(And Other Useless Life Skills)

There’s two things that I’ve learned from the internet. One of them is to use words such as ‘awesome’ and ‘epic’ out of the correct context. The other is how important it is to use the English language properly.

This is because if you miss-spell something in certain places, you and your opinions become invalid. It’s sad, but it happens. This is why I’ve taken to googling words to spell-check them if I’m in an argument with someone who I fear may point out that ‘disappointed’ only has one ‘s’ and therefore my entire system of logic is incorrect.

To be honest, I don’t spend a lot of time arguing on the internet anyway, but I used to so that’s a boring story and no one’s ever going to read this thing again.

The other reason is that it’s so, so easy to be misunderstood when you’re only communicating through type. Everyone’s experienced the vanishing sarcasm syndrome, and the awkwardness of having to use little xD/:D/C:/:3 faces to make sure people who aren’t familiar with your particular sense of humour understand that you’re not really stalking them, you’re only kidding.

I thought of this because as a sort of easy to do New Years Resolution that won’t be overly distressing if I don’t keep it, I’ve been trying to stop saying/writing awesome so much – except when it’s immediately followed by the word, ‘fez’.

This isn’t because it’s a bad word, or because it’s a ‘Americanism’*, or because things like lollipops and pictures of birds with arms photoshoppedonto them rarely inspire actual awe. It’s because there’re millions of other words out there that I’ve been neglecting.

Words like amazing, brilliant, beautiful, excellent,** fabulous, fantastic,*** great,**** groovy (OH YEAH BABY)…

I’m gonna stop trying to think of them and just go to thesaurus.com.***** It’s late, okay?

Here’s what I got for ‘good’:

acceptable, ace, admirable, agreeable, bad, boss, bully, capital, choice, commendable, congenial, crack, deluxe, excellent, exceptional, favorable, first-class, first-rate, gnarly, gratifying, great, honorable, marvelous, neat, nice, pleasing, positive, precious, prime, rad, recherché, reputable, satisfactory, satisfying, select, shipshape, sound, spanking, splendid, sterling, stupendous, super, super-eminent, super-excellent, superb, superior, tip-top, up to snuff, valuable, welcome, wonderful, worthy

Now, I’m likely not going to be using ‘neat’, ‘bully’, ‘ace’, ‘rad’ or ‘spanking’. Though ‘congenial’, ‘up to snuff’, and ‘choice’ are definite winners./sarcasm

Now, I put in ‘awesome’, and the results give a clue as to the ‘proper’ usage.

alarming, astonishing, awe-inspiring, awful, beautiful, breathtaking, daunting, dreadful, exalted, fearful, fearsome, formidable, frantic, frightening, grand, hairy, horrible, horrifying, imposing, impressive, intimidating, magnificent, majestic, mean, mind-blowing, moving, nervous, overwhelming, real gone, shocking, something else, striking, stunning, stupefying, terrible, terrifying, wonderful, wondrous, zero cool ******

Awe-inspiring being key.

Hah, it says, ‘Awesome synonyms’. These synonyms are awesome! 😀

I’m rapidly discovering, however, that sometimes there’s really no other word that works, which probably why everyone******* uses it so much. So I’m limiting myself to one colloquial ‘awesome’ a day to let words like ‘super’ get a chance.

Now, because I don’t think there’s enough of it for a whole post but for some reason I think I have to post about it, here’s some shit about Christmas.

I made notes on Christmas day (boredom) so I’m gonna bullet-point it.

• Fake snow: it is amazing. You get this powder and put a tiny bit of water in it and then you’ve got a fucking mug of fucking expanding toxic fucking snow. I was supposed to use it to make ‘Santa footprints’ – that is, the sprinkly outline of snow falling from Santa’s freakishly small boots as he walks from the door – no chimney – to the chillins’ stockings. But I couldn’t resist doing handprints, too. The kids weren’t very impressed with Santa’s ability to do handstands while carrying a sack of presents.
• I sprained the end joint on one of my fingers. How? Lightsaber duel. If it was broken, I wouldn’t have gone to Casualty. Why? Lightsaber duel.
• I now own sliver knee-high go-go boots. Google it, come back and feel the AWESOME.
• Before lunch I’d already done the Time Warp. With two primary school kids and my mother. *sob*
• Oh, yeah, and then I was mildly drunk and on the internets. Don’t judge me!
• At about half past twelve in the evening, my parents are brushing their teeth in the bathroom, and they hear this sort of  ‘aaaooooooow’ sound of painful misery. In my room, I’m standing on one foot listening to them choking because they’re laughing with mouthfuls of toothpaste. Let’s drop a 822 page book on their feet and see how funny it is.

So, I have made an obligatory post and for about a week will be free of the completely irrational feeling of guilt for owning a blog that I don’t have to pay for and no one reads but not ever actually using it.

_________________________________________________

*Thanks, Dad.

** This one’s especially good as it comes with optional air guitar sound effect/action. Incidentally I should as bodacious and gnarly to that list.

*** Another word that’s been meltated into a different meaning?

****I’m not too keen on this one as ‘great’ doesn’t quite capture the same kind of emotion as, ‘This footnote is fucking awesome!’ does.

*****Or, thesuarus.clom, as I originally put into google.

******Hairy? Zero cool? What?

*******Everyone who grew up watching Friends, the Simpsons and Scrubs that is.