See, isn't that annoying?

2. Those who feel the need to name their kid something weird.
We all know about Gwyneth Paltrow and Apple. Apple????? Might as well have named your precious daughter Watermelon. There's no difference--you're kid is still a fruit. So, we've all heard of the words apple and watermelon. But what do you do when someone makes up a word and names their kid that? It's like the parents' thought process is, I have a name that, like, people have heard of. I don't like it when people can read my name and pronounce it on the first try. I want to make teachers who are calling roll butcher my child's name, so then the teacher will have to ask if she pronounced the child's name correctly, and the kid can be so used to his name being butchered that he's expecting it to be butchered, and he's proud of this fact, and the fact that he can make the teacher look stupid for saying his name incorrectly.

3. People who liked Napoleon Dynamite, or those that continue to quote it.
That movie is lame. I didn't laugh once throughout the whole thing. People told me I'd like it better if I saw it more than once. Well, guess what! I watched it about 35 times (because BYU students were obsessed with it at the time) and I still think it's horribly stupid. If you want to quote something good, I suggest watching Dumb and Dumber. I mean, compare the quotes: Vote For Pedro vs. We Got No Food, No Jobs, Our Pets' Heads Are Falling Off!

4. Skinny girls who think they're fat.
You know what I'm talking about. You walk into a room and there's, like, this 5'10" model-like girl who's pretty and gorgeous and all that junk. You scan her over and within a second you tell yourself that she can't weigh more than 105 pounds. Then, when she's offered her a saltine cracker, "Oh no, dahlin', I'm watching my figure. I've been on Weight Watchers all my life and I need to keep this weight. If I gain three pounds I would absolutely die!! That would be the end of me. In fact, I need to lose 10 more pounds--you can never lose enough, sweetie. I won't stop criticizing myself and making those around me feel uncomfortable until I look like Karen Carpenter."

5. People who are happy ALL THE TIME.
Yeah, positive people are nice to be around, but if your happy during every circumstance, every bad situation, every single little thing, I'm going to think your fake, or a robot whose button is set on Uncontrollable Optimism...or something. "Oh hey, guys, I just got a flat tire on the freeway, but it's super fantastic because I still have three good tires. I mean these other tires are practically new and they do their job so well. I really love my tires! Having three tires is just dandy because these remaining three can still keep each other company. That reminds me of Three's Company--I love that show! Hehehehe, Jack Tripper is SO funny. But, what's actually funnier is my tire blowing out on the freeway that could've gotten me killed is really a blessing because I swerved from running over the candy wrapper because I thought it was a squirrel...but it wasn't a squirrel! Anyways, I ended up running over a nail instead, but I'm so happy that I put my life and others' in danger to keep from killing an innocent little creature who was somehow lost on the freeway. I love life and even little squirrels deserve the chance to have one! And I'm glad I get to go buy a new tire because I LOVE to shop! So, actually, me getting a flat tire is giving me a reason to go out and shop for a new tire who could be the other three tires' companions. I'm ecstatic about the whole situation..."

Oh, I see you're not smiling anymore, huh? What's there not to be happy about?

A Big, Fat Thumbs Up

What's not to love about Megan Fox? She is an attractive young lady (with good morals, I'm sure), is...uh...in movies, and...she's foxy (pun intended). Well, guess what, I can relate to her. We're basically, like, the same person because of one thing--no, not because we both (ironically) didn't make the cut for People's "100 Most Beautiful" people of the year edition (pshh, I don't care that I wasn't chosen. It's not as if I need a magazine to tell me who's beautiful. I can just look in the mirror for that). What connection do I have to Megan Fox, then? It's simple: Our thumbs. Love thumbody? Yes, I do.

I never thought that thumbs were a big deal. I mean, they only make life easier by helping you hold or grip things, so, seriously, what's the big deal? But this story if totally opposite for Megan. Her thumbs are, apparently, her downfall. Her thumb problem has guys now giving her a rating of 8.4/10 instead of 9.8/10! Oh, the horror. And, well, no one cares what my thumbs look like (heck, even I don't).

I thought that I was the only person in the world with my kind of thumbs--which, in a way, made me unique. Thumbs up, Shannon. But, then, during my freshman year at BYU, I met another girl who had thumbs that looked like mine. Whaaaaaaaaaaa? To make the situation even more confusing, this girl and I were both born on the same day of the same year. Whaaaaaaaaaa? So, then I started to try and figure out this weird-looking-thumb-situation and try to make sense out of the whole thing. The only reasonable conclusion in my mind was that only people who were born on my birthday have my kind of thumbs. Then, Megan Fox had to come along and expose to the world her thumbs. Thanks for stealing the limelight, Megan.

I don't watch football, but I guess during a 2010 Superbowl commercial, Megan starred in a Motorola ad, along with her fine acting skills. What's this have to do with thumbs? Well, from what I read the next day on the ever informative Yahoo! news, Motorola had hired a hand model to replace Megan's up-close hand shots. Why? Because if the public saw what Megan's thumbs really looked like, they'd focus more on her thumbs than on the phone they were trying to sell. Way to steal the limelight from everyone, Megan, geez. This Yahoo! article also informed me what exactly type of thumbs I have. I just thought they were Shannon-and-people-born-on-Shannon's-birthday thumbs, but I found out there's a technical name: Brachydactyly. To make it simple, it means our thumbs look like this:

Our thumbs are short and fat!

Just because we have alien thumbs doesn't mean we have a green thumb. But it does mean that we are experts at pushing thumbtacks into the wall. And we're also good at...oh, I don't know. How about this scenario: your friend is hammering a nail into the floor, but the hammer accidentally slips and instead of hitting the nail on the head, it hits your friend's thumb. Now your friend is probably walking around with a huge swollen thumb. Well, I'm good at looking like I have a huge swollen thumb, without actually hitting my thumb with a hammer. It's not even painful.

However, it's still easier to think of things we're not very skillful at (like texting, my thumb is too fat to fit on one button. My text recipients usually get results like: qr0qy#i0 instead of: hi how r u). Uh, having fat thumbs also makes it difficult to bowl. Yeah, sometimes my thumb gets stuck in the ball. Yeah...it really happens. Annnnd, I can't even do sign language. Uh, every time a student in my class farted, and I signed to them asking if they needed the bathroom, the kids probably thought I was shaking my fist at them in anger (my thumb is too short to even show up between my fingers). Makes sense. Unfortunately, I recognized that my dream of ever becoming a rock star fell flat (not B-flatflat, either) when I finished my growth spurt and realized that my hands would always be the size of a fourth grader's. In fact, I stopped taking piano lessons after three years because once I got into the hard stuff, my thumbs didn't have the ability to reach the needed keys. Looking on the bright side, I guess I could always play the ukulele for my music career. Sadly, though, I think this instrument is still too massive for my fingers and thumb.

But, still, the only reason I didn't make People's 100 Most Beautiful list is just because my thumbs are holding me back. I have to quote The Rolling Stones and say to People:

Under my thumb

[are] the [people] who once pushed me around

(and I hope it hurt being squished by my sausages. m.wp0###y0. [Dang you.])