*Ding ding* Round two. Here we go again. (I'm kidding- I love this shit). As uncomfortable as it is, I find myself most prone to writing sitting on my living room floor. I suppose it seems appropriate. Sipping my pomegranate lemonade crystal light (Now with more artificial sweeteners!), I've been contemplating how best to write this. I've alluded in the comments section of the facebook group what my general topic is- I'll give you a few seconds to go check......................

Ya right. We both know you don't read that crap. But I do- and I appreciate them. Seriously. Go write a post right now. Suggestions, comments, whatever. Make me feel loved. That being said, I've gotten two suggestions in the last couple days. 1. Be more mean. I can do that. Easily. 2. Mention my saxophone. Much, much harder. But I'll try. I'm embarrassed to say I just had to correct my spelling of “saxophone” just now- thank you spell check.

So, for those of you who don't read the wall (I don't blame you), this post is going to be about the fall of the English language. I'll start off by referring you to the article (suggested by my aunt, Nancy) that inspired this: http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/17-09/st_thompson

The article essentially makes the case (through Ig Nobel award inspiring research) that texting, twitter, and the like aren't actually destroying a language that took over a millennium to develop. The research studies a bunch of college students- analyzing various writing they do throughout their post secondary education. The researcher (Dr. Andrea Lunsford, that's her mug staring at you from the top of this post. She looks like she wants to lure me to her ginger bread house and invite me in for dinner, where the surprise main course is -wait for it- me!) suggests that the “LOL”s and “OMG”s are adding up to more writing than past generations, making this generation of college goers better writers.

I see a problem here.

Twitter has been around for...what? A year? Two? Chatting has been around for a while, but texting didn't hit mainstream until a few years ago. The students studied in this...uh....study... are about my age (I'm 20), maybe older. That means they (like me) grew up with relatively little texting/chatting/LOLing, and with proper English as the majority of their language exposure. This research would be far more valid in five to ten years when these nit wits people call “the future” (which scares me to no end) are in college. They will have grown up with this shit. I have actually heard someone say “L O L” in conversation when something humorous was said. I SHIT YOU NOT. This makes me want to hole up with an AK somewhere in the everglades, waiting for Europe to finally get sick of us and team up against the good ol' US of A (get used to saying “God Save the Queen!” or “Viva La France!”).

In the first blog post, I mentioned Californication. In it, David Duchovny's character has an interview during which he says of his latest obsession:

Just the fact that people seem to be getting dumber and dumber. You know, I mean we have all this amazing technology and yet computers have turned into basically four figure wank machines. The internet was supposed to set us free, democratize us, but all it's really given us is Howard Dean's aborted candidacy and 24 hour a day access to kiddie porn. People... they don't write anymore, they blog. Instead of talking, they text, no punctuation, no grammar: LOL this and LMFAO that. You know, it just seems to me it's just a bunch of stupid people pseudo- communicating with a bunch of other stupid people at a proto-language that resembles more what cavemen used to speak than the King's English.

While I realize that was a long quote, it was worth it. It sums up EXACTLY what I want to say in this post.

I feel the need to defend myself a little here. I text. You all probably know that. If you didn't, surprise. However, never will you see me type “LOL” or something similar. If I wish to convey laughing, I say “haha.” I also type in (mostly) complete sentences. When my mother texts me and says LOL, I die a little on the inside. It's bad enough I have to put up with that shit from people my age or younger- but my mom? Jesus.

O ya.

Sax-a-ma-phone. (to the tune of Beethoven's fifth)