REALLY?

My To Do List for 12/5:
1. Pick up dry cleaning
2. Mail Christmas cards
3. Change auto signature on emails from "sent from blackberry wireless" to "no reply without face + dick pics"

WHEN DID "TO WHERE" REPLACE "UNTIL"?

I should probably start this post by apologizing for not having posted in upwards of five months, but that would presume that anyone (other than my sister) reads this blog. So...sorry Dana.

I am not sure when or how it started but I have been witnessing the slow death of the word "until." What is stranger, however, is that it seems it is being replaced by the clunky and grammatically unfortunate phrase "to where." As in, "they kept talking and talking about Britney Spears on the news to where I almost forgot there was a war going on." It is as if people are either too lazy to cough out "the point" between the "to " and the "where," and for some reason they have forgotten about the simple and clean "until."

I first noticed this new trend around my house. As in, my husband continued to say it to where I finally asked him where he picked up this terrible habit. He didn't know it was wrong. And in his defense, I started to notice many people using it. And then I heard it on a sitcom. Which means somebody wrote it into a script. Since I frequently gauge the rise and fall of American grammar by the syndicated sitcoms shown repeatedly on American Airlines in-flight programming, to me, this was the last nail in the "until" coffin. If the CBS Eye in the Sky is promoting “to where,” well, then “until” might as well never have existed.

Imagine an until-less world…imagine penny savers, newspaper ads and the occasional t-shirt bearing the headline “Shop to where you drop.” Imagine ending the I Dos with “in sickness and in health, to where death do us part,” or worse…no until means no ‘til. I think Tarantino and Rodriguez would agree, “From Dusk to where Dawn (comes)” would suck as a movie title and no good cowboy wants to be promising that, “so help me God, I will keep looking for the man that did this to where the day comes that I die.” That is just too many words to spit out before exiting the room/saloon/scene.


So I ask all of you readers (Dana) to resist the urge to give in to the To Where crowd. Hold tight to your Untils and use them liberally and properly. Heck, even use ‘Til. Otherwise, you will hear it less and less to where the wrong things start to sound right, and you will barely notice it is gone.

GAP BOYFRIEND TROUSER? PLEASE. MORE LIKE GAP MORNING-AFTER, REGRET PANTS.

I would like to start off by commending Gap for trying to bring back everyone’s favorite grandpa term, “trousers.” I think that is gutsy and I applaud it.
But let’s be honest about the whole wearing-your-boyfriends-wrinkled-khakis-trend that is apparently so prevalent that they named a line item after it. The only girls I see wearing a man’s pair of khakis are the ones walking through the East Village on Sunday morning with the pointy toes of their high heels poking out from under the ill-fitting “trousers” and their skirt from the night before balled up in their leather purse...possibly with their underwear. The crinkled look of these...let's call them Morning After Pants...is mirrored by the wrinkle of regret in their eyes as they try to hail a cab as quickly as possible. I would venture to say the borrowing (or silently stealing, depending on level of regret) of a strange man's pants (and by strange man I mean a stranger that you exchanged at least one fluid with) is far more common then slipping your silky thong covered ass into the cargo pants your boyfriend has been wearing for eight straight days. Because that would just be gross. But I guess the creatives over at Gap figured the second scenario would make a far better dance number for Claire Danes and that dude from the internet pedophile movie.

AIN'T NO PARTY LIKE A WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENTS' PARTY...

Today I make an exception. This post is not necessarily about lingo or catch phrases. It is just a lesson in not-funny.

Unfortunately due to the limitations of blogspot technology, I can't upload a video...so you can copy and paste the link below into your navigation bar. You can probably also search "Karl Rove dancing" on You Tube or google "what is wrong with our country?" and it'll show up that way too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYZre8kEsuw

I KOW WHEN YOU SAY "GOOD TIMES" AT THE END OF A STORY, YOU REALLY MEAN THEY WERE BAD.

I think I blame Will Ferrell for this super annoying, over-used expression. Although I have asked people who use it where they got it and they all seem to have different answers. Some say Strangers With Candy started it, some credit Old School and others just don’t know. Just as I was celebrating the silence left in the wake of the “That doesn’t suck” craze, this sarcasm bomb starts dropping all the over place. I’ve heard it used as a tag at the end of peoples' recounting of bad events over a thousand times and on both coasts (I swear I am not exaggerating). I have even heard it on TV so presumably it was written into a sitcom script. But Old School is old news. Yes, it is a funny movie and you can watch it over and over and still laugh…but for this to be the quote that lasts three years after its release is a bit disheartening. What about “earmuffs!”? That was hysterical. Why aren’t more people using that one every day? I do not doubt the genius of Todd Phillips or Will Ferrell by any means. Old School was worthy of Animal House, Caddyshack and Monty Python style quoting. You know, the kind of quoting where you not only say the quote but imitate the person’s line read or accent as well (The Carl Spackler lower lip-curl must be the most imitated speech impediment in the history of movies). And Ferrell’s delivery of that line in the graveyard (if that is, in fact, where it is derived from) is impeccable. But perhaps it is time to put this one to rest. It has been over three years and maybe we don’t need to drive home the point of a bad story with sarcasm any longer. Own your complaining. Own your bad news. End your bad stories with realism and acceptance. Try something more along these lines, “so then after they towed the car they gave me another ticket for loitering while I was waiting for the tow truck so that was so bad and crappy that I wanted to share it with you in hopes that you would shower me in sympathy or at least get dragged down with me into the pool of bitter resentment in which I am currently wallowing.” That is so much better than “…Good times. Good times.”

“META” POISED TO BE NEXT ANNOYINGLY OVER-USED PREFIX.

Remember how the euro-pretentious ‘über’ was über popular for a minute? Besides the fact that it requires an ümlaut, which is reason enough to dislike it on sheer looks, the fact that when the fashion-magazine-moniker-creation team shouted “supermodel just doesn’t describe how truly model-y she is, we need something even more super than super,” Übermodel was introduced, cemented its place in the lexicon of hateful prefixes. However, the only place you can find it now is in a Quiznos commercial attached to the word meat. That’s an über-fall from grace. No matter though. There is a new prefix on the horizon and it is primed for mass-consumption. Meet “Meta,” the smart-sounding, tech-chic prefix du jour.

Basically, if you put “meta” in front of a word, it becomes a new word defined as that word about itself. It is the prefix equivalent of pointing a video camera at your TV screen. For example, Metadata are data about data, E’s Talk Soup is a talk show that shows clips from other talk shows (metatalk show), Metacrawler.com is a search engine that just searches other search engines, and in the ultimate online version of pot-callling-the-kettle-black, there are multiple accounts of bloggers talking on their blogs about other bloggers metablogging…which I think borders on creating an infinite loop.

Previously relegated to use among the HTML-literati, and linked to phrases like “refresh tag” and “redirect code,” Meta now holds court with the likes of NPR and Comedy Central. KCRW, the flagship station of National Public Radio on the west coast, recently held a panel discussion on the topic of shows-about-shows on their show Left, Right & Center (a lot of meta-ing in that sentence) And Jon Stewart frequently works the prefix into clever jokes as he hosts the ultimate in witty metashows, the Daily Show. This prefix is blowing up yo.

So you heard it here first! You better start needlessly attaching meta to the beginning of words while you still can because we are only seconds away from McDonalds launching a new rib flavored riblet sandwich on a rib flavored bun called the McMetaRib. Here is my new Metadictionary of words I made up that begin with Meta. Feel free to add your own suggestions:

Metaban: A ban on other bans. Frequently employed by teenagers to little or no success. As in, “You are not allowed to tell me anymore what I am not allowed to do.”

MetaRemix: A remix of other remixes of other dance songs that use samples.

Metatax: Where somehow, the government finds a way to make you pay tax on the amount you are paying in taxes.

Metasexual: A person who can only perform in bed if his or her partner is telling them how good they are at performing in bed.

Metajokes: Bad jokes about how bad other peoples’ jokes are. Frequently used on The Match Game. As in “Bad Joke Charlie’s jokes are so bad that his wife won’t even let him near her Blank.” The answer of course is something lame like funnybone.

Metadepressed: When you are sick and tired of being sick and tired.

Metalife: When you create a Sims Character and/or Second Life avatar based exactly on your real life persona and then make the same stupid, depressing mistakes in the video game and/or Second Life that you made with your real life and your virtual self ends up just as metadepressed as your real self.

Enough metatorializing (editorializing about other peoples' opinions or perspectives) for me.
bye.

BLARNEY IS LIKE BULLSH*T BUT MUCH, MUCH CUTER

In honor of saturday being St. Patricks Day and all, I decided to take some of my next door neighbor's favorite phrases ( I know they are his favorite because he yells them at his 14 year-old son all the time) and put a little touch of the irish on 'em. Next St. Patrick's day you can do the same. Just replace all your usual s-bombs with a word more fitting for the holiday.
Enjoy:

""Hey- blarney for brains...get your ass in here"
"Let me tell you, your mom used to be built like a brick blarney-house."
"I may be blarney-faced but I know when you're lying to me kid."
"Why'd I do it? I don't know... for blarney and giggles."
"Oh- the TV isn't working? No Blarney Sherlock."

And my all time favorite...
"Jesus kid, you don't know Blarney from Shinola."


Happy belated St. Patrick's Day!