Cockroach vs Conscience

"Murder the damned thing!" My voice hammered at the walls of our flat like a drum at an execution.

The creature was a spawn of hell, a black scourge brooding against the cream-white fibreglass. People bathe in that. My crooked smile warped into a grimace. That cockroach has to die.

"I can't find the fly swat, or the spray," Douglas announced. His news spelled doom for us all. I turned to him and frowned, but my gaze was never far from the creature. Its monstrous antennae lashed and lurched in my peripherals.

"I found the spray." Thank God.

Josiah soaked the thing, which, minutes later, tumbled onto its back with a light pat. I've always hated that sound.

The ordeal laboured in silence; not a single word was spoken save a few eughs and hmms. And then Douglas decided he wasn't through with it.

"What are you doing?" I asked as he reached for the faucet. "It's already dying!"

"It's not dying fast enough!"

The rush of water muffled the critter's pleas for mercy. I couldn't watch, yet my eyes wouldn't stray; the same eyes that glared with fear now trembled with pity.

The dying critter lifted with the current, helpless and scared, and then stuck in the drain.

"Stop, you're drowning it!" In truth he was water-boarding it.

"It's a cockroach!"

"It's unnecessary!"

"You're unnecessary!"

He fitted the plug on - not an easy task with the thing you're trying to murder in the way.

"Masking your sins is no way to deal with them!"

He just laughed.

We returned to the scene minutes later to find our victim twitching helplessly. I think one of us must have freighted it to the bin. It was over two years ago; the memory becomes hazy where the emotions start to wane. Yeah, even I wonder how manly our seven-man flat must have been, or not been.

Those emotions were real, and they revive every time I think of the ordeal. When there isn't a swat in reach, when the horror takes but one second too long to die, my perception instantly transforms, injecting compounds of sympathy and guilt, convicting me. The horror becomes a helpless soul sacrificed for convenience.

I once drowned a moth - a large moth - because it was perched on my towel and I had just got out of the shower. Thank goodness for manoeuvrable shower heads, I thought. Curse it for this damnable conscience.

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The Rulebook for Facebook. Ten things you should never do.

It's something of a virtual garden, this Facebook. Out of the soil we call newsfeed grows fruits, vegetables, flowers and weeds. The weeds are villains, as you will know, strangling every flower of life and substance, capturing every fruit beneath stem and sprout. I try to hide them myself, but the task is no lasting cure, and the routine is growing ever more onerous. Perhaps I should quit this garden altogether. Or… or I could share the following list with the world. Yes. Yes I see it now. This is the cure! Uh, right. Ahem.

You should never…

1. Facebook your problems

You won't get my attention, no matter how vague you are. In fact, you'll get my UN-attention. That is, I will hide you.

2. Send people game requests

Every time I get a game request, I a) block said request, b) consider blocking the requester, and c) think to myself, "I'd rather play a real game." And then I do.

3. Instagram photos of food

Trust me, honey, you ain't gonna make that fried chicken look any less nasty no matter which photo editing programme's ass you worship.

4. Say "Hi" to me (and nothing else) after years of silence

Crickets chirping. Tumbleweed hovering. A vulture squawking. Me ignoring (you).

5. Upload photos of yourself posing in front of a mirror

Look at yourself! Oh wait, you are, all the time. That's admirable.

6. Use a false name

I will likely forget who you are and unfriend you.

7. Ask me why I unfriended you

I might be tempted to use a false name so you can't... oh wait.

8. Write something entirely unrelated to the status under which you're commenting

Status: Bought our first house!

Appropriate comment: Nice!

Inappropriate comment: Did I leave my phone in your car? *hic*

9. Add me even though you've never met me

If you do this, I'll have to go through the tiring process of clicking on your profile, scanning your friends list for any mutual friends, your timeline for anything familiar, and my memory for some past event involving you. After having zero success on all accounts, I'll see that you've added anyone and everyone. Well don't, stranger! It's annoying!

10. Upload a photo of yourself with the caption, "Lol, I'm so ugly" (or some variation that implies the same thing).

Lol, I'm such a noob at grammar. Lol, I don't know the first thing about spelling. Lol, what is English? Lol. WE AREN'T IDIOTS.

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Five words that aren't words but should be. Start saying them.

This list was harder to think up than I anticipated, and not because the non-words are used so scarcely that I'd almost forgotten about them. Anna, a friend who can vouch for me that these non-words should be words, put it nicely when she said,

"The problem is we use them so normal-like, that they aren't stored in our heads as weirdly words."

Just so; I hope they become stored in your heads as nothing less than funtastic.

Trouché

Trou∙ché

Exclamation

Used to acknowledge taking a 'hit' (as in the word touché), only that the hit was also true. A combination of touché and true.

1.         "Aah! My house is on fire!"

            "That's probably because you left the oven on."

            "Trouché."

Goog/Googs

Verb or Noun

An abbreviation for Google.

Examples:

1.         "I'm bored. How long does it take for the fire truck to get here?"

            "I dunno, why don't you Goog it?"

2.         After using Google to find the answer to your question: "Thanks Googs!"

Possibtentially

Poss∙ib∙ten∙tial∙ly

Adverb

Both able to be done and possible. A combination of possibly and potentially.

Synonyms

Proboplausibly

Examples:

1.         "Do you think Mister Muggles is still alive?"

            "Possibtentially."

Zactlo

Zact∙lo

Adverb

The alien term for exactly. It's also more fun to use.

Examples:

1.         "Mister Muggles has an acute sense for danger."

            "Yeah. Plus it wasn't like I put him in the oven."

            "Zactlo!"

Hugify

Hug∙i∙fy

Expression or verb

Used upon magically making something bigger than its ordinary size, that is, after hugifying an object or person. The exact duration of hugification is irrelevant.

Examples:

1.         "Oh look, here comes the fire truck."

            "Hugify!"

            "Huh? Whoa! You just supersized that truck! How did you do that?"

            You smile knowingly. "I'm a wizard."

            "Couldn't you use your magic to extinguish the flames?"

            A lengthy pause. "Trouché."

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Words that aren't words. Stop using them.

I have put together a list of eight words that, quite simply, aren't words. If you say/write them, you should probably stop. Some are spoken correctly but spelled horrendously, while others on paper look fine, but when spoken, make the earth cringe.

(Yes, every time you misspeak a word, somewhere, there's an earthquake).

It would be a top ten, but the highest ranking, 'yous' and 'totes', have achieved such infamy that they each have a post of their own. Links are at the bottom. As promised, here are the other eight.

Alot

Alot is not aword. Neither is apony or apoptart. Weird, right?

Aswell

It’s ‘as well’, with a gap for personal space in between.

Alright

You might not get the red underline for this one. Know why? Because it’s so disgraceful you should know better. ‘All right’ - now there’s a breath of fresh air.

Aks

As in, "Aks him for the cash."

It's entirely possible that at some point in my past, I heard this very command and thought, To what culture does this person belong? Surely killing is illegal there too, right? More importantly, why do they always axe their friends? Note to self: do not befriend this person.

Then it hit me. Oh, they meant 'ask'. Yet I folded my arms, brow creased. Note to self: do not befriend this person.

Dieing

Just look at the three vowels in the middle there and tell me that it makes even a smidgen of sense to pronounce that mutation of letters as ‘die-ing’. I’d probably go for ‘deeeng’, like a doorbell with an Australian accent. 

(The correct spelling of the word that describes someone whose health is presently waning to the point of no longer living is ‘dying’).

Ragland

When someone says "Ragland," I think of a meadow filled with old shirts and car engine-stained flannels, and then I say, “Oh, you mean Raglan. Yeah, sure, let's go.”

Some-think, any-think and every-think

A friend who needs better arguments recently uttered that words ending in ‘ing’ are sometimes pronounced with a ‘k’ stuck to the end to help conclude without having to trail off, since the ‘ng’ on its own doesn’t really 'finish'. I remained unconvinced, replying that any word ending with a vowel doesn’t ‘finish’, and therefore we should add a ‘k’ to them, too. (I was being sarcastic. Don't even think about it.)

Also, no one says 'think' when they mean 'thing'.

Some-pink

No one says this, either, except my childhood neighbour friend. He had a permanently-blocked nose and parents who didn't feel the need to correct him. He was trying to say “something”, but his ‘th’ became ‘p’, and then he added the ‘k’ like an epilogue to his verbal diarrhoea. I must have lost my note.

-------------------------

Totes

http://sanctuaryofsynonyms.blogspot.co.nz/2012/04/totes.html

Yous

http://sanctuaryofsynonyms.blogspot.co.nz/2012/12/the-yous-epidemic.html

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