Working at University means you are inevitably exposed to the rambling, excitable though often inane conversations between students. This is ok though and I am often entertained by some of the grammar and slang I hear. Things like “OMG” or “my bad” are endearing I find.
However, this is not always the case and I have come to take particular exception to one verb misuse and sadly it has become prevalent. I am of course referring to conversation such as this:
Student 1: So anyways, I text her right, and she text me straight back
Student: Yeah, she text me as well
I’M SORRY! IT’S “TEXTED”. It’s the past tense and therefore it is texted. Or even better, it’s “she sent me a text message”.
This has made me realise something. Language is always evolving. That’s something we cannot (nor should we) stop. And besides, it’s a good thing. Languages which do not evolve tend to die out. And technology is one of many areas which help to shape the changes. However, I think there are certain grammatical ground rules which should not be interfered with and verb tenses are one of them. Messing with these is tantamount to messing with the space-time continuum. However will be ever know whether we are referring to something which happened, is happening or will happen? The world might well go a bit Salvador Dali.
new ‘Rabid dog on the loose’ game
Yes, we have a new game. It’s called ‘rabid dog on the loose’. It’s quite simply but highly entertaining. I crawl about on my hands and knees panting, sniffing and barking. Maisie and Lois think it is a bit hilarious although their participation (patting me like a dog and jumping on top) is hindered by a small amount of fear and mistrust. Maisie feels the need to keep reminding me that I’m not really a dog. I think those words may be for her own reassurance more than anything else. Anyway it’s fun and judging my his face, it certainly gives Louis one or two things to think about.
Graceland
I was listening to Paul Simon’s ‘Graceland’ album on the train the other day. Well, I was listening to the mp3s which I’d ripped from a time back when I used to own the CD. I have since sold ALL my CDs after deciding that I didn’t need them. I had them all digitised and backed up on a hard drive. The CD cases were really just taking up space and besides, we love to de-clutter these days, oh yes. Anyway, it is still a very listenable album, beautifully produced, a rare mix of instrumentation, some pretty virtuosic performances (that bass riff in the middle of ‘You can call me Al’ never loses its appeal) and some really clever lyrics and vocal choruses etc.
However, I was aware whilst listening to it that I must have ripped it with some stingy compression settings. The quality could be better. The volume is lower than most of the other music on my ipod (and I hate that I am a slave to Apple these days).
So I thought that maybe I could buy the CD again so I could re-rip. I looked on amazon and discovered there was actually a remastered version of the album too. Cool! Unfortunately and to my amazement both the original CD and the remastered version are now very hard to get hold of and people are selling them for silly money used on amazon marketplace. Wow.
I now wish I hadn’t sold my original copy because it was potentially worth as much as the entire collection went for on ebay. In fact I’m wondering whether selling the entire collection was such a wise move after all. Oh well. I’m lying in the musical bed which I made.
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