September 15th, 2008
Bright Idea
It so nearly made it on to the list – It makes you think – alongside all of those other superfluous vocal ticks that plague speakers of the English language.
The ones that did make it included starting sentences with ‘basically’ or ‘at the end of the day’ and finishing them with ‘right?’ and ‘you know what I mean?’.
But there’s something special about saying the phrase, ‘it makes you think’… It’s a momentary recognition that it is all we do, think, expressed verbally.
It’s like saying, ‘I am here, and I am sentient’.
It makes you think.
I’m pink, therefore I’m spam.
teeee hee
iPod, therefore I am.
Adaaaaammmmm….Y’know, you ain’t'ent put the strip I drew you onto the site yet. *hint hint*
Oooh, folks, I realised this evening that I have been reading and commenting on TFFU for one year, three months now. I was 14 at the time. Next month, I will be 16.
Is anyone else really scared by that last sentence? Cos I am….
That is a scary statistic…
OK, the one you sent me… I was being a bit selfish. I have print-outs of everything that people send me in my ‘office’. They cheer me up.
What I meant to do was print yours out and draw the strip in my own way, just as I did with Roo’s spoons. But I’ve been lazy and it’s still on my wall. The plan was to use it to launch the ‘collaborative’ section of my site (somewhere you can find everything you’d need to make your own strips etc.) It’s just that I haven’t got round to doing it yet.
The reason I need to make a new section of my site is due to copyright issues, and the fact that I sell my book on the premise of ‘pick your strips from the site’. Whilst I could ask everyone that submits some work to sign a formal waiver of rights, as you know I’m against that sort of thing… you came up with the idea, so it should be yours…
I will do it. Maybe not this week, but how about the one after?
It is a great strip, I was chuckling at it last night.
Hehe, that’s fine by me. Giggle all you like.
I meant to do another strip for you recently. It was based on the alphabet one you did, about clever kids. One I’ve drawn it, it will say:
*box 1, picture of something beginning with V*
“Mussolini Senior had great plans for his son”
*box 2, picture of something beginning with W*
“Unfortunatley…”
*Box three, “Xenophobia”*
“…They were a little bit fascist”
I will draw it….but I haven’t thought of pictures for all the letters yet. The joke makes me giggle a little though.
Hey, Ad, you should draw it. You have the skills, after all.
There are a lot of those vocal tics… I try to avoid them, but it’s hard…
I also have my own individual ones, like those ellipses. I use those too much, until I notice the fact that I’m doing so, at which point I go back and replace them with commas or hyphens to hide some of them.
New game: identify your own vocal tic.
That’s a textual tic…
I do that too, way too much.
I guess it is a sign of unformed thought, and a rambling mind. It’s like when people forget to finish sentences.
that said, I quite like that. It seems a more honest way of writing – as if it has just poured out and left rough.
I have a verbal form of elipsiitis – I say the phrase ‘dot dot dot’ at the end of my sentences.
My mom and sister were watching “Wife Swap” the other day while I was cooking and I’m pretty sure shows like that actually discourage thoughts, besides of course “WHY THE HELL AM I WATCHING THIS?!?” which is just a defense mechanism until you manage to get out of the TV’s influence.
The US version of Wife Swap is amazing. I mean amazingly bad, but still…
If you subscribe to the view that television is a reflection of society, then Wife Swap prooves that we are doomed… doomed and stupid… and bad parents.
The thing that really bothers me though is that the ‘contestants’ (there are no winners, just losers) seem to be unaware of the programme that they are on. It begs the question, ‘why go on a third rate TV programme if you don’t even watch it?’.
If we’re measuring the decay of civilization through our television programming, I think we should add “Moment of Truth” to the evidence of society’s decay. The idea of watching people destroy their lives for money–and I think the maximum is $500,000, which really isn’t that much, considering what you have to give up to get it–is profoundly disturbing.
I’ve got a solution to your problem: a little cartoon I drew in a meeting last year! Imagine ME showing YOU a picture!
Ever since moving to a small retirement island, I have been DROWNING in wasted verbiage. For some infuriating reason every time I try to engage in a conversation about interesting people it always ends abruptly with the other person saying something along the lines of “it takes all sorts to make a world/everyone’s different/horses for courses” and basically expanding no further than the noted fact that each human is unique. Is it any wonder I’m getting cynical up here?
On another similar note, Dad busted me the other day using the phrase “almost unique”. I had to be restrained from doing the honourable thing and committing hara kari by beating myself to death with a dictionary.
Sorry about the slow reply. My own neurones have been stretched to capacity.
That’s ace. I would most likely buy that if it were a t-shirt design.
Having followed your adventures on your new island, I can see the absolute frustration. It’s as if they are all drilled with the notion of ‘quick say something true and inoffensive’. Obviously, that in itself can be offensive, especially through long-term exposure.
It’s a fear of silence too. If it all goes quiet you’re left with just your thoughts… or thought… and some people, especially the older ones don’t like to dwell on thinking too much.
I’d hate for my last words to be as generic as, ‘horses for courses’, unless I was actually been trampled by some horses, in which case it would be excusable.
I expect my last words will be an incoherent string of curse words. It will differ of course depending on how I die; if I die quickly and unexpectedly it will be short and with a more surprised, probably darkly humorous tone; if I die gradually from a long illness (or just live a really long time) it will be longer and progressively more annoyed (if fact I expect if I live long enough I’ll just start cursing randomly and slowly this will eclipse all other speech). Of this I believe I can be certain.
A lot of conversation is just verbal filler. It dissipates tension. If we only spoke when we had something worth saying, it’d be a lot quieter around here.
“Yeah, no…”
“No… no, yah…”
“Yah, yeah, no…”
“…like…”
Somebody shoot me.
I think everyone younger than 40 is guilty of constantly saying “like.” I’m pretty sure it has something to do with the idea that we are not being properly understood. It sometimes messes with me when I cannot quite identify if it is forming a simile or not.
i think you’re really on to something there Maura. I believe if is a confidence thing: if you’re not making then definitive statements, ever, then you can’t betray yourself by being held up to be wrong later on.
You’re not wrong.
I don’t mind it when it is used as a reference to ‘Clockwork Orange’…
“But suddenly, I viddied that thinking was for the gloopy ones, and that the oomny ones use like, inspiration and what Bog sends”
But you are right, both of you. The simile – the people that use ‘like’ are trying to frame their thought as a reference to other thoughts… give it context. As much as it is a verbal tick it is a cry for help and understanding.
And the result of that is confidence and clarity, not necessarily for every one else though.
when i read this i was thinking about the ‘yeahnah’ people
“hey, hows it going?”
“yeahnah, nah its going great.”
which reminds me, a terrible vocal habit ive developed lately would be attaching ‘hey’ to the end of everything
“yeah, i cant believe it hey!”
“oh, i’ll just do it later hey.”
somebody shoot ME whenever i say that!
haha, That is a hella bad habit for ppl in Townsville or even just north Queensland.
They tac “hey” on the end of every sentence.
My mates started the yeah nah thing ages ago, not sure where they got it from.
We used to do it so well.
We could confuse almost any one.
There have been studies… I forget which university it is, but they’ve got just thousands of hours of phone conversations recorded and transcribed.. I need to find that link again…
But anyway they did a search for occurrences of various “yeah” and “no” combinations right next to each other. While they concluded that it was usually quite ambiguous, it filled a lexical gap in some instances (such as where you would use the word “si” in French)
Turns out it’s really common.
i would definitely say this is the case; as a terrible offender myself (i cringe every time, but i still say ‘like’ so very often) i know i use it as a natural way to avoid committing to something ive said, me being a person with the most terrible self-confidence.
there’s a habit in the Japanese language of putting “ne” at the end of sentences, it is specifically used to provide what my teacher called a “backchannel” to the listener. it’s supposed to let the speaker know if you’re listening or not, and provide harmony. it’s like a question (“ka”), but both parties probably know the answer.
maybe putting “right?” or “you know?” is a similar type of thing
Japanese class is fun~
So it is a rhetorical question?
ah *foreheadslap*
yes
I’ve done two college courses on technical communication now.
Both emphasised the need to excluded unnecessary descriptive words.
Since the second course, I have tried to drop all excess words in my communications.
It is hard and makes everything seem bland, tho, it does make meanings clearer.
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Was that it? Or did you want to ask me two questions?”
I have a rather odd manner of speaking. I’ll often slip into antiquation or use terms from other countries (that I’ve never been to) when I “forget” the American term for them. Thus, the bank becomes the depository, the grocery store the market, a commercial an advert…etc. But I still do the “like” and “dude” that befits my country and age group. So it all comes out a bit muddled.
I usually just have long gaps in my side of the conversation when I forget what word I wanted to use. These are filled with an extended “uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh”. More often than not I give up and find another way of saying it before the other person interrupts me and I don’t get to finish my thought. I hate leaving thoughts hanging. My thoughts stretch out a long way and so it’s difficult to get them quickly finished while still making them coherent.
“My thoughts stretch out a long way and so it’s difficult to get them quickly finished while still making them coherent.”
Good sir, you have just summed up my life in *counts* 21 words.