Be More Good at Talking Words!

     Greetings, friends and neighbors, and welcome to another installment of what I like to call "Can you hear yourself speak?" with your old friend St. John the Amenable, patron saint of telling people to stop it. This is when I take time to point out that language is great, and people should be better at using it.
     Now, bear in mind, this is not one of those things where some idiot tries to argue that everyone in America should speak English. Never mind the fact that the word 'America' means quite a bit more than the United States, hence the necessary designations of North and South. The bottom line to that controversy is that singing the line "the land of the free" loses its' significance when you insist it be sung in only one language.
     No indeed, this is one of those things where some idiot -that would be me (hi!)-  pointlessly but relentlessly insists that the words 'ask' and 'especially' do not contain the letter 'x', nor is 'alot' one word, and on and on.
    For example, it is with a fair amount of disappointment that I feel the need to say that 'rite' and 'right' are not interchangeable, and when you are speaking to a confidant, you are speaking to someone in whom you are confident you can confide. Mind your 'e' or watch your 'a.' That's all I'm saying.
     This completes the spelling and pronunciation portion of our time together.
     Now I'd like to discuss with you a phrase. However, this is not a chat session, so I'm just going to write about how everyone should stop using it, and then you, for your part, will ignore me even though I'm right. It's kind of a rite for us now.
     Anyway, the phrase is "back in the day," and unfortunately, it has spread to all media, all generations, and if it doesn't stop soon, it may do irreversible damage to all you, as a people and as a culture, hold dear. Or, at the very least, it will continue to bug me, which is just as bad. My point here is that anyone who is old enough to reference a past, or smart enough to be able to reference a point of history, that is different enough from the present to make it worth mentioning, is old enough or smart enough to know better than to use that phrase. Conversely, anyone who is too young to remember when things were different, or too stupid to know any history, has no right to use that phrase, even though they may be more likely to do so, due to said youth or stupidity. Follow me? Allow me to simplify:
     You cannot justify using it, because no matter what, you are either too old, too smart, too young, or too stupid. Clear? Great.
     Lastly, I'm going to leave you with a little fun. We're going to discuss mixing metaphors, and why doing so can be great fun, under the right conditions.
     For example, say a man spends eight years happily married to his wife. Then, out of nowhere, she tells him the love has left their relationship, and she leaves. The man is devastated, and still loves her deeply. His misery is compounded by the fact that she has not met someone else, there was no great event that destroyed their relationship, it just, in her words "feels empty." So the man and woman get divorced and he moves out, because she got the house.
     After a few months of savage depression, the man decides that he still loves his wife, and wants her back. He makes several attempts, each one a failure, and finally she tells him that she doesn't want to be with him, or anyone, for that matter, and just wants to be alone. He goes home, battered but determined to try one more grand, immense, earth moving thing to get her back. He decides to show up on their anniversary, dressed to the nines, and take her on the exotic honeymoon they'd been too poor to afford when they were first married. He makes all the arrangements, spending months, and shows up at her house, which used to be their house, on the aforementioned day. He knocks on the door, hat in hand and heart in throat. And she answers, with her arm around another man. Our man leaves without a word, and does not speak to her again.
     One could say that this last straw at which our man was grasping was the one that broke the camel's back.
     Fun, right?
     Have another:
     Let's say you buy a new TV, top of the line and whatnot, and invite a friend over to watch a movie. Your friend agrees, and even brings beer. Now, during the movie, your friend accidentally knocks over his beer bottle, which hits the floor and shatters, sending beer everywhere, some of it even getting on the television screen. How do you react? Why, you leap up, screaming, punch your friend in the face, drag the television to your second story balcony, and pitch it over. Then, as any rational person would do when pushed to his or her absolute limit, you run downstairs, get in your car, and drive over the pieces of your televison three or four times, going all the way around the block each time to build speed. You then stop the car on top of the pile of plastic rubble, and light it on fire. Your car is now burning, soon to be joined by what was once a brand new television, and your friend (if the term still applies) is staring at you with a bloody face and wide eyed terror.
    What you have done here is thrown the baby out with the spilled milk. In this case, the milk is beer, but let's not split hairs (or hares), okay?
     Try this out yourselves; you'll probably only regret it a little.
-St. John