So, like... Blog

Ah, 9/12/2oo3. Has it really been a day over two years ago since a bunch of Muslims that hated the US chasing people out of their own countries, and then giving them to a group of people that had lived there thousands of years before, and then throwing full military support behind this new country stole some commercial passenger jets and went kamikaze on the World Trade Center towers? Yes. How could I forget, with the media ramming it in my face? Yes, a bunch of people died. Yes, it's really sad and some tosh. Yes, the man with a negative IQ running our country has now attacked anyone that has ever dared say the word "terrorism". But we don't get this worked up about Pearl Harbor. How many people remember that it was December 7th, 1941? Hell, I'm not even entirely sure that that's the correct date. No one wears T-Shirts with flags on them saying "Remember 12/7". Lets have a moment of silence for those poor souls that were forcibly removed from their mortal coils when the Japanese got over-ambitious.

...

Ok. That's over with. But still, no one crys tears for all of the poor dust mites that fall victim to that merciless mechanized menace known as a vacuum. What the hell's with that? Two "u"s in a row? I think I can see how that came about...

Man #1: Hey, what the hell should we call this thing? It sucks up dust, but "Dust Sucker" isn't quite poetic enough for my refined taste.

Man #2: You drink Coor's Light, how refined can your taste be?

Man #1: Shut up, man, help me think.

Man #2: Fuck, I dunno. Maybe we need a few drinks in us first.

Man #1: We've already split a whole keg of some alcoholic-like beverage.

Man #2: Oh. Well then. We could write a bunch of random letters down and see if they make something that resembles an English word.

Man #1: Yeah right, and look like fools? We have a chance to make a totally unique word, here. Free from the shackles of any despotic tongue. We shall be bards, skalds, literary geniuses. Now, help me think of something that hasn't been done before.

Man #2: How about "ZZyxxyzlx?" I've always felt bad for those poor letters at the end of the alphabet.

Man #1: Bah, that blows primate testicles. I'm going to call it a "Vacuum cleaner".

Man #2: Isn't "vacuum" already a word?

Man #1: No, of course not.

Man #2: Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's a derivative of the Latin neuter "vacuus", meaning empty space. I wonder what was going on when those crazy Romans thought up that double "u" thing...

Roman #1: Have you finished digging this hole I've asked you to?

Roman #2: Yes, why the fuck did you make me dig a huge hole?

Roman #1:You lost the last round of the "Don't Say Toga" game, remember?

Roman #2: Oh, right. Thank you for not eating me and all that.

Roman #1: Don't mention it. Now, watching you work, I've been thinking... What the hell are we going to call what this hole is full of?

Roman #2: That's a good question. It's full of nothing, but that seems to contradict itself. What we need to do is create a different word for this concept!

Roman #1: This is our chance to do something new to our language! Our chance to go down in history like Ovid! Help me think of something proactive, retronominous, and inventive to use.

Roman #2: Hmm, besides not stringing together a group of meaningless buzz-words... Well, we could start using spaces and punctuation in our written texts...

Roman #1: No, I was thinking more along the lines of "vacuus".

Roman #2: A double "u"? What kind of idiot are you? Someone is going to take a look at that word when we cover the whole globe and think "What moron would use a double "u" in a word? He must have been Gaul."

Man #2: Yes, some day, someone is going to look at your new word and say "What kind of idiot uses two u's in a word? He must have been American."

Look at that. I used parallelism, an established literary technique. Were it used effectively, I would be proud. Anyway, that's not all. What about all of the migrant workers that died of malnutrition and fatigue to bring you that glass of orange juice you drank for breakfast? I don't see ABC running any specials on that. There are thousands of illegal immigrants foolishly risking deportation to come to the US, thinking there will be jobs for them, but what do we get? A thirty minute clip about John Ritter and Johnny Cash dieing. Apparently, deaths are more important if the corpse once owned large amounts of paper printed to represent small amounts of gold. What about the poor Korean boy that was overworked to make your sneakers? Or the tree that was butchered to make the paper your mail is printed on? So while Raul struggles to pick enough oranges to buy food for one day, while little Ching gets a finger chopped off because his stitches weren't exactly eight inches apart, while countless nameless trees are fed into a shredder like cows at the slaughter house, just keep watching about how some old guy who could sing died from a life of excess of drugs and alcohol. You're hiding from reality by drowning your intellect in the lives of people you will never be like. You have to wake up and smell the irrelevancy.

Oh, and in case you're wondering, I might have an update with more of a point tomorrow.

posted by Slade at 12:10 AM