OT: Sci-fi (was RE: Ultra-portable terminals)

[Fairlight]

Yo, homey, in case you don' be listenin', John Esak done said:
> Now, that's funny... you do realize, of course, that *you* have used this
> forum as your own personal "blog" for years.... just don't want to use the
> new word, huh?  We all do this in one way or another, some just codify it
> and regiment it to a daily or periodic task. Also funny that you dislike the
> word "blog"... 

Well it's not intentional.  Sure, things leave my keybord with my personal
viewpoint imprinted upon them.  That's different than setting up either a
virtual pulpit or a public diary.  I've considered doing the whole weblog
thing and in the end my analysis still comes down to, "And -who- exactly is
going to give a damn enough to read it that I should waste my time
maintaining one instead of gaming?"

> I do, too. However, I dislike it for the single reason that
> it just popped up into huge, widespread usage and acceptance *without* me
> ever hearing it once. 

Bingo.  And you brought up "dis", which also made the dictionary.
That's wrong on so many levels.  I mean, I guess it's a continuation of
acknowledging and making definitions of slang words available to all
through the dictionary.  But has anyone noticed a significant uptick
in slang and bastardised words in the last decade?  It's also not just
coming from the tech crowd, but largely from (not to be racist) ebonics,
the hip-hop scene, the drug scene, etc.  I mean, do you know how long it
took me to find out exactly what a "phat spliff" was?!  The spoof of a
Delta commercial has more examples than I care to count (but is absolutely
hilarious to me for some reason--I think it's the realistic way the
announcer did it straight-faced like it was perfectly normal).

I roll contradictorily roll my eyes at the French take on maintaining the
cultural purity of their language, to the extent they won't even use the
word "email" (they have their own French version), yet I'm sick of our
language being downgraded several times a year.  It's possibly one of the
few areas where I'm openly possibly hypocritical.  Only "possibly" because
the French seem to be doing it out of pretentiousness, while I'm simply
wishing people would remain intelligible.

Glad you have that insulation.  I have to deal with understanding people in
gaming circles, and so much of this stuff has filtered back upwards because
the primary audience of games nowadays is getting to be not the vintage
gamers in my age bracket, but the lowest common denomenator of the 14yr old
brat whose parents don't care enough to make sure he sounds literate.
They're involved in both gaming and the other scenes that show such
vocabulary degredation, and it filters back up into a community I'm
involved in.  Half the time you need a reference guide to understand these
people.  And grammar?  Forgeddaboudit!  Not even close in most cases.  I'm
not talking stringent, by-the-rules grammar--I'm talking remotely
intelligible by-feel usage in many cases.

I mean...it's just plain ludicrous.  Do you know there's actually a
difference betweein "biatch" and "bitch"?  There's also one between
"newbie" and "n00b" (yes, they often use zeroes...it's a warez-derived
degredation, but it's also "noob").  Keeping up with these trends gets to
be almost another job.  You can listen to one coloured person call another
coloured person a name, and it's -not- derrogatory!  Apparently, from what
I gather, it's the difference between "er" and "ah" in the ending, and
the fact that that community adopted the latter themselves.  To me, it's
as close as makes almost no difference, and left me confused as to what
happened to the civil rights and anti-discrimination advances we'd made for
the better part of a year until I got an answer from someone I was brave
enough to ask.  Of course, it -is- derrogatory if you're white and use
it "properly".  You can only get away with this if you're coloured.  Go
figure.  I haven't been brave enough to see if it's made the dictionary
yet.  I don't want to need antidepressants.  :)

mark->