Words fail me.

There are times when I hate people for how they use language, and I'm including myself in this declaration.  Yeah, as a former English Major I have been known to completely butcher the language, but I figure having a B.A. in English doesn't mean I have to be snooty about it.  Sometimes though I like to use words and language as they are supposed to properly be used.  When that earthquake caused the terrible tsunami in Japan I told my buddy I thought it was awesome how the effects of that quake could make it all the way to the west coast crossing the entire Pacific.  I then caught grief from him about how could I refer to anything having to do with that quake as "awesome".

"Awesome" is currently the "cool".  "Cool" is nearly antiquated now.  Thank you, Bill and Ted.

When I referred to what happened as "awesome" I meant it in the classic sense.  I was in awe of the effects of the quake.  I saw the video of the waves coming into California.  It really made me consider the power of our planet.  Certainly I would not refer to a natural disaster which killed many people as anything ressembling "cool".

I'm bringing this up because of something that I talked about today with Federali and Joey Part Deux up at Kings.  We were talking about Marvel's INFINITY storyline
and event.  Last post I made a joke about how it was a tie in to the new Disney video game since they both kicked off inside of a week of each other.  Here's the thing, this storyline is offically three issues in, but its been building in multiple books for a while.  Hickman's set the stage for something that's really huge.  

Let's look at what's going on.  

A group called The Builders are taking out everything in their path.  The Avengers have ties to the Kree and the Shi'ar, and the Builder's path is heading forwards Earth.  Captain America has taken a team into space to join with the major players in the Marvel Universe to combat this.

Back on Earth the Illuminati have been busting their butts to try to save Earth and the Universe from the collapsing of the Multiverse and parallel Earths crashing into our earth.  This process destroyed most of the Infinity Gems.  And we have Namor and the Black Panther going to war with each other, so there's back-stabbery afoot.

To top things off, Thanos is looking to put the curb stomp on the entire planet and has sent his generals, the Cull Obsidion, to get the last Infinity Gem and put away anyone who gets in their way.  As such, ironman and the Illumanati, instead of prepping to take on the Builders in case Cap's team and the rest of the Universe can't stop them, are in it up to their necks dealing with one fired-up mad Titan.

Seriously.  Holy crap, that's a lot going on.  And that's just a brief overview. 

There we are talking about this storyline and there's just one word that I could think of to describe, and I didn't even want to use that word because of every goober online using it to describe anything remotely above average: "epic".

This thing is freaking epic.

This is like Hickman is saying to the funnybook fandom and the internet, "Yeah, that word you've been misusing?  I'm taking it back."

Because, as the Missus said earlier and paraphrasing THE INCREDIBLES, "When everything is epic, nothing is epic."

Words 2 hard.

The National Spelling Bee got protesters claiming that the English Language is too difficult of spell. They obviously haven't tried their hand at figuring out Mandarin. These people were in Bee costumes advocating for the simplification of our language in its written form. I swear I thought this story was from the Onion, but oh no. These morons were serious.

Remember back a few years ago when some schools were angsting so hard over the self esteem of their students that they start encouraging student to write words how they felt they should be spelled? Same thought patterns as this, proving that in many cases stupid is not very original. Its bad enough, oh I'm sorry, enuf that we have kids exercising horrible grammar and spelling in texts and on the internet. Now there's an actual teacher advocating for this to be the norm.

No, sorry. Your job as a teacher to make the kids smarter, not try to get the subject material dumbed down. The rules of the English language can be a bit tricky at times, but if The Electric Company on PBS can get the rules across then a teacher should too.



As a guy who has spent a bit of time on internet forums I know that there you are judged by your spelling and grammar almost as much as the ideals or viewpoints you present. Take old Deffie McDouchebag, my former would-be nemesis, for instance. His concepts of reality were clearly off the mark to the point that most would have dealt with him online theorize that he has some sort of mental disorder, but this was only once you were able to decipher the ramblings through his Godawful spelling and grammar. Now, I'm by no means perfect with my spelling and grammar, as anyone who has read anything of mine can attest, however making the best effort to master the language to clearly put forth your thoughts will get you taken a lot more seriously than using 'chatspeak'.

So too those protesters at the Spelling Bee: sit down and shut up. Those kids participating in there likely have a better grasp of the language than you or I do. Instead of trying to make things stupid, why do you try pushing yourself and (the notion that there are educators in this group actually pains me) try pushing your students to the excellence that those kids completing have accomplished.