Maybe today is a good day to just take a break and say, “Enough!”
Stuff I’ve Learned to – UH – Dislike!
Hate is one of those things we’re not supposed to do anymore. It’s on this unwritten list of things that are strictly verboten in the 21st century. There’s a lot of other stuff on the list, but that’s not our concern today. (Besides the list kinda keeps changing, so it hard to keep up.) Anyway, hate is a biggie, so if you’re going to do it, you better keep your mouth shut about it. And that’s the problem. You see, hate is one of the primal emotions. It’s hardwired into our DNA — like love, jealousy, fear, sadness, etc., etc. — and we can’t just switch it off because a Twitter mob tells us to. Think about it! Every religion on the planet made its bones preaching that our spiritual needs must overcome our baser emotions; Twitter’s no different. Yet, throughout history, we’ve managed to harvest a pretty substantial crop of sinners. Personally, I think a little sin is good for the soul: just don’t let it get out of hand. So, with that in mind, here are a few things I — uh – dislike very, very much.
Eggplant – When I was a kid, this was a particularly insidious brand of child abuse, and I vowed when I became an adult, I would never let this slippery, slimy, sludgy purple horror darken my doorstep again – and it hasn’t.
Wine Snobs – These are the guys (and they’re always guys) who take one sip of wine and start orating its qualities like Cicero in front of the Roman Senate. Here’s the deal. It has been proven (literally hundreds of times) that ordinary people cannot actually tell plonk from pinot noir— and even seasoned sommeliers can’t do it consistently. In fact, in one study (University of Bordeaux) white wine was coloured red and nobody knew the difference! Fruity aftertaste, my ass!
“The Little Drummer Boy” – Listening to this dirge every Christmas is like getting beaten over the head with candy canes. This is one holiday tradition that should be shot in the head, dragged by its heels into the back garden and buried without ceremony.
“Relationships” – This is what’s wrong with contemporary society: we don’t have the cojones to love each other anymore.
Faux Foodies – I love genuine foodies. Anyone who spends that much time and trouble just to find something different to put in their mouth is a dedicated connoisseur of the oral experience. However, those other clowns who insist guacamole is an entrée, refuse to serve any vegetable with a recognizable name and prowl the trendy shops, looking for esoteric crap like Peruvian pygmy goat cheese, are just assholes.
And finally:
Pompous Asses – Years ago, I had a university professor who thought he didn’t put his pants on one leg at a time. I decided to squeeze some creative points out of the old boy by giving him a gag gift for his office. I bought a plaster figurine of Pan at a local garden shop. Then I created a long-winded provenance that said it was a replica of a full-sized statue, discovered in the ruins of Pompeii. I even printed a tag that read, Frederico II, University of Naples/Gift Shop. I thought it was all in good fun. Unfortunately, Professor X and his colleagues didn’t really have a sense of humour. They were quite impressed with the gift! They marvelled at the craftsmanship, and a couple of them commented that it was an excellent example of 1st century Roman art. One fellow, overcome with one-upmanship, casually mentioned that it was indeed a very good replica because he’d seen the original. (I needed the marks, so I kept my mouth shut.)
The Prankster And The Plural
Ever since I learned to read, English has been my renegade lover. She is a rapiered pirate with a pistol in her belt and a stiletto on her sleeve. She moves like a tango, cool-eyed and serious — the scent of the Trade Winds tangled in her hair and the salt of the sea still lingers on her lips. But when she speaks you must listen carefully – her words are full of wit and unexpected – because she is a prankster, a trickster, a conjurer of jests that make her giggle and clap and crinkle her eyes.
“Would you like some more?” she says, the temptress not even hidden in her voice.
“It’s very easy,” she says, sly as the fox.
“All you have to do,” she says, looking away, “Is add an ‘S’ and you will have two, four, ten, even a thousand — if you like.”
And then you try it, and she has you trapped because it’s her game and she made the rules.
We all know the plural of house is houses, but what about mouse — cuz the plural ain’t mouses. It’s mice, like lice is the plural of louse. And it works the same way with a word such as noose. Though the plural is nooses, you can’t do that with tooth, cuz more than one tooth is never called toothes. They’re teeth just like geese is the plural of goose. Then it all goes to hell when there’s more than one moose!
But let’s get serious. No, moose doesn’t get a plural. Why? Who knows? But they’re like several other animals – sheep, swine, deer, bison, shrimp, etc. One sheep, two sheep, ‘nother sheep, ‘nother sheep; it just doesn’t change. It’s as if these particular animals were bad or something. My theory is they pissed Noah off when they were late for the Ark, and he lobbed off their ‘S’ as punishment. Either way, it’s clear: the “add an ‘S’ rule” doesn’t always work. Especially since some singular words sound like plurals right from the beginning, and nobody bats an eye. Look at scissors, pliers and binoculars. They all get the extra ‘S’ before they even need it. And some of those singular plurals start off as pairs. Not like a pair of socks (which is two) but like a pair of pants — which is only one. And I’m not even going to speculate how we arrived at a pair of pajamas.
Then there are other badass words that don’t care if they’re singular or not. They just use the plural and strut around like a bunch of linguistic anarchists — words like criteria, media, data and our old favourite, graffiti. This crew has been wrong for so long everybody thinks they’re right.
Plus there are some pretentious words that don’t bother with the ‘S’ and choose to use an ‘I’ instead because – OOWW! — they’re from the Latin, dontcha know! These are words like fungus and focus and octopus and cactus. Personally, I avoid these words because anyone who drops “foci” or “cacti” into a conversation might as well wear a sign that says “Pompous Ass.” FYI: for all the other pompous asses in the neighbourhood, the plural of hippopotamus is NOT hippopotami. Hippopotamus is a Greek word, so the Latin rules don’t apply. On the other hand, the octopus (also a Greek word) is a smart little cephalopod and snuck into the Latin section when no one was looking.
And from here it just goes nuts. It’s as if the English language got totally wasted one night on Jamaican rum and was dancing around, naming things. The plural of dice is die. The plural of thief is thieves. The plural of aircraft is – heh, heh, heh – you don’t get one. More than one child is children — figure that one out – although it happens again with ox and oxen. Man becomes men and women don’t get a choice. Then, just as she collapses on the sofa, laughing, she says, “Oh yeah! And the plural of person is people.”
So, if you’re studying English as a second language and she’s sitting slumped in a chair with her boots on the table, cleaning her fingernails with a dagger — just do as you’re told! It’s easier that way.
WD Fyfe 