Grammar Nazi strikes again

Pet peeve: when people use words that sound similar to the word they really mean. Eg. mutilate when they mean mutate. Means a totally different thing. Elevate and relegate. If I ask you what the hell you mean, don’t get mad at me! You’re the one who is too lazy to think of the right word or use one that has less syllables because you’re too busy trying to sound smart.

Also: double negatives. Saying it twice negates the negative dumbass! It doesn’t make it more negative. Example: I haven’t got none. Not only does it make you sound like a hayseed, it means the exact opposite of what you really mean. The worst? Irregardless.

Want a lesson in prefixes and suffixes?? Too bad.

The prefix ir- means “not” (Just like the prefixes in- il- and im-) i.e. Irresponsible literally means ‘not responsible’. Inconceivable, immature follow the same pattern. “Irregard” does not follow the same logic, nor would you ever find someone using it in normal speech because IT IS NOT A WORD. You’d probably hear disregard instead, since the prefix dis- actually means: the reverse of. Dystopia, disarm, disability, disfunction… you get the picture.

the suffix -less literally means ‘lack of’. Following that, harmless = lack of harm. Regardless = lack of regard.

irregardless = a double negative and should not even exist in your vocabulary.

Bottom line: If it comes out of George W.’s mouth on a regular basis then it probably shouldn’t be coming out of yours.

/rant

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the irony is killing me

As if life weren’t complicated enough… It seems that every time I sit down, or turn around, or even think about doing something for myself for a change, the world hands me a pile of extra shit to deal with. It’s like “oh, you’re stressed? Well, I think you can handle THIS too!” and shovels all sorts of crap at me. Right now, suffice it to say that I’m finding life to be a bit overwhelming. I have a list and its longer than I will get into here but it can be borken into categories.

School: The list of all the little things I need to do is shorter now, there are only 2 things left and one is proving to be an extreme pain in the arse. Moving: the how, where, when and what of that is all up in the air and that makes me anxious. Not the least of which is how to get the cats over there with the minimum angst. Teenager and her particular curve ball at this moment (which is the source of my toxic irony). I have that image of Jack Bristow in Alias staring Vaughn down and saying “One thing you’re not, is wise,” before turning and stomping off to save his daughter. Then there is J and his health and my inordinate tendency to worry. And then there’s work.

Fuck… I need a holiday.

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I’m spinning it tight…

I was going to write a blog about how I detest some of the programming that’s on TV – how I think reality TV is watchable only in a train wreck sense: how it’s impossible to tear your eyes away even though you know that some television network is exploiting people for money, and that those same people are allowing themselves to be exploited for money and or whatever dubious fame they can achieve. It’s sick. And it’s a symptom of just how sick our world is. What’s next? A reality TV show following the next teen gunman? How far is too far? How desensitised can we be to violence, mistreatment and exploitation before we lose our core humanity?

Bre was watching Robot Chicken the other night and the disclaimer at the beginning said that it was for 18+ and I said off hand that she should probably not be watching it then and she threw me attitude. She doesn’t even get all the jokes and every other frame has someone being raped, beaten, stabbed or otherwise killed and/or humiliated, albeit in cartoon fashion. I remember when people were upset about the violence in bugs bunny. We have lost our subtlety

Granted I’m not one for censorship; people should be allowed to express their feelings and show how they see the world as they see fit. I’m an advocate of free speech – but at the same time I’m worried about how much is too much. There is a line whether we like it or not and mass media has left it far, far behind because sensation sells.

For instance, the kid who committed suicide on a webcam –what led him to such drastic measures for attention? How can a kid think that shooting everyone in his school will somehow end his pain? How does a man just decide to decapitate the man sitting next to him on a bus? Where did we get so disconnected? (No, I’m not blaming mass media for these behaviours any more than I can blame a violent video game - it’s how people process the input that causes the rift, the disassociation if you please - and there does not seem to be the tools available to help people differentiate and/or make sense of the crap versus the not-crap - or rather the people to teach these differences and supply the tools.)

I can see a prime example in teenagers today. Parents are either too self-absorbed or too busy to pay much more than the cursory attention to thier children. They end up appeasing thier guilt and/or the kids with gifts and bribes and by letting them get away with the most outrageous of behaviour, and now these kids have this sense of entitlement that seems to be a trademark of the generation. That’s oversimplifying, I know but the fault lies in thier upbringing, more than on the state of the universe. Though mass media: the Internet, TV, you name it, feeds the consumer tendency, that doesn’t mean anyone has to buy into it. But because it’s there and it’s so prevalant and, for the most part, unregulated by parents… they watch things they don’t entirely have the capacity to deconstruct in a useful manner and where does that leave them? (And if not regulated, then parents are not taking the time to deconstruct or interpret the content with these kids - I tell you I’ve had some interesting conversations about Robot Chicken recently…)

Why is it so hard to give each other attention? That’s all we really want and need at the end of the day: to feel loved and appreciated by someone. When we don’t get that we feel less than ourselves. Am I wrong? I don’t think so.

So we look outside of ourselves to reinforce the way we feel about ourselves. If we don’t have people to do this for us we turn to food, alcohol, drugs, media, to make us feel better. Food to fill the void, alcohol and drugs to alter our emotional state – though that never lasts for long- media because there’s always some poor sap who’s worse off than we are. It’s a weird kind of one-upmanship.

Whatever happened to those feel-good programs? You know, like ‘on the road again’ and such, where the host would visit these people with extraordinary tales of survival, creativity and accomplishment. I miss those! Where is our pride? We’re a mess, people.

listening to: Tori Amos - Strong Black Vine

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