Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Proper Names For Things

I don't like it when people refer to anything that isn't knit as a sweater. I don't think of hoodies, fleece, jackets, or sweatshirts as sweaters.

I also don't like it when people refer to anything other than email as email; for example, Facebook messages aren't email. Email is better than Facebook messages by a whoop and a holler, and the two should not be confused.

Juice comes from plant parts that you'd eat ordinarily. Tea is not juice, no one eats tea leaves. Kool-Aid is not juice, it is sugar water and dye. (It is acceptable to call Kool-Aid bug juice.) While real ades, like lemonade or limeade, contain juice, they are not, themselves, juice, because they are diluted. Soda is certainly not juice.

Action figures are not dolls. They might look like dolls, but action figures blow things up. Dolls are precious. Stuffed animals are not dolls, either, because stuffed animals are snoogly, while dolls are crunchy.

9 comments:

  1. http://www.kathysfastfoodtoys.com/images/Characters2_Koolaid1.jpg

    Man, look at the those juice pitcher dolls. You can get his face on a sweater too:
    http://www.myteespot.com/images/Images_d/d_6005.jpg

    I hope you've enjoyed this email.

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  2. It is painful for me to read that comment.

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  3. Whoa! I nearly spit out my hot juice when I read this e-mail!

    All kidding aside, action figures are a subset of dolls, according to dictionary.com:

    ". a small figure representing a baby or other human being, esp. for use as a child's toy."

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  4. Hate to bring a serious tone to this amusing post, but one of my pet peeves is when people use names of mental illnesses to describe people that are just odd. People too often say things like "she's neurotic" or "haha I'm so obsessive-compulsive" for someone who's a perfectionist or "they're schitzophrenic" referring to someone who is just moody or something (not to mention what they really mean is that they have multiple personality disorder). It's one of those things that is really generally accepted to say but you never know who will be listening and how they feel.

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  5. I also hate it when people call things that they don't like, "gay."

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  6. Alex, I _love_ this post. And it was almost upstaged by Tim's comment... But either way...laughter, which I appreciate.

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  7. I would preface my first comment on your blog with something like "Nice blog; i like it," but i don't care much for small talkish type things or for unnecessary niceties.

    With that said, i did really enjoy this post. One of my biggest peeves recently has been from a certain friend of mine. When talking about food, they regularly use "bad for you" when they really mean "high calorie."

    I know it is not exactly the same as the things you mentioned, but man...it grinds on me.

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  8. Weston, I similarly abhor pleasantries.

    Also, that's a very good example of using proper names for things. High calorie is only bad for you if you have too much of it. I'm simply annoyed when people talk about being "tempted" to eat a slice of cheesecake, or how they talk about ice cream being "decadent;" this is sin-language, not food-language.

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