I like to think of myself as a laid-back sort of guy. I suppose this isn't saying much. Even the folks who don't think of themselves as laissez-faire people consider themselves demanding, competitive, go-getter types. I suspect that few folks prefer to think of themselves as uptight assholes, the sort of person who can sit on a penny and then draw 22-gauge copper wire out of their ass.
So it's with a certain disappointment that I find my sensibilities assaulted by stuff that I really should just let wash over me and drain back down into the sigmoid of the planet where it belongs. However, although the vast majority of folks are too busy scarfing their Protein Style Double-Doubles to even consider these things let alone be annoyed by them, I can't help but point them out, for they are bad and they piss me off.
What niggling tiny thing has set me on the warpath with a brace of pistols strapped to my chest and smoking matches under my hat? Ignorant and lazy use of the damned language, that's what.
One of my first encounters with English butchery occurred in Orange County, California. I'm not referring to Fox's fucked-up "faerie lond" of The OC. I'm talking about the Newport Beach that hadn't had all of its working fishing harbor grime burnished off with handfuls of cash. I'm thinking about the Costa Mesa and Santa Ana that still had bean fields. Anyhoo, there's a town tucked into the northwest corner of the county called Westminster. Pretty simple, you'd think. Surely you've heard of Westminster Abbey. I grew up with a hanging clock that struck the Westminster Chimes. I took this stuff for granted. Then one fateful day I heard someone refer to the town as Westmin-i-ster. Apparently, too many folks in Orange County are going for some sort of hat trick of stupidity by combining illiteracy, blindness, and ignorance into a big, grey, lumpy mass. I suppose the "minster" part does sound a bit like "minister", but holy cow folks, there's a reason why folks snigger when you mention that your grandmother suffers from chest pains and has to take medication for her vagina. It's called a malaprop. Even if it sort of sounds like another word, I would hope that you'd be worldly enough to recognize the word for what it is. My hope is in vain. Folks in England probably don't have to deal too much with this. For a country that can agree on wacky pronunciations for Gloucester, Happisburgh, Wymondham, Costessey, Worcester, and Leicestershire, Westminster is a cinch.
Next up on the cavalcade of annoying crap: the dropped terminal T.
At certain times of the year, every year, I find myself gripping the steering wheel a little tighter than usual as I grate my teeth to the advertisements on the radio. The whole planet is on a mad search for that one perfect thing, the item that you purchase and give to another, that ideal gif that communicates exactly how considerate and thoughtful you are. The kids rush out as early as they can, still rubbing the sleep from their eyes, and descend on the pile of gifs under the tree. At work, we all endure the inevitable white elephant gif exchange for a chance to see the CEO with a Cheesehead foam hat on his head or a douche bag tube up his ass. Department stores prattle on and on about all the special gifs that they include with a minimum purchase of $1600 worth of worthless crap designed to make you look like a department store mannequin and smell like a French cathouse. Somewhere there's a Unisys patent lawyer who's about to shit herself over the potential licensing proceeds of all these gifs. Too bad you can't tell if people are talking about GIFs or gifts because everyone is too fucking lazy to flick their tongue into a voiceless alveolar stop.
Then there's the weather report, where some goon with epoxied hair tells me all about the tempatures that our area is going to be experiencing. Tempatures? Where in hell did the R go? Now, I'm not such a prig to extend the word out to four syllables, but I at least make an attempt at homage to that threatened R. I end up saying something more like temprature. See? I'm not perfect, but at least I'm not as obviously stunted as the rest of them.
Just the other day, I listened to an ad for Safeway's Rancher's Reserve hunks beef. Some slightly retarded, drawling, Western-sounding announcer insisted that Safeway's gobbets of bovine flesh are oways tender and oways juicy. Oways. Singing: "Oh, ahhh-eee-ahhh-eee-ahhh will oways love yoo-eee-ooo-eee-ooo". Commence screaming now.
I realize that language has a large subjective component. Language changes and thank goodness it does or we'd all be pronouncing everything in "daughter" and "knight" or speaking Proto-Indo-European or something really wacky like having a special word for a letter of the alphabet, like "zed", and yet failing to use it where it is so obviously needed: realise, harmonise, ad nauseam.
Nobody's perfect. Like I said, if I were closer to perfection, these silly things would not leave even the slightest mark. In the meantime, I'll be weeping all hunched over in this corner here.
Pakeha