Tag: language

New Normal Nonsense

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Over the past few years I have heard a phrase used often that, when deconstructed, makes no sense at all. The phrase is, “the new normal.” How can something “new” be normal? It isn’t remotely normal, and although, over time, it might become part of your lifestyle, it isn’t normal when it first begins.

The situation might be considered a new beginning, a new type, a new way of doing something, a new event, a new expectancy, a new thought, a new passion, and new meaning, but it isn’t anything near normal when it is NEW.

Normal. What does that mean? Normal to whom or what? My normal isn’t your normal, and we don’t really have a normal. We have a routine, a way of managing our day and life. Not one day is exactly the same as another, so how can you judge something to be normal? Lets say we have an hour long commute every single day, going to the same part of town, to the same building or workplace, the same position or office, five days a week. Most of us, will not have the same exact experience on any of those five days. The only normal part of that commute is the direction and destination in which we are going. Something different will happen, a random event, an accident, a slow down, something weird in the car next to you or on the train near to you will happen. You might miss your train, the exit, or someone may cut you off causing an accident. Maybe you will have a flat or your car won’t start. On the train or bus, a conversation might start up that you join, or most likely, you over hear and that will set your thoughts off in an original direction. Sure we get to work, but it wasn’t a standard, exactly the same, normal every day thing. It was a day. different, strange, boring, amazing, but it was A DAY,

No job is ever normal either. So you stand in the same spot, doing the same job, but the assembly line fails, someone doesn’t turn up, or is late. Gossip goes up and down the grapevine, someone is having a bad day and takes it out on someone else, everything goes to hell in a manner of seconds when someone throws a spanner in the works. It is a day, but it isn’t exactly the same ever single work day. It isn’t the Old Normal, therefore, how can there be a new normal?

What you have is a change in your life. Sometimes good and sometimes bad. You learn to adapt to or overcome that change in your life. Because if life was always normal, it would be static. A static life is a stagnant life, and that is not normal, in fact, it is harmful, debilitating, depressing, and demoralizing. Human beings are meant to change, sometimes on a daily basis. Those that can’t get left behind as everyone around them moves forward with their lives. The only people who can’t or don’t naturally change daily are those with disabilities, and they do change only more slowly. It isn’t in us to always remain the same. If it was, we would always be children, never maturing beyond being totally dependent on parents and caregivers. It is within our DNA to try to grow up and away from our parents into adults who can take care of ourselves. That growth, while in one way is normal, it is also individual and therefore there is no correct or normal way to reach maturity. It is simply an individual effort that changes daily.

Stop already with the New Normal nonsense. No one is normal, we are all unique with unique moments and events in our lives. Our singular way of coping with those events makes us different from one another, and it also makes us interesting to others around us. There is no Old Normal, there is no New Normal, there is only change and how we cope with those changes in our lives.

The Lost Art of Swearing: Disclaimer, NOT MY WORK. I just thought it was SO funny.

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As excerpted from the University of Wisconsin Student Voice – 15 April 1999

Everyone can swear, but very few can do it with any degree of style.
The art of swearing has all but disappeared from our modern language. Gone are the days of witty insults and stinging barbs. What used to be a creative process has been replaced by a short list of four-letter words.
When was the last time you heard a guest on the “Jerry Springer Show” call someone a “knotty-pated fool,” or “obscene greasy tallow-catch,” (a tallow-catch was a large tub used to collect the waxy drippings from candle making)?
These clever Shakespearean invectives have been swallowed up by unintelligent, unimaginative and overused swear words.
Anyone can use a common swear word, but a truly creative person would strive for the uncommon.
Shakespeare loved insults, invectives and curses. He was a master of the art of swearing, whether through a full-blooded volley of words or a quick, sharp barb. Some are even almost too graphic to say out loud.
So instead of hearing, “Away, you scullion! You rampallian! You fustilarian! I’ll tickle your catastrophe!” the viewing audience hears an annoying string of beeps.
These garden-variety insults have wormed their way so deep into American culture that we have forgotten what a true insult really is.
How much heat is really behind a five-letter word for a female dog? We have become desensitized to these worthless excuses for swearing. There is no other way to explain the emergence of these words on prime-time television. With the exception of the mother of all swear words, what haven’t you heard broadcast across the networks?
The viewing audience and newspaper readers deserve more witty repartee from writers than what the guests on “Springer” are capable of engaging in.
People have simply become complacent. Who wouldn’t rather hear someone called a “lump of foul deformity,” a “poisonous bunch-backed toad,” an “elvish-marked, abortive rooting hog?”
Even those who wrote in classical Latin had more imagination when it came to hurling insults at each other.
Plautus once said, “Do me a favour and get that twaddle-talking tongue of yours surgically removed from your mouth.” Which is infinitely more inventive than a simple shut-up could ever be.
So the next time you find yourself in a situation that requires a witty epitaph, consider these. They are considerably more imaginative and effective than the commonly used utterances. You can thank Shakespeare later.
The all-purpose insult: “Were I like thee I’d throw away myself,” or “You are as a candle, the better part burnt out.”
Curses: “Son of sixteen, / Pluck the lined crutch from thy old limping sire; / With it beat out his brains!”, “Gods give me strength to endure the torture of your company!” or “Thou cream-faced loon!”
Threats: “Let me go grind their bones to powder small / And with this hateful liquor temper it; / And in that paste let their vile heads be baked.”

Other Clean Insults:
“I beg your pardon! I had not realised how utterly outmatched you are by me. As worthy as you are of a good thrashing, there is no honour in shaming one who is less than a fool.”

“You have the face of a swamp troll, and the brains of half of one.”

“May each of your days be worse than the last and may you live forever!”

“Do you realise that you are depriving a village somewhere of an idiot?”

“Is ignorance really bliss, or are you just faking it?”

“Anyone with half a brain could have figured that out! Oh, pardon, I forgot for a moment who I was speaking to.”

“Your tongue trips over your words as if they were obstacles set before you.”