1/9/07I’ve mentioned some of this material before, but this post has the joy of a ludicrously moronic Craigslist posting, so bear with me.
Anyone who has spoken to me for more than a few minutes is probably aware I’m a bit of a dick when it comes to grammar. It is physically painful for me to hear people butchering a language that is already the biggest bastard in the orphanage. Hearing some douchebag in a smelly muscle shirt insert non-existent R’s into the word “wash,” claim something literally happened which is beyond the scope of reality, use the word “ain’t”, or ask “where you at?” with that final word just dangling there like a dead, rotting herring, send me into fits of homicidal rage. Visions of attempting to cram an English textbook down their sic-spewing throats dance through my head like the singing movie snack advertisement.
It’s not that I’m elitist, snarky, or merely an asshole. Well, okay, I am all of those things, and it is them a little bit, but not mostly. Mostly it’s just the frustration that so few people don’t seem to give a shit how terrifically ignorant they sound. Whenever I bring up the fact that, hey, it’s Joe and me in this instance, they react as if I’m asking them to pour battery acid into their crotch. There’s this prevailing notion that grammar doesn’t matter. But it does, if only in the way others perceive you. I found this, for example, on a recent online posting:
"we have two houses that we would like to sell we have listed with two different
realtors and they could not sell none of them one realtor was dumber than a box
of rocks one house is 3bedroom 1 bath that needs fixed up it was priced at
49900.00 the other one is 2beedroom 1 bath with 24x24 shop and new furnace and
hot water heater newac system it was listed at 69900.00 one is at 2028 n benton
which is rented for 475.00 and the other one is at 2127 n lyon which we live in"
Great smoking horny toads! Upon reading this my eyes began to glaze over and I’m pretty sure I had a minor stroke. The right side of my face is still tingly. Leaving aside the fact that this entire post is a run-on sentence, nary a punctuation mark in sight, I love the fact that they refer to their realtor as “dumber than a box of rocks” right after the gem of a phrase “could not sell none” makes its ghastly appearance. It’s sort of like hearing Corky call someone a fucking retard. And what, was moving his pinky finger over to the Shift key just far too much effort? “I ain’t cap’tlizin’ sheeeeet. Fuck ‘em, man! Pass me them Twinkies, Murtle.” Can you take an ad like this seriously? I’m not sure what the legal ramifications are when purchasing a house from the brain-damaged. This cat might be the smartest mongoloid on his block; he might even be a goddamn genius but you’d never know it because he writes and, likely, speaks as if the left hemisphere of his brain has been removed. Perception, people.
Why take the effort to speak properly? Because doing otherwise gives your listener an excuse to think you are an idiot, and conclude you don’t know what the bloody shit you’re talking about. It’s an excuse for people to dismiss you. If nothing else, maybe someday you’d like to make a first impression that doesn’t require you to end up banging the sleepy-eyed turd who smells like cheese because everyone with above a 4th grade vocabulary isn’t interested in your ignorant ass.
Of course, the amendment to this rule is that if you’re attractive enough, you’ll be forgiven anything and might as well go around just grunting and pointing whenever you want something.
