Just finished..

writing an em. That is, an email.. pronounced "eem". It seemed like a logical way of saying it being a person who is naturally drawn to shortening words, like many out there in this day and age. Makes me wonder why it hasn't caught on yet. I think it should. It sounds kind of obnoxious and annoying but I reckon people would get used to it. If I say it and write it and generally use it a lot, maybe it will. And it will be all because of me.

I may achieve nothing else during this lifetime, but if I get a couple of people to occasionally use a shortened version of an oft used word, it's better than nothing.

Even better then the others!

I've just added another nerdy annoyance (nerdinoyance, nerdannoyance?) to my list of peeves re spelling and grammar and use of similar but obviously wrong words in particular contexts that are depressingly common.

Can you guess what it is? I've probably already mentioned vexation with unnecessary apostrophes, you're/your etc.. loose for lose, speach, rediculous..

This is even more annoying then those. Well not more annoying then them, it's as annoying as those others.

...........

Yeah.. then/than.. not the same word people!

For instance:

"I got off the tram, and then I realized I didn't have my wallet on me."

is correct..

"This pasta is even better then the one my grandmother makes!"

is incorrect... it should read

"This pasta is even better than the one my grandmother makes!"

See the difference?

*takes off nitpicky hat, goes back to being inarticulate slob who probably says a hundred things a day to piss off even more wordnerdy people*

Like.. real bad and stuff.

Is the word egregious suddenly really popular with people who want to sound quite clever and therefore used a lot.. enough more than some vague time summed up as "before" for it to be noticeable, or am I just imagining that it is, based on the fact that I never really paid attention before.. or for some other reason? Well?

I dunno.. it's possible.. either one that is.. I mean, words do come in and out of fashion.. one that doesn't seem to be used nearly enough is palaver.. though it was used by at least one person today... and was named word of the day by another (I assume another person... the person who heard it from the aforementioned other.. I imagine) so it's not completely forgotten.. if indeed there was ever a danger of that.

I don't know if I would use egregious in any particular setting.. there are many other words to use in the instance one would use said word.. heinous, nefarious.. notorious.. many others.. appropriateness to the situation depending on the situation of course.. and all of those sound so much mor dramatic and... more better.. kinda :) but I think I'd use insufferable. Now there's a word that's rarely used.. these days.. and it's a crying shame.. scandalous really!

*goes about saying "insufferable* a lot*

Sounds rude doesn't it?

I speak of the word ablaut, a recent Word o the day that caught my attention. Of course, when I say it sounds rude, I don't mean it sounds rude in the sense that it "sounds rude", I mean that it sounds rude to me (to whom almost everything sounds rude) particularly, and even more so when coupled with it's meaning, which is "vowel change".

you know, it sounds sorta like... oh nevermind..

The more detailed meaning is:

the systematic substitution of one root vowel sound for another in different inflectional forms or derivatives of a word, as in ring, rang, rung

so there you go. It's the kind of word I'd like to be clever enough to use in regular conversation, but I'm afraid I'm not.

Another word I really love, and I love in the sense that I fucking hate, is "literally". The word itself is inoffensive, but the problem is the way it's used, but strangely enough it never really hit me why it bothered me so much, I always thought it was just that it's so overused, but I realized now that it's because it's mostly used incorrectly, "I literally died", "I've seen it literally millions of times", "the sea literally sang to me" etc etc etc.. Imagine that! All this time I've been oblivious to a major kind of inappropriate word usage... of course, I must have always been subconsciously aware of it, I was just protecting myself from the true extent of the horror... if I hadn't blocked it out I'd have been forced to realize that the person in front of me hadn't died, etc because it was either impossible or extremely unlikely and GODDAMMIT IT'S NOT SUPPOSED TO BE USED TO EMPHASISE YOUR POINT and gotten quite peeved.. grrrr.. it literally makes my blood boil.

Ok no, I don't mean that in the sense of it's actual meaning.. ie what really occurred. Actually it's not even true if you take into account I'm using the word "literally" in the common incorrect way, which would make the meaning really "really" angry. The meaning of that sentence can be understood if you know I'm using that word in the common incorrect usage and heavily exaggerating all of it.

Ok, let's say some of the time I hear it (the word "literally" use incorrectly) I don't even notice. Some of the time I hear it get mildly annoyed, out of some of those times I get slightly more than mildly annoyed. Some of the times I'm amused, and out of those times some of those times I'm inspired to write something about it, and out of those times, some of them.. at least one, I put it on my blog.

And that's it. Literally. If I was a kiwi I would say it more like "luterally" depending on how you read those vowels. Of course if you're from New Zealand and reading this, it sounds more like "literally".

I'm not sure if that was an ablaut or not.. was ablaut, if I just ablauted, I just did an ablaut. Whatever.

And that's a wrap..

Or is it rap? In any case I believe that's a stupid question which should suffice this Tuesday.. and I'm sure no one ever asks that.

I'm not sure if it's finished finished, but my part in it finished quite early today. I suppose I did all right. Again I had to express fright, anxiety and all that without speaking, I had to tiptoe very slowly and carefully down the stairs and look out the front door with a stupid smile on my face, not sure how that's gonna look, I was doing that while an extreme closeup was being taken, or was it just a bog standard one.. don't remember, either is close enough when one is being specifically directed to smile more.. and one can only turn the edges of one's mouth up at such a direction. Not exactly natural is all I'm saying.

And yes, "bog standard" is an industry term :)

So the knell tolled on my contribution to the film and I walked out into the aestival street, and visited my kitty friends, who were there to greet me, as if they'd been given a philter by.. er, someone who was inclined to do that sort of thing.

I believe I used those words extremely ill, but it's my way of making up for yesterday.

Funny but stupid report of the day

A great writer recently noted that as bloggers we have a wealth of material out there at our fingertips to link to when we're on an off day/month/year and aren't in the frame of mind for real writing. Of course, I'm above this sort of thing and usually stick a photo up when I haven't written anything for a while, I only link such items when I feel they are worthy, it has to be really silly to tempt me. Fortunately that's not too difficult to find.

The American Family Association, as the name suggests is a right wing Christian organization that wants to make everyone Christian by law, kill all the gays and make all women pregnant. All right there's a little bit more to them than that, mostly to do with warmongering, but that's the gist of it.

They have a news feed, where you can read news through their special "family" filter.. (ok I just made that up) and read only things that are suitable for good christians to read, with certain words edited so that the proper word replaces it, I assume it's to get rid of any dirty words or such things, though I'm not sure how many profanities will be in news articles.. oh wait.. there is one gay, the word gay is naughty to christianists.. or not so much naughty as used the wrong way. Gay is supposed to mean happy, and not entirely disgusting and despicable and wrong in every way, and we know that the liberal media incorrectly uses it to mean what shall not be mentioned, so that when the word "gay" shows up in an article, it is replaced by the correct word "homosexual" which, we all know, means entirely disgusting and despicable and wrong in every way. And you get stuff like this...

Tyson Homosexual easily won his semifinal for the 100 meters at the U.S. Olympic
track and field trials and seemed to save something for the final later Sunday.
His wind-aided 9.85 seconds was a fairly cut-and-dry performance compared to what happened a day earlier. On Saturday, Homosexual misjudged the finish in his opening heat and had to scramble to finish fourth, then in his quarterfinal a couple of hours later, ran 9.77 to break the American record that had stood since 1999. […]
Homosexual didn’t get off to a particularly strong start in the first semifinal, but by the halfway mark he had established a comfortable lead. He slowed somewhat over the final 10 meters-nothing like the way-too-soon complete shutdown that almost cost him Saturday. Asked how he felt, Homosexual said: “A little fatigued.”

Yeah.. I bet he was fatigued :)

Fucking weirdos.