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Peccadillos

When the English language was created by God (around 4,000) years ago, He never meant for words like this to infect His perfect creation, which is in the image of His own language. But then in the 16th century, some lame-o needed attention and started talking about “peccadillos” when “flaws” or “small sins” would work just as well without taking up so much of our time listening to it. “Peccadillos” is merely the random belching of the vapors of a small mind that believes itself to be a large mind. And I refuse to even let the word “peccadillos” outside the protective barrier of double-quotes. Come to think of it, I should be double or triple-bagging for this filthy whore of a word, “”"peccadillos”"”.

That will protect me from word herpes.

Posted 13 April 2009 † Christopher § Getting Attention § Nouns § Too Long ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged:

Velvet / Velveteen

I have posted these together because they both suffer the same problem: poets love them. And not just hack poets, either. Respectable, even professional poets spew “velveteen” like it was “gossamer”. I have no idea what the poetic obsession with these words are. Velvet is a fabric. At one point, it was a beautiful, luxurious, expensive fabric. But now that it can be produced by machine, using synthetic materials, and that it can be PAINTED ON, it’s just shit like everything else. If you own anything made of velvet that wasn’t created before, say, the Spanish Civil War, you may find wiping your baby’s ass is a better use for it.

And “velveteen”? That’s also a fabric…an IMITATION of velvet! Isn’t the world already burdened with a enough SUCK?

Yet poets hang on to these words as if they still have any relevance or beauty.

At least we can take consolation in the fact that “velvet” and “veleveteen” are strikingly similar to “Velveeta”. So every time you read a poem that uses the words “velvet” or “velveteen”, say “Velveeta” instead, and give the poet what he/she deserves. Imitation CHEESE.

Posted 08 April 2009 † Christopher § Nouns § Overused § Poetry ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: , ,

Remiss

Remiss is a needy needy word, at least in modern spoken English. I’m sure at some point years ago people actually used “remiss” on its own, actually using it to describe a state of carelessness or negligence. In fact, this definition lives on in its very useful offspring, remission.

But today, people do not say “remiss” without also saying “I would be…if I didn’t” as in “I would be remiss if I didn’t…”. Remiss needs SIX other words to survive. And there are many perfectly good substitutes that can be used almost interchangeably:

  • negligent
  • derelict
  • thoughtless
  • careless

“Remiss” is on life support. It has lost all or most of its meaning and is only kept alive by the will of the words that surround it. I say it is time to let it go.

Posted 06 April 2009 † Christopher § Adjectives § Needy ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: , , ,

Literally

This one almost goes without saying. “Literally” is quite literally the most bastardized word in the English language. It literally makes me vomit. You will literally grow a penis out of your face and die if you say it.

You see what’s going on here? The real meaning of “literally” has been destroyed. Sometimes, this is a wonderful thing. Words need to evolve and change as society evolves and changes. But the real meaning of “literally” is being pummeled by ignorami, who seek to turn it into a glorified “certainly”.

This word has been around a long time, too. It’s etymology has the same Latin root as “letter”, and its meaning — “taking words in their natural meaning” — has been the same for hundreds and hundreds of years. And now, in literally the time it takes for a fart to travel from your asshole to your face, it has been destroyed.

I wouldn’t be so bothered if there was another word to use in its place, but I haven’t been able to find one. When a word is both useful and unique, the destruction of its meaning can actually destroy the very idea it represents. With no literal meaning, words can mean whatever we want them to mean. The death of “literally” is literally the death of language, and by extension, the death of thought.

Damn you postmodernism! I am literally farting with anger!

Posted 30 March 2009 † Christopher § Adverbs § Meaningless ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged:

Sanguine

This word does not deserve to exist. In the US, everyone learns it when studying for the SATs. It has no other usefulness in our language than tripping up vacuous high school juniors. And that’s a pretty shitty life for any word.

The problem with this word is that it sounds nothing like its meaning. Here’s the Random House definition:

cheerfully optimistic, hopeful, or confident

WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG. Here’s what sanguine SHOULD mean:

sad, sour, and under the weather, as if in mourning

Instead, it means the opposite of this. And the etymology of this word only adds to the confusion. From the Latin sanguineus, meaning “of blood”. How in hell did that turn into “cheerfully optimistic”? Most of the time when there’s blood all over the place, we are not particularly hopeful or confident. Unless you’re a vampire. When someone uses this word in a sentence that ISN’T about standardized testing, I know I’m talking to a dickhead.

“Sanguine” should be totally stricken from the English language. I hereby renounce it. If a person uses this word when speaking to me, I will hear nothing but dead air.

Posted 28 March 2009 † Christopher § Adjectives § Doesn't Match Meaning § SATs ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged:

AIDS

Technically, it’s an acronym

  • Acquired ImmunoDeficiency Syndrome

…but after almost 30 years with it rattling around in our lives (and for some of us, our bloodstream) it’s really a word. Sort of like what happened to XEROX (Xygomorphic Endospectral Reproduction Of eXtra pages). When it was first being reported and researched, the disease was given a series of names, including

  • Gay-related Immune Deficiency (GRID)
  • Gay cancer
  • The 4H Disease (Haitians, homosexuals, hemophiliacs, and heroin users)
  • (I did not make these up…Aren’t people, like, total freaking retards?)

In light of these circumstances, it’s not so bad that we got stuck with AIDS. The story behind it is kind of lame, though; it was proposed at a CDC meeting in 1982 and they accepted it. But did no one at that CDC meeting stand up and point out that the WORD “aid” means “to help”? AIDS doesn’t help you do anything but die! And not a good death, either! A horrible death!

This is why the sciences needs more poets. The science and epidemiological community must have had a hunch that AIDS might turn into an epidemic; couldn’t they have given it a name with some gravitas? Maybe “the cannibal virus” or “T-cell armageddon syndrome”. Something to actually scare us!

They did smarten up after this mistake, though. That’s how we got “flesh-eating virus”, “mad cow disease”, and “Ebola”. Ebola sounds horrible, and it is. Maybe it didn’t pan out as they hoped, but at least it was named right just in case (of course, they have made mistakes anyway…remember “bird flu”? Really? Bird flu? Do I have to worry now about a blue jay sneezing on me? Gimme a break!)

Posted 18 March 2009 † Christopher § Acronyms § Doesn't Match Meaning ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: , ,

Aubergine

Okay, I get it. You think you’re better than everyone else. Only a pleb would dare use such lowbrow words as “eggplant”. You like to pretend you can speak French because you took a class in college and now you have some tapes.

But you’re in America now. And in America, people who try to act all high class and snooty get the guillotine. I mean the…er…Chop-o-Matic 5000. And don’t give me that crap about how “eggplant” only refers to the “white variety of aubergine”. Until I actually see one on sale at the Wal-Mart Supercenter for less that $0.99/lb, it will remain a theoretical vegetable. If I’m going to eat my vegetables, I want them cheap, and in English. Also, who’s ever heard of an “aubergine parmesan”? Not me.

Can’t bring yourself to call it an eggplant? Then get the hell out of my country, you communist. Move up to Canada. They love pretentious assholes like you who think the British Royal Family is still paying attention. Go have your aubergines and your colOURs and affordable health care and leave me alone. I hate you.

Posted 15 March 2009 † Christopher § Nouns § Pretentious § Sounding Snooty ‡ Comments (1) ° Tagged: ,

Necessary

I am quite serious when I say no other word in the English language gives me so much trouble for spelling. I hope I am not the only idiot who cannot fucking spell this word. And it’s not like this is “wankel-rotary engine” (which I confess I probably use MORE), this is NECESSARY. The word itself describes its own usefulness. We NEED it.

But I always want to write “necesarry”. It’s within the unwritten “rules” of English, if there are any, which there aren’t. I could write “neseserrie” and it’s still okay.

The trouble comes with that double-S single-R at the end. I seem to be addicted to the -arry spelling of the AR-e sound, as in “carry” and “marry”. What makes me feel supremely dumb is when I pull out my rhyming dictionary (just now) and find there seem to be a lot more words that end in -ary, words such as “scary”, “binary”, “arbitrary”, “fiduciary”, and even other loved words, like “supernumerary” and “eleemosynary“.

“Necesarry” still looks okay to me. Can’t I please get away with misspelling this word without feeling like a doofus? I can spell everything else…Doesn’t everybody get one?

Posted 14 March 2009 † Christopher § Adjectives § Spelling ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged:

Going Forward

I work days in a nice quiet office. One of the favorite expressions used in any meeting is “going forward”, because it makes you sound more business-y. If you’ve never heard this expression, get ready to shield your keyboard from the barfspray. “Going forward” is used to indicate action that is to be taken in the future, starting from the present moment. It is like saying “will”, as in “I will, she will, we will”, but with additional authority. It is completely redundant and accomplishes nothing except making dumb people think they’re being more dynamic and intelligent because they’re using more words in a single sentence.

So instead of saying

We would like you to sort your submissions by account number.

or

We would like you to sort your submissions by account number from now on.

they say

Going forward, we would like you to sort your submissions by account number.

or

We would like you to sort your submissions by account number going forward.

What makes it horrendously awful is not just its stupid redundancy, but also that it implies that we can also go backward in time. Of course, we can only ever go forward in time, so it makes the person saying this twice as stupid as they’ve ever been.

Worst of all, this expression is contagious. It’s like “like” for adults, and I’ve heard it so many times that even I find myself saying it. When you see everyone else using it and having such a good time, you can’t help but try it a few times. Like crystal meth.

The only way to kill “going forward” is to use it at inappropriate times so everyone realizes how idiotic it sounds. For example:

If you don’t shut your damn mouth going forward, I might have to shut it for you going forward!

I bought a used van last week. Going forward, it runs great, but going backward, it stalls. So, going forward, I plan to always test drive my vans both going forward and going backward. That way, going forward, I won’t have these problems going backward.

We had our second child together last month. The last kid turned out so badly that, going forward, we plan to beat the new kid a lot more.

Posted 12 March 2009 † Christopher § Expressions § Redundant ‡ Comments (2) ° Tagged:

Brouhaha

Perhaps this word was considered clever in medieval France (from where supposedly it originates) but anyone who uses this word today is, simply put, asking for pain. There is just no excuse for using this word. It’s not funny. It never was funny and no matter how many times you say it, will never be funny. And if you tell me no other word correctly describes a “brouhaha” I will twist your face off and feed it to the fucking vultures.

Words to use instead of brouhaha:

  • commotion
  • disturbance
  • flap
  • furor
  • pandemonium (!)
  • turmoil
  • uproar

Words that are actually WORSE than brouhaha:

  • kerfuffle
Posted 11 March 2009 † Christopher § Nouns § Trying to be Funny ‡ Comments (1) ° Tagged:

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