Nouns to Verbs or "let's go Nouning!"

Near daily I read a great blog (http://conchscooter.blogspot.com/) and near daily the talented writer provides some food for thought or a differing perspective on the commonplace.

A while back he mentioned, tangentially, the seemingly common practice of turning nouns into verbs. I realized just how much this, and other liberties commonly taken with our language, tend to annoy the piss out of me.

I'm certainly no English professor... but the thing is, why is that people no longer go to a store to look at antiques? These days, people go "antiquing". Right now I'm not really composing an essay as much as I'm "blogging". If my wife is staring blankly into the tiny screen while madly pressing equally tiny keys on her complicated phone, I instinctively know that she must be "texting". Facebook people are "friending", while Twitter people are "tweeting". And for fuck's sake, while I would love to have a cup of coffee with you, I simply don't DO coffee!

Perhaps it's a sign of the times. The hurried pace in all things spares no victims, and language is just another casualty. While nouns are being raped and converted to verbs at a pace even Columbus would have been proud of, the trunkation of other words continues en masse...

When I recently asked a co-worker what his thoughts were for lunch, the reply was "I could do 'za". "ZA"?, what the hell is "ZA"? Really?, you mean dropping that extra pesky syllable "PIZ" actually saved you ass loads of troublesome phonics? I refuse to eat Pizza ever again with anyone who refers to it as "ZA".

A few months ago my brother informed me he was going on "vacay" for a couple of weeks to the family cabin in the Carolinas. A few minutes had gone by before, during the drone of his giving me his entire itinerary from start to excrutiating finish (a habit which I will complain about at length in a future post), I had realized that instead of a vacation, he had taken the liberty to say "vacay". I mean for fuck's sake, Really? REALLY?! the extra "TION" is that much of a pain in the ass?!

It is, I suppose, in a broader extrapolation, a comment on us as a species. Technology strives constantly to develop newer, faster applications to ease our lives. So much so that technology itself cannot seem to catch up to its own hurried pace. In the wake of that, have our very interactions and relationships become abbreviated versions of themselves? IJS OMG WTF?

You know what you should do?...

We've all said it at one time or another to a friend, colleague, family member... "You know what you should do (insert name)?.... You should get back into (insert inane hobby or talent)..."

This annoying piece of advice typically is offered at a time when someone comes to us in a state of exasperation over boredom, general malaise or overall dissatisfaction with work, relationships or just life in general. The advice essentially sucks and is really meant more as a distractor from the issue at hand, rather than a solution to. Nonetheless we'll offer it hoping that reminding Phil about how he used to love stamp collecting will magically make him forget about his tiny prick of a supervisor, or the girlfriend that left him for the blonde Brazilian concierge after the delightfully drunken threesome they all had at the resort in Cozumel... and in so forgetting, we can relieve ourselves of having to hear Phil bitch about it anymore.

I've had it offered to me on occasion and as soon as I hear the words..."you know what you ought to do?'...I am instinctively compelled to reply... "You know what I think you should do?...I think you should go fuck yourself"-- An albeit impolite reply, but highly satisfying nonetheless.

Recently, however, I found that I have actually given the advice to myself (not the "go fuck yourself" part, the other)... I've had a myriad of hobbies over the years. The thing about hobbies is that, for people with pathetically small attention spans such as myself, they all tend to lose luster after awhile. The idea of the hobby far surpasses the eventual reality of the hobby. Scale model WWII fighter planes appealed to me..until I actually began to put the infinitesimally small pieces together. It's like the Japanese model makers specifically targeted me to motherfuck with half-assed instructions and pieces that the Surgeon General himself could not remove from the plastic casing without snapping in two. Stunt kites seemed cool too until I realized that baking in the sun with 40 other dorks spinning $250 rip-stop fabric kites in the air telling me that my maneuveres were being done incorrectly wasn't my bag... Then there was my scuba phase, photography phase, astronomy phase, surfing phase, fishing phase (still working on this one), golf phase, tennis phase, racketball phase...

The feeble point to all this prelude is that I told myself I should try writing... And that's what I intend to do. About what I'm not quite sure, but if anyone starts in with "You know what you should write about?", I'll promise restraint...