language

Annoying Things

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Anything about life in America you find annoying? Here’s a partial list I spent all afternoon organizing. Small, un-backlit keyboards are so annoying.

Why would anyone care what Brigitte Bardot looks like, now? Or the cast of Happy Days? Or a breathy headline: “Where are they now?” about the Monkees? A new rule: if you give us these updates after a certain length of time, you–whoever you are—should update your article on a regular basis. Tell us about the cast of All in The Family every 5 years, or until you, the writer, pass away. And if you’re going to show us what Brigitte looks like now, make sure you put a “before” picture alongside the Now.

So many on-line news articles are about what somebody said about someone else. Example from today, March 31, 2026, from InStyle magazine: “Prince Charles Asked a Friend This Heartbreaking Question Before He Married Princess Diana.” Let’s not talk about how old this subject is, and let’s not talk about who the pronoun (He) is referring to, (see next paragraph), but let’s try and assume the target audience of this article. Or, let’s not and just agree it wasn’t me. So why did it come across my AOL news screen?

America has a problem with pronouns and preceding nouns. First, we’re lucky, these days, if there even IS a preceding noun. “He went out the door” without context might mean God went out the door, for example. A pronoun takes the place of a preceding person, place, or thing that has already been mentioned. And to avoid confusion, we should endeavor* to keep our pronouns and their partner preceding nouns as close as possible. Our choices in the headline above are Prince Charles or The Friend. Those of you with knowledge of Diana’s wedding can extrapolate* the correct noun, but those of us who don’t care are entirely within our rights to blame The Friend, especially just before The Friend married Charles and Diana.

Puzzles. Who needs them? Actually, brain teasers are the real problem. What’s black and white and red (read?) all over? See the problem? What makes it worse is the breathy headline: “You’re a genius if you can solve this problem,” printed next to a picture of a wild-haired Einstein.

There is an educational quality to a good puzzle however, which makes my confession annoying. Get this one: Can you draw a square with three straight lines? This oxymoronic brain buster reveals an important glitch in our lives. If you get the answer, you are in the top 1% of Americans, even though the answer was on the national news this week. Ai it for some fun.

Old Man’s Memory is annoying as hell. It took me 10 minutes to remember Einstein’s first name. No, I did not look it up. Memory is a waiting game, now. Things I knew yesterday I may not know today, but they may come to me tomorrow. Older friends tell me I’m lucky they come back at all. And there is that European Study about memories not being accurate, just gangs of electrical impulses…

Forgot where this was headed, but The Matrix concept is being revisited if I could remember where I saw the article.

Feck it. I got my blinds fixed today. Hallelujah!

*What a great, big word!

Please. Stop.

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I’ve written before about the “fun” of local “Letters to the Editor” in my local paper. It was fun for several months, but then…eh..it’s been awhile.

The problem is lack of growth, lack of progress. Read any comment section and you see this scene play out: Original, breathless statement filled with adverbs, adjectives, and snarkiness. Followed by breathless comments filled with adverbs, adjectives and snarkiness. Followed by more…snarkiness. (my grammar editor is “flagging” snarkiness as not spelled correctly. He/She/Them/It is wrong. Google it, yourself, and I’ve amended the grammar police’s dictionary. Oddballs.)

Maybe it is too much to expect immediate change in the tone and structure of public discourse, but is it that hard for people to see what I see? If you were asked for the sum of 2 plus 3 and answered 6, how many times would you do that before you wondered why people were correcting you, and gave a different, perhaps correct answer. (Hopefully, there is no undiscovered ethnic group/tribe where 2 pls 3 does equal 6.) Math is easy to see, isn’t it?

Past columns have talked about “Critical Thinking” (CT) and “Reading the Rome” (RR) and those expressed thoughts were not the work of a genius, or once-in-a-generation mind. (Unless you’d care to think of me that way. Your call.) They are the thoughts of an old man who paid attention. So, if all the writers and commentators are young, high school students, does the illogical repetitiveness of the stereotypical “Statement and Comments ad nauseum” (SCAN), indict our current educational systems? Yes. And the past systems. And the present systems. And commercial television. And contemporary music, And professional sports. And Capitalism. And the Free Market. Everything, Everywhere. All the time.

Huh. Finally. Nihilism explained. Maybe. Frederic Jacobi in the 18th century said Nihilism refuted the “belief in an unknowable true reality”. Uh-oh. No “true reality”? Sounds MAGAish but Nietzsche asked with God dead, where were we to find meaning in the world?

Okay, I’m off the google sidetrack, but it made clear the need for a True Reality. Trump and many others say January 6th was a kind of patriotic “celebration”. Others say it was an insurrection. All that is true, now, as the farther—in time—we get from 1/6/2021 the “less true” that day’s reality will be for both sides. Why?

As Americans we face constant MANIPULATION. Advertising. Politics. Societal norms. Rock stars have known thins for years and made a living singing about fighting it. “Another Brick in The Wall”, by Pink Floyd. “Monster” by Steppenwolf. “For What It’s Worth”, by Buffalo Springfield. In fact, find this song on YouTube from the late 60s. It clearly and precisely represents the entire point of this post. What does it say about us that a song from 1966 identifies our 2025 problems? I’m dropping the mic.

A nice thing about aging is the natural shedding of concerns for anything but our own medical and financial condition. It’s not up to the old people to save the world, we won’t be around long enough.

A bad thing about aging is the recognition nothing has changed. And sadly, may never change.

Music, again, and Jackson Browne in 1971:

“Oh, people, look around you the signs are everywhere. You’ve left it for somebody other than you to be the one to care.”

Another thing learned as an old man, the good we do and the things we learn in our youth fade with age, and there is no guarantee any following generation will feel the same. All empires decline and fall.

In reflection, this post reminds me of a recent medical test. The test is 90 per cent accurate reading negative results, but its positive results are only correct 50 per cent of the time.

Feels like symbolism for something, but it’s nap time, so…

Words, but different ones…

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When you view life as a certain state of being and allow its eccentricities to be the fabric of your existence, beginnings and endings fade away. The nature of eternity, endless space, and a higher power greater, even, than the sum of all in this known world, yields an understanding maybe not quite right but inherently capable of satisfying human inquisitiveness.

So it is when you enter the world of The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, written by John Koening, and published in 2021. My internet friend, Wikipedia, says it is an “English word-construction project seeking to coin and define neologisms (new words) for emotions not yet described in language.” The author apparently started the project when he could not find the right words to use in his poetry. American ingenuity at its finest, yes?

You should do your own research, trust me, but here are some of my favorites, including “sonder”, the original word which tickled my fancy so much a rush to the bathroom was required to avoid dampening my boxers. I’ve paraphrased definitions to fit more in, but take a look at the book and website of the same name for more mental exercise and amusement.

SONDER: “noun, the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own–populated with their own ambitions, friends, worries and as much inherited craziness as your own.”

EISCE: noun, “the awareness of the infinitesimal role you play in shaping your own society.”

KENAWAY: noun, “the longing to see how other people live their lives when they’re not in public”.

Hm. These three words, alone, distill years and paragraphs of college dorm room discussions into three nouns. At least for a private, Liberal Arts school. It’s fun to imagine, too, how new words describe things new to humankind. Imagine a caveman feeling any of these words, and wondering “is it just me?”

As modern life exponentially grows in complexity, it makes sense we need new words to describe the mental, emotional, and physical realities humans encounter as they grow with it, but is it socially efficient to simply make up or own words? Fick, (sic) if I know.

I do know that if everyone sondered* more the world would be a better place. If everyone was aware of their eisce we’d be a humbler, intelligent society instead of one full of minor, local dictators trying to change reality. And if kenaway becomes a legal defense for peeping,…”Your honor, I was simply kenawaying*.”

The best part of the whole word discussion is…the discussion, the dialogue. New words, old words, it matters only if we understand them, use them, and share them in thoughtful, humane conversations, sog sam it.

The only true fear is for grammar and punctuation. A world with new words, misplaced commas, no periods, and an epidemic of dangling participles will be the end of us all.

*I’ve always hated turning a noun into a verb, but it’s so much fun…

Language…Words…Tools?

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The last post got me interested in the origins of words and languages. The usual suspects were consulted: The internet and Wikipedia.

The only true thing I learned is: nobody knows. In fact, according to Wikipedia, the evolution of language is such a difficult subject, its research was banned by The Linguistic Society of Paris in 1866 as a subject “unsuitable for serious study”. Study has not stopped, however, but why would it when the best theories cannot be unproven, and even the dumbest among us can have a go at it.

There is a consensus among us serious thinkers (I am now among them) that language took a long time to develop and will not reveal its secrets…ever. A theory which makes sense (as most do), is the appearance of stone tools. The existence of these tools meant the someone who invented the tools was sharing intelligence with others on how to make those tools. Makes sense. But then the theory fails to be taken seriously when we consider apes have–and use–tools of all kinds yet they can’t conjugate a verb. Or can they? For that matter, can we? And when the original tool maker pointed, grunted, and nodded approval to his apprentices, could they ever have imagined the concept of conjugation might find its way into the process?

A theory which is neat and tidy is the Alien Theory. Let me elucidate and explicate. Well-dressed and educated aliens were driving by eons ago and saw an empty-looking, green and blue ball.They stopped to take a leak and were surprised to find early humans hiding behind the bushes, watching. At that very moment, the aliens responded with something similar to our modern “WTF?”, and followed that up with an “LOL” when the the humans threw stone tools at the titanium spaceship. After washing their hands completely, the Aliens proceeded to set up tents for classroom instruction of the Native Earthians, who were forced to attend, unless they were sick. Masks were not invented, yet. Subjects were English 101 and Precalculas math. Pop quizzes were scored and failing humans were put on the spaceship for specimens to be examined on the ride home. The “smart humans” were set loose into the world to propagate their learning and population. And thus math and language were given to our world by somebody who couldn’t hold it in, any longer.

There’s no speculation on how the Aliens were treated when they got home, but Earth proceeded on its course to development, especially after the humans realized the apes “weren’t getting it” and all attention was then focused on the least hairy members of the clan/tribe/society. Shaving was invented around then, as well, using a really sharp stone. Smart, right?

Does any of this sound like a “subject unsuitable for study”?

Final thought? Language and words (and math, science, et. al.) are wonders we all should take part in, and enjoy. We will never get all the answers to all the questions, especially in our lifetimes, but enjoy the journey. Be more inquisitive about where “decimate” comes, from (deck a mate?)and less about who will win “Survivor”. Please.