Parlor Spider...Step In, Little Fly

Insightful thoughts and/or rants from atop the soapbox from one who wishes to share the "right" opinion with everyone.

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

Travesty or Idiosyncracy?

While I probably would not be the absolute first to admit it, I do have foibles...I can be a bit quirky at times. Occasionally, there are little things that get under my skin (chiggers included) that other people generally don't notice. For example, I absolutely refuse to give in to bad spelling or poor grammar. For this reason, I do not drink Lite beer nor do I eat ketchup. My children would not wear Luvs diapers even though rinsing disgusting cloth ones out in the toilet is almost as odious as misspellings! Although we all know the liabilities of drinking soda pop, there are still Mello Yello drinkers out there (gasp!). A recent insult offered by the Coca Cola company is the caffeine/soda mixture "Blak." Please! Are we so stupid as a nation that we cannot recognize a product if the name is spelled properly? Aren't packaging colors bright enough to attract our attention? Madison Avenue can offer such malaprops as gimmicks designed to attract buyers...perhaps it is so. However, I have recently been accosted in the quasi-national media (WGN,Chicago) by a complete disregard for structure, and I need to speak out. Ken Harrelson and Darrin Jackson have set language use back 100 years or at least relegated its use to the verbiage of the, shall we say, less informed segments (red states, for example).
I'm not a Chicago White Sox fan, but last night the choice boiled down to the Sox, the Cubs or poker on TV. I watched the Sox because I usually don't notice them except when Ozzie Guillen blows a nut about something. Anyway, during the game, every time a Sox pitcher struck out a member of the opposing team, one or the other of the two broadcasters would shout "He gone!" Initially, I thought maybe thehy simply had gotten excited given the recent travails of the club; not so...EVERY strikeout was followed by those two words. As the game progressed, it irritated me more and more until finally, I turned to the Cubs at Milwaukee.
OK, so I don't have to watch the Sox if I don't want to. I agree. Today, however, as I was peacefully driving down the road alert for any billboard mistakes such as the local Saturn dealer advertising "convertables", a vehicle featuring a White Sox sticker on the rear bumper passed me. The car had a personalized plate: "HeGonne." Not surprisingly, there was NO accompanying sticker saying " Proud parent of an honor student at..." I lined up the laser from my headlight and shot an imaginary 20-megaton explosive charge into the tailpipe like I do when I see a vehicle with a "W" sticker on the window. Too bad the explosion was imaginary. I just hope people who say things like "he gone" are not having children. Teaching is hard enough.
Go Cubs.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home