Where I'm Coming From

Hmmm. Been a while since I blogged. And now I’m pissed. So I’ll blog. I live with a young man who has some serious emotional issues. We were up late talking and he was crying about some bullshit that happened. Then he got a little hysterical and said that he thought he could die right now. And I knew that he meant it. He said that I’m the only person alive that he trusted and asked me why people are such assholes. I couldn’t tell him, but in retaliation I did send some mental violence to a couple of people who desperately deserve it. It’s wrong to make a point of hurting someone. Especially when they are emotionally fragile. All he wants is for someone to care. Not so much to ask for, is it?
I wonder how many of us have really had the world crashing down on us and no place to hide from the fallout. How many of us have slept in our cars, with no place to go, no one to talk to, nowhere to belong, to feel safe, to feel loved. How desperate do you have to be to ask someone to help you die?
Everyone’s wanting to know why I let a virtual stranger into my home, not quite grown, who can’t really take care of himself. Why tolerate his mania?
Because I won’t watch from a distance as this beautiful young man tears himself apart from guilt, shame, and most of all, despair. Because there are so many of us attacked on the streets, bullied out of our homes, shamed into submission and disowned by our families.
Because there are so many of us already dead.

S'tupid People

It seems that more and more, I’m seeing a misunderstanding of the written word. In particular of late, the use of the apostrophe. The apostrophe is that little hook, ‘. You see, it looks like a little upside down comma. In the English language, the apostrophe has two functions. It indicates contractions, such as "do not" to "don’t" or "we are" to "we’re." The indication is, of course, that some letters have been left out. The other function is to denote possession, but again, a contraction of some kind is implied. You may say "Jayvin’s Blog" instead of "the Blog of Jayvin." See how handy that is? You can say less and mean more.

More terrifying is the misuse of "you’re" and "your." The misuse of these words indicates a misunderstanding of fundamental language concepts which you should have learned in the first grade. Are you sure you should be writing anything that anyone else will read? Maybe you just shouldn’t speak, either. Anyway, in most American regions, there is a slight difference in the vowel pronunciation of those two words. The contracted "you’re" is pronounced a little tighter. The vowel in "your" is a more open vowel. To my linguist ear, these words are as different as day and die. And if they’re not to you, that’s OK, there’s no shame. Just do it right and there'll be no further complaints.

That said, I completely understand if you are too stupid to be able to tell the difference between a contraction and a possessive. You probably didn’t do so well in English class and that’s OK also, it’s nothing to be ashamed about. Just remember the examples above, and you’ll be fine. But when you write "you’re" when you mean something belongs to me, and "blog’s" when you mean more than one blog, and not, for example, the blog’s (or blogs’) template, it really makes you look like a dumbas’s.

Don’t even get me started on "there" and they’re."