don't say it.

Well, my mentor Dr. Syntax read Everything is on the Table today and liked it a great deal. Unfortunately he had a total breakdown this morning when the fellow in front of him in the Starbucks line said something about a Simplograndemochamacchimacchihalfcalfcrappochinofrappe with cinnamon to the Barista. I don't know which word set him off but they had to take him away in a basket and so I'm posting his response inspired by Sharia's post:

________________

Dear Americans,

There are so many more things you shouldn't be saying. But you keep at it, don't you?

It's not hopeless, you can change if you really want to. After all, you managed to pry yourself away from "efforting" not that long ago and if you keep trying you can stop pushing envelopes too and leave it to the mailman. The worn out engineering metaphor was about pushing the outside of a performance envelope anyway and you don't even know what that means, do you? Efforting -- don't you feel, well, effortless without it?

Yes, I know what you're saying and I know what you're talking about so you don't have to point out that everything you said or saw or liked was what you were talking about, OK? The same for you telling me about what you were like or are like when you were trying to tell me what you said. I already know what you're like what you said and what you've been talking about and I don't like it.

Believe me, I'm being tactful when I mention for the umpteenth time that intact is one word, not two and that you don't tow a metaphorical line, you toe it. So can you remember that, or do I have to get nasty? Because that actually is what I'm talking about -- and while we're about the word because it's because there never was a reason that was because anything. Let's pause and contemplate the cause of such confusion. That's if you want to know the reason that I said it not the reason why I said it. The reason is that I prefer to make sense and that preference takes precedence over my American desire to sound as unlettered and unfettered by logic as possible .

So you want to know your congressman's track record? So do I, because I don't want my congressman betting on the horses or dogs or anything else that runs on tracks. Track records are records one holds at the track or that the track keeps records of. One can have all kinds of records you know. Try saying congressional record or job record or any other kind of record you can think of -- please. You can simply stop saying track record like a broken record now and all of the above in one swoop and I don't care if the swoop is fell or kindly. Just stop.

Are you going green or are you already there? If so, get off my boat or take a Dramamine. It's fine if you turn lights off or drive a small car and commute a short distance and keep your cell phone charger unplugged, but that isn't making the oceans or rain forests any greener because you're not doing a damn thing when compared to what the cattle ranchers and the oil drillers are doing and that Wal-Mart you shop at burns up more Wal-Watts than all the SUVs in the parking lot just keeping the air conditioning cold enough so you won't smell the customers. Just save energy and leave it at that. Green is pretentious, don't pretend it isn't.

Wall Street Vs. Main Street? They don't measure up to Interstate 94, so lose the metaphor and cutesy dichotomy dude, cause it's my way or the highway says the cliche -- or maybe Rte A1A if you prefer the scenic route.

High Tech means absolutely nothing. It's a gimmick designed to make a gimmick more appealing to people who don't know how gimmicks work. It's not a useful comment. Stop saying it.

Did you know, by the way, that you can get close, or even up close without getting personal, and since you can also get personal without getting up close there isn't any reason to keep adding one unrelated action to another as though they were inseparable, is there? So why do you keep doing it?

I had a hard time with the Sunday crossword puzzle yesterday and I was outside on the patio and not in any kind of box, so thanks for your suggestion, but it doesn't help anyone think -- so stop saying it.

And last -- perhaps least perhaps not least, that's up to you -- stop trying to sound like a 14 year old street urchin, unless you are one -- and even then, hipness is only a type of conformity and there's nothing more cliche than a hipster of any age even a week out of date with his palette of cliche-of-the-day speech. It's OK to grow up. It's OK to sound like you are grown up (Not if you're running for office, of course) and have read books and don't need to paste together cutouts from other people's speech like someone writing a ransom note in some 30's cinema noir film.

It's OK to defeat someone without kicking their ass; to be bad at something without reference to fellatio and please, for God's sake don't open another can of whoop ass on me. It was out of date 30 years ago and smells like it.

I could go on, but my message is like simple and I'm like limiting the list in order to impactify it so that it will impact negatively on you in an impactful way and because like you know I can't do this all day without more coffee -- that's what I'm talking about.

-Dr. Syntax-