Sort of stupid

As if my fellow humans didn't do enough things to irritate me, here's one more: the superfluous adding of "sort of" or "kind of" to their sentences. It wouldn't be so annoying if people didn't reach for it so quickly and lazily, and adopt so easily it as a posing habit. I noticed people adding these qualifiers recently, as if they just couldn't hit on a sufficiently accurate descriptor, often during a self-indulgent traipse down memory lane:

"I don't know, I guess the experience just sort of opened new doors for me as a person..."

Did it? Did it sort of open new doors for you, or did it just open new doors for you? Oh yes, that's right, your story and its slippery little point are simply too complex and elusive to be captured by mere and common turns of phrase; but you, ever the bon vivant and irrepressible storyteller will just have to make do with the paltry language that human civilization has patched together over the past few thousand years. Do struggle on, won't you, and sort of patch together your high-minded repartee, in a kind of grandiose pastiche of sloppy metaphors and unnecessary, trendy figures of speech? Oh, won't you, do?

I admit, I am easily annoyed.

Meta Blog

Nearly another week gone by and I've written darn little of personal import. I used to love writing in this thing, and now it's becoming an effort. I feel that I'm losing a grip on something important, and I don't know if it's so that I can have a hand free for what's next, or if something's just slipping away.

Sometimes I feel like I'm turning into one of them - one of the norms, the everyday zombies who lack introspection, irony and the sense of being just out of sync enough to remind themselves that life is weird and once you're comfortable, you're probably dead. "It's warm and welcoming, here in the herd. Give in to our embrace..." It sounds tempting, inviting and creepily like a suspense thriller film, and I know it's not right.