I remember a few years ago when the news was scaring... I'm sorry, informing the public about the dangers of SARS. And Bird Flu. And then last year, Swine Flu. I realize that people did get sick (and die) but they reported that death and destruction was imminent unless you got yourself vaccinated and wore these fancy little masks and started Lysoling everything and stopped going out in public because oh my God, every door handle ever is crawling with flu germs, watch out, they're going to get you, OH NO IT'S TOO LATE, YOU'RE INFECTED!
Good thing too! I myself never got a flu shot in lieu of the dreaded Swine Flu Pandemic. I hate shots and going to the doctor. I have better stuff to do, like sleep, make pancakes, and walk around in circles for a few hours. Sure, sure, it was beaten into me by nearly everyone that I needed to get the flu shot OR I WOULD DIE. I guess I like to live on the edge or maybe my parents raised me to be a heathen, so for umpteenth year in a row, I didn't get a flu shot. And it turned out to be a better-than-usual cold and flu season for me! Why, I didn't get a single cold, let alone the flu, throughout the whole Swine Flu Pandemic! I imagine it was because everyone was freaked out that if they didn't bathe themselves in rubbing alcohol after they touched anything, they'd be dead in 3 hours, so they were abnormally sterile. Plus I saw fewer people licking doorknobs.
Anyway, after the media duped us, I decided to devote my time to researching, studying, and predicting Scary Things. And you won't even believe what is about to happen.
Maybe you've heard of it: next week we're going to get a visit by Old Mister Supermoon. Maybe you laughed about it because you realized that an astrologer is just a glorified Miss Cleo, or maybe you pondered whether the moon has it in for the Japanese. I, for one, urge you to get serious, take the time to buckle down and Be Prepared. Okay, okay, I know they dropped the ball on SARS or Swine Flu. But the moon! Look at how menacing it is! I mean, it changes size like, every day and sometimes, it disappears entirely! It definitely means business.
And it WILL destroy you.
I've been conducting some research in my free time (and all of my time is free so I definitely am a credible source of information, how could I not be?) and look, things are going to get real bad next week. And in the upcoming months. Japan was just the appetizer. The moon is only getting closer. I know you might say that the moon yesterday was farther away than it is on average, or that the earthquake occurred when the sun and moon were askew and thus when the tidal forces are actually relatively weak. Maybe you say "But Bekki, earthquakes are common in Japan, that's why the have strict building codes?"
But my evidence shows that the moon was hovering dangerously close to Earth in 2005 when THE SAME EXACT THING happened in Sumatra! How can that be a coincidence? Not convinced? Remember Katrina? Katrina was that hurricane that devastated New Orleans, a city built in the middle of a swamp, barely above sea level, on the Gulf of Mexico, a region of the U.S. known for hurricanes. But I ask you, what was the moon doing so close to Earth in 2005? What's it planning to do next week when it gets close again?
And it was here in 1992, did you know that? There was a flood in Chicago that year, and a huge earthquake in California and even some tornadoes in Kansas! Can you believe the nerve of the moon? Flooding Chicago in April (rainy season), hitting California with an earthquake (earthquakes never happen in California!) and slamming Kansas with tornadoes! (who could have seen that coming?)
And we all know that natural disasters never occur when the moon is just a regular-style moon, laying dorment in space. Haiti who?
As an world renowned expert in the field of Supermoons, I feel the need to give you a heads up. The supermoon can strike anyone, anywhere. If you live in low-lying areas, and it's the wet season (spring), it WILL attempt to drown you in flood waters. If you live in the midwest, be careful! There's a 100% chance there will be tornadoes chasing you down! And if you live in the coastal regions, be prepared for summer hurricanes. The moon WILL try to maybe, probably send a category 4 or 5 monster to tear apart your house, flatten your garden and steal you daughter's lunch money. At the very least, a weak tropical storm will rip a few leaves off your prized rosebush. BECAUSE OF THE MOON.
And if you don't live in one of these places and think "Gee, nothing bad happens where I live, everything is perfect and wonderful and there's butterflies and rainbows all day long," THINK AGAIN. The moon WILL find you and set you on fire. The moon can do that. I know, I'm a scientist.
Friday, March 11, 2011
Monday, March 7, 2011
Wanderlust vs. The American Dream
When I was in high school, I was constantly asked "Where are you going to college?"
When I was in my first year or two of college, I was constantly asked "What is your major?"
In my later half at college, I was constantly asked "What are you going to do with a degree in English?"
As I finished college, I was constantly asked "So where are you going to work?"
I understand that these are well-meaning questions. The intention is to ensure that I'm following some practical life path and making good decisions. The problem is, I don't believe these are good decisions for me.
As I interpret it, many people consider a practical life path to be one in which I make plenty of money, however much money that might be. In which I work a respectable, upper-middle class job in an office decorated with photos of friends, family and my kids' art. My hours are 9 to 5 or maybe 8 to 4. I come home to my nice house in the suburbs and make pot roast for dinner. I have 2.5 kids who play soccer and get straight As and Bs. I have a sweet golden retriever who we take on walks at the neighborhood dog park. On weekends, I go to Pottery Barn and buy nice things and invite my friends over for some BBQ. I'm moderately Republican but I usually keep my opinions to myself.
I don't really think there is anything wrong with this path. I am not belittling the people who follow and appreciate it. However, I think it's wrong to assume that this is the path to happiness for me. In fact, the thought of living this entirely wholesome and astounding normal life makes me feel a little uncomfortable, as if I have to break out of my skin and run away from the idea. This is not the life I imagined when I was 8 years old.
I'm not employed right now, therefore, my life now revolves around jobs. Probably more than yours does. And I don't like it at all. The importance of a "good" job has never been more obvious to me now that I can't pay off my student loans, now that I can't contribute to rent, now that I can't go shopping and buy new clothes and shoes so that I may be totally fashionable and cool.
But more importantly, the absence of a job, and my obsession over finding the "perfect" one, means that I am pushing my life in a direction that I don't want it to go. I am forgetting what is important to me. I feel like I am slowly selling out to the "American Dream," but this dream was never mine. And I'm not sure how I got here.
When I was younger, perhaps about 8 years old, I came across a few polaroids of the Nevada desert. I grew up in Western New York farm country, a rolling green valley (well, maybe not so green in February) studded with the scent of lilacs, apples and manure. The desert was as foreign to me as it got. I could not imagine a sky so blue or a landscape so red, so dry, so void of the scars of commercialization and suburbanization.
And I wanted nothing more than to experience that place.
As I grew older, the foreign world unfolded around by the way of food. I moved away from my little farm world in New York, full of pizza, subs and fast food chains, and found myself in Florida, a hot, humid, flat land with sugary-white beaches (at least on my portion of the state) and a marginally more diverse population. I had the chance to try new cuisines, a la Epcot at Disney World, and I still remember the first time I had sushi. From there on out, with the memory of that Nevada desert in mind, Trying New Things was my goal in life. Sushi, this (sometimes) raw fish dish (which, at the time, had not gained sweeping popularity in the US and therefore was still considered weird and unusual) turned out to be absolutely wonderful - what more "weird" stuff did the world have to offer?
Meanwhile, I began to travel more, to places other than beaches. I went to New Orleans and wanted to sob with joy over how the beignets exceeded my expectations. I went Chicago and shared a giant Russian dinner with my mother and sister. In Atlanta, Thai food melted my heart. In Washington DC, I was surprised by Ethiopian. I had Italian food in Italy and wandered an outdoor market in Switzerland - and then was peer-pressure by my group to go to McDonalds.
But it wasn't just the food. These places were new. Where the beauty of Western New York had numbed me, these places warmed me back up. The snow-capped mountains of Switzerland and Washington State were alien, and breathtaking, to me - the biggest "mountains" I'd ever seen were in Pennsylvania, and those are really just giant hills. There I stood, tiny, insignificant, in the shadow of these giants, who existed long before me and would remain long after my ashed were absorbed back into the Earth.
And then there was the desert in Washington State, not nearly as spectacular as the desert in the polaraid, but still just as lovely. I woke up early one morning from frigid, shivering sleep to to climb canyon walls before the sun had the chance to lift up over the horizon and, from there, watched the coyotes howl to the day to come.
These were lonely places where I could be myself. There were no signs of people, no office parks or shopping malls, no stop signs, no cell towers. Trees and sand and bird song, fresh air and more stars than you could ever count. I was no one and it was okay.
And yet, from all the exploring I've attempted to while I'm young and able, for all I've hoped to see, I have hardly seen a thing. All I can do is sit and surf through travel websites, flip through glossy magazines or whine at travel shows and nature documentaries. This is what I've become. For me, it's not a small world after all - the world is large and out of reach and I fear I will never experience it.
I don't need to be a super hero or a millionaire. I don't need a fancy house, a nice car, or the cushy desk job. I need to go places. I need to see it. I need to go to Cappadocia, to Arches National Park, I need to see Tokyo and Mount Fuji, the jungles of Cambodia. There is so much to China that I could spend years there and never feel satisfied. I must go to Peru and see the city in the clouds, I want to go to New Zealand and just soak it all in, and then hop on a plane to Iceland and watch the tectonic plates drift apart. I want to see Gaudi's magical buildings, to drive through America's Heartland and stop for a burger, and then escape it all in Patagonia.
I feel happiest when I'm not at home. No, scratch that. I am happy to be with the people I love. I love my family and friends and their company means the world to me. But I am most alive, most myself, and I don't feel lost, when I am not at home. I am not awkward or unsure. I feel comfortable. I feel like "This is exactly what I was meant to be doing at this moment, this is where I should be." I don't need a career-oriented title or have an impressive answer to "What do you do?" I see, I wander, I try new things. That is what I do.
I have never been certain about "what I want to do with my life." When people ask that question, they really mean "What job do you want?" I don't know what job I want. I truly don't. I am sorry that at 24 years old, I still don't have an answer. Please stop asking, I'm tired of lying or making stuff up.
It makes me sad to be trapped here in the city, in the suburbs, to know the world is out there, confined by my lack of money and obsession with following the perfect career path. It makes me sad that you never asked what makes me happy. You just made me feel bad that I didn't have the job, that I didn't study the right thing in school, that I don't have the money to buy the things "I need." I need to pay off my loans, I need to contribute to our living expenses and I need to save every other penny. That's it. I don't need an iPhone, I don't need the finest china, or designer jeans.
The world is bigger than who I am.
When I was in my first year or two of college, I was constantly asked "What is your major?"
In my later half at college, I was constantly asked "What are you going to do with a degree in English?"
As I finished college, I was constantly asked "So where are you going to work?"
I understand that these are well-meaning questions. The intention is to ensure that I'm following some practical life path and making good decisions. The problem is, I don't believe these are good decisions for me.
As I interpret it, many people consider a practical life path to be one in which I make plenty of money, however much money that might be. In which I work a respectable, upper-middle class job in an office decorated with photos of friends, family and my kids' art. My hours are 9 to 5 or maybe 8 to 4. I come home to my nice house in the suburbs and make pot roast for dinner. I have 2.5 kids who play soccer and get straight As and Bs. I have a sweet golden retriever who we take on walks at the neighborhood dog park. On weekends, I go to Pottery Barn and buy nice things and invite my friends over for some BBQ. I'm moderately Republican but I usually keep my opinions to myself.
I don't really think there is anything wrong with this path. I am not belittling the people who follow and appreciate it. However, I think it's wrong to assume that this is the path to happiness for me. In fact, the thought of living this entirely wholesome and astounding normal life makes me feel a little uncomfortable, as if I have to break out of my skin and run away from the idea. This is not the life I imagined when I was 8 years old.
I'm not employed right now, therefore, my life now revolves around jobs. Probably more than yours does. And I don't like it at all. The importance of a "good" job has never been more obvious to me now that I can't pay off my student loans, now that I can't contribute to rent, now that I can't go shopping and buy new clothes and shoes so that I may be totally fashionable and cool.
But more importantly, the absence of a job, and my obsession over finding the "perfect" one, means that I am pushing my life in a direction that I don't want it to go. I am forgetting what is important to me. I feel like I am slowly selling out to the "American Dream," but this dream was never mine. And I'm not sure how I got here.
When I was younger, perhaps about 8 years old, I came across a few polaroids of the Nevada desert. I grew up in Western New York farm country, a rolling green valley (well, maybe not so green in February) studded with the scent of lilacs, apples and manure. The desert was as foreign to me as it got. I could not imagine a sky so blue or a landscape so red, so dry, so void of the scars of commercialization and suburbanization.
And I wanted nothing more than to experience that place.
As I grew older, the foreign world unfolded around by the way of food. I moved away from my little farm world in New York, full of pizza, subs and fast food chains, and found myself in Florida, a hot, humid, flat land with sugary-white beaches (at least on my portion of the state) and a marginally more diverse population. I had the chance to try new cuisines, a la Epcot at Disney World, and I still remember the first time I had sushi. From there on out, with the memory of that Nevada desert in mind, Trying New Things was my goal in life. Sushi, this (sometimes) raw fish dish (which, at the time, had not gained sweeping popularity in the US and therefore was still considered weird and unusual) turned out to be absolutely wonderful - what more "weird" stuff did the world have to offer?
Meanwhile, I began to travel more, to places other than beaches. I went to New Orleans and wanted to sob with joy over how the beignets exceeded my expectations. I went Chicago and shared a giant Russian dinner with my mother and sister. In Atlanta, Thai food melted my heart. In Washington DC, I was surprised by Ethiopian. I had Italian food in Italy and wandered an outdoor market in Switzerland - and then was peer-pressure by my group to go to McDonalds.
But it wasn't just the food. These places were new. Where the beauty of Western New York had numbed me, these places warmed me back up. The snow-capped mountains of Switzerland and Washington State were alien, and breathtaking, to me - the biggest "mountains" I'd ever seen were in Pennsylvania, and those are really just giant hills. There I stood, tiny, insignificant, in the shadow of these giants, who existed long before me and would remain long after my ashed were absorbed back into the Earth.
And then there was the desert in Washington State, not nearly as spectacular as the desert in the polaraid, but still just as lovely. I woke up early one morning from frigid, shivering sleep to to climb canyon walls before the sun had the chance to lift up over the horizon and, from there, watched the coyotes howl to the day to come.
These were lonely places where I could be myself. There were no signs of people, no office parks or shopping malls, no stop signs, no cell towers. Trees and sand and bird song, fresh air and more stars than you could ever count. I was no one and it was okay.
And yet, from all the exploring I've attempted to while I'm young and able, for all I've hoped to see, I have hardly seen a thing. All I can do is sit and surf through travel websites, flip through glossy magazines or whine at travel shows and nature documentaries. This is what I've become. For me, it's not a small world after all - the world is large and out of reach and I fear I will never experience it.
I don't need to be a super hero or a millionaire. I don't need a fancy house, a nice car, or the cushy desk job. I need to go places. I need to see it. I need to go to Cappadocia, to Arches National Park, I need to see Tokyo and Mount Fuji, the jungles of Cambodia. There is so much to China that I could spend years there and never feel satisfied. I must go to Peru and see the city in the clouds, I want to go to New Zealand and just soak it all in, and then hop on a plane to Iceland and watch the tectonic plates drift apart. I want to see Gaudi's magical buildings, to drive through America's Heartland and stop for a burger, and then escape it all in Patagonia.
I feel happiest when I'm not at home. No, scratch that. I am happy to be with the people I love. I love my family and friends and their company means the world to me. But I am most alive, most myself, and I don't feel lost, when I am not at home. I am not awkward or unsure. I feel comfortable. I feel like "This is exactly what I was meant to be doing at this moment, this is where I should be." I don't need a career-oriented title or have an impressive answer to "What do you do?" I see, I wander, I try new things. That is what I do.
I have never been certain about "what I want to do with my life." When people ask that question, they really mean "What job do you want?" I don't know what job I want. I truly don't. I am sorry that at 24 years old, I still don't have an answer. Please stop asking, I'm tired of lying or making stuff up.
It makes me sad to be trapped here in the city, in the suburbs, to know the world is out there, confined by my lack of money and obsession with following the perfect career path. It makes me sad that you never asked what makes me happy. You just made me feel bad that I didn't have the job, that I didn't study the right thing in school, that I don't have the money to buy the things "I need." I need to pay off my loans, I need to contribute to our living expenses and I need to save every other penny. That's it. I don't need an iPhone, I don't need the finest china, or designer jeans.
The world is bigger than who I am.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
I went to college and I studied English. Many people postulated that this was a dumb move on my part. I will neither agree (you're right, if I had studied, say, nursing or engineering, there is a good chance I would have a job right now and I would not be writing this) nor disagree (I truly enjoyed my time in college and loved what I did, which is the advice I heard most touted before I entered college - do what you love).
You see, I spent several years reading beautifully written novels, short stories and essays. I also spent this time writing myself and having every tiny detail scrutinized and criticized by my professors and my peers, as if the ability to write well could be beaten into a person. After years of studying words and perfecting my own writing, I have a low tolerance for seeing the English language abused. This is particularly a problem thanks to the internet and my increased exposure to your weak grasp on how words work. I think most of you have a Facebook account. Or use texting as a substitute for real conversation. Well, there seems to be a theme to this technology-based form of communication: many of you actually don't seem to understand English, including the natives speakers who were born and bred in the good ole U S of A.
This isn't going to be an angry rant about the difference between you're and your or their, they're and there because you've heard it all before and you still don't seem to get it (clue: they mean different thing and are not interchangeable based on your mood). Instead, I would like to make an effort to correct some of the bad habits you have with a few words. It's beginning to get a little out of control and I worry that these words are beyond saving. But seeing as I fancy myself a superhero of the grammatical variety, allow me to attempt to rescue them.
"Literally" is literally abused on a daily basis. In fact, The Oatmeal devoted a comic to this baffling malapropism so if you'd rather look at pretty pictures, then mosey on over there. If not, keep reading. Or don't.
"Literally" doesn't mean "figuratively." "Figuratively" is the word you're usually looking for and now that I've introduced it to your malformed vocabulary, I implore you to experiment with it. "Figuratively" is a metaphor, it's symbolic, it represents something but is not actually what is true.
"Literally" is literal. If you don't know what "literal" means then there's no hope for you and just go. You're dismissed. If you do know what "literal" means, then I've made it simple for you. "Literally" is just a few letters longer than "literal" (wow, gee! Maybe that's where the word "literally" comes from!) which you can now apply to your every day life. If you're about to say "I was so hungry that I literally went out and bought 16 meatball subs," STOP! Were those 16 meatball subs literal? Did they exist? Or did you only eat 1 meatball sub and you just decided to use those other 15 meatball subs to represent how hungry you were? What's that? You only ate one? Then you actually were figuratively so hungry that you went out to eat 1 meatball sub and then told your friends some tedious anecdote about 15 nonexistent meatball subs.
Unfortunately, "literally" doesn't have it as bad as another word that has been kidnapped and brutally assaulted by pop culture. Does this sentence sound remotely familiar to you: "I literally just saw the most random thing at the frat party!" Actually, I'm pretty sure you did not. The word you meant to use was "weird" but you've somehow decided that misusing the word "random" makes you sound more intelligent.
Here's an experiment: go and get a coin. Don't have one because you're broke like me? Then just imagine it. You do have an imagination, right? Okay, I want you to write down, 16 times, whether you think the coin will land on heads or tails. Go on, it's not a trick. Once you're done with that, I want you to drop the (figurative or literal) coin 16 times. How accurate were you? You weren't 100% spot on, though, were you? That's because which side the coin is going to land on is random. It cannot be predicted with absolute certainty
It, whatever it is, cannot be predicted, foreseen or guessed through previous patterns. Now imagine you're at that party. Some guy just took off his pants, started making helicopter noises and declared that the kitchen was infested with gnomes and that Mulder and Scully were being brought in to deal with them. This can be predicted, foreseen, or guessed. He's drunk. Drunk people are stupid people. He's being stupid, not random, and you could have guessed that he was going to degenerate into a raging moron when he told you that his favorite sport was "Beer Pong." This is why I don't like to drink or go to parties or bars or hang around with people who think beer is the answer to everything - because I can predict that something like this is going to happen. There is no reason to get out your phone and start texting everyone you know about the totally random thing you just saw, largely because no one actually cares.
In addition, please don't describe yourself, or someone else, as random. "Random" is not a personality trait. You are outgoing or belligerent or hungry for meatball subs but you are not random.
As a slave to the English language, I don't think any other word makes me want to punch you in the face more than hearing you say "ironic." It's so bad that I don't think I'm going to touch that one. In fact, I almost didn't include it because I realized that I could not convey the true meaning of irony to you because you've mangled it beyond all recognition. I'm just going to tell you this: you're using it wrong. Stop using it. If you're about to say that something is ironic, close your mouth. Count to three. Then use the word you were probably looking for: coincidental. "Ironic" does not mean "coincidental." Alanis Morissette ruined it for you.
And just because this makes my brain disintegrate into a pile of dog food, it's not "I didn't give that delicious plate of macaroni and cheese to nobody/no one." "Anybody/anyone," those are the words that you're looking for. "I didn't give that delicious plate of macaroni and cheese to anyone. I kept it to myself and shared it with no one." "Didn't" is already negative, the "no" is redundant. There's a phrase for that: a double negative.
Now excuse me. I have to settle a dispute between Who and Whom.
You see, I spent several years reading beautifully written novels, short stories and essays. I also spent this time writing myself and having every tiny detail scrutinized and criticized by my professors and my peers, as if the ability to write well could be beaten into a person. After years of studying words and perfecting my own writing, I have a low tolerance for seeing the English language abused. This is particularly a problem thanks to the internet and my increased exposure to your weak grasp on how words work. I think most of you have a Facebook account. Or use texting as a substitute for real conversation. Well, there seems to be a theme to this technology-based form of communication: many of you actually don't seem to understand English, including the natives speakers who were born and bred in the good ole U S of A.
This isn't going to be an angry rant about the difference between you're and your or their, they're and there because you've heard it all before and you still don't seem to get it (clue: they mean different thing and are not interchangeable based on your mood). Instead, I would like to make an effort to correct some of the bad habits you have with a few words. It's beginning to get a little out of control and I worry that these words are beyond saving. But seeing as I fancy myself a superhero of the grammatical variety, allow me to attempt to rescue them.
"Literally" is literally abused on a daily basis. In fact, The Oatmeal devoted a comic to this baffling malapropism so if you'd rather look at pretty pictures, then mosey on over there. If not, keep reading. Or don't.
"Literally" doesn't mean "figuratively." "Figuratively" is the word you're usually looking for and now that I've introduced it to your malformed vocabulary, I implore you to experiment with it. "Figuratively" is a metaphor, it's symbolic, it represents something but is not actually what is true.
"Literally" is literal. If you don't know what "literal" means then there's no hope for you and just go. You're dismissed. If you do know what "literal" means, then I've made it simple for you. "Literally" is just a few letters longer than "literal" (wow, gee! Maybe that's where the word "literally" comes from!) which you can now apply to your every day life. If you're about to say "I was so hungry that I literally went out and bought 16 meatball subs," STOP! Were those 16 meatball subs literal? Did they exist? Or did you only eat 1 meatball sub and you just decided to use those other 15 meatball subs to represent how hungry you were? What's that? You only ate one? Then you actually were figuratively so hungry that you went out to eat 1 meatball sub and then told your friends some tedious anecdote about 15 nonexistent meatball subs.
Unfortunately, "literally" doesn't have it as bad as another word that has been kidnapped and brutally assaulted by pop culture. Does this sentence sound remotely familiar to you: "I literally just saw the most random thing at the frat party!" Actually, I'm pretty sure you did not. The word you meant to use was "weird" but you've somehow decided that misusing the word "random" makes you sound more intelligent.
Here's an experiment: go and get a coin. Don't have one because you're broke like me? Then just imagine it. You do have an imagination, right? Okay, I want you to write down, 16 times, whether you think the coin will land on heads or tails. Go on, it's not a trick. Once you're done with that, I want you to drop the (figurative or literal) coin 16 times. How accurate were you? You weren't 100% spot on, though, were you? That's because which side the coin is going to land on is random. It cannot be predicted with absolute certainty
It, whatever it is, cannot be predicted, foreseen or guessed through previous patterns. Now imagine you're at that party. Some guy just took off his pants, started making helicopter noises and declared that the kitchen was infested with gnomes and that Mulder and Scully were being brought in to deal with them. This can be predicted, foreseen, or guessed. He's drunk. Drunk people are stupid people. He's being stupid, not random, and you could have guessed that he was going to degenerate into a raging moron when he told you that his favorite sport was "Beer Pong." This is why I don't like to drink or go to parties or bars or hang around with people who think beer is the answer to everything - because I can predict that something like this is going to happen. There is no reason to get out your phone and start texting everyone you know about the totally random thing you just saw, largely because no one actually cares.
In addition, please don't describe yourself, or someone else, as random. "Random" is not a personality trait. You are outgoing or belligerent or hungry for meatball subs but you are not random.
As a slave to the English language, I don't think any other word makes me want to punch you in the face more than hearing you say "ironic." It's so bad that I don't think I'm going to touch that one. In fact, I almost didn't include it because I realized that I could not convey the true meaning of irony to you because you've mangled it beyond all recognition. I'm just going to tell you this: you're using it wrong. Stop using it. If you're about to say that something is ironic, close your mouth. Count to three. Then use the word you were probably looking for: coincidental. "Ironic" does not mean "coincidental." Alanis Morissette ruined it for you.
And just because this makes my brain disintegrate into a pile of dog food, it's not "I didn't give that delicious plate of macaroni and cheese to nobody/no one." "Anybody/anyone," those are the words that you're looking for. "I didn't give that delicious plate of macaroni and cheese to anyone. I kept it to myself and shared it with no one." "Didn't" is already negative, the "no" is redundant. There's a phrase for that: a double negative.
Now excuse me. I have to settle a dispute between Who and Whom.
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