Free To A Good Home: Adopt A Pet Peeve Today

Since I don't do New Year's resolutions, but still like to self-evaluate and tweak the complex and often bizarre set of behaviors that are me, I decided to see if I couldn't find homes for some of my more troubling, and yet deeply unimportant, pet peeves. In no particular order:

Just don't call it 'White Chocolate'. There is no such thing as 'white chocolate'. From unsweetened to bittersweet to semi-sweet to milk, and all shadings therein, the central ingredient common to all chocolate is chocolate liquor, the liquid or paste made when cocoa beans are roasted and ground. This carpet-bagging imposter contains no chocolate liquor, just cocoa butter. I have no idea why this is a peeve of mine.

When you say 'Irregardless', it doesn't mean what you think it does. This is a double-negative.

There is no such word as 'Supposably'. I had a supervisor, an adult woman with an advanced degree, who managed the entire Training Department for one of the top five auto insurance companies in the country, that used this word every time she wanted to say supposedly. And no, she has no accent whatsoever, and her family goes halfway back to the Mayflower.

The state in the midwest that Chicago is in is not pronounced the way it is spelled. My teeth grind every time I hear 'Ill-i-noise'.

It's a lot funnier when Homer Simpson talks about 'Nuculer' disasters than when the President does. Don't you think that ONE of the speechwriters the White House employs in the Communications Department would explain to the chief executive how that word is actually pronounced? Especially when the vast majority of the times he uses that word it's in a pretty important context?

His parents named him Colin, but he pronounces it like a part of the body most closely associated with the rectum? The man was General of The Army, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Secretary of State, would it kill him to be referred to the same way most other people with that name do? Think Colin Ferrell or Colin Firth. Although it was a nice picture caption with the President, Vice President, and Secretary of State (at the time) that could be called: A Bush, A Dick, and a Colin, when pronounced his way.

If it's new, how can it be improved? Self explanatory, except to advertising execs.

It won't hurt you to say please and thank you. Just be polite, dammit. The subset to this one is, if I stop to let you into traffic, a polite wave and/or smile will cost you very little of your roadrage momentum. I promise.

Feel free to give a good home to any of the above.