Whom the hell nose grammEr?

It is hard when you come from the part of the country that seems that everything we have been reading about has been targeted at. My parents are the cliché, “I don’t want none of that” speakers. So my dad would be the last person to correct my grammar. This brings me to a thought about changing language like we change our clothes. Indeed I change my language for a English class drastically from how I would speak at home. I catch myself saying things such as, “I have already ate” or “Where is my car at?” I know these are wrong and the second they come off my tongue it is like I am reaching out and trying to grab the words and shove them back into my mouth. I can’t help how I was raised nor can I help that I didn’t properly learn the names for all the words in a sentence.

I can however recall a time in seventh grade when my Australian English teacher expected out class to know how to diagram a sentence. We seriously didn’t know an adverb from a hole in the ground. I guess that was the first time where we got a description of the names of words. It was a little too late, and at the time I couldn’t have cared less.

The first time I guess I figured out that the names of words actually mattered was in my High School French class when I was trying to describe how these words went in a specific order. Which is hard, when I still had no clue what exactly a direct or indirect object was or how to describe how they pointed to something? GERUND PHRASE? Can someone please explain?

But does language really have to be this scripted. I mean everyone knows what you mean when you say, “I didn’t get no money today.” Just like in class we discussed who the authorities were to say what is and is not correct. Who really cares as long as it just works? I guess I am saying this because I don’t particularly care if people are wrong or not in speech. However why they are wrong interest me. If we were all correct when we spoke or wrote, then I would be left without anything to sit back and be, “Like, Whoa!” And tons of people would be without a job.

Old World! New World!

First off I want to say that this week has been the most stressful week of my life. STRIKE THAT! This week sucked.

How is that for concision? So this week we talked about our papers and how to make them more effective. I have always had a huge problem with writing sentences that go on forever. That contains multiple ideas, and most likely confuses the hell out of the reader. After reading in About Language on concision and going to class that day I was able to make my reading more effective. But I must say didn’t help on the length of my paper.

The time spent on writing a paper, editing, re-vision, and re-re-vision is well worth the time. I used to write papers and turn them out without second thought, and without even reading over them. I would get the papers back with marks on things that made absolutely no sense at all. I then started having someone else read my papers and help me be sure that they made sense. This was effective but I never thought about how powerful you can make a paper by taking out filler words, and just saying what is need to be said.

I will admit this makes it hard to meet the word wouldn’t requirements. Because usually I would have went on forever about my first sentence. In fact I feel everyone deserves to re-live what has happened.

OK so I am coming into this week from the worst Valentines Day ever. I was broken up with this year on V-Day! Yes I couldn’t believe it either, but it was my fault. I guess sometimes you need to choose your battles wisely. The fact that this relationship ended is not as upsetting has how it did. Moving on into this week. I spent the first part of this week with the flu, so I lay in bed and moped around about last week’s loss.

One stupid thing after another! Eventually it leads me to taking my best friend to the hospital where she lay I sat in the ER overnight on Tuesday. Her parents aren’t from here and she was very scared about being there alone, and I don’t blame her. OK, so after being there all night the next day they decide that she has appendicitis, and are going to do and emergency appendectomy. However they give her morphine right before they realize that her parents are forever away. Rendering her unable to go into surgery, because she has had pain meds and cannot sign a medical release.

This is where I come in! Her parents made me her medical proxy. Which means I am stuck at the hospital now. So I missed tons of important quizzes and papers in classes. But it was for my best friend so it was ok. The surgery went well and recovery was pretty quick. She had her own room and we ended up staying one more night. The chairs are very uncomfortable to sleep in, and I am not fond of the hospital at all. But we got out of there yesterday, after missing a final for a first session class.

Anyway, it has just been a stressful week!

"Please press 1 for white or 2 for black!"

Sometimes I really wonder if we purposely stereotype or be racist. I mean when you answer the phone or take an order at the drive through, do you think to yourself, “Oh my god, they are black/Indian/different. I better treat them different or lie to them and tell them that we don’t have said product in stock, or even spit in their food?” Probably not, sometimes when you call a business multiple times, different employees answer, and sometimes every employee doesn’t know every possible way to get something for the customer whether it be order it Etc. Sometimes an employee can overlook a product or may not work in the department in which they are answering the phone for.

I am by no means condoning that they shouldn’t know what they are doing, or saying that racial profiling is right. However I am saying that I don’t know of anyone that just profiles people to be doing it, it must be a subconscious thing that we do.

Looking at this in a different prospective, an entrepreneur building a subdivision that he hopes grows into a rich community, probably wouldn’t want to sell the first fifty houses out to Mexicans or blacks, just based on a stereotype. This is wrong, I know that people have this preconceived notion of not wanting to live in a subdivision and be the minority, but people should realize that others cannot help their origin. I don’t know why people make such a big deal about all this. What does it really matter; they are people just like I am.

It pisses me off to see someone making fun of another’s skin color or origin. There is one thing that does bother me though. It is when a person of a different race portrays that stereotype and just tries to stand out in the crowd. Of course we are all different but damn, what is up with the shorts and a belt but you wear them down at your knees, this is not an exaggeration either.
Based on the reading we did I find it amusing that people make a big deal about it. It also posed a question to me that if it is illegal to do this in person why isn’t it illegal to do it on the phone, but how can you prove if they are telling the truth or they are giving you an answer based solely on you race or ethnicity. The reading did open my eyes and I will try to be conscious and not profile on the phone however.

I took a break from writing this and went out to the store. I had in mind what I was writing about and believe it or not this is what pulled up next to me. I found it very ironic speaking of stereotypes, and found some humor in it.

I will let the reader caption it for themselves.

Men vs. Women

I hate to even admit that during the first reading by Nilsen, I was thinking to myself stop your whining no one cares. Girls just look for reasons to complain about not getting treated fair, and then when it truly is fair you complain because you don’t want to have to do certain things that men do. Or your excuse is, “Would you carry that? I am a girl.” Also as I read I couldn’t help but go UGH and it killed me to actually read this. Because I was thinking, you couldn’t be more wrong.

Then I read the second by August, I thought to myself you know he is right, I really agree that everything is either your bad at this or you should have done this better. Guys lead a pretty much, “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t life.” I really agreed with about every bit of what he had to say.

Then I decided that I would write about this and was putting y thoughts together on all of this. Then I thought to myself, WOW! I guess we really do protect our own sex in all this. I don’t know who is right or wrong I am going to have to contemplate that a bit more.