very serious cause for concern

Dear blog-readers,

Last week I wrote about a very fortunate event that took place in my life: the bodaciously awesome experience of taking a spin class with an instructor who looked, moved, and even talked, exactly like Kirsten Dunst. But, folks, this week I have not been quite so fortunate. In fact I have had a couple of experiences that have given me very serious cause for concern. Very serious indeed. I have witnessed two, not one but TWO, assaults against human reason and basic English literacy. The first is courtesy of an Unmentionable Person who said to me, and I quote,



"This is not some sort of hippie-dippie place where you can just walk around talking to whoever you want."



For the sake of moving on to more important issues at stake here, I will skip over Unmentionable Person's obvious grammatical error of substituting "whoever" for "whomever" because in the end, this is not really that big of a deal, and it's a pretty ubiquitous mistake. Forgiven. I will just chalk this up to grammatical style choice--indeed there is such a thing! Granted, this is usually reserved for people who have gained more control over conservative grammar usage, but it exists all the same.



My gut reaction, however, was to blink and rub my eyes. This was followed closely by the momentary thought that my parents had lied to me, telling me that I was born and raised in Texas, in the United States of America, otherwise known as that place where that thing called The Declaration of Independence was written. It states: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Do you think when they said "liberty" they meant that even hippie-dippie people can talk to whomever they want? Because oh, I don't know, ALL MEN (AND WOMEN) ARE CREATED EQUAL? Obviously, this is just a thought and is only my interpretation. But really, is my love of barbecue and country music pure affectation if I wasn't really born in Texas Which Is In The United States Of America Where They Have That Thing Called The Declaration Of Independence? Obviously shaken up, I picked up my iPhone and chose the "use current location" option on Yelp and got in return lots of restaurants all located in New York City's Upper East Side. I think we can pretty safely say that this is indeed located within the United States of America, can we not? And the rest of my reasoning went like this: considering that Unmentionable Person obviously did not even know which country we were in, I could confidently disregard the rest of this inane statement. Controversy avoided. This UP was a loony, plain and simple.



The other issue I have to talk about here concerns third-world literacy. I know that this is a touchy subject for many, but I feel compelled to state my case all the same. Yesterday morning I received several emails and phone calls from friends, alerting me that someone had hacked into my yahoo email account and was sending emails with the subject heading, " PLEASE GET BACK TO ME WITHING 24HRS YOU ARE MY LAST HOPE." Please note here the complete lack of punctuation and the obviously inappropriate use of all caps. I do have to say, however, that adding a "g" to "within" is a cute way to end an already adorable word, don't you think? I tried typing it this way over and over and found myself thrilled at the way this neologism felt beneath my fingers. In other words, this is one spelling error that I can get behind! My husband and I even broke out the new gin and threw a party for "withing," sporting hats made of paper in the shape of the letter "g."



I will not burden you by recounting the entire rest of the email here, but spare me just this one part, please!:

"It as been a very sad and bad moment for me, the present condition that i
found myself is very hard for me to explain. I am really stranded in
Nigeria because I forgot my little bag in the Taxi where my money, passport,
documents and other valuable things were kept on my way to the Hotel am staying,
I am facing a hard time here because i have no money on me. I am now owning a
hotel bill of $ 950 and they wanted me to pay the bill soon else they will have
to seize my bag and hand me over to the Hotel Management, I need this help from
you urgently to help me back home, and i need to get to get back to
the office i need you to help me with the hotel bill and i will also need
$1250 to feed and help myself back home so please can you help me with a sum of
$2300 to sort out my problems here? I need this help so much and on time because
i am in a terrible and tight situation here, I don't even have money to feed
myself for a day which means i had been starving so please understand how urgent
i need your help."


Now, how on earth am I supposed to empower "Youth to Fight Racism, HIV/AIDS, Poverty and Lack of Education" having such an obvious lack of education myself? Me! really stranded, as in "I'm stranded, not just a little bit but really, no really! stranded" with my "little bag" that I forgot in the capitalized Taxi after which I was "owning" $950 to the hotel in NIGERIA! because hotels in Nigeria typically charge this rate for ONE NIGHT. That would be the one night that I have been here since I talked to you all yesterday, people! Otherwise they will take my little bag. The one I left in the Taxi! Don't you get it? I am in Africa saving people from bad things and I thus lost my entire sense of reason along with my ability to spell and use punctuation!!!!

Now, you try and tell me that that doesn't make any sense.



Before you get upset about my insensitivity concerning third-world education and literacy, let me assure that this is actually an issue very close to my heart. And to prove this, I am starting an organization called "Education for internet criminals who are trying to scam money from your friends and family." Meetings will be held monthly in my apartment and will involve said criminals receiving tutorials in logic, grammar, and business by faculty from Sesame Street. Coming soon, tutorials will also be available via Skype.