St. John the Amenable, Again(able)

     Again I return, after an extended excursion into the astral plain in search of justice and otherworldly virtue, and what do I, your patron saint of Must You Torment Me With This, find when I arrive? To what have I borne witness, despite all of my well intended and perfectly thought out suggestions from times gone by? Why, I find the world continuing on as though I'd never pointed out the dangers, nor illuminated the limitations placed on the minds of those who recalcitrantly refuse to refrain from utilizing nonsense vocalizations, such as 'totes' or 'yolo' or some other term I could only imagine in the darkest of horrors of my most harrowing dreams.
     Yet my resolve remains intact, friends and neighbors! I shall not capitulate to the demands of the dunces among us, simply because the have the majority! I shall not heed their arguments of "but it's easier to type on my phone," or "language is a living, growing thing, and new words come up all the time, and you should get over it, already."
    Nay, I declare, I will not "get over it, already!" I will not allow this living, growing thing, to be mangled so by the intellectual toxin known as "text speak." I will not have it! 'U' is not a substitute for 'you,' nor is 'R' the same as 'are' or 'our.' This path is one of linguistic putrefaction, and I would and do advise against it. All living things die, and thus our manner of communication must eventually whither away as well, most likely taken over by binary code, or simply eradicated along with the species that used it, but surely we can permit it to pass peacefully, can we not?
    Now that's settled, and we've all agreed to never use letters that are not words as words, we can move on to a few other items on my infinitely increasing index of things people do and say and think that your goodly saint wishes they wouldn't, and unfortunately I must revisit one or two things that I once believed we had, like Polio or Smallpox, mostly sent off, cast eternally from our collective compendium of communication.
     For example, if one is having an experience which they find to be droll, and from this experience they find instilled in themselves a measure of mirth, then said person is 'amused.' Now, if that same person, at presumably a different time, has an experience which, metaphorically speaking, knocks them about the head and face with a summer squash and subsequently asks them for a dollar, that same person could be said to be 'bemused.'
      As an aside, if this same individual was literally assaulted with a gourd of the summer months and then entreated for money, said individual would very likely not be amused, though they could be bemused, because these words mean two different things. Also, this person would probably press charges.
     Also, I feel the time for the phrase 'that's just no' has passed. It has been given ample time to prove its worth, and has failed to catch on, or attain any true place of respect. Besides, few things in this life are in fact, just no, and it largely remains fair for people to request reasons for one's beliefs and opinions.
     Now, because I am a benevolent saint, I have brought something from the ether for you all besides the usual tirade of belittling certain words and phrases simply because they lack credulity, or otherwise annoy me. I brought something fun.
     No, really. I did.
     As many of you know, I generally refrain from using what some people refer to as 'off color' language in this, my written rant. This is not... exactly... the case when I express myself aloud. Indeed, such language, which is also referred to as 'blue,' which makes yours truly wonder why blue is an off color, often finds gainful employment in my phraseology, but for reasons which are my own, they don't tend to show up here.
     I bring this up because I was recently reminded of how movies get censored for television, and the amazing lines that get substituted in. My two new favorites, and as such are officially sanctioned articulations, are "Who the hey are you?" and "Man the huck up!"
     I like former merely for the sweetness of its sonority. The latter, however, seems to me that one is being told stand up for what he or she believes in, as would Huckleberry Finn, albeit after some deliberation.
      So join me, won't you, whoever the hey you are, and release yourself from the confinement of shorthand typing and treating words with different definitions as identical and interchangeable items of intonation. Especially when they are literally not the same word. Man the huck up, and enjoy whichever language you speak with a little enthusiasm. I give you my holy guarantee, your endeavors will be met with many bemused looks, and every once in an epic while, you will literally see a look of amusement upon the face of a person who understands. It's lots of fun.
-St. John the Amenable, patron saint of That's Not What That Means!

Not a Lot Going On, Really...

     At first, I admit, I was having trouble finding an idea for this week. I really was. I thought about doing a thing about guns, because I've quite simply had enough of all this lead laden insanity. School shootings are happening so much that the even emotional vampires that pass themselves off as today's journalists can't seem to force their faces into that "frowning at tragedy" look they all get. Plus, we've got those open carry proponents, walking around with their guns out while they do their shopping and dining and whatever else most people do everyday without turning a deadly weapon into a fashion accessory. How carrying guns around and scaring everyone shows the world these people care about personal freedom is beyond me, because let me tell you something for nothing, friends and neighbors, any world where people feel the need to take a gun to buy their hot dogs and apple pies is not a free one.
     But what's the point in arguing with them? Why try and point out the hypocrisy? Seems a little too far gone, doesn't it? They've already committed themselves wholeheartedly to a viewpoint that insists the best way to keep people from getting shot is to give everyone a gun.
     So I decided not to get into it, and kept looking.
     Wanna know what I found? I found a bunch of stuff, and it ranges all over. Want an example? Here's an example: Gwyneth Paltrow says that negative words hurt water's feelings. For real. This was an article. In real life, written by an actual person. Which is when I thought about getting into how ridiculous celebrities are, but immediately realized that everyone knows that already, and who cares anyway? It's bad enough that some other poor soul had to write that article and put his or her name to it, no sense me dirtying myself with such inanity.
      Thus, onward I looked, searching for a spark of inspiration in the dark abyss of public consciousness.
      Soon, I came upon a group of headlines, and I noticed something odd. There was one, reading as follows: "P90X guy critiques Obama's form." This was right immediately above another one, namely "G7 leaders warn Moscow." To elucidate, for the unaware: the P90X is yet another in a long line of home exercise trends, and anyone known as "The P90X guy" should shut up about everything, because his life is already over. The G7 leaders are a group of the world's most powerful heads of state, and they were warning Moscow about all the weird stuff Russia seems to be up to these days.
      Hold on to that for a moment, dear reader, because more is on the way.
      I also saw a headline for an article about Mariah Carey's new album sales, right next to one about violence against women. Also on this list of interesting pairings I have included  "What Burgers and Baby Wipes Have in Common," which was saddled up next to "BP Oil Spill Could Happen again." And, just this morning, just this very morning, I say, without even trying, I find "Nick Diaz: 'Anderson Silva Should Fire His Trainer'" right above -above, mind you- "Woman Who Drove With Dying Man on Car Gets Prison."
     Now, I don't know who Nick Diaz is, or why he thinks Anderson Silva's trainer is doing a bad job of preparing Anderson Silva to do whatever it is Anderson Silva is training himself to do. Probably it's some sort of cage fighting thing, but for all I know or care he could be training up his ability to make water cry.
What I do know is I care about it a lot less than I do the about the story about the woman with a dying man on her car, or what the world plans to do with Russia, or the potential of another giant oil spill.
     So I thought to Myself -you might remember him-, "Hey, maybe I could write about how silly it is that all categories of news seem to be just melting together, and how the blurring up of all this stuff makes it all seem unimportant, and thus, in my opinion, is contributing to a less informed and less effective populace, one that could be more easily used and manipulated by the corrupt and powerful. What do you think?"
     To which Myself dutifully replied, "Well, it's an interesting point, and one I'm not, being you, inclined to disagree with. Although, My Favorite of All Champions Past, Present, and Future, Including But Not Limited To Hector, Hercules, Harrys both Potter and of 'Harry and the Hendersons' Fame, most people probably won't really care, so I recommend you just come up with a really long and mildly amusing nickname for yourself, and be done with it."
     This was, I found, a persuasive argument, and as I hadn't really come up with anything substantial anyway, I agreed.
     Tune in next week, as St. John returns!
-John