Month: June 2006

Crankypantsing

Psittacism

Shelly

This is via Ms. Lea, who likes to watch spelling bees.

Come to find out, there’s a word (of course there is!) for the aforementioned parroting of nonsense: psittacism.

Psittacism is speech or writing that appears mechanical or repetitive in the manner of a parrot. More generally it is a pejorative description of the use of words which appear to have been used without regard to their meaning.

Well, then. I seem to be suffering a plague of asschapeaux (yes, that is the correct collective noun for a group of assberets) who are afflicted with this terrible malady. God help me. The only thing that keeps me from completely losing my mind is the knowledge that I am not alone. So, for all of you who are also fighting an unwinnable war with empty platitude-spewing asschapeaux, I give you psittacism. Putting a name to the symptoms doesn’t solve the problem, but it does lessen the pain-in-the-ass somewhat.

Crankypantsing, News & Politics

It Makes the Baby Shelly Cry

Shelly

If I hear one more person say that the soldiers in Iraq are “fighting for our freedom,” I am going to scream. Iraq was never, ever a threat to the U.S. That it may now pose a threat to us is our own damned fault, but that still doesn’t justify the ignorant parroting, ad nauseum, of the “they’re fighting for our freedom” party line. That’s a big, fat, fucking lie

And don’t get me started on Iran. Why on earth are we ramping ourselves up for another war when we are stretched too thinly as it is? It’s deja vu all over again, and I’m feeling a little nauseated.

In unrelated news from the Things That Make the Baby Shelly Cry file, I noticed that Ford has stopped with the illiterate “less stops at the pump” nonsense. Their newest commercial is grammatically correct. Praise be! Now, if only the “manly men crave greasy slabs o’ meaty meat” trend in food advertising would just go the hell away, I might be able to sleep at night.