Ridiculous Subdivision Names

Since the end of World War II, land in Arizona has been cheap and plentiful compared to other states. This has made Arizona a prime location for building massive communities of residential homes, known as subdivisions or suburbs.


Housing mega-developers such as Del Webb, Pulte, D.R. Horton, Richmond American, Lennar, Meritage, and Taylor Morrison Homes have purchased hundreds of thousands of acres of land on the outskirts of Phoenix and built massive master-planned communities, also called "satellite communities." The explosive growth of these communities has kept Phoenix on the top 10 list of "fastest growing cities in America" for decades.

Aside from the urban sprawl and increased traffic, what really bugs me is the absolutely awful names these new subdivisions have. Most of them are designed to appeal to yuppies, and therefore incorporate some sort of pseudo-luxurious or elite sounding word into the name. Take a look at the examples below. All of these are real names of subdivisions in the greater Phoenix area:

Silverleaf
Villagio
Verrado
Vistancia
Estancia
Dynamite Ranch
Anthem
Troon
Troon North
Tartesso
Trillium
Desert Highlands
Whisper Rock
Pecan Creek South
Rancho Bella Vista
Grayhawk
Serenity Shores at Fulton Ranch

You can find yuppies and real estate agents discussing pricing and locations of the various subdivisions on forums such as City-Data.com.

How could you ever tell your parents or your co-workers that you just bought a new house in "Troon North" with a straight face? Not only is it an embarrassing name, but you are admitting to the world that you were seduced into buying an overpriced, cookie-cutter home that was made for people exactly like you by market researchers and focus groups. This is conspicuous consumption at its worst.

If the pinnacle of your adult life is moving into a stucco castle in some brand new master-planned community with a ridiculous name like "Tartesso" or "Troon North," then you should know that I hate everything about your priorities and your lifestyle.

Check out the master list of silly subdivisions in the Phoenix area.

I am not the only one who feels this way:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0DE4D61131F93BA25755C0A9609C8B63
http://denverinfill.com/blog/2006/09/guide-to-suburban-denver-subdivision.html
http://www.cyburbia.org/forums/showthread.php?t=20502
http://www.city-data.com/forum/houston/462251-amusing-ridiculous-contrived-subdivision-names.html

Verb the Noun Bands

Have you noticed how many bands these days are creating their names with the formula "verb the noun?" It mostly seems to happen in the hardcore, death metal, and screamo genres. At the time of this writing, all of these are real names of bands:
Becoming the Archetype
Before the Dawn
Bleed the Sky
Blessthefall
Bury Your Dead
Clone the Fragile
Escape the Fate
Haste the Day
Hit the Lights
Pierce the Veil
Poison the Well
Protest the Hero
Remove the Veil
Salt the Wound
Scatter the Ashes
Sever Your Fall
Sound the Alarm
Swallow the Sun

Maybe it's too much to expect death metal bands to care about things like grammar, but it's also unoriginal when your band name sounds like every other band name out there. Can we please stop with the ridiculous band names?

I am not the only one who feels this way:http://www.musicbusinessblog.com/2005/11/27/verb-the-noun/ 
http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/forum/showthread.php?t=866530

Language I Loathe

May I present to you the growing list of buzzwords and meaningless lexicon which I have come to abhor simply for their excessive appearance in popular culture and writing. It's time to put these words and phrases out to pasture because I'm officially calling them cliché and worn-out. If I didn't hear them again for a very long time, that would be just fine with me.


Hack
Blog, blogging, and especially blogosphere
Wiki-anything (as a prefix, suffix, or root word)
RSS feed
Comment
Profile
Web two-point-oh
Anything two-point-oh
Twitter/Tweet
Facebook
Social networking
Social bookmarking
Podcast
iPod, iTunes, and iPhone
"Hi-Def" and HD
Download
Infotainment
Edutainment
Infomercial
Cloud computing
Stream
Swarm
Microsoft and Yahoo
Ringtone
MP3
Eminem (honestly, who still listens to this guy?)
Monsoon Season
Concept
Rumored to
Think outside the (article)
and the no-longer clever Think inside the (article)
Limited time offer
OAC
"Green"
Eco-friendly
Eco as a prefix in general
Prius
Hybrid (when refeferring to cars and otherwise)
Mash-up
Global warming
Greenhouse effect
Homeland Security
TSA
Iraq
Terrorism
Text-message
Texting
Uber
Emo
Metrosexual

There are lots more words I hate but I cannot think of them at the moment.

I am not the only one who feels this way:
http://www.yelp.com/topic/hoboken-words-that-annoy-you
http://www.lssu.edu/banished/current.php
http://ldaley.wordpress.com/2007/11/27/utilize-and-other-useless-words/
http://www.partyofthefirstpart.com/hallOfShame.html
http://www.webinknow.com/2006/10/the_gobbledygoo.html
http://www-stat.wharton.upenn.edu/~steele/Rants/Pretentious-Words.html