Thursday, June 21, 2007

ten *more* grammatical things you do that piss the world off

first motherfrickety things first: i'm not dead. i just found things other than blogging to do for awhile, but it turns out that working retail for slave pennies and going through the not-very-well-thought-out motions of a not-even-a-relationship-at-all-but-hey-there's-sex-type-stuff-sometimes (okay i abused the dashes, stop pretending you're better than me for noticing) are not exactly as fulfilling as ranting my pretty little heart out in this wee corner of the information highway.

second things secondly: okay. i did a post about this before, but apparently it has done nothing, NOTHING, to calm the denizens of twittermonkeys out there who still rape the english language like a viking with viagra. SERIOUSLY PEOPLE. LISTEN THE HELL UP BECAUSE I WILL RIP YOU A NEW RECTAL EXIT IF YOU DON'T STOP ABUSING GRAMMAR, SPELLING, AND GENERAL INTELLIGENCE. LOOK, YOU'VE MADE ME SO MAD I'VE RESORTED TO CAPS LOCK AND THIS TIME IT'S NOT BECAUSE MY WIRELESS KEYBOARD FROZE. I'M ACTUALLY JUST MAD AT YOU. AND I KNOW THIS IS TOTALLY AN INTERNET ETIQUTTE THING I'M VIOLATING BUT YOU KNOW WHAT? FUCK YOU PEOPLE, I'M GETTING DOWN ON YOUR LEVEL SO THAT YOU MIGHT UNDERSTAND ME. ZOMGS OH NOES!!!1!!1~ U CANT HAZ CHEEZBURGER, MOTHERFUCKERS. (look it up, i'm not linking.)

anyway, here are

10 MORE things you do in the world of grammar to piss me off, and probably the rest of the learned world as well, so shut the fuck up and take one for the literate team, you jerkholes

1. noone
what the fuck is wrong with you? no, seriously. i want to know. since when did 'nobody' and 'the middle point of the day' basically turn into the same word save for that scrappy little e that just comes out of nowhere like a rogue vowel vanna white is gonna chase down and beat to death with one of her spangly earrings? honestly, you people are idiots. did you pass 4th grade? did you read? ever? even a smidge? then i trust you know it goes like this:

nobody = no one. one being synonymous with 'a person'. no denoting lack thereof. hence, nobody being around? no people? maybe you think no one is watching you make a big ass of yourself when you spell it out as 'noon' with an e like an absolute dipshit. it has never been 'noone' and never will be 'noone', it will never ever EVER IN THE PAST PRESENT AND FUTURE TENSE OF THE HISTORY OF LANGUAGE BE NOONE, you doucheling. where did this come from? seriously it's like everybody woke up one day and decided, "hey, you know that space between the two words that make up 'no one'? fuck it! SPACEWASTER!" congratulations, you're all wrong, and the prize for being wrong is a trip to singapore. and they use canes.

2. woman/women as an adjective
oh, there is no vat large enough in all the land to contain my bilious hatred for this goddamn waste, but if there were i'd be sure to brew it up, bottle it, and then throw it through the window of every jerkfuck who is guilty of this bullshit, and ladies, you're not exempt. everybody listen up, i'm gonna lay this down for you in a two-pronged force of reasoning, not unlike how women use their boobs as a two-pronged attack to accomplish pretty much anything. and gentlemen, if you keep this up, we will stop using our lovelies on you. for real. this has to stop.

reason one: 'woman' is not an adjective. it is a noun. do you know what a motherfucking noun is? (make a 'hahahaha, women are objects!' joke here and i'll be sure to introduce your testicles to my trophy case.) let's think of an example where women gets used as an adjective:

"women voters are expected to support hillary clinton in droves!"

first of all, sweet jesus, no. ho chose celine dion as her campaign song and i'm not voting for anything that obviously has a microchip shoved up her twat so that she might hope to act like a human. secondly, you're wrong. you could say 'womanly voters' or 'female goddamn voters' or even 'voters with fallopian tubes' before you say 'women voters'. i mean let's look at it this way:

"blue eyes voters love hillary."

again, no. wrong, voters, on your love of hilary. secondly, blue eyes are the noun, just like the women. blue-eyed is the adjective. is this making any sense? any at all? even a smidge? look, it's simple: you can't qualify a goddamn noun with another one. use a fucking adjective. women/woman is NOT AN ADJECTIVE. *pulls female hair out*

seriously, think of it this way- basically, it looks like you're saying 'women voters' are voters who vote for women. just like fire fighters are people who fight fires. not that there's anything wrong with voting for women, obviously (but if i hear one more 'we should elect hilary because she's a woman!' whine, i will cut a bitch. seriously. gender should have nothing to do with why you elect somebody. it's about the issues, people.), but for the love of pete, just cut it out with the women as adjective thing.

reason two- since when do we even have to fucking qualify the fact that anything, be it voters, doctors, or bumfuck crazy astronauts in diapers are women? if you motherfuckers absolutely have to make the distinction, just say 'female' instead of 'woman', but if you do i'm just going to start saying 'yeah i'll be back later, i've gotta go see that new man doctor i got. hope i don't get cut off by any dumbshit man drivers on my way there.'

oh and by the way, fuck webster. his dictionary's gonna tell you it's appropriate to use women as an adjective, but that fartknocker went batshit insane anyway. also, the dictionary is increasingly letting more generic 'up to date' (read: abused and malnourished) words and phrases into our acceptable speech, and as it's very well known in my universe, the american public is stupid and wrong, hence, i'm right. so eat it.

3. new and improved
fun fact: no, it's not. if something's new, it can't be improved, because there was nothing to precede it. if it's improved, then it's just building on something that was there beforehand, hence, not new. i propose we start a dialogue, if you will, with the minions of satan's asscrack, aka the marketing ingeneues of every ginourmous foodstuff and household item manufacturer, who are currently shoving this garbage into our cabinets and closets and dinner plates with glossy labels, zippy commercials and packaging that makes us think we're getting more but in fact we're paying more for less. (i'm looking at you, kraft easy mac big packs. what gives, you fuckers?) anyway, said dialogue would follow thus:

world at large: hey marketers!
minions of satan's asscrack: sup?
WaL: cut that shit out.
MoSA: what, berries and cream starburst? sorry, that fruity dancing pilgrim was our bad.
WaL: actually no, that was kind of cool.
MoSA: then what? jessica simpson shilling for proactiv? she hypnotized us with her boobies. also her dad kind of holds a higher rank than us down here in the bowels of hell and he forced us.
WaL: whatever keeps the sillicone a-flowin. no, seriously- cut out the 'new and improved' shit.
MoSA: but...but why? it sells!
WaL: well we're not gonna take it anymore.
MoSA: not if we put it on EVERYTHING, i mean, what are you gonna do, refuse to buy ritz crackers because of a little n-a-i action on the label?
WaL: we'll buy wheat thins instead.
MoSA: we run the packaging for those too.
WaL: ...shit. triscuits?
MoSA: fraid so.
WaL: saltines?
MoSA: for real, we own all the crackers. and the cookies.
WaL: even chicken in a biscuit?
MoSA: especially chicken in a biscuit.
WaL: what's up with those, anyway? i mean, they're not really that chickeny. they are tastebudifically baffling.
MoSA: they are what we will feed on when the teats of the master cannot sustain us, for when the apocalypse comes and hellfire of chicken-type biscuits rain on your villages, he will be too busy to-
WaL: HOLY CRAP IT'S GOING TO RAIN BRIMSTONE AND CHICKEN CRACKERS?!
MoSA: if you don't cease your impudence and demand that we remove 'new and improved' from our labeling processes, it shall come to pass.
WaL: ...will there be dip?
MoSA: only NON FAT SOUR CREAM.
WaL: we are so fucked.
MoSA: enjoy a milano in the meantime. they're new and improved.
WaL: we are fucked and also stuffed with chocolate.

so really i'm sure you all see my point.


4. k instead of c
okay, sign makers, small business owners, cartoon show creators and tiny tots, this kind of bullhankle is just inexcusable. what? i mean, why? why are we destroying perfectly servicable words and turning them into fuglyass angular linguistic stepchildren by murdering the c and replacing it with a k? kool? krazy? kats? kartoons? what's with the k's? are you a white-hooded freak who enjoys burning things at night because you're a total tool with the intellectual capacity of a flea? because unless you have a fetish for a super-pathetic chapter in us history, stop turning every sign and name into the fuckin kkk, savvy?

the following words are to be stricken from the record and replaced with their more more awesome counterparts before we all suffer anneurisms. i'm serious. BAN THIS SHIT:

kat/kats
kool
kash
krazy
kool
kake
krafty
kute
kare
kut/kutting/kutters/kutterz
kolor/kolorz

oh god. my brain. i feel the stem seizing up. hang on, i have to put a round into my skull to make the hurt go away. i realize, though, that making obscene demands of you people so soon is very unfair to you, so let's just start with a little barter, or a bargain, on my part: stop k'ing all over the place, you obtuse little tards, or i will fucking kill you. that k stays.

5. good vs well
holy shit. this crap makes you idiots look beyond stupid, and the real kick in the pants is that EVERYBODY does it, regardless of educational level, age, or lack of carbuncles of the brain. look- i know good is an adjective, as is well. but for some reason which we all should have learned in elementary school, 'good' is NOT what we use to describe our feelings. do we need an example? i think we, in the most belittling sense of the word, do. hence, feast your eyes upon the examples, assrapers:

monkey number one: how are you doing?
monkey number two: good. how're you?
monkey number one: super good, thanks.
monkey number two: awesometastic.

OH MY GOD, WHY ARE YOU SO VERY WRONG? look. maybe it's a linguistic thing passed down from the days of yore, perhaps it's something the dictionary decided, maybe it's just the luck of the grammatical draw- but whatever the reasons may be, we do NOT qualify our feelings with 'good'. you can do good only if you're fucking robin hood and you're doing good deeds, wherein good is aka 'good deeds like robbing the rich to give to the poor who should seriously either move to another location where the rates of pay are better (hint: avoid southern az) or perhaps like, go into business for themselves and stop depending upon the feudal lords) and, wait, what? anyway, no. we are not 'doing good' when someone superficially asks us how we are. we are doing well. well, quite well, superfantastically well, amazingly blindingly orgamisically well- see if i care. but if i EVER see you say 'good' again, i will make sure you can never use it as an answer for another mindless checkout drone again. plausible scenario:

monkey number one: how are you?
monkey number two: ...the pain...the pain in my rectum...i think there's a fork involved.
monkey number one: i'm good too, thanks...wait...what?
monkey number two: SHE WILL COME FOR YOU IN THE DARK OF NIGHT AND CREATE MUCH PAIN.
monkey number two: paper or plastic....?

so basically, stop it. bc i'm armed with a swiss army knife and a grammatical sense of justice.

6. 'of' instead of 'have'
oh my sweet jesus, i can't even begin to-::shortcircuits::

...okay. yeah. look. this madness has got to stop. why? because 'of' is a fucking preposition, and 'have' is a frickety frackafrack verb. prepositions and verbs are two COMPLETELY DIFFERENT DAMNFUCK THINGS. you wouldn't go around exchanging "where in the pictures i took?" with "where are the pictures i took?" well you could, if you went all eraserhead on the space and turned it into 'wherein' and it was the beginning half of your description, ie, "wherein the pictures i took, it was-" oh fuck it. i'm getting too lessony for you fuckers, aren't i?

"but b," you may or may not be wondering depending upon if you're even reading this rant i've so lovingly crafted out of rum and coke, "what the hell are you talking about? what is this 'of' you speak of me exchanging with 'have'?" well if you'd have waited just a few sentences more, i'd have told you. also, i'd not of told you. see what i did there? eh? no. no i'm fairly sure you didn't. let me elaborate, my occipitally challenged friends.

correct: i could have told you, but i didn't.
incorrect: i could of told you, but i didn't, and also, i'm a fucking moron because i think 'of' and 'have' are the same because they sound similar phonetically, but not really, because seriously, 'a' and 'o' make different sounds, so really i'm an even bigger moron than i thought.

seriously. when you throw that 'have' out there after a could or a would or a will or whatever the fuck you want, you're talking about tenses, past tense, future perfect, or swirly parallel ninja tense, see if i give a flying turtle scrotum. 'have' is what makes the tense. 'of' is a fucking preposition. 'of' does not change a tense. look, i can't even explain this properly because i'm not a teacher, mainly because i hate children and don't want to read their shitty handwriting and give them stickers just for showing up, so i can't really drive this home to you people in the form of a lesson plan.

but just fucking heed my advice, would you? next time you find yourself going with 'i would of come but i couldn't,', reach instead for 'i would have come, but i was busy being stabbed to death by an errant lawn dart. from whence it came, it is not known. but the police believe it was the work of the grammar vigilante. she is wiley. but also seriously awesome. so basically, i'm sure that party sucked anyway. because i'm a loser who doesn't know the difference between 'have' and 'of', and i'd only go to a party that sucks anyway.'

7. apostrophes where there should be none

why? seriously. why do you people abuse the apostrophe? did it molest you at an early age? did it shoot your mother? i mean really, WHY? last i checked, it was just some inked junk on a page and it did not have the capacity or wherewithall to hurt you, so why do you abuse it so? for all i know it's chained to a radiator begging you not to subject it to yet another viewing of 'america's got talent'. seriously you fuckers, stop it. unless you're making something posessive or pluralizing an abbreviation, there is no fucking need to throw this bit of ink into the mix. examples would naturally follow:

#1: congratulation's!
first of all, no. no congratulations are in order when you PUT A FUCKING APOSTROPHE IN THERE. congratulations are plural, not POSESSIVE. if you wanted to be really weird about it and be all 'the congratulations thought that we should order a pizza for your grad party but i told the pizza guy that congratulation's order was pretty fucking stupid', then, no. we do not put an apostrophe in a plural non-possessive noun thing. also? i'm surprised you managed to spell it without the d. because if i see another dumbshit do it, i might just knife a vertebrae or two. just sayin'.

#2: hot dog's: $5.50
seriously? fuck you. i saw this bullshit at coachella and i'm sure it's not foreign at many a music or sporting event. first of all, we work HARD FO THA MONEY, and secondly, unless the hot dog is procuring said $5.50 to do a magic dance alongside david bowie and a bunch of goblins, this is unaccepable. hot dogs is not a motherfucking abbreviation, therefore, it is simply: 'hot dogs, $5.50", even though it should rightly cost us no more than freakin $2.50 for a damn dog. and also? i got a package of dogs for $1.00 on sale at safeway with my club card yesterday. stop raising the prices, you assholes. i'm here to see jarvis and incubus and buy their tour t-shirts, not waste my dollars on your machine-pressed meat fillings. you bastards.

#3: your baby's are so cute!
well, thank god you people are so interested in procreating. i mean really, all we need saturating the nurseries and baby gap is a bunch of morons who think that a) the plural of 'baby' is 'babys', and that to pluralize, we need to add an apostrophe. i swear to god, i hope your children grow up to be nobel peace winners so that they can prove intelligence grows out of the garbage heap that is stupidity and genetics, and also so that they can strangle you with the ribbons their medals may or may not be hanging from so that you'll stop cooing at other folks' offspring and being so mind-numbingly stupid. the end. because mother goose fuckin said so.

8. questions with no question marks
okay, manboy behind what would tyler durden do?, this is all on you, buddy. look, i love what you've done with the place. really. i totally have an e-crush on your snarktastic lindsay lohan zingers and don't care if you really do love fluffy puppies, i would drink your site if it came in coffee creamer form. but i have a quibble, nay, a really fucking big problem with you- WHERE THE HELL ARE YOUR QUESTION MARKS? holy shit, man up and stop destroying the noble interrogative. what did it ever do to you, and to the rest of you numbnutted fuckers who refuse to use it? seriously? i want to know.

is this a question.

no, it is just a really unfortunate lump of words that is utterly directionless because it can't be a statement if it asks a question, but it can't be a question if it doesn't have the proper squiggle at the end. so CUT IT THE FUCK OUT, or we will never make hilariously angry bloggy e-babies together, tyler. do you really want that to happen. no. no you don't. but really you don't even know i'm making threats if i don't put a handy little ? at the end of it. so listen up, everybody- stop being such douchebags and mark your questions properly, alright? good. because if you don't, i will simply borrow a comma, flip it upside down, weave it into the question mark, flip the whole business around, and form it into an e-noose and take care of your existence for you.

9. alot
i'm gonna make this short and motherfuckin sweet:

alot is NOT A WORD.
a lot is two words, but it means 'very much', 'many', or, oh hey how's this for convenient, a large amount, perhaps a 'lot'. oh my god how amazing is it that 'a lot' means 'a fucking large lot of whatever it is you're talking about'? seriously. look it up sometime, dumbshit.

10. confounding packaging exclamations
okay this is really only for me, because as a dear friend of mine says, all you need to survive on your own is pop tarts and pizza rolls. i have found that a liberal addition of vodka and v8 splash to said diet is beneficial, but the fact of the matter is this: the good folks at totino's, who make quite delicious pizza rolls, have got to step up to the plate and explain the most obnoxious label EVER. it haunts me. every time i take the crinkly yellow bag out of the freezer and pop a few lovely little treats on a plate and prepare to microwave them into bubbling bready pillows of lavalike cheese and tomato, i can't help but notice the garish exclamation that shouts at me, nay, shrieks at me with the fury of a thousand glue stick-toting third graders hungry for a snack:

'the kids can do!'

i mean...what? what is that? it boggles. what does it mean? was there an oversight? was it supposed to say something like '[this is something that] the kids can do!'? or was it perhaps 'the kids can do [this and a whole lot more if you leave them unsupervised, mom, like, way to not even make your own damn kids' snacks anymore you whore.] perchance it was aiming for '[these cholesterol-ridden goodies are delicious and totally a culinary feat so accessible to young brains that] the kids can do [this and then they'll probably eat too many, turn into lardasses, and then you'll just be left with a bunch of roly poly lumpkins on your hands, you lazy two-bit shiftless parents, seriously, haven't you heard of english muffin pizzas?]'

either way, there needs to be a damn subject in there. it doesn't say *what* the kids can do. and it bothers me so much. i'm pretty sure it's not normal to get a twitch every time you see a totino's product, but, there it is. so step up, pizza roll folks. take out the trans fats and add a damn subject to your stupid instructional exclamation or else i'll stop enjoying your product. and as a lardass myself, that *is* a viable threat, you motherfuckers.


and, scene.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

People who confuse "of" with "have" make me want to watch them die horrible deaths. I don't actually kill them myself, though, because that takes effort, and dammit, I have enough to do right now.

You know what mistake really pisses me off? Fortunately I don't run across it much: "fill" in place of "feel." They aren't even homonyms!

Anonymous said...

Gah. I don't actually *want to* kill them myself. I'm fighting the kitten for the keyboard.

Lauren said...

Do you have Krispy Kreme there? When they bult it here, and when I saw the abbreviation "KK" I was very disturbed.

Anonymous said...

Two quibbles with your #2:
1) woman and female are not exactly the same thing, though most of the time they coincide (there can be females [owners of fallopian tubes] who self-identify as men [masculine social constructs], and males who self-identify as women);

2) talking about "female voters" is different than talking about "female doctors," because female can actually be looked at as a voting bloc, just as male voters, teen voters, and black voters can be. It's not the same as qualifying someone who's the member of some profession, as though you're making the assumption that someone with that job is usually of one sex or another.
-Rick

Anonymous said...

Betsy, I just want to let you know I have forwarded your blog on to my best friend. You are hilarious!
;)

Lori