Thank You, “Weird Al” Yankovic, For Your Lesson In Grammar

Mike said to me today, “You’re getting a little snippier every day since you’ve been pregnant.”

I said, “I don’t know if it’s me being snippy. I just feel less willing to tolerate people’s idiocy.”

Remember Crank-Ass Erica? I guess she’s still here.  With that said, this country’s decline in grammar/punctuation/speaking/writing skills is truly disheartening to me, and I wonder where we’ll be in 10, even 5 years. Frankly, it horrifies me.

Will we all be vegetables with smart phones in our hands relying on squiggly red underlines to tell us that we’re idiots–and then will we simply ignore those squiggly red lines and use single letters to denote actual words? I fear the answer is yes.

I’m currently rereading Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice, and I find myself enamored with the language and the grand language of each of the characters. Though the Bennets are not of the highest society, they still sound refined.  Hell, Elizabeth is witty enough to keep up her banter with Darcy–and that is a task in itself.

When I was in elementary school, I became insanely jealous of Jillian Rhoad (anyone know where she is?) when she showed up with “Weird Al” Yankovic’s “Bad Hair Day.” I wanted it. I wanted all the songs on it. I thought it was clever and wonderful, and truth be told, it made me want an accordion. “Weird Al” has been kind of MIA of late, but in the past two days, I’ve read about two of his songs:  “Tacky” – the “Happy” parody and “Word Crimes” – the “Blurred Lines” parody, which is directly below this word.

At first, I was just thrilled that “Weird Al” was back. I f*cking love this guy.

But most importantly, I was hit with the very stark realization that when a guy named “Weird Al” has to step in to tell all the people on the Internet that they sound like morons, the world should take it as a sign that it’s time to start improving the way we speak and write. As a country and as a species, our communication skills truthfully make us look like a bunch of uncouth, barbaric slobs.

So I posted this on Facebook earlier, and now I’m putting the call to improve on my blog.

Let’s get better, America!