Random Things That Annoy the Pee-Turkey Out of Me

When I was in high school, my geometry teacher was the former head football coach and I thought he was one of the most frustrating people I knew. In retrospect, he was a nice guy, but because he liked football and the Lord and various other things I found ridiculous, he drove me right up the wall. Honestly, if it hadn't been for the lunatic who sat behind me in class who would variously sing The Cure songs or pretend to vomit (it was endearing...somehow), I might have gone clinically insane. As it was, I spent a lot of time making poor Coach mad, at which point he would squint his eyes, jut his lower jaw out, and say something disciplinary which would almost always involve the word "pee-turkey." Coach wouldn't curse, you see; he would instead say "pee-turkey." Like, "I don't give a pee-turkey about the fight you had with your boyfriend, Miss YoungNotHannah. You need to dissect this parabola."  (Or something. Can you dissect a parabola? Is that geometry?)  Sometimes, he would throw in a "pee-dooky" if he was really mad. It was fabulous.

But this blog post isn't about Coach or high school. I was just trying to give you a little history, a little literary base from which to launch yourself into the post below.

Not buying it?  Me, neither.

Here's ma list of random things that annoy the pee-turkey out of me:

• Having to say "pee-turkey."  I curse.  I curse with glee and abandon and prefer to feel not the slightest bit guilty that the f-word is one of my favorite all-purpose adjectives, nouns, and verbs.  (Pretend that sentence made sense.)   However, the other morning, I told River she couldn't have any lemonade yet and she said, "Aw, man.  That sucks."  In exactly my tone of voice.  With my accent.  And dramatic rolling of eyes.  Whoopsiedoodle.  So now I'm trying to use words like "shucks" and "feediddle" and "ay caramba" instead of the words I really want to use.  I do not want to say, "What the pee-turkey are you doing?"  But I'm going to, so that River isn't kicked out of pre-K.  Fiddlesticks.
• When people say the word "weary" when they mean "wary" or "leery."  Y'all, I saw it on the Entertainment Weekly site today and I almost bit off my own face.  If you are "weary" of the big dog at the end of your street, you are tired of him snapping at you every time you jog past.  If you are "wary" or "leery" of the big dog at the end of your street, you are afraid he will snap at you when you jog past.  Please, for pee-turkey's sake, figure this mess out because I need my face to try to reform my child's vocabulary.
• Also, your boss is not "prejudice" unless he is a negative opinion based on a specific characteristic of  an object or person.  Your baby is not "jaundice" unless she is a problem with the blood related to an elevated bilirubin count.  Your boss MIGHT be prejudiced and your baby MIGHT be jaundiced, but for the love of all that is good and holy, BUY A FRICKIN' D, people.  Gah.  
• Any and all end-time prophesies and/or commentary related to them.  Thanks to the radio dude who screwed the pooch prophetically back in 1994, there are a whole bunch of people either A:  selling everything they own to buy RVs, billboards, and websites proclaiming the end of the world or B:  making studiously snarky remarks about looting after the Rapture or C:  being Tim LaHaye and saying, "Hey, ain't nobody supposed to talk about end times but me, bitches."  And NOW, the Pagans want to get in on the End of the World Panic, by circulating what appears to be a sketchily-documented Hopi prophesy involving a blue star.  (Go ahead and google it.  You'll find three different versions of it in five seconds, involving everything from a preacher and an old Hopi dude in a car in the 1950s to aliens to the Hale-Bopp comet to the Mayan 2012 thingamabob.  Lawsy.)  Y'all.  I'm not trying to hurt anybody's feelings, but this whole "we'll have to go through something EVEN WORSE than what's happening now and then we'll either be in a perfect place, a hellish place, or a more enlightened place" thing is wearing me down.  How about we just do our best to stop making a hell on Earth right now and not worry about how awful it WILL be tomorrow or Thursday or December whatever 2012?  Mkay?  Thanks.
• People who keep bragging about how school is over.  School is NOT over, my friends.  It is draaaggggiiinnnng on here at a glacial pace, hauling us along behind it helplessly.  Three days might not sound like a lot, but for me, it feels like three centuries.  (Guess whose kid has done pretty much not a thing for the last month, since testing was over?  Go ahead.  Did you guess me?  You must be, like, psychic.)
• Lack of rain.  Pretty much all of my interweb friends are all like, "It's rained for days.  When will the rain stop?  The RAAAIIIINNNNN...."  Meanwhile, I'm wondering if I should start collecting my shower water in buckets because it's so fricking dry here.  Last weekend, I watched the radar as a line of storms approached our county and then, upon reaching the Perrydise city limits, split in two, only to reemerge as a line after passing over Perrydise.  NOT COOL, line of storms.  I broke down and watered the other day.  Oh, how I watered:  I accidentally left the sprinkler on for about two hours when I went to the store.  My garden was happy.  And by "garden" I mean barren wasteland of weeds and herbs that are living despite me.  I rock.
• The phrase "RINO."  This is a cute little acronym conservatives use to derisively call out Republicans who they feel are not Republican-y enough.  (Republican In Name Only.  Brilliant.)  Arnold Schwarzenegger is the latest recipient of the RINO moniker, seemingly because he had the illicit sex with somebody other than his wife.  Frankly, if this is the big criteria, I'm gonna have to give the big X to the term, because Newt, Ensign, Thurmond, Sanford, and that dude who solicited a police officer in the potty are all big free market, small government, less taxation folks who just also happen to be giant adulterous whores.  (This is only a small list.  Please feel free to ask me if you need more examples.) Now, I suppose that Ahnuld could be a RINO because he advocated that more people be given more rights under California law, thumbing his nose at federal law--wait.  THAT can't be right, can it?  Maybe he was a RINO because the people being given more rights are Teh Gays, and we all know that Republicans are not supposed to think being Teh Gay means you deserve equal protection under law.  I mean, it says so on the card, right?  Hint:  No.  No, it doesn't.  I think that what folks mean when they say "RINO" is actually Republican Who Refused to Jump in the Very Lucrative Christian and/or Traditional Energy Industry Pocket And Thus, Are Running Counterwise to Current Republican Thinking .  I recognize that RWRJVLCa/oTEIPTRCCRT does not have the same ring to it as RINO. And please don't think I'm defending Ahnuld, because I am fairly done with politicians being whores.  BUT  Schwarzenegger's governorship doesn't look a whole lot different than that Brown fool from Wisconsin that conservatives are fainting in ecstasy over.  (Schwarzenegger tried to cut state services to the poor, lower state worker pay and consolidate state departments, privatize prisons, block union influence, and vetoed an "easy way to citizenship" bill several times.)  My point is, does being a Republican now mean that you have to deny Teh Gays equal protection under law and give oil companies huge tax breaks?  Because then, and only then, will I agree that Ahnuld is a RINO.  (I will, however, still think that the term is dumb.  Sorry.)  Honestly, I think that lots of folks who call themselves Republicans need to start calling themselves BOWELs (Bible Owners Wanting to Engender Legislation.) Ahahahhaahhaa!  Sorry.  I couldn't help it.  You know I love you BOWELs, right? 
• Me.  I'm getting on my own dang nerves now.  Great.  

Tune in tomorrow when I'll try to make a list of Random Things That Don't Annoy the Pee-Turkey Out of Me.