Pet Peeves

• Movies in which someone dies of cancer at the end, especially when the movie came out in the nineties and had nothing to do with cancer but was about something else entirely when suddenly the screenwriter got stuck and decided to just kill one of the main characters with cancer or in a sudden accident and end the movie at the person's funeral. Examples of this kind of movie include Fried Green Tomatoes, My Girl, The Man in the Moon, Charly (okay, I've only read the book, and that was bad enough), Pay It Forward, Brian's Song, Steel Magnolias, A Walk to Remember, Remember the Titans, and My Sister's Keeper. Usually I just avoid anything that is promoted as "heartwarming" or "inspiring".
  
• Machines that talk to you, like supermarket self-checkouts and talking ATMs. Automated phone service is even worse because you have to talk back to the machine.
• Instant messaging. (Okay, so maybe I'm a luddite.)
• Plurals with apostrophes.
• Unnecessary use of the marked term sister missionaries and use of the term elders as synonymous with missionaries.
  
• Pool-poll-pole-pull, room-rum, route-root-rut, sale-sell-cell, feel-fell-fill, heel-heal-hell-hill, peel-Pell-pill, steel-still, kneel-nail-nil, meal-Mel-mill, sit-set, peck-pick, bag-beg, pen-pin, ten-tin, and other ambiguous vowel mergers: "We have a sell on still pulls today. I know you fill bad, but just set down and the doctor will be in to hell you." (Shudder.)
• Kreeaityvli spelled names: Stephenie, Qurysteenah, Alivia, Jaxon, Jaykawb, Carrion, MacKaeLah, Caity, Maddisyn, Crystofer, Mollee, Ashlie, Jerrod, Jeriko, etc.
• People who touch your arm to emphasize a point when they're talking to you.