Look, I know that when you send me an email that says "i would like if u could email more pix plz", you mean that you would like me to send you more photographs via email, but would it frickin' kill you to type it in English? If you could only see the spike in my blood pressure when I open an email to see that "txtspk" nonsense...
And do they not teach kids to use the frickin' shift key anymore?
Get offa my lawn!
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56 comments:
I know the feeling even if the provocation-of-the-hour is different.
Kingston Trio: "...and I don't like anybody very much."
y u gotta b h8n?
Amen...the richest nations in the history of the world have succeeded in producing an entire generation of illiterates...complete with remedial freshman English in university to raise them to, perhaps, the Grade 10 level of a generation ago.
The posts I read on most gun boards make my toes curl, and would put my high-school English teachers in their graves if they weren't there already.
Thanks for reminding me to order Gran Torino.
It's worse than that: my dad has started using it in his texts and even emails. My mom has remained stalwart, but I weep for the future.
It's like a whole nother languge, and I for one have enough of a problem with english.
I see your bidder is n/r he may just be a troll.
If he bails report him to Gunbroker, sorry your first sale was such a bummer.
If he wants pictures, send him pictures.
Age and treachery....
My dad sent me an email in internet shorthand once when I was in college. He got back a seven-paragraph nastygram from me explaining why he should never do that again. He replied asking where I learned to lecture people. So, naturally I pulled out the old line from the Partnership for a Drug-Free America ad: "I learned it by watching you!"
He called me up, still laughing about that line.
word verification: winth. What you do when you're victoriouth!
I had this flash of Tam as a high-school English teacher...
I'm thinking there would be a lot of "Yes, Ma'am" and "No, Ma'am".
rickn8or, I just had this sudden flash of Tam taking over the "Dear Abby" column...
Art
"And do they not teach kids to use the frickin' shift key anymore?"
No.
I feel the same.
Preach it, Sister.
I have added Clint's "Get off my lawn!" to the greatest movie quotes of all time.
Bypassing the Dirty Harry stuff, I always liked the Duke's line; "Fill your hand, you sonofabitch".
Sigh. All I hear these days is some metrosexual whining about his latte double caramel being the wrong temperature.
It's really nothing new. Telegraph operators, and later ham radio folk, used lots of abbreviations. The abbreviations even migrated from morse code to *spoken* language. How weird is that?
QRM = man-made interference
QRN = Natural interference
QSO = an radio contact (conversation)
QTH = location
Is this really more readable than modern txt speech?
Texting from a 10-key cell phone, I think much can be forgiven. However, if the sender has a full keyboard at their disposal then they should have their butts (verbally) kicked.
Samsam
Tam as schoolmarm.
I can see the school outing to the range now:
"Luther, touch that gun without permission and _you_ are the target holder for the rest of the afternoon. How good do think suzie's aim is?"
"Using math an physics to calculate bullet drop at 100 yards...and you didn't think this stuff had practical applications"
Samsam: I bet if the message had been in Morse, Tam would have forgiven the boy for using shorthand. ;)
Teach typing? You are old.
They don't teach typing.
Hell, they don't teach reading, writing or arithmetic anymore.
Yeah, schools only require "students" to show up during a designated snout-counting period in order to get their money from the .gov for 'educational funding'.
Teach? Feh. I tried being a substitute while I was back in college. Twain was right. Keep them in a barrel, fed through the bunghole until 18, then decide whether to let them out or close the bung.
I knew there was a good reason why I have no known biological offspring of which I am aware.
Regards,
Rabbit.
r u 4 real????????????
l8r
This is a huge pet peeve of mine also...and it has nothing to do with whether or not you have a full keyboard or are doing dial pad. I've dealt with non-keyboard phones and T9 Word is nearly as quick as typing on a full board.
People get one warning from me...if it isn't worth spelling out, it isn't worth bothering me. If it is worth bothering me and you think it's going to be a pain to spell out, then CALL me. Yeah, I understand your gibberish but it just makes me want to slap the shit out of you just as much as the advent of "133t" did on BBSs back in the early 80s. Gave away my age there I guess...
And, while we're on the subject of Gran Torino, some dumbass made a "Which Movie Badass are You?" quiz on Facebook...I got Walt Kowalski. I took that as a complement, with the only problem being that they described him as chasing people off of his lawn "with a shotgun". Sigh! I don't suppose I have to school anyone here as to how much friggin' stupid was in that statement.
People suck.
Don't go knocking on Q signals. They make perfect sense.
David de kb4anv
I've finally started sending text messages from a cell phone . . . but I can't bring myself to use the txtlolspkz.
My sister and I text message almost exclusive in full words with correct grammar. On the other hand, we were homeschooled for several years by our mother, who has a master's in English. So, there's that.
can i haz cheezburger?
Really, you have lolcats asking you for pictures.
Hi, Tamara;
I couldn't agree more. Another, related thing that really bugs me is WHEN PEOPLE SEND EVERYTHING IN ALL CAPS. I FEEL LIKE THEY'RE SHOUTING AT ME!
I used to work for a man who did all email that way. He got the idea from contract language wherein the important stuff is always all caps. He thought it made his words important. What a jerk.
"Shoot'em all, let God sort'em out!"
-Popgun
I give my niece more crap about that than is probably warranted, but it drives me nuts. Especially since she is at a computer with a fully functional keyboard. I give users of full keyboard phones the same lashings. But, alas and alack, the thing that kills me the most, is the death of the library at the schools. My daughters don't have a library, they have a "Media Center" and I think we have more books in boxes in the basement than they do on the shelves. And we bought them a manual typewriter-as in non-powered- and one of the neighborhood kids saw it and called it "an old-fashioned computer."
Samsam: That's just q-signals. R hv left out all the fb ot ham shorthand -- Hw cpy, om? Hihi -- 73 es _VA_ (or _SK_, same prosign)
Samsam: That's just q-signals. U hv left out all the fb ot ham shorthand -- Hw cpy, om? Hihi -- 73 es _VA_ (or _SK_, same prosign)
My company now uses Microsoft communicator (IM) extensively since the majority of employees now work from home. Many use this nonsense abbreviations. I don't.
One asked why I didn't and I told her that I could type full words faster than she could mentally abbreviate words and type them. After that, I proved it to her.
That's "fuckin' shift key", ma'am. Let's not corrupt our (ahem) cursive writing, either.
pmsl
...d&r
DJ, it is "fucking", not "fuckin'". Please make the appropriate effort to enunciate next time.
You will have to stay after class and bang erasers if you do not wise up, and quick. Do you understand? And please put the hall pass back on the desk where it belongs before you take you seat. Thank you.
Frankly, I have the luxury of being able to completely ignore gibberish messages (e-mail, IM, text message, whatever) without suffering, so that's what I do. If someone can't bother to use something that closely resembles proper English, then I can't bother to give my eyeballs a migraine trying to interpret their nonsense.
And, yes, ignoring proper capitalization ticks me off too - along with Capitalizing random Words like I'm Doing right Now. So, so annoying.
Gun Broker. Cool. I have those Krag actions with good bolts to move if I want to buy that spoon handled Mannlicher.
I don't even care if the drooler is an unlettered moron as long as he can find someone with an FFL who will accept delivery.
Although, I suspect that anyone with the G2 to appreciate a Krag based sporter probably has a certain modicum of gray matter.
WV romin. Perhaps the verification dwarves are playing games with Julius Cesar, or perhaps they are devotees of Sir Harry Lauder. Hopefully the latter.
And Jim, I think the Kingston Trio popularized it, but I believe the original bit of brilliance was the immortally irreverent Tom Lehrer.
Perhaps from his eponymous "Poisoning Pigeons In The Park" album, but I'd have to check on that with Amazon.com to be sure.
Well, if we're going to grumble, I may as well throw in Bob the Angry Flower's Guide to the Apostrophe, You Idiots!
(WV: buths. What Humphrey Bogart rode to school.)
I just want the ability to eliminate words from the English language. I'd start with "actually". It seems this word's only function is to permit newscasters to utter phrases such as "was actually stolen" or "to actually go".
Rick, a word is not responsible for the people who use it. Lobby for the ability to remove the people, not the innocent word.
Must be getting early clocks are running late
Paint by number morning sky looks so phony
Dawn is breaking everywhere light a candle
curse the glare
Draw the curtains I don't care 'cause it's alright
I will get by I will get by
I will get by I will survive
I see you've got your fist out say your piece and get out
Yes I get the gist of it but it's alright
Sorry that you feel that way the only there is to say
Every silver lining's got a touch of grey
Just like the song. :)
No, Ancient Woodsman, she wrote "frickin'", not "fricking". Thus, the proper correction is "fuckin'", not "fucking". Further, I did not enunciate, I wrote.
I'll use the miscorrect unpronounciation anytime I please, but at least I'll misunpronounciate the correct word.
I can't be the only one thinking it, just the only one saying it, but Tam as a school teacher?
That would have me playing, "Hot for Teacher" on repeat...
-Rob
WV: draway, is that when you have a tendency to draw your handgun a lot? He's very "draway".
lol. wut?
[twitch]
Okay, so we have several hams that read Tam's.... how about a 75m net? I need an excuse to repair my doublet.
Maybe we are having our own personal little summer?
Anon @ 10 p.m.: Maybe us grown-ups don't get a summer, and don't want to put up with your lazy abbreviating asses?
T. Stahl: Hear, hear!
I weep for the future when I read some on the entries in the paperwork at work.
As for photos, Oleg did a great job of capturing Tam. Gee whiz, some people are never satisfied.
Jim
This isn't just an american problem. I see the same thing in Scandinavia, people in their 20s write as if they're 14.
If I get an email about something wrong with one of my website forms, it's never a coherrent message, it's just a short one line message that makes no sense, something like "da form no work". They usually dont bother to sign it either.
Once we had the Greatest Generation.
Now we have the Stupidest Generation.
Martha Anne is a recently retired 43- year veteran high-school teacher, licensed in all subjects.
In the past,I have helped her grade essays, or other 'written' tests, as a GOOD teacher's workload ain't feathers in a pillowcase.
For the last twenty of those years, I watched the general world, historical, and referential cultural knowledge among HS students, decline at a steeper and steeper rate.
Even among my friends' younger kids, the replacement of learning 'book stuff' with the seemingly hypnotic uselessness of... say... "Warcraft" is painfully evident. As is a general sort of laziness regarding future earnings and anything but the least challenging type of employment.
The foregoing is prolly not news to any reader here. but mebbe the world IS really going to Hell in Handbasket, this time around.
Perhaps a good old fashioned Apocalypse might stir up interest in actually having useful skills, among the younger set.
Or not, is as more likely. A Zombie Insurrection might interest them, but only if could be fought from their video console. Actually running and fighting would waaaaaaay too hard, dude.
WTF, and resigned to watching Western Civ fold it's full house of cards, to a hand of malevolent jokers.
John, the Red
Every profession has its own slang.
This thread reminded me of an article I read decades ago about the verbal shorthand thrown around by waitresses in diners (hash houses?) in the pre-electronic days, when common items were called back to the kitchen when they were written up on the order pad. The only one I remember now is for a toasted English muffin--"Burn a redcoat!"
cap'n chumbucket
I don't believe texting is forgivable. Anyhow I will not respond to it and delete such messages, even if it says, "Plz hlp am dying." Oops, delete.
Can we at least keep WTF?
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is an honorarium that predates juvenile "texting."
"the verbal shorthand thrown around by waitresses in diners (hash houses?) in the pre-electronic days"
I am proud of being able to order my favorite Waffle House meal in official wafflehousespeak: "Steak'n'eggs medium rare and up, hash browns scattered smothered covered and peppered, well!"
Tam, your Waffle Houses must be much different in Indy. Here in KC, they serve nothing edible. The coffee is useful only to patch the cracks in the drive way. Eggs come in two ways---raw and rubber. The waffles are useful only a frizbee substitutes.
and how many remember Gregg shorthand ? ....other than Roberta X
Noel
Hear, hear!
There may be hope yet -- after the advent of the next Little Ice Age, and the limited nuclear exchange with Iran, one imagines the surviving twerps will have sufficient time to learn to read real books, handwrite legibly, and compose coherent letters on manual typewriters.
Afternoons should be reserved for 500-yard qualification and bayonet drill.
Beaumont said...
...
Afternoons should be reserved for 500-yard qualification and bayonet drill.
At last! A school system with subjects I would be qualified to teach!
WV: thewants. What I get when I read The Arms Room...
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