TEXTING ENGLISH, ETC -

i tried replicating this on my cellphone and literally went incredibly crazy trying!!!!

hi gd am b at u soon
or if I get a txt from the pi - gud am kmsta kyo

Now, look, I can read and write cursive in a language or two, but I have to admit that I sometimes get lost in "txtglish, txtgalog, txtikano, txtanish, etc."  I thought it was bad when I would get stuff like, ROTFLMAO, or maybe even just LOL to say nothing about what might be the difference between :) and :-) or even ;-) or :o.

i have been falling into the habit of not punctuating anything and just rolling along writing away with not a capital letter not a comma or anything just plain old words strung together for the recipient to decipher and if you think that it makes it hard for you to understand the string of thought or maybe i should say thread as is the present custom you should try me in french with no accents and no cedillas and it gets even worse in spanish with no til on the n and no accent on the verbs to differentiate for the tense and the mood o yeah grt stuff ohhh!!!!~~

Back to normal, if you don't mind.  This all got started in me when I ran into a piece on the Internet about the deterioration of the English language as it used to be called back about 50 or 60 years ago.
The author was talking about how words today don't mean what they used to mean even though they are still described in the dictionary the way they were back then.  He gave the word "literal" or "literally"as an example.  Then as I was reading another article, not a satire like the first one, I ran into the word "incredible" used in the wrong way, just as the word "literally" is used the wrong way so often.  My example was like, "He was incredibly old."  Hmmm, sounds like me.  Except I am credibly alive, so something, somewhere has to be out of sync here.  Besides, my birth anniversary is just around the corner, and that is a real and credible date.  It says so right there on the calendar.  So there.
But my incredibly, literal favorite is when I am filling out a form and the information to be provided is "Gender."  There is never enough room to write "masculine."  By the same token, there is never enough room to register the complaint that I am not a grammar classification.  Nope, not me.  I am a real, no holds barred hot blooded French Canadian male with the attributes to prove it.

So, my 21st century friends, neighbors and relatives, you have to bear with me because I am not going to stop punctuating my writing.  I am going to try to be true to the grammar rules like I know them.  I do not use plural pronouns to signify singular antecedents and when I want to use a relative pronoun, I will still use "who" for people, and not "that."  Believe me, I don't care what you think about that. My numb and arthritic fingers make touch errors, but my mind is still clear and I strive to keep it under control...and I tell you that sister Mary of the Holy Guardian Angels never taught me anything but right grammar, French or English.  So there.

So, all of you, have an incredibly great time, and I mean that, literally.

...SEVEN SENATE DEMOCRATS HAVE YET TO COME OUT IN SUPPORT OF MARRIAGE EQUALITY

I got this in my email today from a political activist.  So I have decided to let you all know about "Marriage Equality" by Paul Dion.  In case you are wondering whether or not I am going to pull out my moral stance on the subject - I am, but just a little bit.  But I do have one.  A very stubborn one as well as a nuanced one.  Much too complicated for 500 words.  So this is going to be reality based sarcasm.

There are several fundamental non-equalities in a same-sex marriage.  Just for starters, I issue a few.
1. Everyone knows that there is no marriage without a daily quibble or outright spat about the toilet seat being left up.
2. Everyone knows that there is no marriage without a clearly defined owner of who gets the last word.
3. Everyone knows that there is no marriage without the remote possibility of engendering offspring. (I offer Sarah and Abraham as examples.)
4. Everyone knows that there is no marriage in "gender."  SEX is where it's at, not "gender" for crying out loud!
5. So, when all these things add up to "no marriage" then the "gender" of marriage = neuter. (You can look it up in any grammar book where there is no sex, just gender.)  Gender = no marriage.
5a. The question that I have is: "With all this talk about "gender" why do we even bother talking about same SEX marriage?
6. Everyone knows that for a true marriage to exist, the ensuing divorce has to be a vicious battle of wills between a man and a woman fighting over money, property and custody of children.  What's going to happen to that?  Will the lawyers go hungry?
7. Everyone knows that it takes testosterone and estrogen go have a real newsworthy, headline grabbing divorce.  That's why "gender" unions won't work.  The tabloids will go broke because they won't have any more real marriages to denigrate.

I must say, to be fair, that I am solidly convinced that the government can grant marriage licenses to whomever it pleases, provided, of course, that the recipients are human.  That does not mean that I think that what the government does is moral.  Not at all.  In fact I know that it is immoral.  It goes from one bribe source to another to the detriment of the common good.  That is immoral because it contributes to the preparation of the nation for its downfall. I do know, according to the moral principles of the relationship between law and virtue, that the lawmaker should never make a law that countervails virtue.  Laws that are counter basic morality are not enforceable laws and are therefore not real laws at all.  The law must always make it easier to practice virtue.  I don't think that anybody should put the Constitution of the United States of America before the fundamental natural law that governs right human conduct which is in commonality with the Law of God.

We hear a lot about same-sex marriage being an attack on the institution of marriage.  The wise-crack answer is usually, "It's not attacking my marriage."  You're right, except for one thing.  It is an attack on your children's perception of human morality and over time it will erode the moral fiber of this democratic republic...all the way to its downfall.  Remember Greece?  Remember Rome? Remember Constantinople?  

Therefore, every time the lawmaker caves in to a special interest, the greater good suffers at the hands of individual greed and the republic gets weaker and weaker every time.

Remember, you read it here.  That way you won't be tempted to cry at my funeral.

GENDER SELLS

The other day I was in another town [the "big city" actually] and I picked up one of the "alternative press" weeklies.  This is the one that is second in circulation in the city.  I like them both because they are both free.  Imagine a city that can support two major weeklies that are distributed to the public at large at no cost to the reader.  EFR Dion didn't live long enough to enjoy this.  The more prosperous one has a fabulous crossword puzzle too.  I suppose that I should have a "thought" about that phenomenon but actually I don't.  It is because I know exactly how they do it.  I didn't say I can do it, I only said that I know HOW they do it.  I am sure that I told you that old man Socrates said that knowledge of moral good does not insure that the person with the intellectual knowledge of it will act on it and be a righteous person.  So, the same is true for me.  I know how they do it, but That's their "gig" and I have mine.  Period.
There is a point to this article.  Yeah, really.  So I better get to it, right?  So I picked up this newspaper and on page three I saw the picture that you see in the upper left corner.  I figured that they were selling ... No, it couldn't be that.  Besides the heading says Sunglass Optical.  "Oh," says I,  "Now I get it.  It's her eyes I'm supposed to be looking at."  Hmmm.  "Nah, I wanna see about the gift cards."  So, I'm still checking out the gift cards.  I still don't know what the gift is.  I'm afraid that they're going to take the picture away from me and give me a gift card for sunglasses.  I'm saying, "No way."
I have this "thought" now because I am an adult and I have lived long enough that I can remember my mother, yep, good ole MJT Dion herself, asking why they had these shameless women sitting on automobile hoods in the ads.  She always wondered if the gender connection had anything to do with the quality of the internal combustion engine or some other such essential thing.  I remember this even though it was in the 1940's.  There are some of you whose eyes are traveling the electronic images here who weren't even born yet.  I guess I have to write it because things haven't really changed too much.  Yes there are all kinds of crusades about not objectifying women, but there are still ads out there, few but still out there, that do just that.  Frankly, I think I know what happened.  In the passing of time, the fabric that was supposed to be hiding the essential parts of the star of the ad shrunk and the paint on the cars was suffering from human skin contact.  So they had to back off from doing that.  Probably better.  I sure would never buy a car that had female skin hormones all over the hood.  Would you?   Hmmmm.  I figured.
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Now, this is a thought.  Human beings, dogs, cats, horses, cows, ducks, song birds, snakes, honey bees, monkeys and yes, even the TASMANIAN DEVIL do not have "gender." All we animals are either of the "male" or "female" sex.  That's the joke in the title and in other places in the post.
There is not an individual or group of individuals on this planet who is ever going to be able to change that.  The other day someone made the mistake of asking me what my gender is.  I told the idiot to go look me up in the grammar book.  
No, I'm not interested in your 21st century philosophy about the matter.