h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

You like George Carlin, don't you?

He's pretty funny - He came up with that pre-boarding criticism thing as I remember.

Just watch business programs on TV, an you will cringe at the misuse of language. People can't just say "they made some money", it has to be really clever and complex.

I implemented a mental paradigm ommitment and neglected to mention that my non-tolerance for unfunctional grammatical forms negatively impacts the quantitative level of my personal positive opinion asymptotically approaching the reciprocal factor of zero.

Cute. (There is no sarcasm implied here.)

I know what you're talking about. I would give my own example, but I've been trying not to watch tv recently, so nothing comes to mind. Except for an episode of MST3K (it's almost impossible for me to not relate things to that show). The movie is called Cave Dwellers and in it they have all these fancy names for things like "glimmering charm sheild" and the like. Joel said that since the movie had such a low budget they couldn't afford nice props, so they gave things fancy names to dress it up. He called it "giving extraordinary names to ordinary things". That's what all those people on those shows are doing, using big fancy words to make it sound important.

I myself am not very good at that kind of stuff, as you can probably see. I have a large vocabulary, but I can't just bring up big words to sound intelligent. Especially while typing. I think a lot faster than I type, so I have to slow things down and use smaller words, otherwise, this would be full of typos.

I also have a tendency to be long winded, especially when discussing unimportant stuff. Anyway, I love George Carlin. The man is brilliant.

GreyRose

Oh yeah, I thought you were really funny in TVF's KITH forum. That's why I didn't say anything when you crushed my head (aside from the fact that I now have a flat head ). I couldn't think of a witty retort, and my mother always told me, "if you can't say anything funny, don't say anything at all". (She didn't really say that.)

If you had a small vocabulary and/or a poor grasp of language then you would behave like these "experts" inventing words that make no sense (and usually have an English word that means the same thing, and is in common use), and try to sound so incredibly intelligent no-one understands.

My English teacher (in England) always used to stress that the most important thing, once you know the basics is to use the clearest simple language to make yourself understood. The beauty of literature is to describe things clearly an artistically - This does not mean trying to invent words to fill up space - like these TV people do - I remember a five minute run-on sentence on a LA newscast that was just to say "it is getting close to sundown and then it will be dark until sunrise" - pretty clever stuff.

What's MST3K by-the-way?

This doesn't have anything to do with made up words, but it does have to do with stupid newscasters. A few days ago there was this cow loose on the streets on the south side of the city, and the reporter was talking about it and kept referring to it as 'he'. Cows are female, bulls are male. My photography teacher told me that. I wanted to go see it, but I'm afraid of cows so I didn't.

MST3K is Mystery Science Theater 3000. TVF wrote a really good article on it. It was, in my opinion, the greatest tv show ever made. They made a movie, you can get it on video. You should watch it, but only after you read Frink's article so you have the back story.

Oh yeah, I'd been meaning to tell you this earlier, your name rocks! 'Dude' is one of the words I use the most in real life conversation. You know the ones we use to keep ourselves from actually thinking?

I hope that newscaster doesnt become a dairy farmer - there might be some happy bulls however.

Dude, you rule!