It's That Time Again

It's that time again, where I gripe about dumb things I see and, particularly, dumb phrases and expressions I wish would just die.

Item 1: Baby Bump, always uttered in a sentence like this one: Dimwitted celebutard shows off baby bump! We have pictures! I guess saying Dimwitted celebutard is pregnant just isn't cool or chic. And I really don't want to see the pictures either. I don't even care.

Item 2: Keep it real. What on earth does that mean? I like so-and-so because he keeps it real. As opposed to what? Keeping it unreal? Imaginary? Fantastical? As far as I can tell, people who use "keeping it real" as a justification for saying things are just rationalizing the fact that they're thoughtless bastards.

Item 3: Status Shuffle. Apparently some people can't come up with snarky, sarcastic Facebook updates on their own, so they go to some application and pick one. Usually more than one. Five or six. In a row. Arrrrrgh. And as if that isn't enough, someone who's apparently been sniffing too much model glue comes along and says "Ur so funy!" It reminds me of the movie Life of Brian, where Brian shouts to the crowd "You've got to think for yourselves! You're all individuals!" And the crowd shouts back in unison "Yes, we're all individuals!"

Item 4: Speak truth to power. American politics is chock-full of worn-out aphorisms, but this one is one of the more worn-out. Plus I think it's grammatically incorrect; shouldn't it be speak the truth to power? Or even Say things that are true to people who are in positions of authority? But never mind, we're too busy giving it to The Man, speaking truth to power, to be bothered. As if The Man gives a shit. And if someone is "speaking truth to power" and I happen not to agree with them, where does that leave me??

Item 5: Trustworthy. If speaking truth to power is a worn-out motto of the Left, trustworthy is a worn-out motto of the Right. The implication is that liberal things are by their very nature untrustworthy. A good example is Conservapedia, which bills itself as the "trustworthy" alternative to Wikipedia. Someone apparently decided that Wikipedia is a seething cesspool of liberal thought. One of their data points? The fact that some of the people who write Wikipedia entries may not - gasp - be American! I guess you can't be trustworthy if you happen to have been born in Iceland, Japan, or Australia, to cite just a few of those awful, untrustworthy non-American countries. I'm particularly amused that they are bothered by the fact that some people use spellings like "colour" or "flavour" or "tyre". There it is, prima facie evidence of extreme untrustworthiness. There are other words for that, by the way, like xenophobia and Amerocentric jingoism and plain foolishness.

Words Non Grata

I think it's time to list a new set of people, things, words and expressions that I'd really like to see fade into oblivion. Not because they necessarily exhibit bad grammar or bad usage, but simply because I'm sick and tired of them, and it's all about me.

Social Media. Sounds too much like an embarrassing disease you wouldn't want to admit to your family. Besides, I can't turn on the radio these days without hearing some technophile flapping his cake-hole about how social media is going to completely transform the way I eat a sandwich.

Smart Phone. No it isn't.

String Theory. No it isn't. (In science, for something to be a theory, it must be proven by experiment or observation. String theory hasn't been proven by anything yet, so it's more like a string hypothesis, or, if you're feeling uncharitable, a string wild-assed guess.)

At the end of the day. Unless you're actually British or Indian, this just makes you sound smug, self-satisfied, and pretentious. I know an Indian engineer who says this from time to time, and coming from him, it seems entirely appropriate. But coming from a guy from Iowa? Nope.

Hipster. I have arrived at the conclusion that three things America has a great excess of are lawyers, MBAs and self-professed hipsters.

Consume media. What, I can't just read a book, or watch a movie? I must consume media instead? Closely related to this is content, as in "I bought some content yesterday and today I'm consuming me some tasty media." I guess it isn't cool to buy and listen to a CD.

Facebook. Yeah, I have a Facebook page, and yeah, ninety percent of the stuff I see on it is a complete waste of network capacity. Saw a killer TV show. Stand by, I'll alert the President. (One hates to wish ill on people, but sometimes I wish it really WAS a "killer show".)

App. Guys always want to show you their apps. In the old days wristwatches with 15 hands and glowing tritium hour markers were the road to superior oneupmanship, but these days, it's your apps. It is by your apps that we shall judge ye! One guy showed me an app once that showed that we were sitting in a restaurant near I-17 and the Loop 101. But wait a second, I already knew that!

iPad. So it's sorta like a laptop, only not as good? Why not just get a laptop? Oh, right, because it's a luxury item.

Back in the day. As opposed to the night, I guess. This is a little less annoying than referring to one's "salad days", but I still tend to glance askance at a 22-year-old who says "Yeah, back in the day we used to like have wires that connected our controllers to our game consoles!" I prefer "back in the old days" because it distinguishes the old days from the newer days, like yesterday.

Alternate Timeline. Ever since Lost came out, alternate timeline stories have been tres popular. They made a Star Trek movie that was nothing but an alternate timeline. They're fun because you can re-imagine Captain Kirk as a leatherboy, I guess, but I find them too easy and too convenient. One of the reasons I think Star Trek: First Contact was the best of the Trek movies was because it was all about preventing an alternate timeline, and I'm 100% down with that.

Teenage Vampires. Oh god, not more of these pallid weirdos! A few is okay, but it's getting to be a regular damned plague of the things (one wants to go to Home Depot and get the two-gallon-size jug of Teenage Vampire B Gone and spray the outside of the house). I remember (with some fondness) the days when vampires were cursed soulless undead things, not objects of angsty teenage lust. And while I'm at it, why do all these modern "dark romance" vampires move at about 800 miles per hour? Does being a vampire exempt one from the laws of physics? If you had a sloth and turned it into a vampire, would it be slow or fast?

LeBron James. I don't care where he goes. Really. Honestly. Take my word for it.

Indie. There's a conceit that indie anything is better than commercially produced anything, like indie music and indie movies. Is that so? I have two words for you: Sonic Youth. Oh, wait, I have four more: My Own Private Idaho. Yeech.

Twitter. Been there, done that, and didn't really see the attraction. "But it's a great way to keep in touch with your friends," they tell me. Do you think my friends had any interest in what I was doing when I was going through chemo? Throwing up. Throwing up again. Terrible diarrhea. Throwing up. Had diarrhea but was too weak to get out of bathtub in time. Uh huh. Some things people just don't want to know.