There’s so damn much to rant about. There’s no way that I can add anything new, can’t come up with anything that someone else hasn’t said better. I’ve gone back to watching the news, but cannot handle Wolf Blitzer’s delivery and am still disgusted and mad at CNN, which used to be the network of choice. CNN’s “Headline News” station seems to be “celebrity watch” (anyone caught using “celeb” as a word will be asked to leave the room) and sorry but I just cannot handle Shiny Boy, um, sorry I mean um Anderson Cooper. If they’d bring Aaron Brown back, oh PLEASE, I might watch again. It also seems that there’s some dismal requirement/agreement with these stations to allow local programs on, which means that I want to hear what’s new in Washington DC, or India, or the friggin world, or the Obama press conference, and I turn on the tv and get this local reporter dude interviewing someone in a half hour public relations fluff piece about a new play revival in a suburban theater somewhere. I stopped watching local tv news years ago out of disgust. I did notice the other night an ad for one of the local stations’ weather people – apparently it takes four men to read the printouts and point to the green screen. And today’s Sunday paper features almost full page ads – I kid you not – touting the excellence of one stations weather people.

So we’re here to rant about something else and hope for, um, audience participation. As a 55 year old woman who never diagrammed a sentence, who went to allegedly good schools but never learned a lot of grammar that I recall until I got into First Year Latin (oh I loved Latin), I remembered hearing older folks complain. “What are they teaching?” grump grump. “Why back in MY day, we….” Crank crank. And I got it, sort of because I did know that there was stuff I wasn’t learning. I don’t think I missed anything by never diagramming a sentence, and those parts of speech only seem really useful when I play along on Jeopardy, but I’m now middle-aged (cringe0 and I figure that entitles me to rant and grump with the best of them. PLEASE feel free to join in.

Kids today. Etc. etc. Of course, it’s not necessarily kids but well, okay, right off the top, two words that are showing up that are not issues of grammatical import but political. When did women become girls again? I’m hearing this constantly on television, reading it in lots of newspaper stories, when women in their twenties are suddenly “girls”. We fought hard for the understanding that it demeans women to call them girls. It’s never been an issue for white men, but think about the politics of calling a grown man “boy”. It’s not the same – racism is not sexism, and we fought against both – but it matters.

And goddamit, when did it become acceptable to start using “retarded” again? This is far too common, to hear some kid talk about how something is so “retarded”. No, they’re not necessarily referring to a person (and yeah there are probably too many euphemisms here to count) but it’s a huge step back in understanding disability and I resent it.

But here’s the real rant. Get comfy, find your volume button, if you’ve got a stick handy, grab it to stomp along with me.

While watching tv yesterday, I heard one of my Biggest peeves of all those gathered in the pet peeve corral. “it’s so unique. How very unique” Unique just IS, dammit. It’s not sort of unique or somewhat unique or very unique, it’s goddam unique. Period. Dammit.

Stomp

A moment, please, heads bowed, for the late Terry Carr and his battle for the proper use of “hopefully”. We never won that one, but at least we’re aware of it. I will say that I do think of Terry every time I see the damn word. It’s fallen somewhat out of favor (phew) so I don’t have to twitch as much as I used to, but it’s out there.

I think we’ve lost this battle – “decimate”. Decimate is an interesting, somewhat arcane word that have a very specific meaning which has been not only lost, but pretty much reversed. Decimate (note the “deci” part, see above “I loved Latin” ) originally meant to kill one in ten, every tenth X. It was used apparently in ancient Rome (according to the American heritage Dictionary entry at Dictionary.com, thank you) My Webster’s still uses this definition as the primary, only later saying it’s used to indicate great destruction or harm.

It now appears to mean “lots of people were killed, the vast majority of those present were attacked”. Apparently, the original meaning is now considered obsolete. This not only bothers me because the few of us (I assume we are few) that know the original meaning are now confused when someone says ”the population was decimated”. Aren’t there other words to mean what is intended? Wiped out, eliminated, slaughtered in large numbers, eradicated, obliterated, there are dozens of synonyms offered on that web page.

Then there’s everyone’s favorite. “Literally”. Which again, has apparently lost all meaning and is used for an opposite meaning. Apparently, the relative meanings of :”literally” versus “figuratively” have been lost and one uses one when she means the other. I’ve heard one too many uses of this one when someone states “he literally exploded” when, of course, he did not explode. Jesus, what is wrong with people? (Stomp. STOMP!) (grump) (et cetera)

By the way, the “snow showers” predicted for the Seattle area resulted in at least a couple inches of snow and ice chez Roscoe. I’m pretty stuck here (though I have a doctor’s appointment on Wednesday that I must get to). While I had no plans for these few days, I’m crazed at the idea of being stuck at home in bitterly cold weather. I’m doped to the gills. I worry about friends losing power, Stu waiting for the buses and well, everything one worries abut in this situation. (and huge sympaties to you if you’re without power or stuck due to weather.) We did not manage to put down the anti-skid stuff on the ramp (another one of those things) and it doesn’t look very safe right now. Sympathy for my plight would be much appreciated.