I’m sure you’re all just dying to know what annoys me… Here’s my latest list of two things:

1. People who back into parking spaces
2. The awful words “gifting” and “efforting”
   (not to be confused with the sacred words, Ni!, Peng and Ni-Wom!)

The first I encountered again this morning. As I pulled into the parking lot for my company’s weekly meeting, I was behind a rather nice sedan. The guy zipped to the left, apparently heading for one of the 9,000 open spaces on that side. I prepared to slide in behind him — but wait! What are those?!? Backup lights, that’s what. I had to stop my car and wait for this yahoo to back into the bloody parking space. That’s very annoying. Had there not been any spaces on the left, then it would have been obvious what he was doing (i.e. being an annoying twit). But since there were the aforementioned 9,000 empty spaces on that side, it wasn’t obvious. And I don’t suffer idiots lightly or patiently…

The second (and, OK, third…) are these new “words” that are creeping into our language. The use of “gifting” has suddenly gotten heavy, though checking Google shows that it has been around for a while. It’s just a stupid word. I mean, is it really that hard to say giving? The other I’ve only heard once, and I’m not the only one annoyed by this ridiculous word used by some talking head on CNN or some other news station during coverage of Katrina. He used it instead of saying “trying.” Now I ask you, what’s so wrong with “trying?” That’s doubleplusungood, indeed.