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.