Senseless Sunday Sarcasm : Communication

Ever since man pulled his filthy, flea-ridden body from the trees and said his first word, more death and destruction has been wrought on this Earth than the number caused by car accidents.

It looks like my FedUps package isn’t going to arrive. Chilling.

We create opposing words that are easily mis-typed.  I worked for a state government in the 1990’s that sent out a memo about an “exciting” new change — to EVERY employee:  

Clients are not consumers.

There was one pesky little problem:  “NOT” was supposed to read, “NOW.”

Almost 30 years later, consumer morphed into “individual” which has now morphed into “client.”

Are we confused yet?

Then there are the words that sound similar but make funny memes

Yep.   No need to rent a séance. It didn’t take a fortune-teller to see that after he got through with us, we truly were Baroque.

Then there are words that can be twisted like macabre pretzels. 

Thus, lawyers were invented.

“I did not have sex with that woman,” means, “I did not have what would legally be termed as sex for the purposes of consummating a marriage.”

It’s especially hard to communicate in the computer age.

“Utopia” is another word that’s highly misunderstood. 

When you understand that humans are a social platypus, there is only one conclusion:  The other definition of utopia is “Rainbows and Unicorns.” 

Why?

Rainbows are a short-lived phenomena that can only be seen if you’re in just the right place to enjoy it…and unicorns are a fantasy.  When it comes down to it, someone has to pay so that people with no money can have 60 inch entertainment centers. 

Utopia, as I see it, is the attempt to make savages (aka the human race) adopt a hive mentality.

Wow!  Two memes in one.  This brings me to the next problem with communication.

WORDS

We’re constantly reinventing words and we can’t even decide on one language, spelling or pronunciation.  All you have to do is send an email from the US to Canada to discover that one.

First, there was the word, “ugh.” 

And the word was good. 

But it only described what the wives of the toothless tribe leader thought of him.  

Then, the next word had to be, No.  I say that because it sounds so similar in many languages. That, and no, no, no, nao, tends to be used a lot more often than yes, si, oui, sin…

If you think about it, every word we speak was created by someone.  That kinda makes the purity of language thing a boot moot point.

You may wonder where the topic for today’s senseless sarcasm is coming from.  

Imagine that yesterday you bought canned cat food at the store.  Imagine that the canned cat food was still in bags on the floor the next day.  Imagine that you’re starting to put it away and your spouse says, “Leave that alone!”  You ask why and your spouse gives you some lame answer like, “You know better.”  Then you mention that it might have been helpful to know of his/her plans in advance.

I live with quite an imagination.  If I didn’t, said spouse might be dislodging one of those cans from a place where the sun don’t shine.

But, alas, I digress

Drama by word attack isn’t my idea of marriage

This is:

But…back to words.

I’d love to be this happy all the time.

But some days, it’s better to wrap up your misery in a layer of happiment.  After a hearty laugh, you’re ready to face the next two minutes of life.

Sarcasm… a way with words that isn’t the way the words were meant to be waylaid.  For example, the word “Happy.”

Words…you can’t live with them and sometimes you wish you could live without them. 

But I’m a writer, and if it weren’t for words, my fingers wouldn’t have anything to do.