The Entire Spanish Language

My hatred of words is not just limited to specific words or phrases, but also entire lexica. This is, of course, a subjective opinion based only on facts I made up,  so if you disagree with me I’ll just make something up to counter your argument.

And just because I hate the Spanish language doesn’t mean I hate Spanish PEOPLE, or Mexicans, or Cubans, or Argentinians, I just hate all the words they speak. And also Roman Catholicism and its followers. That’s all. Kind of a minor thing.

The reason I hate this language is because it sounds like they picked words out of a hat. Take, for example, the word for “woman”, which is “mujer”. If you’re a redneck who can’t read Spanish, I’ll help you out. The closest phonetic approximation of this word is “moo HAIR”. Moo hair. This is how they describe their women. It’s not sexy or feminine, it’s not clever or strong. It’s ridiculous, which is why, in English, those sounds mean something totally different. Because the English language is really well-planned.

Another word I hate in Spanish is “entonces” (pronounced en-TONE-ses). This word means “then”. That’s an important word. It’s how you tell a story. So while the English-speaker has already put his kids to bed and made his way to the basement to do bong hits, the Spanish-speaker is still upstairs saying “entonces” over and over, probably getting sleepier than his kids, who’ve been eating churros all day and are bouncing off the fucking walls. This is why the siesta was invented, because Spanish-speakers get sleepy from talking.

The language is full of basic words that have extra syllables and vowels that add nothing to the meaning. Find an English-to-Spanish translator and type in any English word and the word it returns in Spanish will have as many or more syllables.

small = pequeño
hot = caliente
rain = lluvia
butter = mantequilla
find = encontrar
hat = sombrero
genital warts = las verrugas genitales
diarrhea = chili con carne

Shorter, efficient words also improve survivability. If someone yells “TIRE FIRE!” the English-speakers all run, but you can bet all the Puerto Ricans are dead before anyone can get out “INCENDIO DE NEUMÁTICOS!” This is why Catholics have so many children, to replace all the people who die in tire fires.

It doesn’t help, either, that this language originated in the worst country in the world, Spain. Now I already know what you’re thinking, “how can you hate a country just because they shot your father and stole his burro? He was a pedophile, anyway, and the donkey was a racist and had a bad spine” and I say “is a donkey a racist just for burning ONE CROSS on his neighbor’s lawn? You never saw all the GOOD THINGS that donkey did for black people”.

And you’re probably also thinking “don’t all those extra syllables make Spanish more flamboyant and decorated and beautiful?” It surely does, but language isn’t about beauty, it’s about transmission of ideas. That’s why the British were such good colonists, and the Americans win every war ever and never lose. Not because of superior weapons, but because of ideas. So while the natives are busy saying “entonces” this and “biblioteca” that, the English-speakers have already turned your kids into Protestants and absconded with your oil.

And sure you might point out how that’s idiotic and the Spanish were possibly the most effective and brutal conquerors the world has ever known, but that is because they were able to CONFUSE the natives with their complicated-sounding language. The natives thought the Spanish were gods, who were saying all these complex other-wordly things, when really all they were saying was “give us your land and we’ll kill you with rats and smallpox”.

Help me out here. I have to justify my retarded opinions.

Correction: This article originally made the implication that residents of the Azores speak Spanish, when, in fact, they speak Portuguese. I totally knew that.

It’s Going to Be Interesting

Once you’ve learned to hate this expression as much as I do, you’re going to start hearing it everywhere. And then, on or around the forty-hundred-billionth time you hear it, the tiny parasitic worms that live just under your skull will emerge from your eyes, ears, and nostrils to commit ritual suicide on your forehead because even THEY can’t stand the sound of it.

I’ve identified two major sources of this filth, one is sports commentators talking about an upcoming game:

Idiot Commentator 1: It seems the Patriots and Ravens match up really well on both sides of the ball. Chuck, any predictions who might pull this one off?
Idiot Commentator 2: Well I can’t say for sure, but it’s going to be interesting.

The other source is political commentary before an election:

Idiot Commentator 1: Palin has certainly wrapped up the stupid crappy loser vote, but Romney has strong support from his tie-wearing douchebag Mormon homophobe base. Carol, who’s going to win this primary?
Idiot Commentator 2: We’ll see, Idiot Commentator One, we’ll see. It’s going to be interesting.

Did you catch how they are similar? In both cases, Idiot Commentator 2 is stupid. Like, molten rock levels of brain power. But not only are they stupid, they are also cowardly. Rather than just making an educated guess, they pass it off and just call it interesting. But every football game is interesting if you’re a football fan. And every election is interesting if you like politics. In fact, life generally is pretty interesting. Sometimes even my bowel movements are interesting. At least if you said “it’s going to be a football game” nobody could argue with you. You’d still be dumb, but at least your facts are straight.

You know what would actually be an interesting thing to say? ANYTHING besides “it’s going to be interesting”. You could say “woozle wuzzle” or even “purple monkey dishwasher” and at least people would raise an eyebrow, instead of having an aneurysm listening to your waste of valuable broadcasting time. What if Thomas Edison had said “It’s going to be interesting” into his first phonograph? People would have thought it was the crappiest invention ever. But instead he sang “Mary had a little lamb…”, the Dark Side of the Moon of its day, which was tearing up the charts in the 19th century (bested only by the other hits, “Little Brown Jug” and “Jimmy Crack Corn”).

Man, people in the 19th century sucked. I’m glad they’re all dead so I don’t have to listen to their crap.

Meme

I don’t fucking care at all that Richard Dawkins invented this word. It’s straight up horrible and nobody will point out this fact so I guess I have to.

First of all, Richard Dawkins is a dick. I mean his NAME is even Dick. I’m an atheist but I think between he and Christopher Hitchens, atheism is very poorly represented, the same way Christianity is very poorly represented by James Dobson, Veggietales, and Pope Leo XII. But perhaps good ideas can come from dickheads — it is widely known that Marie Curie was an incorrigible bitch, and she managed to invent radium, by scraping away at tiny watches for three decades.

But this isn’t a good idea, because at its core, its definition is the following:

Meme: (meem) n. - thing

Of course, dictionaries have to dress it up a little, so you don’t feel stupid for using it. Here’s the definition as given by Dictionary.com

Meme: (meem) n. - a cultural item that is transmitted by repetition in a manner analogous to the biological transmission of genes

And that is fine. Philosophers need to reference all sorts of ideas because they are talking about very complicated esoteric things.  But that isn’t what the world thinks this word means. Here’s what the definition should actually be:

Meme: (meem) n. – Stupid internet horseshit a bunch of inbred teenagers think is funny

So an arcane but probably useful word, with a dickish pedigree, was turned into double rainbow and the Lincoln Park rapist. And it couldn’t have happened to an uglier word, either.

Supposedly, Dick Dawkins tried to use Latin, the Zombie language, like all biologists do, instead of something more modern and relevant and not shitty. And according the OED (that’s Online Etymology Dictionary to me) the word was supposed to sound like “gene”, reflecting how a meme can be mutated after repeated copying, or, in the case of memes, made less funny.

When I first saw the word “meme” I thought it was pronounced “mem”. It’s slightly less caustic that way. We might have  then been able to say it came from French, with that elegant decorative E at the end, or even Olde Englishe. But it’s actually pronounced MEEM, like the EE in BEE. You know why they’re called bees and not puppy dogs? Because they’re fucking ANNOYING and we want to smoosh them and steal their honey.

MEEM sounds like something small and annoying that will not go away, and many memes behave this way, refusing to die like the Zombie language. Even the spelling is bad. “Meem” is at least honest about its pronunciation. There’s only one way to pronounce it in English. “Meme”, on the other hand could be pronounced MEE-MEE, or MEM, or MEEM, or even MEM-EH.

From now on I’m going to pronounce “meme” as “flying spaghetti monster” because it’s a better idea and I think Dicky Dawkins would understand anyway.

Stand Idly By / Sit Idly By

Have you ever heard anyone use the word “idly” without this expression? No, you haven’t, because this word is mentally challenged. It is as lazy as its definition implies and needs the support of at least two other words to function. Look at its entry in the Online Etymology Dictionary. It has no history, it has never evolved, it just sits idly by while every other word in our language has grown up, changed pronunciations, taken on new connotations, and so forth. “Idly” is developmentally disabled.

Perhaps it is appropriate, then, that American politicians in particular love to use this phrase. They “won’t stand idly by while Iran builds a nuclear arsenal”. They “won’t stand idly by  while men touch other men’s penises for enjoyment.” They “won’t sit idly by as illiterate speechwriters make me look like a total douchetard”. This expression has no other purpose than to make a bigshot pretend like he gives a fuck. And what a shame, too, because one could be very creative with substitutes for this idiotic idiom:

We can no longer afford to lounge about in our health spas and massage parlors, having our mani-pedi’s and getting whacked off by southeast Asians while children go to school without pencils.

I’m still working out what I meant when I wrote that. I might be douchetarded.

Plethora

Here’s a weird one where I hate the word, but I actually like it in its archaic form.

In case you’ve been living in a cage in your uncle Harry’s basement, subsisting off sewer rats that venture too close to your putrid, pus-spewing, gangrenous foot, which you fractured trying to escape but were thwarted by the series of cleverly-placed bear traps with Mounds bars in them….in case you’ve been living THERE, a plethora is the same thing as “a lot”, but for douches. Despite the lovely diblend P+L, it’s a horrific-sounding Late Latin word with no real rhythm or composition. What kind of North African hashish were these Romans smoking when they came up with a word where “pleth” is the accented part? PLETH! And also where can I get some of this hashish? And also what is hashish? (I actually had to look it up.)

And even worse, saying “plethora” instead of “a lot” adds NOTHING to the content of what you are saying. It’s just a way to show off how you got a whopping 560 on your SAT English section in 1994.

For some reason when I see it (as it’s used more in writing than speech I think) I think of “phlegm”. This may not be a coincidence, either: “plethora” was originally a 16-century “medical” word for “excess of body fluid”. So ladies, if you want to tell me how you need to go to the restroom to sop up the plethora of menses clogging your pipes, I’m totally cool with that. Actually I’d be a little turned on (god, what is WRONG with me???).

If you’re looking for something with which to replace it, but still want to sound like a butthole, try saying “a great many” in its stead, for example, instead of

There is a plethora of warts on my anus.

say

There are a great many warts on my anus.

or, if you’re feeling bold

I have supernumerary warts on my anus. Use a condom. I mean use three condoms.

Tight-Knit

No joke here, I am actually filled with anxiety to write about this word. It pesters me. It traps me and fills me with bile and ire. Even more than its brother, “tightly-knit”, which I hate just 10% less.

Perhaps it’s the K following a T, or the two T endings. Perhaps it is the cumbersome switch from a T-sound to an N-sound. Maybe it’s the silent G, H, and K all at once. Or maybe it’s because this word traps us. There is no synonym that means the same thing, that I can find. Even the most common definition of “closely integrated” doesn’t really explain what it means. It’s a relationship thing, a family thing, and that makes me uncomfortable. And we must use this word because we can’t think of anything more mellifluous. It rules us with an iron fist. It knows we hate it and it ENJOYS BEING HATED. “Tight-Knit” is the masochist of words. Words like “bound” or “close” or “joined” or “unified” simply do not mean the same thing.

Like being swabbed for gonorrhea, I need it but I hate it.

OCD

I am a clean guy. I like my room to be tidy, my hallway to be swept, and my kitchen to be insect-free. But there are those that would accuse me of “being OCD”. This acronym, which once stood for “obsessive-compulsive disorder”, is now a simple stand-in for cleanliness, perpetrated by the denizens of filth, sloth, and ignorance.

As humans, we are surrounded by obsessions and by compulsions. We are compelled to eat. Some of us are a little obsessed with vaginas, others with penises, a rare few with little boys. Some people are obsessed with heroin, and compulsively inject it into their veins. And minor obsessions with specific numbers, or even/odd numbers are very common. But you wouldn’t call any of these people “OCD”. They’re just people!

OCD is, as a matter of fact, a medically diagnosable anxiety disorder in which a person, overcome by anxiety and thoughts, compulsively behaves in a way that is disruptive to his life or the lives of others. Jack Nicholson in “As Good As It Gets” was a fine demonstration of OCD. Obsessions with numbers and germs, hoarding, checking and rechecking things, repeated hand-washing, can be OCD behaviors. Even obsessions with specific thoughts, which disrupt easy functioning, might be diagnosed as OCD.

But sweeping your floors now and then, wiping up after you’ve been cooking, putting away your dishes and organizing your books are NOT demonstrations of obsessive-compulsive disorder unless they interfere with, that is, DISORDER, one’s life.

Thank you. Please leave me alone now forever.

Have a Good One

Have a good what, asshole? A good day? A good life? A good diarrhea? What on Earth is this noisy air that escapes your lungs every time you walk away? And who taught you to talk to strangers, or worse, your friends, like such a turd?

What ever happened to “good bye”? It used to be “God be with ye” so it has pedigree. Or how about bringing back “good morning” or “good evening” on parting?

Hell, just give me the finger when you leave. Or punch me in the forehead, or spit on me. Custom-make every parting word. I can’t stand being so easily dismissed from the docket of your attention. When someone says “have a good one” I know they were never really listening to me, that they never cared half a shit for my existence.

You are instantly my enemies, all of you. Have a good diarrhea.

Irony / Ironic

“Irony” has been a word I hated for a long time, but it’s almost TOO BIG now to blog about. The problems with this word are almost too egregious and too numerous to do justice to it. Nonetheless, it screams out for an entry here, if only to put me on record as anti-irony.

Certainly, we are all aware, even those among us us who still call things “ironic”, and those knuckle-dragging troglodytes who think they are using “irony” ironically, that this word has been abused and abused and abused like I abused my grandmother. (Relax, it was the 90′s…it’s what everybody did in the 90′s–abuse their grandparents. I know that doesn’t make it right but it FELT right.) It isn’t even worth explaining the definition of the word here because it is clear that this word is nearly devoid of meaning–when people can use it to simply describe something bad, or merely interesting, that happened. Perhaps it needs to be totally stricken from our lexicon. There is no use trying to fix a word that is totaled.

So my question then becomes, what do we need to do to remove a word from public usage? We can stop using it ourselves, of course, and encourage others to do the same. And when someone around us, say an acquaintance or close relative uses this word, we can ignore them, or hit them, or stab them in the penis or vagina with a piece of glass. If they are a talking dog, we can stab them in the dog penis or dog vagina. Parrots should be thrown into the sea and chimpanzees who can sign “irony” should be fired out of a cannon, also into the sea, but a different sea from the parrots because we wouldn’t want them procreating and creating an underwater master race of parronkeymen and parronkeymaids who take over the world and put us in cages. Because that would be ironic! :P

Meta

People, listen up and listen good. “Meta” is not an adjective. It is a prefix which can take one of two meanings:

  • connected with a change of position or state
    • metamorphosis
    • metabolism
  • higher; beyond
    • metaphysics
    • metalanguage

But now some people have decided it would be a good idea to take this PREFIX and turn it into its own WORD, because apparently “arcane” and “esoteric” and “abstruse” aren’t enough for them. “Meta” is supposedly used when you’re talking about talking, or thinking about thinking, or masturbating to pictures of people masturbating, or strangling your father. It is supposed to refer to some secord-order processing, but really it just sounds fucking shitty. It is pop lexicon.

The next person who says “That’s so meta” is getting an ice pick up the urethra. If said person is male-bodied and has a boner, then down the urethra.