Monday, April 19, 2010

Truculent @ 45


Today is my birthday and i'm forty-five years old. My sense of humor betrays me as the phrase, and that about sums me up, screams for me to splice it to the end of the first sentence. Truly, is that how i feel? Is that the value i place upon myself? Well, i just don't know. I'm beginning to believe "not knowing" is the stem from which i wilt.

I want to go fly fishing again.

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

A few notes on the Language

I must have been in my playpen, forty some-odd years ago, when the phrase "It's not what you said, it's the way you said it" was introduced to my lexicon. Perhaps, there are those of you that would prefer i use the term Broca's Area, but either way it's where we store our language. The interesting part of this is in the transport and delivery of language. Don't let me lose you, yet! This isn't going to be one of those dry academic things, more to the point it's going to be a quick examination of some language oddities that are on my mind. Oh Boy! I used the word quick didn't i?? Well, like the man said, "You get what you pay for." Back to, it's not what you said, it was the way you said it. Since the transport of our language is a living being, so must our language also be a living being. For instance the devolution of expletives for happiness or joy: sweet, dope, fly, awesome, cool, far out, peaches, berries, capital, and the like. Ah would a rose by any other name... Okay, so chalk that one up to generational catch phrases. How about the way technology has effected the language. if you misspell emulate (to mimic or attempt to pay homage to) you will end up with immolate (to destroy, usually by fire) another good one is rife (meaning a great amount of) and you get ripe (ready for harvest). These two can have overlapping contextual agreement. One could use either word to describe a quantity. Finally, we come to ascetic and aesthetic. The former is a person who trains in self denial and mortification and the latter is of beauty and what's pleasing to the eye. I'm not even sure i can find a parallel for those. Make no mistake, i'm not an English snob. If you look for grammatical problems in my writing, i promise you'll find them. I am the King of the Comma Splice.


All of this has been merely prologue to a few of my personal pet peeves. These are in no particular order and i hope you get some kind of giggle out of these. First off there is "alot". Alot is not a word. It is two and as two it doesn't mean many or several. However, many and several do substitute for alot just fine. Next, I want to remind y'all that y'all is spelled y'all. The argument has been made that y'all isn't a word either and the only reason it is in the dictionary is for common usage. WRONG! If you want to blame someone for y'all, then blame Queen Isabella of Spain. She needed to unite her country and commissioned a man named Nebrija to write the first Grammar. It is in this the Spanish form of the, plural and singular(in some cases) second person pronoun (you) (vosotros) was set down and hence, y'all is ours through assimilation.


Which leads me to my favorite email of the week. Yes! i'm telling secrets out of school.


I received the following:


Dude like my bff and me was hangin at the park just kickin and like her genes ript omg so funny cause her azz wuz hangin out and everything can you sew up her azz call me


In a word, WOW!!! I don't know if they need a geneticist or a seamster. So, i replied to my little friend with the following:


Dude, If she's over eighteen and has a good personality, bring her over and let me see if i can get her under the presser foot.


Remember, it's not what you say, but how you say it. I wonder if she'll want quilting stitches on her azz.......Y'all be great, D