Hooray, I have a new pet peeve.

First, a little background. During the summer months I spend a great deal of my weekends taking my kids to the pool. (I mean that in the literal sense, not in the morning constitutional sense.) It's a great way to really relax and get tan at the same time. And the kids love it, it wears them out, and it's darn good for them.

Anyway, while I sit pool-side I often have someone else sitting about four feet away. Normally, that's a comfortable distance but when that person is talking on the phone, they may as well be talking to me. Point? Saturday, this pasty, dumpy guy chooses a seat a couple chairs away. After he plops himself down he decides it would be a good time to catch up on his personal phone calls.

First he calls his sister who is evidently going through a serious divorce. He -- let's call him Chad -- is doing his brotherly duty by consoling her. It quickly becomes clear to me that this guy sees himself as a bit of a sage -- a dispenser of wisdom, if you will. I've only been listening to this guy for three or four minutes before I decide that I hate him for the way he talks. You know how people have quirky habits when they talk? Like when people make little quotation marks around their head. Or when people say "ya know wut I mean" or "know wut I'm sayin?" Chad has a tendency to plagiarize song titles in everyday conversation. For instance, he couldn't quite figure out what to say to sis so he sums it up be saying: "Helen, I wrote a song -- maybe you've heard it -- it's called "Breaking Up Is Hard To Do."

Isn't that weird? I guess it's normal to quote people but it's odd that he would take credit for a song that someone else obviously wrote. It seemed surreal to me. I heard him burp that out and thought, "Hmm, he doesn't look like Neil Sedaka."

The full gravity of the weirdness didn't sink in until I realized that he apparently does this a lot. He then called his brother, Glenn, to discuss the idea of them going with Helen to go visit their Dad in Colorado. Once that was resolved they moved on to discuss the fact that Glenn is stuck in a dead end job that he hates. Glenn's making himself ill because he's working too much and he's all stressed out. Chad is trying to convince him that life is too short to have a sucky job so he captures the sentiment by saying: "Look Glenn, I wrote a song -- maybe you've heard it -- it's called "Take This Job and Shove It." Wouldn't it suck to be related to that guy.

He then calls his Dad to inform him that his three kids were planning to inflict themselves upon him. After a couple attempts at coaxing Dad to buy into their plan he says: "Dad, I wrote a song -- maybe you've heard it -- it's called "We Are Family."

You know, come to think of it, I wrote a song -- maybe you've heard it -- it's called "Everybody knows, that the world is full of stupid people."