Monday, August 11, 2008

I'm all, like, you know, totally tubular?

There was once this, you know, dialect of English? Out in California? In the eighties? And it was, like, totally awesome? And because it was, you know, spoken, like, mainly by, you know, seventeen-year-old girlfriends of nineteen-year-old surfer dudes, it was called, like, you know, Valley Girl? And every, like, declarative sentence? Would end on a, you know, rising inflection? And nobody ever, like, “said” anything? It was, like, totally “I'm all” and “he’s like” and “she goes”? And everybody, you know, was, like, blown away? With their own coolness?

I was suddenly and inexplicably reduced to Valley Girl speech yesterday when I discovered, quite by accident -- I had simply typed in “yellowswordfish” to catch up on the latest at my new English friend Andy’s blog over there across the pond -- that I have been named a (you should pardon the expression) “kick-ass blogger.” Me. Moi. Old rhymeswithplague himself.

Oh. My. God. It was, like, totally awesome.

I have never been considered “kick-ass” at anything, by anybody, with the possible exception of playing the piano and typing* (not at the same time, of course) -- I”m more the geeky, nerdy type -- so to be singled out in such a fashion at the advanced age of 67 totally, like, you know, blows me away, dude.

Nor am I into the crudities of modern English speech -- in fact, I feel more and more like the Victorians who preferred that a chicken leg be referred to as a “limb” -- so I entered “kick-ass” into a dictionary search and learned the following from Webster’s New Millennium™ Dictionary of English, Preview Edition (v 0.9.7), Copyright © 2003-2008 Lexico Publishing Group, LLC:

Main Entry: kick-ass
Part of Speech: adj
Definition: 1. aggressive, forceful. 2. very effective.

As I am very much the peaceful sort and cannot possibly be considered aggressive or forceful in any way, shape, or form, I accept this award within the confines of the second definition. Andy of England, not to be confused with Jeannelle of Iowa (the writing of which always makes me think of Eleanor of Aquitaine), considers my blog to be very effective. Maybe even aggressive and forceful. Okay, with apologies to my pastor and the entire church congregation, KICK-ASS!

Here's the award:



One might think, it having come by way of England (not Britain; there's a difference), that the award might have morphed into the only slightly more refined sounding Kick-Arse Blogger award, but no. One would be mistaken.

And speaking of one, one of the rules is to link to the blog that presented you with the award, so go to Yellow Swordfish and knock yourself out. A second rule is to include a link to the originator of the award, someone with whom I'm (totally) unfamiliar named mammadawg, so I will. Or, more accurately, I just did.

Yellowfish is a joy to read. His wife has JDOCD (Johnny Depp Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder) and they have two dogs named Princess and Pirate.

Just so you understand what an Anglophile I am, and how honored I am to have received this award, I shall now toss in, for good measure, links to three of my earlier posts, Happy Birthday, Lilibet!, The celebration continues, and This just in from our London correspondent... and I’m guessing I shall soon find out whether Andy and his JDOCD wifey are fans of the monarchy.

Our language is constantly changing. One day Valley Girl is in; the next day it’s out (with my deepest apologies to Heidi Klum Seal). As my twelve-year-old grandson might say of my having received this award, in his currently-fashionable-among-pre-teens, neo-Gansta-Rap way, “It’s tight, yo.”

*I won’t lie to you. When I went to work for IBM, secretaries from around the building came by my cubicle one day just to see me type 125 words per minute.

6 comments:

  1. Congratulations, both on the award and the funny imitation of a valley girl.

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  2. hehehe
    "Louis" congratulates you - but he hopes you don't kick his @$$!

    In conjunction with "Louis's" post about Studebakers, he has this post about Packards.

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  3. Thanks, Ruth and Louis (or maybe that should be "Louis"), for commenting on my blog.

    Ruth, thank you for your twofold congratulations.

    Louis (or maybe that should be "Louis"), merci! (You'll have to imagine the accent, if any. And I, being the peaceful type, promise not to kick anything.) Are you by any chance related to Cabeza da Vaca?

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  4. P.S. to Louis (or maybe that should be "Louis") -- my Francophilia is second only to my Anglophilia. I thought you should know.

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  5. I bow to your typing skills. The best I could ever do was about 104wpm. Of course that was back in the day of typewriters! Not sure what I could have accomplished on a keyboard.

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  6. Hi, Debbie, and welcome. I'm the same way. Always wondered how fast I might be typing on an electric typewriter (remember a Selectric ball?) or a computer keyboard. Back in my day, the testing was done on a big, old, clunky Royal manual typewriter -- meaning it was the kind where a little bell rings and you have to reach up and return the carriage manually. I haven't seen one of those in years.

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<b>Always true to you, darlin’, in my fashion</b>

We are bombarded daily by abbreviations in everyday life, abbreviations that are never explained, only assumed to be understood by everyone...