About a blog...

It has been quite a while since I wrote something on here. I know nobody is reading this, but really, I don't care. Well maybe one or two people are reading this. You know who you are. I still don't really care. Anyway, I was inspired (mostly by the Lawrence Arms) to write things on here after my last posts (which I had to do for a class). I know that you have probably NEVER heard of the Lawrence Arms, unless you know me (in which case you most certainly have heard of them). Suffice to say that they are an amazingly awesome (and obscure) melodic hardcore punk band from Chicago, and their frontman writes extremely long (often quite obscene) random/ philosophical/comedy musings for his blog. Now that that's out of the way, I must say that my posts will be considerably shorter than his, but still fairly long. My posts will also lack the obscenity of his... just because I'm not a 30 year old punk rocker who gets drunk, plays bass, screams, gets drunk more and then goes to his day job the next morning. Know what I'm saying?

Now, down to business. Firstly, I must wonder what the point of blogging is. Why is it that people get on the internet and start writing things to be posted on this..web log thingy? I see no reason, it's just like Facebook or whatever, except only putting PART of your life online. Or some worthless crap. I guess people are inspired by the awesomeness of putting their random ideas on blogs. It's really I suppose an outlet for philosophical musings. Basically it's a metaphor for ska punk getting together with Aristotle and smoking some stuff with him or something like that.

So basically, while we blog, the entire world is slowly progressing toward becoming a receptacle for greasy middle aged men reading blogs from 15 year olds, and becoming indoctrinated by the ideas in the blog. As a result, the generational difference will be reversed, and the middle aged will assume the ideas of youth, whereas the younger generations will become old beyond their years. So basically, people will be younger than their children in behavior! This would probably cause a massive reversal of the working class, and Congress will probably have to redefine "child labor" as employing someone over the age of 45. If we were to take this idea another step, imagine in China where it is traditional for people to care for their elderly parents. If the parents are essentially younger than their children, they would end up having a massive screwed up double role reversal. Basically the 75 year old grandma is taking care of her 50 year old son who seems older than her. I suppose the entire nursing home system would have to be reworked because we'll have all these people who are only 50 years old in body acting like they're 95. Sounds interesting. I have no idea how this theory developed from ironic musings on why we blog, but it rules. I do things like this all the time, this is just the first time I've done it *ONLINNNNEEEE*....

I digress. In the end, blogging is a pointless exercise in idiocy that should be completely avoided at all costs.

P.S. I hope you've caught the irony in all this, whoever you are. It's a totally retarded experiment in the complex, multilayered properties of my mind. You can probably expect more of this kind of crap later. I think I like publishing my mindless rambles on the internet....

Where language rules come from...

So, where do language rules come from? In the past, they were determined by people who decide that one thing is right and everything else is wrong. "Language, The Loaded Weapon" describes them as Shamans. At this point, those Shamans of prescriptive language have mostly lost their influence. This does not signify the triumph of the true linguists, for they no longer play a huge part either.

New rules, in my mind, are mostly determined by people who wish to express their ideas and feelings in a unique way. This is not the only possibility, however. Dialects such as those used in the south and in black communities can also grow from a lack of the education required to express their thoughts. Perhaps they feel that they "lack language" as Moraga once said and so they create their own rules. Such new rules would spread through communities as more and more people heard others using them and became assimilated into the group of "dialect users."

Amidst all of this speculation, there's always the possibility that new rules arose merely because people enjoyed the way something sounded. Can't sounds better than cannot, for example. Poetry and Music show that man has a natural attraction to rhythm, and this attraction extends into the mundane plane of everyday speech. In the end, it's not so much a matter of what is right, but what sounds good or what you believe best expresses your purpose for speaking or idea.

Regardless of how language arises, the process repeats itself almost constantly, spawning new dialects and rules on a regular basis. The most important aspect is that it allows different people to express their thoughts.

Welcome to my blog

*I owned this post*