Oilpressure

The NTT IndyCar Series offseason ended this past weekend, with Josef Newgarden and Team Penske collecting the first win of the season at the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg. The podium had no real surprises, so it appears to be business as usual. There was a lot of offseason news to write about, which left me little time to devote to some of the more frivolous “puff” pieces I like to do in the offseason. Since there is a weekend between the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg and the IndyCar Classic at COTA, I thought I would squeeze one in that I had planned to run a couple of weeks ago – so just pretend for a few minutes that we are still in the offseason.

Whether or not anyone enjoys reading it, I’ve always enjoyed what has become a (mostly) annual event of the IndyCar offseason, and that’s writing about some of my many pet-peeves. Your enjoyment of this may be debatable, but I find it very therapeutic to write about them. So if you were looking for some hard-core racing opinions from me, bear with me today and come back Monday for a more conventional post.

This yearly rant normally consists of corporate buzzwords, trendy sayings, misuse of the English language and irritating commercials. If any of these sayings apply to you – stop using them immediately! Some of these you may have read here before, but they keep annoying me. So let’s get started on my final farewell to the IndyCar offseason, one week late.

Indy 500: Most will disagree with me on this one, because most people use it – but I don’t. If you’ll notice, throughout the history of this site – I’ve always referred to the race on Memorial Day weekend as the Indianapolis 500, and not the Indy 500. The only time I use the phrase “Indy” while writing is if I’m texting or if I’m limited for space such as one of my headlines or on Twitter.

Donald Davidson doesn’t use the term Indy and he says that Tony Hulman didn’t like it either. That’s good enough for me. You might catch me using it verbally in conversation, but I even make a conscious effort to not do that.

The Indy: Indy 500 may not be desirable, but it’s acceptable. I won’t correct anyone for using the term Indy, even if I don’t use it. But if I ever hear anyone referring to the Indianapolis 500 as The Indy, I will reprimand them on site. To hear someone say “We’re going to The Indy this May”, absolutely makes my skin crawl. The only thing worse is hearing someone say they are “Doing The Indy”. [shudder]

Reach out: I think I’ve listed this one before, but it is becoming more and more frequent in my surroundings and I am finding it much more irritating with time. It has gotten to the point that I am now correcting people that use it. I’ll let them know that they are not going to reach out to someone, they are going to contact someone. They will look at me like a dog looks at a typewriter, and then say “I don’t know why I’ve started saying that”. If you don’t know why you’re doing it, don’t do it.

It just sounds a little too warm and fuzzy when someone e-mails me to tell me why they are reaching out to me. Their credibility immediately drops when I read that. I am either going to call, text, e-mail or contact you. But I am never going to reach out to you.

Circle back: Are we in the air? Are we going in circles chasing our tail? I am in a lot of meetings at work each week, where a lot of pretentious people enjoy using corporate jargon when everyday language would be a lot more effective. If they want us to talk about something later, why don’t they just say “Let’s talk about that later”? Instead, they have to sound trendy and suggest that we circle back to that later. Please.

Parking lot: Some of you probably thought that a parking lot was where you left your car. That’s what I thought. But recently, I’ve learned that the term parking lot is a verb. In those same meetings where people want to circle back to things, they find themselves one-upped by those that want to parking lot a topic. The first time I heard that one, I had to ask what it meant. They looked at me like I was an idiot. In an exasperated tone – they explained to me that it meant to circle back to it. Who’s the idiot?

360-degrees: Just last week, I was watching our local news one night. One of the young and hip anchors was describing two people on the City Council with opposing viewpoints and smugly said “They are 360-degrees away from each other”. It sounds like they must be pretty closely aligned to me.

Anymore: This word is totally misused. To begin with, there is the one-word version and the two-word version. Anymore should be used like “That’s not happening anymore” whereas the two-word version should be used as “They don’t have any more candy”.

Lately, I’ve noticed that people are using the word anymore in place of the word nowadays. The word nowadays is a good word that is not to be confused with the word now. A good example is “I used to eat ice cream every night, but nowadays I only eat it on weekends”. Using now instead of nowadays would not be the same meaning. But it has become popular to insert anymore for nowadays. When I hear it, I come unglued. How stupid it sounds to say “I used to eat ice cream every night, but anymore I only eat it on weekends”. That just makes no sense.

GOAT: In sports, it’s common to have debates about who is the greatest of all time. In football, the debate centers around Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Joe Montana or Johnny Unitas. Being an old soul, I tend to lean toward Unitas – but there are legitimate arguments for each one. In IndyCar racing, the greatest of all time argument centers on mostly Mario Andretti or AJ Foyt; but younger fans who never saw those two from the sixties race like to throw Scott Dixon’s name into the mix.

Just in the last couple of years, it has become popular to assign this debate an acronym. Unfortunately the acronym for Greatest of All Time spells out GOAT. What’s worse is that people tend to use it as a word in conversation – as in, “I think AJ Foyt is the goat”. You’d better be ready to run if you say that in front of AJ.

For a minute: It used to be that this phrase was meant to denote either an actual minute or a few minutes; as in “I’m going to stop by for a minute”. Then I heard somebody say “I worked there for a minute”. I thought that was a cutesy way of saying that somebody worked at a place for such a short amount of time that it wasn’t worth mentioning. I asked how long she actually worked there and she said “Eighteen years”.

Since then, I’ve heard the hip trendy sportscasters on ESPN use the word minute to describe what is in actuality a very long time. Why has this become a thing?

Flustrated: As I type this, the red squiggly lines show up to tell me that it’s not a word. I know that. It’s a non-word. This one has probably made this list every year, but I’m hearing it more and more. Just yesterday, I heard a former Titan using it on a local sports-talk radio show. You can be flustered or you can be frustrated. But you cannot be flustrated. I’m afraid that if people keep hearing this non-word, they’ll start using it and it will spread like a disease. Ain’t was a non-word at one point, but it has become so commonly used – most people will argue with you that it is a word. It ain’t.

Any KFC commercial: If I was a descendant of Col. Harlan Sanders, I would be upset at the way my great-grandfather was being portrayed by the company he founded. As it is, I am just generally annoyed at all the bad, and I mean bad, commercials featuring different people dressed as him. Col. Sanders is not a caricature like Mr. Peanut is for Planters. He was a real person. He was not the comical oaf you see on television nowadays.

Impact: When did impact become a trendy verb? People use it because they’re too unsure of whether or not to use effect or affect. They sound so caring when asking “How does that impact you?”, but what they are really saying is “I’m too stupid to know how exactly to ask how you are affected, so I’m going to use a power word to ask you that instead.”

All of the sudden: My friend Paul Dalbey brought this one to my attention and says it is one of his pet-peeves. I can see why. The correct phrase is “All of a sudden”. If you have to be told that, this flustrates me.

For all intensive purposes: No, no no! Think about it – this makes no sense at all. The correct phrase is “For all intents and purposes”. If you can’t use the right phrase, just say practically or virtually. They are both shorter and mean the same thing.

Gifted:  This isn’t the adjective, as in "Felix Rosenqvist is a gifted driver". No, I’m talking about the trendy new way of saying someone was given something; such as "He was gifted the latest set of shocks and dampers". He wasn’t gifted the shocks, he was given the shocks.

Any Liberty Mutual commercial: Whether it’s the girl who named her car Brad or the moron that throws his wallet into the water – Liberty Mutual has had annoying commercials for the last several years. Someone should reach out to them and tell them they need a new ad campaign.

A NASCAR: It pains me when I hear people say that Jeff Gordon used to drive a NASCAR. No, he drove in NASCAR. He drove a stock car while he drove in NASCAR. NASCAR is an acronym for the sanctioning body – the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing. You cannot drive a sanctioning body.

Discover’s “More Money, More Money” commercial: If you’ve seen this, you know what I’m talking about. No further comment necessary.

Curve my appetite: Someone at work says she smokes because it curves her appetite. I wonder if she watches Larry David’s show, “Curve Your Enthusiasm”.

Touching base: When I think of touching base, I think of a runner on first in baseball tagging up, when a fly-ball is hit deep to right-field. In the workplace, it means “I’m getting back with you.” I think most people who use this corporate buzz phrase, don’t even know it’s origin. It’s just a little too cute.

Genre: I mentioned this one just a couple of weeks ago, and it has made this list before. The word category is a very descriptive word and does not lend itself to misinterpretation. It’s a very good word. Somewhere along the way, someone decided it was not fancy enough – hence the word genre.

I am convinced that people use genre instead of category because they think it makes them sound sophisticated. Instead, it just makes them sound pretentious.

This could go on for quite a while, but my negativity has probably already run a few people off. If you’ve made it down this far, you either agree with me or you’re wondering just how far off the rails I’ll go. Am I overly critical? My wife thinks so. Do you identify with several of these? Then we think alike and that might concern you. Do you say any or a lot of these? Stop immediately.

Thanks for sticking with me, because with one race already behind us we are pretty much in race mode throughout the season. All of the sudden, the NTT IndyCar Series season has sneaked up on me. Before anyone gets flustrated with me carrying on any further, we’ll parking lot this for now and I’ll circle back to it later. I’ll reach out and share it with you when I do.

George Phillips

This entry was posted on March 15, 2019 at 4:05 am and is filed under IndyCar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.