it's over. move to somnia.

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I Cannot Promise This Will Make Sense

I've been spending a goodly amount of time staring off into space recently. I'm sure it's good for me. It's a very relaxing activity. I guess one could argue that it's not so good when I'm at work, as it would cut into my productivity. (At which point I'd probably laugh.) Yeah, apart from when I'm crossing the street, I can't say it's any real danger.

Sure, people may assume I'm thinking deeply about something, when in reality my mind is really blank, but then I'm used to people thinking I'm deeper than I actually am. OK, maybe I'm marvelling at some random quirk of language, but that's only on occasion.

For example, I love verbs. I love idiomatic expressions and the bizarre verb-forms they use. I dwelt for a minute this morning on all the meanings of the word used. There's the past tense of to use, of course. And the adjective But there's also to be used to, as used (hee!) in the previous paragraph, which means "to be accustomed to," which really doesn't have a direct relation to to using something, not to mention that used is pronounced [just], instead of [ju:zd]* like the past participle. Then, of course, there's the wild kooky phrase used to be, which translates to "once was but no longer is" and is even more aberrant because it's a verb phrase with no infinitive form! (Which is probably related to its being tense-specific, but come on....)

Then there's to utilize, which is one of a whole slew of ugly backformation verbs (which are made by lopping off the end of a noun and result in a completely redundant word) that plague our language. Unfortunately, I'm somewhat inconsistent in my approach, seeing as I routinely change "utilize" to "use," but I confess I have suggested "administrate" when we all know "administer" would do. Hey, "to administrate" was in the dictionary! I thought that made it acceptable! (Short answer: nope.)

Oh, and another fun verb is "to eke."

Coming soon: Cultural Right #2: The Right to List Your Comrades' Faults.


*If you don't understand, you need a short course in the International Phonetic Alphabet. Or you need to not care, which is probably the easier option.
peachy as always, Mike at 7:40 PM