"Those who Disobey shall be Regarded with Condescension"
So, I've had a lot of time and conversations recently, mostly over MSN but one or two in my own head, and at least one over Facebook and one over the phone. And over the course of all this talking, I find myself... expressing opinions of intense dislike of certain, shall we say, habits of people. In fact they're not so much habits as character traits (flaws, from my point of view, but who's to say the handkerchief was supposed to be spotless?), and... I simply cannot allow my views on these things to go unannounced any further. Not many people will read this, I'm certain, so it's safe to assume I shall not be offending anybody; and anybody who manages to plough through the entirety of this post will almost certainly be intelligent enough to understand my arguments. Not that I flatter myself that my blog attracts intelligent readers, but that the lack of photos and the proliferation of verbiage are sure to drive away all but the most perservering of readers.
We address the first issue: spelling. I'm an administrator of one forum, visit two or three others on a regular basis, and occasionally get drawn into discussions over MSN and... oh, my heavens. What, in the name of the one thousand seven hundred and twenty-eight positive integers before 1729 causes these people to spell the way they do?! Replacing "y" for "i", "d" for "t"--it's phonetic spelling all over again, and while it may be somewhat acceptable in SMSes or over MSN where things want rapidfire replying (and even so I manage to type perfectly well), in fora it only serves to tell me that these people, whoever they are, never had an English module they didn't barely pass. Either that, or they're actually taking pains to write in this amazingly illegible method: being unable to scrawl with indecipherable handwriting, they choose to type with near-illegible spellings. It's gotten to the point where I barely even notice people typing "u" for "you" or forgetting to capitalise the first letter of their sentences or special nouns; those are just too widespread to even begin to attempt to tackle. I will not even deign to consider the causes of people randomly adding "x" to the end of their words--"hahax" being the most-often encountered, but surely there are many more similarly-mangled specimens of the language out there--this falls below even phonetic spelling and descends into the territory of Black Speech. If Tolkien wrote the LotR in modern times, the orcs would speak in this. Leetspeak, while irritating, at least admits a certain sort of spelling system, else the symbols should become impossible to understand; combined with this, it becomes a sort of visual illustration of hell. I find this particularly painful because it seems to be primarily a characteristic of Malaysians and Singaporeans, both of which claim some level of English education, and yet write like this... and then, of course, they have the gall to claim education, and then invoke Godwin's Law by calling grammarnazism. Patriotism be thrown to the winds, I say: with apparently the majority of the population that visits fora typing like this, and the rest being apparently completely illiterate, it leaves a very small literate and intelligent minority. Suffice it to say that there's a reason I read very, very few blogs by Malaysians, or Singaporeans for that matter. Naturally, I do not mean by this that the Western Hemisphere is free of such people--the existence of an Eragon fanbase tells me that somewhere out there are a few million people who've effectively switched off their brains and hold out their wallets, bleating for pulp. But nowhere else have I seen such... such effort being put in to mangle the language beyond comprehension. It reached its apex some days ago, when somebody unapologetically told me to look beyond their "back englsh" to the supposedly intelligent message behind the misspelled words and the broken grammar. It's just a pity that I believe intelligent thoughts are expressed intelligently, or at least intelligibly, and if you want to claim intelligence--go learn yourself a language.
Next: chivalry. Wonderful word, is it not? Conjuring up images, for what seems to be a neverending sea of women worldwide, of them gently swooning into the strong arms of some cleft-jawed, doe-eyed, muscular man in plate armour who's just braved the fiery breath of a dragon and all just for poor little ol' them. And with dragons being extinct at the moment and plate armor being out of fashion, I find more than one female exclaiming over chivalry being dead. Good heavens. Grow up. Oh, certainly they don't always say so. What they say is something like "I bumped into somebody and they shot me a glare instead of stepping aside and laying their jacket on the ground for me to tread on", or "I made you dinner and why are you not worshipping the ground I walk on yet?", or simply "I don't like your non-servile, non-fawning, non-ingratiating manner, and you are nothing like the knight in shining armor I want". I think it's about time men started making demands in return: "Why are you working when you should be reclining on the swooning-couch?", "How dare you attempt to do anything other than clean and cook", or simply "I don't like your non-servile, non-fawning, non-ingratiating manner": the two attitudes go in like vein. What they basically both boil down to is "everybody of the opposite gender must behave in such-and-such a way, to my satisfaction, towards every other person of my gender". And that, let me tell you, died with feminism. Gender equality, the idea of men and women having equal rights, was a good thing: I won't deny it. Women are a valuable addition to the workforce and have many capabilities that men don't, such as maternity leave and lawsuits to get sexually-harassing men out of the force. However it's got to the point where the genders are not only equal, but interchangeable, as seen in the whole idiotic brouhaha about his/her/zir; and of course, women have been told that they are strong and powerful and can do anything! In essence I see this whole idea of chivalry as utter bosh; it strikes me as something akin to a person with perfectly good hearing demanding that people communicate with them with hand gestures and loud voices, or an Olympic-level runner asking for a piggyback ride. Common courtesy makes its reasonable demands--be generally nice to each other as social situations allow or require; get rid of the idea that your gender merits you special treatment from the opposite gender, or at least be consistent--if you insist on being given special treatment, act like you need it. If you want to be given a piggyback, be lame; if you want hearing-aids, be deaf. Otherwise, please don't complain when people treat you as normal, regular old you.
And next, those who create trouble for themselves and then, when offered help, turn it down because they don't think the help's good enough. I'm the first one to admit that I get myself into scrapes every now and then--but I ask for help, and am grateful for it when received! On the other hand... really, however, this speaks for itself, and I get so, so, frustrated with them, not least because this is a feedback chain and they'll just keep on repeating their troubles because they'll never want the help--either because the help will require them to change something they find oh-so-important, or... no. There's no other reason I see in these people--they're the sort who think if they complain enough about something in their own power to change, then somebody up there will notice and get bugged enough by their many many complaints and change the rules of reality to suit their particular needs. Absolutely ridiculous, but that's what happens when people start thinking oh, they're special and the entire universe worships their discarded toilet paper.
...and now I've just worked myself up into a fine old fury, when I was planning to use this as a catharsis and get it out... how counterproductive--but really, when it comes to it, I'm glad I've at least vented somewhere, even if it's not to any living person. I wish I had one of those sometimes on hand--but I don't. Quite likely never will really.
We address the first issue: spelling. I'm an administrator of one forum, visit two or three others on a regular basis, and occasionally get drawn into discussions over MSN and... oh, my heavens. What, in the name of the one thousand seven hundred and twenty-eight positive integers before 1729 causes these people to spell the way they do?! Replacing "y" for "i", "d" for "t"--it's phonetic spelling all over again, and while it may be somewhat acceptable in SMSes or over MSN where things want rapidfire replying (and even so I manage to type perfectly well), in fora it only serves to tell me that these people, whoever they are, never had an English module they didn't barely pass. Either that, or they're actually taking pains to write in this amazingly illegible method: being unable to scrawl with indecipherable handwriting, they choose to type with near-illegible spellings. It's gotten to the point where I barely even notice people typing "u" for "you" or forgetting to capitalise the first letter of their sentences or special nouns; those are just too widespread to even begin to attempt to tackle. I will not even deign to consider the causes of people randomly adding "x" to the end of their words--"hahax" being the most-often encountered, but surely there are many more similarly-mangled specimens of the language out there--this falls below even phonetic spelling and descends into the territory of Black Speech. If Tolkien wrote the LotR in modern times, the orcs would speak in this. Leetspeak, while irritating, at least admits a certain sort of spelling system, else the symbols should become impossible to understand; combined with this, it becomes a sort of visual illustration of hell. I find this particularly painful because it seems to be primarily a characteristic of Malaysians and Singaporeans, both of which claim some level of English education, and yet write like this... and then, of course, they have the gall to claim education, and then invoke Godwin's Law by calling grammarnazism. Patriotism be thrown to the winds, I say: with apparently the majority of the population that visits fora typing like this, and the rest being apparently completely illiterate, it leaves a very small literate and intelligent minority. Suffice it to say that there's a reason I read very, very few blogs by Malaysians, or Singaporeans for that matter. Naturally, I do not mean by this that the Western Hemisphere is free of such people--the existence of an Eragon fanbase tells me that somewhere out there are a few million people who've effectively switched off their brains and hold out their wallets, bleating for pulp. But nowhere else have I seen such... such effort being put in to mangle the language beyond comprehension. It reached its apex some days ago, when somebody unapologetically told me to look beyond their "back englsh" to the supposedly intelligent message behind the misspelled words and the broken grammar. It's just a pity that I believe intelligent thoughts are expressed intelligently, or at least intelligibly, and if you want to claim intelligence--go learn yourself a language.
Next: chivalry. Wonderful word, is it not? Conjuring up images, for what seems to be a neverending sea of women worldwide, of them gently swooning into the strong arms of some cleft-jawed, doe-eyed, muscular man in plate armour who's just braved the fiery breath of a dragon and all just for poor little ol' them. And with dragons being extinct at the moment and plate armor being out of fashion, I find more than one female exclaiming over chivalry being dead. Good heavens. Grow up. Oh, certainly they don't always say so. What they say is something like "I bumped into somebody and they shot me a glare instead of stepping aside and laying their jacket on the ground for me to tread on", or "I made you dinner and why are you not worshipping the ground I walk on yet?", or simply "I don't like your non-servile, non-fawning, non-ingratiating manner, and you are nothing like the knight in shining armor I want". I think it's about time men started making demands in return: "Why are you working when you should be reclining on the swooning-couch?", "How dare you attempt to do anything other than clean and cook", or simply "I don't like your non-servile, non-fawning, non-ingratiating manner": the two attitudes go in like vein. What they basically both boil down to is "everybody of the opposite gender must behave in such-and-such a way, to my satisfaction, towards every other person of my gender". And that, let me tell you, died with feminism. Gender equality, the idea of men and women having equal rights, was a good thing: I won't deny it. Women are a valuable addition to the workforce and have many capabilities that men don't, such as maternity leave and lawsuits to get sexually-harassing men out of the force. However it's got to the point where the genders are not only equal, but interchangeable, as seen in the whole idiotic brouhaha about his/her/zir; and of course, women have been told that they are strong and powerful and can do anything! In essence I see this whole idea of chivalry as utter bosh; it strikes me as something akin to a person with perfectly good hearing demanding that people communicate with them with hand gestures and loud voices, or an Olympic-level runner asking for a piggyback ride. Common courtesy makes its reasonable demands--be generally nice to each other as social situations allow or require; get rid of the idea that your gender merits you special treatment from the opposite gender, or at least be consistent--if you insist on being given special treatment, act like you need it. If you want to be given a piggyback, be lame; if you want hearing-aids, be deaf. Otherwise, please don't complain when people treat you as normal, regular old you.
And next, those who create trouble for themselves and then, when offered help, turn it down because they don't think the help's good enough. I'm the first one to admit that I get myself into scrapes every now and then--but I ask for help, and am grateful for it when received! On the other hand... really, however, this speaks for itself, and I get so, so, frustrated with them, not least because this is a feedback chain and they'll just keep on repeating their troubles because they'll never want the help--either because the help will require them to change something they find oh-so-important, or... no. There's no other reason I see in these people--they're the sort who think if they complain enough about something in their own power to change, then somebody up there will notice and get bugged enough by their many many complaints and change the rules of reality to suit their particular needs. Absolutely ridiculous, but that's what happens when people start thinking oh, they're special and the entire universe worships their discarded toilet paper.
...and now I've just worked myself up into a fine old fury, when I was planning to use this as a catharsis and get it out... how counterproductive--but really, when it comes to it, I'm glad I've at least vented somewhere, even if it's not to any living person. I wish I had one of those sometimes on hand--but I don't. Quite likely never will really.
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