How about those love and angel and best friend forwards we seem to get every day via email?
Don’t they make you feel special—“You are an angel; to me you are one of the finest, warmest, sweetest people I know”—me and 500 others up in the Send-to section.
What the hell?
Stop filling up my inbox with that crap!
I no longer open them because 1) I don’t feel great because you sent it to me and 2) I sure am not forwarding it to everybody in my contact list to keep myself from having a plague of locusts descend or whatever else it is these emails sweetly threaten.
It’s crap and it’s not even fun crap. Doesn’t put a smile on my face. Doesn’t stretch my imagination or make me use my brain in any productive way. Probably puts malware and, at the very least, tracking cookies onto my computer.
Stop sending it to me.
If you can’t write a decent note once in a while, something a person can look forward to opening and actually respond to, take me off your list. Think of it this way, if you wouldn’t write it on paper, stick it in an envelope, put a stamp on it and send it to me via snail mail, don’t send it through cyberspace!
As if any of those people are going to read this.
The rest of you – thanks for reading this rant and, hopefully, adding a rant of your own below.
Friday, October 23, 2009
Sunday, October 18, 2009
In A Moment
It seems to me that people are all caught up with their technology, and I wonder if they are really present in their own lives any more. Gone are the days when you drove to or from work and either prepared yourself mentally for your day or wound down from the events at the office and looked forward to your evening at home. It seems people are either talking or texting with their cell phones while driving and I wonder what the long-term effects, if any, there are going to be.
Will people end up less relaxed? Unable to truly enjoy silences or park their bums on the couch for an extended afternoon of movies, classic TV or a handheld book and cup of tea? I think people are already showing signs of being more stressed than not. Most people I know are always tired. I don’t remember people always being tired when I was in my 20s and 30s.
I was wondering if taking pictures or videos at get-togethers lessens the enjoyment of the actual event. Looking for that great shot and hoping to get the best moments might be removing us from participating.
Because I live so far from my daughters and their families, I love that I get to see so many pictures of their days, movies from their special events and even being able to see them in real time on the computer. Living hundreds of miles away and still feeling involved as a mom and grandmother is a real gift that my mother did not get to take advantage of just several short years ago and it must have been abysmal for her mother when she moved to a completely different country, way back when air travel was not in most people’s budgets, never mind the price and quality of overseas calls in that era.
By posting pictures and videos on places like Facebook, you get a wider group of people able to enjoy the moments you’ve digitally caught and they post feedback and similar stories—I think we might actually be able to enjoy those events even more, being able to relive more of the best moments more often. Different moments stand out to different people and we might be getting more of the actual event with the addition of the digital version.
My granddaughters are 4 and 2 years old. Saying “cheese” for pictures is an integral part of their everyday life. I wonder what they think of saying that word and smiling for the camera as compared to eating cheese, which they both love doing and likely happens daily as well. I think I’m going to have to ask them what cheese means and see what those two brilliant, clear-thinking, unabashed girls have to say.
It sure is easier nowadays to go on a long trip with young children, what with the portable DVD players, hand-held games and more available to entertain them. Are they going to be able to entertain themselves when they are alone? Will they be missing out on using their imaginations? I used to think that maybe it would be detrimental; now I’m not so sure.
One definite improvement: I haven’t heard of today’s kids ever saying, “Are we there yet?”
Will people end up less relaxed? Unable to truly enjoy silences or park their bums on the couch for an extended afternoon of movies, classic TV or a handheld book and cup of tea? I think people are already showing signs of being more stressed than not. Most people I know are always tired. I don’t remember people always being tired when I was in my 20s and 30s.
I was wondering if taking pictures or videos at get-togethers lessens the enjoyment of the actual event. Looking for that great shot and hoping to get the best moments might be removing us from participating.
Because I live so far from my daughters and their families, I love that I get to see so many pictures of their days, movies from their special events and even being able to see them in real time on the computer. Living hundreds of miles away and still feeling involved as a mom and grandmother is a real gift that my mother did not get to take advantage of just several short years ago and it must have been abysmal for her mother when she moved to a completely different country, way back when air travel was not in most people’s budgets, never mind the price and quality of overseas calls in that era.
By posting pictures and videos on places like Facebook, you get a wider group of people able to enjoy the moments you’ve digitally caught and they post feedback and similar stories—I think we might actually be able to enjoy those events even more, being able to relive more of the best moments more often. Different moments stand out to different people and we might be getting more of the actual event with the addition of the digital version.
My granddaughters are 4 and 2 years old. Saying “cheese” for pictures is an integral part of their everyday life. I wonder what they think of saying that word and smiling for the camera as compared to eating cheese, which they both love doing and likely happens daily as well. I think I’m going to have to ask them what cheese means and see what those two brilliant, clear-thinking, unabashed girls have to say.
It sure is easier nowadays to go on a long trip with young children, what with the portable DVD players, hand-held games and more available to entertain them. Are they going to be able to entertain themselves when they are alone? Will they be missing out on using their imaginations? I used to think that maybe it would be detrimental; now I’m not so sure.
One definite improvement: I haven’t heard of today’s kids ever saying, “Are we there yet?”
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
The One Where I Become A Dictionary Editor
My question is why do people not capitalize the “e” in Earth when they are talking about our planet? They are the same people who capitalize the “m” in Mars, and the “j” in Jupiter and they always seem to capitalize Hell and Heaven, but for some reason, they must think they are talking only of the dirt, not the planet, when they are actually talking about the planet Earth. How about fixing that?
I want to be a dictionary editor because I am tired of their criteria. Specifically, one criterion—the one where if enough people use something incorrectly for long enough, it gets voted in as a proper use of the word, no matter how it may add nothing of value to the language.
An annoying example:
Entitled: Used to be that a book couldn’t be entitled but a person could.
Because so many people thought they were writing or talking “up” by erroneously using “entitled” where “titled” should have been, those of us who knew the difference and loved the difference in meaning are now forced to put our knowledge aside and dumb down.
By talking up, I mean, for example, the millions of speakers at podiums everywhere and on radio and TV who think they are coming across as emphatic intelligentsia when they use the trite phrase, “each and every ...” Makes me shudder every time. STOP SAYING THAT!
Another one:
“Myriad.” So many people use it as a noun instead of an adjective. To be sure you are using it properly, think of the word “many.” If “many” can be used in place of “myriad,” then you are using it properly.
Proper: “She counted myriad species of fish in the enormous tank.” “Many” works just fine in place of “myriad.”
Improper: “He removed the myriad of ties from the closet.” Would you say, “He removed the many of ties from the closet”? You might, but you’d be wrong and you’d sound wrong.
Before some of you get all wadded up, I already know: I checked the online dictionary and the improper use of myriad has snuck its way in there already. I’m brokenhearted, again, and taking it all too personally.
What is the point of learning this stuff and being good at it? “It” being the only thing I could point to as my personal academic strength. It is where I shine, just like a full moon in my own personal orbit.
Most of the time in the newsrooms I worked in, I was the go-to for spelling and correct usage —I was the walking reference, the person people asked instead of looking it up, because they knew I’d know and it took less time to ask me. If I wasn’t sure, I wanted to look it up. It also made me happy to be helpful. And to be right. I love being right.
That’s probably the real reason this distresses me so—I’m not right nearly as often now that our language is declining at this disturbing, faster-than-you-can-say-perspicacity pace. In the time I took to write this, I discovered this pet peeve I have is fast becoming a waste itself, like a cow’s opinion. You know, “It’s moo.”
I want to be a dictionary editor because I am tired of their criteria. Specifically, one criterion—the one where if enough people use something incorrectly for long enough, it gets voted in as a proper use of the word, no matter how it may add nothing of value to the language.
An annoying example:
Entitled: Used to be that a book couldn’t be entitled but a person could.
Because so many people thought they were writing or talking “up” by erroneously using “entitled” where “titled” should have been, those of us who knew the difference and loved the difference in meaning are now forced to put our knowledge aside and dumb down.
By talking up, I mean, for example, the millions of speakers at podiums everywhere and on radio and TV who think they are coming across as emphatic intelligentsia when they use the trite phrase, “each and every ...” Makes me shudder every time. STOP SAYING THAT!
Another one:
“Myriad.” So many people use it as a noun instead of an adjective. To be sure you are using it properly, think of the word “many.” If “many” can be used in place of “myriad,” then you are using it properly.
Proper: “She counted myriad species of fish in the enormous tank.” “Many” works just fine in place of “myriad.”
Improper: “He removed the myriad of ties from the closet.” Would you say, “He removed the many of ties from the closet”? You might, but you’d be wrong and you’d sound wrong.
Before some of you get all wadded up, I already know: I checked the online dictionary and the improper use of myriad has snuck its way in there already. I’m brokenhearted, again, and taking it all too personally.
What is the point of learning this stuff and being good at it? “It” being the only thing I could point to as my personal academic strength. It is where I shine, just like a full moon in my own personal orbit.
Most of the time in the newsrooms I worked in, I was the go-to for spelling and correct usage —I was the walking reference, the person people asked instead of looking it up, because they knew I’d know and it took less time to ask me. If I wasn’t sure, I wanted to look it up. It also made me happy to be helpful. And to be right. I love being right.
That’s probably the real reason this distresses me so—I’m not right nearly as often now that our language is declining at this disturbing, faster-than-you-can-say-perspicacity pace. In the time I took to write this, I discovered this pet peeve I have is fast becoming a waste itself, like a cow’s opinion. You know, “It’s moo.”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)