Herb’s Blog, Herbdate 22341 – 807:
Here’s the haps:
There are some words and phrases which have figuratively been used to death. Epic and Awesome are two words that are just so abused anymore that they really don’t have any meaning. When I heard this snippet of conversation, “Dude! It was so totes epically awesome! He literally killed himself on that last jump,” I figured out what my “E” post was going to be about. I am really weary of hearing how something was either “awesome” or “epic.” There are many other words and phrases and spellings that irritate me and literally crack me up. Wait. What? I literally go insane when someone uses literally when they mean figuratively or metaphorically.
Irregardless of the fact that a word may have been used in a certain way for two hundred years, the “ir-” prefix is a useless intensifier, regardless of how many people use it. Just say, “regardless.” E.g. (not i.e.), “Regardless of your feeling on the matter, Herb, I am going to use irregardless, just to see if you literally go insane.” Well, maybe I will literally go totes cray-cray. I thought a tote was a large handbag or type of duffel. And what is it with saying “cray-cray.” Just say crazy. Both have the same number of syllables and if you say “crazy” you won’t sound like an idiot. What’s that? You could care less what I think? Well, good because I couldn’t care less what your lame excuse is for abusing a harmless word.
I do laugh, sometimes out loud, when I hear someone say, “I was thinking in my mind the other day…” as opposed to where? Your liver? Too often I think with my stomach, so maybe I should give a pass on this one.
While pondering which phrases to blog about and which one to pass for now and save for another time one of the ones that have really gotten old is Keep Calm and… I did not know that the “Keep Calm and Carry On” posters were originally created by the British government in WWII with the intent of posting them everywhere. At the last minute, they were worried if the people would approve of them while at the same time a paper shortage started. 2.5 million posters that had already been printed up were pulped and recycled. One was discovered in a second-hand bookstore in 2000 and the store began getting requests for copies. A photo of the original:
Finding that was probably awesome sauce! What a totes epic day of shopping! I’m sure it didn’t take them long to think in their mind that they need to run to the nearest Automated Teller Machine machine and enter their Personal Identification Number number.
I feel better now. I guess I’ll just have to take for granite peoples bad grammar pacifically when there thinking in they’re head that its supposably okay to say, “For all intensive purposes
Remember, the good book says, If you don’t think grammar and punctuation are important, try dropping the comma from, “I’m sorry, I love you.”
Edit/Add: I want to be clear that I am not trying to mock anyone who has trouble with English or is not a native speaker of English. I can’t imagine trying to learn English and I applaud anyone who does.
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