The Unavoidable Gun Cliché

From a gun made of words, to words full of guns!
Image from 2Dolphins.com

It struck me, when reading comments regarding President Obama's executive orders on guns, first that we have a hair-trigger overreaction as a culture, whenever even a whisper of "gun control" is uttered. And, more superficially, that we have an inordinate number of gun-related clichés. To the point where it's almost impossible to read a comments section or editorial on the issue without recognizing unintentional double-entendres.

Off the top of my head I can think of:

Give it a shot

On target

Jumped the gun

With a bullet

Lock and load

Lock, stock and barrel

Bite the bullet

Pistol whipped

Missed its mark

Gun shy

Calling the shots

Get the lead out

Shooting blanks

Itchy trigger finger

Going great guns

Zero in

Going postal

Drop the hammer

The whole shooting match

Broad side of a barn

Under the gun

Quick draw

Loaded for bear

Riding shotgun

Set your sights on

Dodged a bullet

Trigger happy

Went off half-cocked

A shot in the dark

Pulled the trigger

Under the gun

I'm quite sure this is a very partial list. Because you find endless variations. Especially when writing colloquially, as most tend to do on blogs or comment sections. It may be as difficult to avoid as Biblical quotes and allusions are for an atheist! It really says something that we're so steeped in gun culture that we don't even notice that the language is shot clean through with them!

Am I a Luddite? I Don't Understand Text Messaging

Photo from source, Wikipedia

This is just a short text message to say that I don't understand texting! I was very slow to get a cell phone (though I did have a telephone lineman sized phone in the early 90s for work). I drug my feet, not wanting to pay $60 a month for something I didn't think I would use.

But, with The Other Half being a flight attendant, and at all corners of our country on any given day, circumstances dictated that we needed mobile phones. "Belling the cat" is what I call it. Since getting the phone, I do use it more than I thought I would, but we rarely go past our allotted 500 minutes. Our initial service included everything of course, for a limited time only. But eventually, we pared down to basic cell service.

I wouldn't mind occasionally using the built in camera to send photos to my email, but mostly, the extra services are useless to me. 95% of the time, I am near a computer, where most of the cell phone services are much easier to use. And here I am, typing away on a 101-key QWERTY keyboard to tell you, I just don't understand using a 12-key, tiny phone pad to type text messages.

According to Wikpedia, 40% of cell phone users regularly use text messaging. What's worse, it has actually been deemed to be as addictive as cigarette smoking. OMG! Oops, I just committed probably the biggest problem connected to all of this texting.

And that is, the degradation to the written word. We've seen this coming for some time, with gamers using leet, with LOL Kitteh, and instant messaging on computers. Being a proficient typist, typing OMG takes more thought and effort than typing "oh my God!" Our English has gotten so jumbled, I fear what resumes are going to look like in a couple of years.

What I don't understand is, why is texting so popular? You're holding a phone in your hands, if you need to contact somebody, call them! Now, I understand that there are rare occurrences, like Mom is in an important meeting, or Dad is in court (again), and you simply must tell them that you've gotten your arms ripped off in a thresher. . .but then, how are you texting? Nevermind. I get that there are circumstances where it could be handy.

But usually it's not necessary. Usually, you are annoying the person on the other end. And often, you are texting somebody like me that doesn't have texting in their plan, and have to pay for the message, whether they read it or not. Nice. Knock it off!

English is Dead: I Can Has Cheez Burger

Picture from source, I Can Has Cheez Burger

Playfulness with language can be fun. When done with cleverness and wit, it can even catch on. Joss Wheden (TV's Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Firefly) was a master of this kind of wordplay. Sometimes referred to as "Buffy-speak" or "Joss-speak," it changes nouns to verbs, plays with adverbs and adjectives, but not so much that it is unrecognizeable.

Examples: "Ms. Calendar is reasonably dollsome." "Someone else's loss is my chocolatey goodness!" "You're the Slayer and we're, like, the Slayerettes" "That's a guy big with the sinning." Basically real English with a tweak. There are countless other examples, and these aren't the best ones, but hopefully you get my point.

Then there's the bad language-twisting. Years ago, there was a rap song that was about the short-shorts that The Dukes of Hazzard character Daisy Duke wore. It was called "Dazzy Duks." You see, that's just bad. If you want to play with it, it should be something like "Day-Z Dooks." Dazzy Duks just looks like it rhymes with "jazzy pucks."

For years, many other things have contributed to the breakdown of the English language (besides education, I mean). Old MS-DOS eight character file names, vanity license plates, beepers--anyplace that had limited space to put your message. Then came email and instant messaging, where convenience and speed lead to sloppy writing. And then came texting, and gaming.

Now, language has devolved into l33t. This cliquey, almost impenetrable language is constantly evolving, changing, and is different from one clique to another. It basically involves replacing letters with numbers, and other creative combinations of characters to create new spellings for old words. It also creates new words out of common typos. The problem of course, is that not all word coinages are equally clever. And it looks like gibberish.

But you ain't see nothin' if you haven't seen the site I Can Has Cheez Burger, and its various spin-offs and imitators. They have a language known as "LOL Kitteh." Rather than try to explain it to you, I'll simply say that it is headache inducing, lamentable, and spells doom for English and possibly America itself. Take a look:

[Excerpt]

LOL-Kitteh as a Second Language (LKSL-101) in Five Easy Steps

Step one: Think of something to say. This is tricky for some people. “That’s a really cute cat. And look, he has a bow on his head!”

Step two: “Engrish” it. “That being the kitty very full of cuteness. And to be with looking! Him gots bowage on hims head!”

Step three: Misspell everything. “Dat beesing teh kiti vary ful ov kutenis. An to bees lukingz! Hims gotz bowwagez on hims hed!!”

Step four: Add exclamations and extra words. “OMG wau!! Dat beesing a kiti vary ful ov tewtul kutenis!! Bees wif da lukingz! Omg him gotz da bowwagez on himz hed lyk WTF?!?”

Step five: Add additional information. “OMG wau!! Dat beesings a kiti vary ful ov tewtul kutenis!! Bees wif da lukingz!! Omg him gotz da bowwagez on himz hed lyk WTF?!? OMG I tewtul wuntz to grabz dat kiti and fuzziez himz awl ovar … him sooooooo mooshy an fullz ov win!! Don werry lil kiti, I no eetz u! I luvz kitiz! I can has bunchiz ov dem! Mah kitiz luvz bowwagez too! YETH!! GIMME!! Kthxbai!”

Read more (if you can handle it) at: I Can Has Cheez Burger

Featured Blog: The Apostrophe Protection Society

Photo from source

As a sign maker, there's not much that jumps out at me with more force than an inappropriately placed apostrophe. Of all the writing skills we are losing as a nation, proper use of the apostrophe has to be at the top of the list.

Many people seem to think that that cute little ( ' ) mark means, "look out, an S is coming!" As one example, there are the signs at our local Fry's Electronics store. Signs I've seen there include:

"DVD'S," "VCR'S," and "SMALL TV'S." I'm surprised they don't have "COMPUTER'S" and "RESTROOM'S." You see it everywhere. Nobody knows what to do with the little sucker.

I even got into an argument with a local radio programmer who insists on having "the Best of the 80's & More!" as the slogan for his station. And even worse, I've seen signs that say, "WOMENS RESTROOM," which is actually missing an apostrophe. Anyway, if you don't see anything wrong with these examples, check out the site below. You'll thank me for it!

[Excerpt]

The Apostrophe Protection Society was started in 2001 by John Richards, now its Chairman, with the specific aim of preserving the correct use of this currently much abused punctuation mark in all forms of text written in the English language.

The Apostrophe Protection Society

What the %@&$ is "W00t?"

Photo from Amazon.com

In the future, I plan to devote a more lengthy post (rant, really) on the destruction of the English language that is happening before our eyes. Text messaging, instant messaging, email, gamers, skaters and a "colloquial English only" President are ripping our language to shreds.

Here's some proof:

[Excerpt]

What's Webster's word of the year? W00t!

You open up grandma's gift on Christmas morning and see that, as always, the sweet lady has bought you the perfect thing (Nintendo 64!). What do you say? If you're well-schooled in the language arts, if you're familiar with the most bitchin', radicool bits of slang, well then there is only one thing to say. "W00t!"

And, LOL, turns out you've just said Merriam-Webster's word of the year. W00t!

Read more at: Machinist at Salon