At the end of the day, it is what it is, and I'm over it.

Back in the eighties, right when people started to realize that the strict authoritarian model of society that we’d all been following could be replaced with a more person-centered model, a phrase cropped up: “Me time.” It was used for any time that a person detached for a moment to gain his or her own personal center, so that he or she could then return to work, family, life, etc. in a refreshed and meaningful way. But soon enough, this phrase began to be used for everything from going shopping to snorting cocaine off of a public toilet, and it lost all practical meaning. The same thing seems to be happening with a crop of popular phrases today. Here are the ones I can think of off the top of my head:

He really threw me under the bus – Listen, I am all for a good metaphor (and a good bus-throwing-under), but the term should only be used when someone makes you a scapegoat for something that wasn’t their responsibility. Nowadays, people use this phrase every time someone gives an opinion that differs from their own. It’s NOT throwing someone under the bus to say, “Here is the thing you believe in that makes you look like a fool. I am going to point that out.” That is just pointing outiness. Totally different.

It is what it is – While divinely philosophical, people typically use this phrase when they actually mean, “It seems like you are winning this argument. In order to escape, I am going to stop all conversation by using this meaningless phrase.” Coward!

Winning! – Nobody needs you to point that shit out.

At the end of the day – More like, “At the end of this sentence.” The Urban Dictionary defines this phrase as, “Rubbish phrase used by many annoying people.” Amen, my urban comrades, amen. Using this phrase is cruel to all of the things that actually must be done at the end of the day, e.g., turning off all of the lights, brushing your teeth, taking your Ambien, etc. At the end of the day, all we really want is to sound smart, but using this phrase just makes you sound like you’re on a time schedule.

I’m so blessed to…. – What you’re really about to say is, “I’m about to rub something in your face reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaal good.” For example, “I am so blessed to have just received my trust fund check. Cha-ching! Thanks for dying, Daddy!” The most heinous thing about this is generally, you are NOT blessed, you are either lucky, or you worked hard to get it, and for some reason, admitting either one of those is uncomfortable right now. On the other hand, I have been blessed with an awesome fucking ability to use swear words.

I love her to death – I find this one particularly disturbing. A) I do not want anyone loving me until I die, either literally or figuratively. That is abusive and sounds uncomfortable. B) Everyone knows that the word that ALMOST ALWAYS follows this phrase is “….but…..,” followed then by some incredibly snide remark. “I love her to death, but Jesus Christ she smells like an ass dipped in vomit!” C) It is just plain condescending. “I love her to death, but she is too stupid to realize the next mean thing I am going to say about her – let’s continue to keep it a secret!” Just face the fact that you are a gossipy gossipmonster. Stop trying to sugarcoat it.

I’m over it – uh…..no you aren’t.

Grammar Rocks!

Here is a real post that I saw on Facebook the other day:

“After listening to two people talk on the bus. I ask my self when did the education system in this country stop teaching grammar. Is english a lost language.”

Just a few, quick suggestions:

#1: “After listening to two people talk on the bus.” This is a fragment sentence. It does not express a complete thought. Use a comma instead and link it to the completion of the thought in the next sentence.

#2: “my self”: the correct word is "myself."

#3: Internal dialogue: You should use either quotation marks or italics for internal dialogue. Since Facebook does not take italics, quotation marks it is.

#4 and #5: Questions should be concluded with a question mark.

#6: English: It needs to be capitalized.

In other words, the post should have been written as follows:

“After listening to two people talk on the bus, I ask (I would say ‘asked’) myself, 'When did the education system in this country stop teaching grammar? Is English a lost language?'”

The person who posted this is a very nice human being. But somewhere in heaven, a thousand fourth-grade teachers are weeping.

That's it. I have been robbed of my will to write.

Happy Halloween!

Several years ago, I had a couple of little trick-or-treaters come to my house. The little girl, probably in second grade or so, was basically dressed like a Pussycat Doll, and the little guy, maybe a third-grader, was wearing a tiny suit, a little fedora, and carrying, like a cane or something. They were adorable, but I couldn’t figure out what they were.

“What are you dressed as?” I asked them.

“I’m a pimp and she’s one of my girls!” the boy said proudly.

So, anyway, I’d like to talk a little bit about things I don’t want to see this Halloween:

1. Inappropriate costumes. No Casey Anthony, no hookers and pimps, no three year olds in Lady Gaga costumes. There's not a lot about this that's difficult to figure out.
2. Adults trick-or-treating. Get your freeloading ass to Target and get your own damn candy.
3. Kids who are not in costume. I don’t want you coming up to my porch and holding out your pillowcase if you can’t at least throw a sheet on and be a ghost.
4. Babies “trick or treating.” See #2 above re: Target and the wide variety of candy available to freeloading adults.
5. Children who have not learned the following phrases: “Trick or treat!” and “Thank you.” Listen, I get that Facebook has actually ruined your ability to interact in actual human society, but this whole trick or treat thing is a transaction. You come up to my house and say “Trick or treat.” I then give you candy. You then say, “Thank you.” I can’t work with you if you don’t do your part.
6.My neighbors. Not my immediate neighbors, but the ones next to them. Every beggar’s night, they have ten equally douchey friends come sit on their porch and guzzle beer like there’s no tomorrow. Over the course of an hour, their interactions with innocent children become progressively louder and more inappropriate until, an hour in, they lose interest and go inside. They’re, like, 26 years old and don’t get the fact that trick-or-treating isn’t about them.
7. Bad candy. I can’t understand why someone would go to the trouble of buying candy and passing it out if it isn’t going to be good. Off-brand chocolate? Black and orange jellybeans? Starlight mints? Banana taffy? So hateful.
8. Parents who take their kids trick or treating with a cigarettes in one hand and a beer in the other. Geez, it's two hours of your life. Lay off the sauce and pay attention to your kids.
9. Parents who force their children’s costume to be a political statement. Nobody wants to see your Global Warming costume. These are the same parents who make their children sit on Santa’s lap and ask for world peace. Just shut up and let your kid be Freddy Krueger.
10. Sassy children. You are eight years old. You have no job. I am giving you candy. Watch your mouth.

God bless you, Raymond Towler

Some of you know that I do a little volunteer work at the Ohio Public Defender’s Office. The public defender has something called the Wrongful Conviction Project, where inmates in Ohio’s prisons who feel that they have been convicted for something they didn’t do, fill out a questionnaire, to see if there’s anything that the nice people at the OPD can do to help them out. Often, when I’m volunteering, my son will call me with some dumb “emergency” that he wants me to fix. I am always like, “Dude. I am trying to help these people get an innocent person out of prison. Can’t you call someone else to find out if you should wear shorts or pants tomorrow?”

Anyway, above my little volunteer desk sits a framed poster that says, “The faces of Ohio’s DNA Exonerees.” It has the pictures of about ten men who were convicted of crimes, and later exonerated through DNA testing. It also has the number of years that these men spent in prison before they were proved innocent. The most striking face in the bunch is Raymond Towler, who was in prison for 29 years before DNA testing proved that another man, not he, committed the rape for which he was convicted. Raymond went to prison when he was 24 and was released when he was 54. Click here for an article that tells Raymond’s story. I am warning you: you will cry when you read it.

Twenty-nine years is longer than some of my friends have been alive. I think about all of the things that I did in 29 years, and then think about what would have become of me had I been forced to live every single day of those 29 years in the same way, wearing the same clothes, sleeping in the same bed, eating the same food, worried about my safety and my family and my sanity day after day after day after day. Twenty-nine years is longer than Kurt Cobain, Heath Ledger, James Dean, Jimi Hendrix, Otis Redding and Tupac lived. Twenty nine years means Christmases and birthdays and anniversaries when nobody remembers to send you a card. Twenty-nine years for anyone, guilty or innocent, is a long time, but for the innocent, it has got to feel like a Kafka nightmare.

I look up at that poster every time I sit down, and I see Raymond Towler’s face, and under that: 29 years in prison. And I wonder how many people are sitting in prison under the same circumstances, but are unable to access the kind of help and resources that Raymond Towler received. Twenty nine years, for doing absolutely nothing. In prison. Raymond Towler’s mother died while he was in prison. He attended her funeral in shackles. He was innocent.

My point here isn’t to say that every prisoner in Ohio was wrongfully convicted. But I know for a fact that those ten faces that I see on the poster were put in prison solely because they were victims of really bad luck. Bad luck doesn’t choose its victims based on how bad of a person they were, or by measuring the potential of evil in their heart. Bad luck is random and capricious and it could get any of us at any time.

So what I am asking of you is this: take a moment, close your eyes, and send your thoughts of loving kindness to those who struggle in prison. Pray, chant, mumble, visualize, meditate - whatever floats your boat – but please, just take a minute to send your very best energy into their Universe. Not every prisoner is Raymond Towler, but any prisoner could be.