I'm gonna try being an asshole out for a minute.
My cinderblock ceiling is being ground slowly to bits under the rapid assault of a wild, bucking bed, which itself is being beaten to death by a screaming football player and his grunting basketballer girlfriend.
So, in the necessary absence of sleep, I'm going to make a list of words and phrases I want stricken from our common speech. In order to do this effectively, I will adopt a more abrasive character -one more suited to those who would deign to modify the language to their preferences.
These first two bother me a lot, but they're on the way to a satisfying demise. Allow me to shine the guillotine:
1. "On Crack." Listen hard, O giggling, slack-jawed, white, frisbee-golf enthusiast at the end of the cafeteria table: You've never laid eyes on crack. You've probably never seen someone feeling the effects of crack. Your reference to the substance is neither novel (it's been used so much that some among us are reluctant to reference a crack in the wall) or appropriately ironic/charmingly bitter (it's not a substance that plagues your community). What you know of it is the unfortunate and degrading cultural imposition of it as a habit of poor black folk. Your use of this putrid phrase, therefore, is offensive, disgusting, and not what actually got you the laugh when you tacked it onto the end of whatever story you were crowing to your friends. Consult instead the string of drool that harnesses the half-slice of pepperoni to your scraggly goatee.
- [I actually ran into this phrase in a book review! Written by someone who gets PAID for writing! It described a guy's narrative as "Monty Python on Crack." (?!) He then went to compare this guy to the other two authors he's heard of - Douglas Adams and Chuck Palanhuik - all because this guy made ample use of whatever those epic four-word sex slang terms used to describe various misogynistic practices are called. Brings me to my second gripe....]
2. Those epic four-word sex slang terms used to describe misogynistic practices: "Dirty Sanchez," "Pearl Necklace," "Angry Dragon," "Donkey Punch." You think you're being funny. More, though, you think you're being edgy, or liberal, or whatever else. But what these phrases are, above all else, are affirmations of the slow-dying puritan culture of sex being "dirty." These all assume that sex's inherent dirtiness or violence is a fact and bathe in it, when really what we ought to be doing is take that damn ideology off life support. Furthermore, a unifying theme of these phrases (and supposed practices) is the a weird sexual-assault-within-sexual-practice; a supposed pleasure derived from making one's partner an unwitting victim of stereotypical horror-story fraternity initiation in the bedroom. Graaaaagh.
The next couple are on the rise, and we owe it to the language to demote them back to simple words.
3. "Awkward." I know. I KNOW. I say it too. It's a fun-sounding word, it's almost "squawk-word," and in american english, it is among the words that sound distinctly american. Yet, I would beg us all to leave this poor word alone for a bit! Ever since it's recent rise to prominence as a description of a social situation or a person, people have been using it to describe everything uncomfortable and leaving it at that. It eats whole stories, whole VOCABULARIES, and consequently, people are feeling more awkward for its constancy in our language! In the absence of other basic feeling-words (which are hard for americans to use in the first place), a person's whole concept of feeling is generalized as Awkward! It's a nice word. Don't kill it.
4. "Belligerent." IT DOES NOT MEAN DRUNK! It means hostile, war-like, or aggressive. Some people may turn that way when drunk, but please note that if we start using this as a synonym for drunk, more people, when drunk, will become belligerent. Particularly new drinkers: they'll have ways they expect to behave once drunk, and once they start drinking, they'll eagerly anticipate the aggression's onset. Just like what's happening up there with awkward.
That's it for now, I suppose.
So, in the necessary absence of sleep, I'm going to make a list of words and phrases I want stricken from our common speech. In order to do this effectively, I will adopt a more abrasive character -one more suited to those who would deign to modify the language to their preferences.
These first two bother me a lot, but they're on the way to a satisfying demise. Allow me to shine the guillotine:
1. "On Crack." Listen hard, O giggling, slack-jawed, white, frisbee-golf enthusiast at the end of the cafeteria table: You've never laid eyes on crack. You've probably never seen someone feeling the effects of crack. Your reference to the substance is neither novel (it's been used so much that some among us are reluctant to reference a crack in the wall) or appropriately ironic/charmingly bitter (it's not a substance that plagues your community). What you know of it is the unfortunate and degrading cultural imposition of it as a habit of poor black folk. Your use of this putrid phrase, therefore, is offensive, disgusting, and not what actually got you the laugh when you tacked it onto the end of whatever story you were crowing to your friends. Consult instead the string of drool that harnesses the half-slice of pepperoni to your scraggly goatee.
- [I actually ran into this phrase in a book review! Written by someone who gets PAID for writing! It described a guy's narrative as "Monty Python on Crack." (?!) He then went to compare this guy to the other two authors he's heard of - Douglas Adams and Chuck Palanhuik - all because this guy made ample use of whatever those epic four-word sex slang terms used to describe various misogynistic practices are called. Brings me to my second gripe....]
2. Those epic four-word sex slang terms used to describe misogynistic practices: "Dirty Sanchez," "Pearl Necklace," "Angry Dragon," "Donkey Punch." You think you're being funny. More, though, you think you're being edgy, or liberal, or whatever else. But what these phrases are, above all else, are affirmations of the slow-dying puritan culture of sex being "dirty." These all assume that sex's inherent dirtiness or violence is a fact and bathe in it, when really what we ought to be doing is take that damn ideology off life support. Furthermore, a unifying theme of these phrases (and supposed practices) is the a weird sexual-assault-within-sexual-practice; a supposed pleasure derived from making one's partner an unwitting victim of stereotypical horror-story fraternity initiation in the bedroom. Graaaaagh.
The next couple are on the rise, and we owe it to the language to demote them back to simple words.
3. "Awkward." I know. I KNOW. I say it too. It's a fun-sounding word, it's almost "squawk-word," and in american english, it is among the words that sound distinctly american. Yet, I would beg us all to leave this poor word alone for a bit! Ever since it's recent rise to prominence as a description of a social situation or a person, people have been using it to describe everything uncomfortable and leaving it at that. It eats whole stories, whole VOCABULARIES, and consequently, people are feeling more awkward for its constancy in our language! In the absence of other basic feeling-words (which are hard for americans to use in the first place), a person's whole concept of feeling is generalized as Awkward! It's a nice word. Don't kill it.
4. "Belligerent." IT DOES NOT MEAN DRUNK! It means hostile, war-like, or aggressive. Some people may turn that way when drunk, but please note that if we start using this as a synonym for drunk, more people, when drunk, will become belligerent. Particularly new drinkers: they'll have ways they expect to behave once drunk, and once they start drinking, they'll eagerly anticipate the aggression's onset. Just like what's happening up there with awkward.
That's it for now, I suppose.