New (sup)post

It's one thing when you make a valid, strong attempt to spell and fall short. Whether it's the 'i' before an 'e', or really difficult words like aneurism, Czechoslovakia and bivouacking, spelling can be a real bitch. But there are some misspellings that just can't be ignored. Modern text editors (like the one I'm using) spell check for you. Even your smartphone does. There's just no excuse.

Take the 'word' suppost for instance. This word gets used in text conversation alarmingly too often. So, what exactly is that, anyway? Maybe the name of an after dinner mint? Or maybe they just misspelled 'support', which is clearly the closest real word to that collection of letters. So, I googled it to be sure, and sure enough, it returns this result:

Ohhh.... Let's be real here: I knew what the person meant. And it's just that attitude of knowing the intent and not wanting to openly correct grammar that lets this plague persist. That and the fact that no one but a few of us even care anymore.

The crazy part of this all is that, after I searched for 'suppost', my satisfaction was only increased by the stunning showcase of superfluous stupidity that followed. Here are a few examples of search results returned:

• Getting Pregnant Forum - Is the Sperm Suppost to Fall Out? -- Whoa! TMI... Wait, what?...
• Why is it that blondes are suppost to be stupid and brunettes are ... -- I suppos(t)e this is a blonde asking
• Incidentally, the top answer is "i dunnno but im both! does that make me both?"
• Are pads suppost to be noise in the pants ? -- Great sentence. F-

I don't think I could have better summed up the kind of people that spell 'supposed' like 'suppost'. No way. I'm not even going to try. And if you're reading this, frantically skimming through your texts and emails for an instance where you used 'suppost' in a sentence, then good for you. Change starts from within.

Of dinosaurs, mystical beasts and the lies that spawned them...

Just about every day, I go to CNN.com to check out all the latest news. Okay, so maybe not all the latest news, but they do occasionally sprinkle in the events of the world inbetween Bieber sightings and celebrity rumors.

Given the prevalence of news that no one cares about, it is particularly striking when something comes up that is truly noteworthy. Maybe that's what they're going for - driving people to the real news by surrounding it with a pile of crap. So, today, you might imagine my surprise/excitement/dare I say all-encompassing zeal for this story.

FLYING CREATURE DIVERTS PLANE

You can't write that and have any sane person avoid clicking. But isn't a 'flying creature diverts plane' scenario, is it? No. When you click on that link you're greeted by a commercial followed by a bunch of people in a plane freaking out about a bat in the cabin. Not to say that I wouldn't duck to avoid the bat if it was there, but the titled of that story is almost a lie. At the very least, it's an exaggeration that in my mind violates a secret code of ethics for all humans that says (and I paraphrase) 'if you're going to make it sound like there's a mythical creature, don't prove yourself wrong by giving too much evidence to the contrary.'

Think of it this way. Why do we have the Yeti? Because no one who isn't crazy (you have to be a little bit to be climbing on Everest or K2) or who wasn't oxygen deprived and lonely has ever seen it. Do we believe them? Well, yeah. Kind of. But we all know that, given enough time alone, a human being is more than capable of creating an imaginary friend, and an imaginary friend that terrorizes goats in the high mountain passes of the Himalayas just points to a childhood filled with too many video games and violent movies. The lack of evidence allows our imagination to run wild.

So, the next time you decide to post a story about a winged creature diverting a plane, CNN, don't include video. Give me an incoherent quote from the dumbest person on the plane and call it a day. Better yet, link that title to a blank page and I will assume quite rightly that the person writing the story was eaten by said beast and only a few other survived the attack. Giant pterodactyl fantasy achieved.

Are you going to eat that?

Someone just walked in to the room and declared "I have a headache and I don't know why." Their logical next assumption made was "It's a brain aneurysm." It probably isn't, but I started thinking about how we (humans) are so aware of all the different stuff that could happen to our bodies. An aneurysm is defined as a "localized, blood-filled ballon-like bulge in the wall of a blood vessel." This does not sound like something a living being would be so acutely aware of, and in that way we are very special. If you were not special and you had a brain aneurysm, you would pretty much just be dead. Your friends would cry and would then bury you. Morbid, I know.

But think of it as a blessing. If you were a coyote or some other vulgar form of life, you would have an aneurysm, die and, for about 10 minutes, your friends would debate whether to eat you or go look for something not-dead, after which time... they would eat you.

365 days later

Try this.

Type *happy birthday* and put a period in place of the exclamation point.

Happy birthday.

To which anyone's reaction is going to be: "Thanks, ass. Glad to see you're so pleased I made it to 30. No cake for you."

It's really missing something without the exclamation point and, even though I really, really don't like to use them, exclamation points have become vital to expressing yourself in text form.

I am rarely excited enough about anything I text or post on the Internet to put an exclamation point. Even in person, if you were to write down every time I've said something like "happy birthday", I don't think you'd find many exclamation points there. You can be enthusiastic without being bombastic, which, I think, is what the exclamation point is for. No, says the general Internet populous? Bombast is the double exclamation point's role? Touche.

"Happy birthday." reeks of formality, a statement uttered only because a little red box popped up on Facebook, or that date happened to be brought to your attention. "Happy birthday." means that "I don't think you're very important as a friend and this is just a courtesy birthday acknowledgement. "Happy birthday!" comes with it an entirely different set of undertones. Things like "I'm glad I'm your friend", or "Let's get wasted" or "Thanks for giving me that extra tuna fish sandwich last Thursday".

All from an exclamation point.

... or are you just happy to see me.

I'm going to cut to get right to it. These shoes have sperm on them ...

And this isn't an accident. According to SkyMall (which is obviously the only place you could buy something so tacky and wasteful) the logo is there "because it's cool." They've since removed that wording from their diagram. It's clearly, unapologetically some dudes "little dude" on the side of your shoe, and the worst part is that you just can't wipe it off.

Who buys this stuf, anyway? SkyMall is full to the brim with the craziest, junkiest, worst stuff you never knew you needed (and don't really need). It's like they just bank on the captivity of an airplane and wait for people to make mistakes with their money.