Me, Myself and iPod

Posted by John

A few weeks ago I wrote about how odd the English language is and specifically how certain words and phrases lose their meaning over time due to over- or incorrect use. That has inspired some really great and thoroughly entertaining feedback from people sharing similar words and phrases that they’ve come across.

For instance, one of the most overused words in the English language is actually a very simple one: myself. At least once every three days in an e-mail or during a conversation, meeting, or presentation, someone will use the word incorrectly in an effort to sound smarter or more formal. Case in point, “The people working on the project will be Gina, Randy, and myself.” To be clear, this is technically not a grammatically incorrect use of the word. In fact, Webster.com states it this way:

Myself is often used where I or me might be expected. Such uses almost always occur when the speaker or writer is referring to himself or herself as an object of discourse rather than as a participant in discourse. The other reflexive personal pronouns are similarly but less frequently used in the same circumstances. Critics have frowned on these uses since about the turn of the century, probably unaware that they serve a definite purpose. Users themselves are as unaware as the critics—they simply follow their instincts.

Fine, I am a critic, and fine, I will grant you that the use of the word has a definite purpose, but if you are just following your instincts and specifically don’t know what the definite purpose of the usage is, you’re a definite jackass. I think the general rule of thumb for using the word “myself” should be: if you think using the word makes you sound smarter or more formal, yourself is using it incorrectly.

One segment of the population that absolutely loves using the word ‘myself’ as well as other unnecessary multi-syllable words in an effort to make themselves sound smart is professional athletes in America. At some point in the recent past, athletes, especially retired athletes who are now sports commentators, came to the conclusion that using the name of the sport they played to describe all aspects of that sport will make them sound smarter: “Today’s National Football League game was a hard-fought battle between two good football teams, the Indianapolis Colts and the New Orleans Saints, each with some great football players, not just on the football field, but off it as well…” Or they’ll throw in a word that doesn’t’ even exist like, “The action on the football field was marveltastic today.”   What? You’re analyzing football, not literature. I already know you’re half-retarded; you don’t have to pretend like you’re not.

Imagine if we all talked like that, using redundantly descriptive words in everyday conversation? “This Monday morning I woke up from sleeping in my queen-size bed before eating a cereal bowl of Kellogg’s Rice Krispies and drinking a glass glass of Tropicana orange juice made from oranges then drove in my Ford Taurus automobile to my construction occupation with Anderson Building, Incorporated where I saw with my eyeballs a 55-year-old caucasian male jay-walking across Montgomery Boulevard…” That’s not intelligent; that’s exhausting.

Sometimes catch phrases become so catchy that conversations just feel like one catch phrase after another without any real substance or meaning: “The bottom line is, you gotta do what you gotta do, so take that for what it’s worth…” Wait, what? That sentence actually isn’t worth anything so why don’t you just take it back? Anytime you un-ironically punctuate a statement by saying, “take that for what it’s worth,” really what you’re saying is, “I’ve made my point but I don’t want to stop talking just yet.”

One thing that always gets under my skin (cp!) is when someone substitutes a non-curse word in place of an actual curse word. The other day my boss forgot something and was like, “Ah, son of a bullfrog!” What? Isn’t the son of a bullfrog a tadpole? “Ah, tadpoles! I am so upset right now!” It was so ridiculous I don’t even remember what happened after that for the next 10 minutes because I was still thinking about it.

I’m not saying that not cursing is a bad thing. Clearly I don’t have a problem using curse words but I respect people that don’t use them. But it’s one thing if you have a zen-like control over your emotions that you never need to cures or if you have a broad enough vocabulary to describe shit without using curse words, it’ an entirely other thing if you want to curse but don’t want to use the actual curse words. “This is a bunch of frickin’ bull-shoot!” Ok, clearly you’re upset but really you just sound silly. “What the heck? This gosh-darn thing is broken!” Fine, if you’re talking about a paperclip that stopped clipping papers, which you can get for a dime a dozen (cp!), then go ahead and refer to it as a “darn thing.” But if something really important breaks, then your choice of words should reflect the relative importance of the object and your relative level of pissiness – “Fucking whores! My goddamn iPod just stopped working. What a fucking piece of shit!”

Incidentally that phrase was taken from real life the other day because my iPod did break. It was an old-school 2^nd generation iPod that was at least 5-years old, so I couldn’t really be all that upset about it except when it stopped working a cartoonish image of an iPod with its eyes x-ed out as if it was dead appeared on the display just to taunt me. To make matters worse (cp!), I made an appointment at the Apple store to see if they could fix it but missed my appointment by 5 minutes because of the great Dixie Blizzard of 2010, so I had to reschedule for an hour later but when I returned the kid that made my appointment forgot to save it so I was positively at the end of my rope (cp!) when the kid was like, “Well, I’m going to have to reschedule you, what time works best for you? By the way, that’s a really nice beard…”

Holy shit you little tadpole, I am going to fucking destroy you. It’s going to be yourself and myself in an octagon ring of death unless yourself stops staring at myself’s beard and get’s on with fixing my goddamn Second Generation Apple iPod so I can get back to watching a fucking futbol match on my Sony television while drinking Carlsberg beers out of a 10 ounce glass pint glass! So take that for what it’s worth!