The Roman numerals have flummoxed me for the moment. Perhaps it's that I tried shoveling the drive and did not get very far. Then Mary went out and finished the path that I couldn't. Hum! My arms still hurt, but so does my psyche. Right now it is, like, sitting on my right shoulder giggling furiously.
LIKE. Communication is so easy in this Facebook age. Like. Like I think like is an abomination. What did I just write? Who knows for certain, for every thing we say now, if we use like, is tentative. Like has slithered off the screen and insinuated itself into our minds revealing that most of us really are sheep. For example, having finished a 2012 episode of Blue Bloods, I deleted it and the screen went to the late show with Seth Myers. He was showing a clip from Rizzoli and Isles, a show I usually enjoy; when the clip finished, lo and behold, the lovely Angie Harmon materialized on Seth's stage, wearing, like, a very short dress and revealing very lovely long legs. The problem should be obvious. Is Angie wearing a very short dress or is she wearing something like a very short dress? Shorts might be something like a very short dress.
She sprinkled her conversation, for as long as I listened, with a number of "likes," particularly in relation to people whose conversations were being reported. "He was like, I can't meet you tomorrow, but if you could like come the next day, that would be great for me. " Then she was like, "That would be really cool!"
Put a new feeder in the backyard and the birds act as if it has been there for ages, never seeming to notice that there has been a change in the environment. So people now insert "like" into their conversations as though it were the only possible way to say something and as though we had all been saying it, like, for ages. "Then he was like..." Notice how that does not give any clear information about him. Then he was like a rhinoceros? Of course not, silly. We all know what it means, unless you stop with like; then we don't. "Then he said..." We know exactly what is coming, a report of exactly what he said, or as close to what he said as possible. Dammit! The proliferation of like in our language makes the world a lot less real than it already is. Certainly it does. Ah, there's like a nuthatch and a Carolina wren at our blue feeder. No, it is a nuthatch!
Now I wonder. Might this business of language be Brian Williams' problem? "I was, like, close to where the RPG round hit, like, the preceding helicopter." "I was like in the helicopter that got hit." Well, one thing I have noticed, no news reporter worth his career will use like when describing an event, at least not yet. People want to know exactly what happened: how many dead, how many wounded? Not there were like three dead and like 27 wounded. Actually, there were 7 dead and 14 wounded, exactly. Got it. It is of course your choice, but if you hear me misuse like, brand my tongue with like a hot poker! Is a recently burned match like a hot poker? Not very.
The proliferation of like in our language makes the world a lot less real than it already is; but who is listening?