Yous has babies: Yours and Yours's

It was as I exited the mall that I saw it. A double-sided blackboard detailing the specials at Esquires. Except, it didn't read 'specials', but rather... 'speciels'. Noting the prominence of foreign workers within the café, I simply donned a wry smile and carried on. Not an unkind man, I was even willing to forgive and forget, even turn my slanted smile into a cheerful one, so long as the spelling on other side of the board was no different. Yet, a deep, ugly cringe left no doubt left me unrecognisable after I turned my head. SPESHALS!

Anecdote aside, if you're going to get something wrong, then at the very least be consistent!

Deep down, we all know that the pronoun 'you' can apply to any number of people at a time. This means that 'yous' is unnecessary in every instance it gets said. But if you're going to insist on speaking poorly, then you really ought to add an 's' to every word derived from the word 'you'. For instance, after your daily jog, you might stop by your neighbours' house.

You note their car, both awesome (it can fly) and green. "That's a mint car yous of got," you say between short breaths.

"Thanks," your friendly and intelligent neighbour replies, "but we hardly use it ever since we got our teleportation device. It takes us anywhere in seconds!"
"Oh, mean. Can I see yours teleportation device?"

"Sure can. Come on in."

You step inside. It's the most amazing house you've ever seen, the descriptions irrelevant to the blog post in which you're presently featuring. "Wow, this place is real nice. Is it yours's, or are yous renting?"

Why leave 'yous' to fend for itself? Give it some friends. Since you've already turned 'you' into 'yous' in cases where two or more people are the subjects of 'you', naturally you should also do the following. 

It's consistent, it's logical, and it clearly makes your language sound aeons cooler than your everyday lingo. Look, Gollum is on the right track.

What? So, you're saying that Gollum is not your role model? But... the language and all... I just thought... Pshh, whatever.

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Three pet peeves of mine that seem to be social norms

1. When someone fails to make eye contact despite their job in customer service

Some stores are better than others, but, every now and then, I approach the counter of a shop, and the man or woman at the checkout fails to look at me once, especially if there's a queue. A few days ago I bought some CDs from the Warehouse. When I took them to the counter, the woman there retrieved them to scan and mumbled something like, "Hi there." I returned the greeting, while thinking, I hope she was talking to me. She wasn't looking at me, but those CDs sure as hell don't talk back. Then she said "Eftpos?" while looking at the table with weary eyes.

I was thinking, retard?, but found myself saying, "Yes," to her hair-covered scalp, since her head was so low that I would've had to squat to see her face.

Finally, with as much energy in her voice as there was visibility of her eyes, she said, "Have a nice day." I looked at the time. It was 5:30pm.

2. When someone insists on texting during a person-to-person conversation

Why does almost everyone drop everything to reply to a text message? I'll be talking to someone when suddenly their text tone sounds, they frantically say, "Hang on," and they pause the conversation while they text, as if the text is somehow more important than you, as if it's less rude to keep the person on the other end waiting rather than you, the person they're talking to. Two minutes later, they're back at it, texting away again. Can't you just, you know, not text them?

I know there's a time and a place for it. It could be work-related, or family issue-related; but 90% of the time it's not. It's just another friend they're probably going to 'catch up' with after they're finished with you. Where's the fun in that if they're texting the whole time? Scratch that. Where's the fun in texting? Text typing has to be the most boring thing ever, that is, besides the enduring process of watching someone else finish their text.

3. When someone thinks they're cooler than you despite the fact that they're driving a bus

I was recently driving down a main road when a bus turned in from a side road. It pulled out in front of me, and I had to brake (and almost stop) to avoid hitting it. During these pivotal seconds, I stared at the driver: a middle-aged, sun glasses-wearing individual who simply stared back. I kept staring as he slowly turned and I hastily slowed, until finally we'd gone our separate ways. My thoughts during this brief period were as follows.

Pulling in front of me doesn't make you cool, buddy. You drive a freaking bus, all day, around and around, yet you fail to give way. Every time you do that, you're like a cop being pulled over. Really ironic, and it doesn't make you any less uncool.

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YOLO and Idiocracy

I recently saw a film called Idiocracy, in which Joe Bauers gets cryogenically frozen for 500 years, only to reawaken to a world full of idiots. The premise makes the assumption that families who are more productive tend to be less intelligent, more intelligent couples produce less kids, and, therefore, the intelligent die out, and the stupid survive.

Makes sense, I thought; but it wasn't until the year 2505 that I was rendered fully petrified.

In this new society, Starbucks is a brothel of sorts, rubbish dumps reach higher than Everest, and plants are 'watered' with Gatorade because "it has electrolytes". When Mr Bauers asks a bunch of loiterers for directions, they get mad and one of them says, "You're starting to sound faggy." When he pleads with a stranger to help him, and promises gold for his assistance, the stranger replies, "I like moneys." And when Joe enquires where he can get water to drink, the response is, "What, like, water from the toilet?"

I can't speak much for the film's premise since, as it happens, I'm not exactly playing my part in spawning a formidable team of mini-Matts. But needless to say, this extreme decline in human intelligence (and with it, the English language) left me asking, "Could this be happening right now?" And you know what? I think it could, evidenced by the infamous term "YOLO!"

It's a shame it's white. There'll be no hope of concealing my vomit.

Aside from the fact that saying YOLO makes whatever you've just said, are saying, or are about to say contain 100% less integrity, it's also a contradiction. You only live once, yes, so why are you wasting your breath (and reputation) saying YOLO? The term destroys itself, yet no one seems to notice.

Thankfully, not one of my friends takes it seriously. For instance, when Naomi says it, she puts on an extremely pompous English accent and drags the word until you've forgotten whatever it is she was on about. And then we all laugh.

Like 'yous' and 'totes' and other mutations of language, YOLO must only be said as a joke or a jest. We must expose the mutation for what it is, for there are those who do use the term seriously, and it's these people who serve only to pave the slippery slope down which intellect itself will soon tumble and fall... from a teetering pile of junk (a metaphor for crappy words and acronyms) the size of Mount Everest.

And as for the mini-Matts, well, at least now I have a sensible reason to have kids!

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