teenybuffalo ([info]teenybuffalo) wrote,
@ 2006-12-30 14:31:00
Previous Entry  Add to memories!  Tell a Friend!  Next Entry
The Growlery is: OPEN

Welcome to the Growlery, my occasional haven for low-key complaints.  Have a cuppa tea.  

What is something minor that gets on your nerves?  I'm talking really petty stuff, the kind of thing you feel silly for being annoyed at but it annoys you nonetheless.  Tell me about it and I'll commiserate. 

I'll start.  You know what really annoys me?  When I hear someone talk rudely about people from pre-20th-century history.  The more I get into reading up on history, the more I run into this stuff.  You may have heard the type of thing: someone will go, "Oh, they all deformed their internal organs with corsets and nobody brushed their teeth and they never bathed so they must have smelled to high heaven."  It's the Everything Sucked Back Then school of thought.  

It really gets my goat, specially as it's so hard to answer because I'm not actually from back then.  I want to deliver a lecture on how (a) diets were comparatively low in sugar so they would have had healthy though crooked teeth, on average; (b) tight lacing was an extreme rather than the norm; and most importantly (c) a person's moral worth and respectability and goodness are not to be measured by how often he or she bathes and anyway they changed their linen every day so they wouldn't have smelled at all.  But I've tried explaining stuff like that, and it's like pounding sand down a rat-hole.  

What I really want to do is scream "Don't you dare speak so crudely of the people I love!"

*groan* 

I know what it's like.  It's like hearing someone make snide remarks about "backwoods hicks" when some of your best friends live out in the backwoods.

(Post a new comment)


[info]lemonlye
2006-12-30 09:35 pm UTC (link)
Good ones, and interesting points.

I hate it when people leave the sponge in the sink, where it only gets re-soaked and never dries out, and ends up smelling moldy within days. But that's kind of minor.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]teenybuffalo
2006-12-31 12:14 am UTC (link)
Hey, minor is the name of the game today!

Yeah. I hate when that happens with washcloths, too.

(Reply to this) (Parent)
Dis-sing OUR kind of people
[info]negothick
2006-12-30 10:06 pm UTC (link)
I'm with you on this, all the way. But we don't have to look at the REAL pre-twentieth century. All we have to do is look at the way the media talks about current medievalists or about fans--or folkies. They say some of the same things--including the remarks about smelling bad.

[though to be fair, there are current medievalists and fans who don't bathe or change their "linen" (read t-shirts) with any regularity]
I've run into the media image of fans as uncouth barbarians on three continents: when reporters show up to cover conventions, they are determined to play spot the loony. If no loonies manifest at first glance, their lead goes something like "Readercon [ConClave New Zealand/ INTERACTION Glasgow] is a science fiction convention, so where are the pointy ears and light-sabre battles in the hallway."
OK, so I guess media coverage of OUR people is my growl du jour.

(Reply to this) (Thread)
Re: Dis-sing OUR kind of people
[info]teenybuffalo
2006-12-31 12:21 am UTC (link)
Yeah, I get sick quite fast of the "beards 'n' beer-guts" sort of description of folkies.

...Part of what gets me riled about that is that I've grown up liking folk music, so I am used to hairy, idiosyncratic, non-trendily-dressed guys. Used to them? Heck! I've reached the point of finding the Mystic Seaport Chanteymen rather hunky. (can't believe I typed that. but it's true.) (Tom Lewis is jolly fanciable, too.)

And ditto on your feelings about the media-coverage of our people. That reminds me of David Langford in _Ansible_ magazine, with the "As Others See Us" column collecting snide media quotes. I've just gotten into reading Ansible, by the way, it's a riot.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]linaelyn
2006-12-31 05:24 am UTC (link)
Disrespect is often a hallmark of ignorance. Having an honest difference of opinion about preferences in personal lifestyle and hygiene is one thing; expressing disgust at historical household practices is just silly. One might as well lament the nonexistence of credit cards in medieval times.

If one wants to express disgust, one should pick something noteworthy, like say, genocide or infanticide being acceptable practices in early European history. That's worth mentioning.

~~~~~~

My complaint? I AM STILL SICK WITH THE FLU. grrrr. arrggghh.

Okay, and one more? My mother-in-law sends pointless-drivel email spam, every single day. But one message in twenty has some important family news in it, so I can't just delete them all, out of hand.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]teenybuffalo
2006-12-31 05:30 pm UTC (link)
One might as well lament the nonexistence of credit cards in medieval times.

Good one. I might use that next time I get into such a discussion.

My complaint? I AM STILL SICK WITH THE FLU. grrrr. arrggghh.

*hug* Get better soon, Lin. *reaches through the Internet and hands you a cup of hot tea with (a) lemon (b) a shot of rum and (c) honey*

But one message in twenty has some important family news in it, so I can't just delete them all, out of hand.

Oh god I know exactly what you mean! And forwards and stuff that you have to go through to winnow out the stuff you might need. Yeah, I get that too, though not as much or from any one person.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

Create an Account
Forgot your login?
Login w/ OpenID
English • Español • Deutsch • Русский…