I Watch 'Em So You Don't Have To

GETTING NEW (WELL, THEY'RE NEW TO ME) MOVIES, TRYING TO FIND THE TIME TO WATCH AND REVIEW THEM, WATCHING WILDFIRES NEAR MY TOWN, WATCHING THE NUMBERS OF OUR THERMOMETER GO WAY WAY UP AND THEN DOWN THEN UP, THEN DOWN, AND WATCHING THE IDIOCRACY OF PEOPLE WHO INSIST ON ONE LANGUAGE IN THIS COUNTRY AND THEY CAN'T EVEN SPEAK IT WELL THEMSELVES





Random Ramblings

Okay that's a long title and pretty much sums up my mood, our current events around here, and a personal peeve I have that seems to be getting worse.


If you want to blame my irritability as a combination of fibro and changing weather pressure, yeah, that's a pretty good bet. But we'd also have to blame the fact that I'm known (and not at all popular) as a spelling and grammar Nazi - which is probably why people dropped off my Facebook page like Disney pushed lemmings off a cliff.

THIS IS AMERICA DAMMIT, WE SPEAK ENGLISH HERE!

No, no we don't. What we do (or a lot of us do) is mangle a language that I admit is pretty confusing and, even though I still believe that Mandarin Chinese is probably one of the most difficult languages to learn to speak and write, English isn't the easiest.

For those who need reminding, America is the ultimate melting pot. So unless you are 100% Native American (Although I am a degree that is just enough to be registered, I don't even remotely look like one), your family came here from somewhere else. Our sense of patriotism can be impressive but our intolerance of other people who speak other languages is not. "I shouldn't have to choose '1' for English!" That gets repeated A LOT. You know how many times I hear or see that? Way, way too many. 

What happened to us being a free nation for all those who want to live here? And no, I am not going to get into politics and talk about who pays for what. That's not my point. What I am saying is, if you're so incredibly proud of your language that you think everyone should use it and ONLY it, shouldn't you also have the responsibility to be able to read, write, and speak it well?


I am not perfect by any means. I do not have a college education. I graduated from a small town high school with decent enough grades but I was not valedictorian - just another face in another class of average kids. But dammit, what the hell happened to them? I've given up on reading posts from people I know as well as those I don't on my Facebook page because I get a headache cringing when I see how badly they write (which is why they're not on my page anymore). But it's not just the people I used to know. It now seems that the idiocracy has spread.

English seems to be converting into a mangled language to news sources, entertainment sources, even sources that really REALLY should at least have a passing knowledge of the language.

'Weird Al' did a song about it which sums up my feelings perfectly. I've posted it before and I'm doing it again:

Just this morning, in referring to a recent tragedy the whole nation is speaking of, one news source said (in part because really the whole sentence didn't make sense) we lost someone who made us 'bare' with our madness...


Bear. Bear with our madness. Why is that so hard? And no, it's not about doing you-know-what in the woods.
You lose time.
You work a knot loose.
You go to the store.
Your friends go to the store too.
You go to the store with two friends.
You're a good friend.
Your friends are good to you.
Your male friend just got his mail.
It's not nice to point at a dog if its tail is bent.

Okay, the combo of heat, frustration and a heap of movies to review has got me a bit cranky and I can't even keep my eyes open. But please consider this:


Many people who have come to the United States know two or more languages. When Americans go to other countries, they get bent out of shape if they can't find someone who speaks English. And a lot of people for whom English is a second language speak it a lot better than we do. How pitiful is that?