Wednesday, November 07, 2007

One last time, then I give up

Okay, there are verbal gaffes that are repeated ad infinitim until they are accepted by millions of people.

For example, irregardless. Not a word. (Geez, the spellchecker didn't flag "irregardless". Aargh!)

"I could care less." Then you do care?

But the one that REALLY bugs me is how UFO has become synonymous for "alien spaceship". UFO means Unidentified Flying Object. I've seen UFOs in that I've seen things in the sky that I couldn't identify. However, I have never seen nor do I expect to see an alien spaceship. There is nothing odd or unusual about seeing a UFO. It would be a somewhat remarkable ability to be able to identify everything you saw flying in the sky. "Next on Heroes! A guy who can identify things!"

Anyway, the media and most people have embraced the stupidity and define UFOs as alien spaceships. Fine. I'll stop complaining.

Why did this come up? The whole Shirley MacLaine/Dennis Kucinich UFO controversy. Since they both seem to define UFO the stupid way, then that does, indeed, make them both nutjobs. But that's okay, because Shirley MacLaine, at least, embraces her inner nut.


One more thing. As I was writing this, I was thinking about how much Kucinich's hot wife looks like Ginny Weasley. And then it hit me!



I am SO voting for this guy now!

6 comments:

David Fair said...

Um, hate to be the one to inform you of this but... "irregardless" used to not be a word, but things change, new words get added to the dictionary, and the language, and a few years back, this was one of them.

And actually, this was right and proper, since the dictionary reflects (or is supposed to reflect) actual usage and not some grammatical ideal.

Ipecac said...

Crud. They really added irregardless to the dictionary? I'm no fundamentalist grammarian but that just seems wrong. Irregardless is in no way a cromulent word. It seems the terrorists have, indeed, won.

ahtitan said...

Oh, come on! Cromulent can't be a real word.

Ipecac said...

Dude, don't badmouth cromulent!

http://tinyurl.com/6u74d

Anonymous said...

Somehow, comparing a hot wife to Ginny Weasley doesn't do mucy for me. Now, if you compared her to Hermoine, that might be different.

Eric Haas said...

Irregardless, you won’t catch me using it any time soon.