I know a lot of folks for whom the statement, “I am a sinner” would not be at all offensive, and even viewed by some as a laudable admission, but who would find the statement, “I am an asshole” to be extremely offensive.
Frankly, I don’t get it.
I’m With Michael Z.
On the passing scene. . . (the riots, looting, arson, assault, and murder that have gone unchecked by police). Cops who are essentially invoking “The Nuremberg Defense” (“I am just following orders”) and violating their oaths to uphold the law, also pleading safety, whether of their persons or their paychecks disgust me. Seriously. Michael Z. Williamson’s view on cops whose first priority is “going home safe at the end of my shift” applies, IMO:
I don’t want to hear some drunk and confused guy squirming on the ground playing “Simon Says” terrified you so much you had to blow him away. I don’t want to hear that some random guy 35 yards away who you had no actual information on “may have reached toward his waist band. Or that “the tree might fall any moment” or that “the smoke makes it hard to see.”
Near as I can tell, I don’t hear the smokejumpers, or the firefighters, or the disaster rescue people say such things.
But it’s all I ever hear from the cops. If you and your five girlfriends in body armor, with rifles, are that terrified of actually risking your life for the theoretically dangerous job you volunteered for and can quit any time, then please do quit.
You can get a job doing pest control and go home safe every night.
Until a bunch of fucking pussies with big tattoos, small dicks, body armor and guns blow you away for minding your own business.
Because what you’re telling me with that statement is, your only concern is cashing a check. That’s fine. But if that’s your concern, don’t pretend you’re serving the public. If you wanted to help people at risk of life, you would be a firefighter, running into buildings, dragging people out, getting scorched regularly.
If you’re cool with writing tickets, then there’s jobs where you can do just that.
If you want to tangle with bad guys and blow them away, fair enough. But understand: That means they get to shoot first to prove their intent, just as happens with the military these days. Our ROE these days are usually “only if fired upon and no civilians are at risk.”
That about sums it up: sign up o be a “public servant” designating yourself as a “law ENFORCEMENT officer,” then taking a paycheck to sit back and do nothing while watching rioters loot, burn, and kill, no matter WHAT the lame excuse is? Well, bugger on off boyos. You are more useless than “sammich fixins” at a feminazi rally. More at the link.
Just. . . Things
Asking all one of the readers that drop by, nowadays: are there any simple problems with English usage that irk you? As frequent reader (note the construction *heh*) likely recalls, I have a few such bugaboos, like
- bafflingly and wildly inappropriately misused words (infer for imply; poignant for pointed; vested for invested, and worse. Much worse *sigh*)
- compound words either used wrongly or not used where called for (backseat ? back seat; log in ? login; backup ? back up; etc.)
- warped time sense (an inability to recognize and properly use perfect tenses, particularly past perfect and conditional past perfect tenses; stupid misuse of present tense for past events, etc. Also illiterate formations of past tenses for some common words, such as “broadcast.”)
- inability to properly use subjective vs objective pronouns. Also in the running for pronoun misuse: a pseudo hoity-toity misuse of the reflexive pronoun “myself” where “I” is correct (apparently under the impression that using “myself” IMPROPERLY somehow conveys a higher level of literacy. . . while unintentionally revealing subliteracy)
Yes, these are a few of my less favorite things. . . And yes, there are more. Stupid punctuation, laughable misspellings, syntax only a mother could love (and then most likely only from a babbling baby), grammar better associated with a brain-damaged Bonobo chimp, and on and on. . .
“Is she over her head?” written by a writer who did not engage his brain before failing to type “Is she in over her head?” Yeh, another one: mishearing and or misreproducing common expressions, rendering them as nonsense.