End of the year mini-rant:
I realized the other day that words like "veggies" have made their way into the mainstream. It isn't often you hear someone actually utter the full word "vegetables" anymore, have you noticed? Even waitstaff, giving you the rundown on the dinner specials, will call them "veggies." Am I two? Do they come with ranch for dipping?
I saw an interview recently that said even Scarlett Johansson hates the whole ScarJo thing. Maybe JLo thought it was cool back when she was a fly girl, but can we be over this now? Our parents gave us names for a reason. They spent months arguing over just the right moniker for your little toothless self. If you're going to have a nickname, have one that we can all appreciate. Like "Duckie."
We have a generation of people who can't spell, and it isn't because of a rampant illiteracy problem or some No Child Left Behind hullaballoo. U no who u r. Unless you are a shortish, extremely talented gentleman with a purple suit and a penchant for girlfriends with names like Mayte or Vanity, you need to learn to write out entire words. Pls.
Do you see the common theme in my rant? I guess it is because I grew up in the '80s, when we threw in extra words just to be cute--I mean, rad. What-EVAR. Totally awesome. Totally. See? We liked it so much we said it twice. We just had more of everything in the '80s. More hair. More makeup. More synthesizers. Oh wait--scratch that last one. I forgot about Will.i.am.
I was a journalism major way back in the day. I think we are nearly obsolete now. But then, we were taught that USA Today was the enemy--everything was getting fed to us in graphs and bites, no one wanted to read a whole news story anymore, people just wanted the highlights. Now we only want the highlights of the highlights.
Maybe I'm the oddball. I love words, how different people--next door or worlds apart--can string together 26 letters in new ways every time, and come up with something beautiful, or sad, or passionate, or inspiring. I love the way they make you think, make you believe, transport you.
I could go on and on, but I'm way over my 140 characters. So I'm off like a dirty shirt.
Totally.
