Ranch (dressing), Text (messages), and (Net)flix it

Language, like spelling, is slipping.

I made a new years resolution to never refer to ranch dressing as just plain "ranch," or a text message as a "text." My reasons were at least two-fold.

1. "Ranch" as in "Uuh, could I get a thing of ranch," sounds/is disgusting, and saying "text" just makes anyone sound like a tool e.g.
"Dude U git my txt?"
"tits"
"wanna go to mall"
"can't gotta cruz round wearin ugly snglsses"

and

2. well, I can't remember two after coming up with those sweet examples.


But anyway, my resolution has been coming along pretty well, very few slip-ups and then the other day I was sitting on the porch and told Mary that,

"We should netflix it."
"ok, but you know we don't have a subscr--"
"Ya know what I think from now on I'm gonna say "flix it" rather than "netflix it."
"Eww, that's like 'floggi-- (lifelogging)"
"No it's not, its nothing like "flogging."
"How is it any different from "ranch" or "text" th--?"
"oh, shit"

And there you have it. Worse (Better?) than selling out I one upped 'em.

(speaking of spelling, will spell check and word recognition software make spelling accuracy and the evolution of spelling better or worse, and I am not talking about in peoples heads, I am talking about on/in the published (web)page.?)





Tune in next time for: Why I have no problem handing our "culture" over to amateurs on the internet... and, oh shit, what about geography?

Bad Books

I began a horrible novel today. (I still have questions as to whether I should feel guilty about making judgments of works that I haven't even finished or read over an 1/8th of for that matter. Should I even refrain altogether from thinking about the book until it is done, complete? Can you imagine what it would be like to be a writer and to operate under such B.S.? To write but not edit?)

It made me begin to think. To think about the best way to discern what is good and what is bad when it comes to literature. For the last, oh I dunno...ten years...I have been fed "good" stuff. And good stuff was all I wanted. Before then I devoured literature. I read books based on the title. I judged them by their covers. And then I began reading good stuff. The canon. Before it was hit and miss, but before I had read for entertainment. Now I was reading to judge.

But as I said reading this bad book after so many years of more or less good ones it made me think. Remember how in math class you would learn some principle and then apply it to a problem? or in English grammar lessons you would learn a rule and they would give you some incorrect sentence to correct? Well something that is lacking in a liberal arts approach to literature is the counterexample. I want something that sucks to give the smack down.

As I was reading along I could have filled a spreadsheet (if I knew how to use excel) with the bad metaphors, the inappropriate phrasing, the authors uncanny and lamentable self-references etc.
All of this to make me realize that I can't tell what is good until I know what's bad (and here's the catch) and vice versa.

Sounds simple enough, right? I mean, was this really worth writing a blog post about?

Well I think so, and this is why. It all made me realize that when it comes to art: If people don't fail, then we ain't got shit.

Tune in next time for: Ranch (dressing), Text (messages), and (Net)flix it