Tenth Blog: No "Word Salad" For Me, Thanks
Whether purposeful or by happenstance, actions, once set in motion, while not always quantifiable, are assuredly affected by the laws of the universe. Insinuations can be offered but don't be surprised (or offended) if there's a lengthy absence of responsiveness due to the fact that time is of the utmost. Couple that with the resurgence of what's been referred to as modern-day "hipster analysis" and the remarkable penchant for the vast majority of people to not take "no" for an answer and you've stumbled onto a plethora of multigrade, high-end algorithms designed to keep you in the dark for years to come. And that's not gonna change anytime soon, my friend.
Okay, a couple things: (1) Thanks for giving me the benefit of the doubt and actually making it to this second paragraph and (2) I apologize for everything in the first paragraph. As usual, this was another of my rather obvious attempts at hitting home a point right out of the starting gate. The preceding gibberish you were duped into slogging through is called "Word Salad", today's topic, not to be confused with "Talk Soup", the old daily half-hour cable show where hosts would give snarky takes on other TV fare or the thankfully cancelled one hour daytime cooking show, "Chew", which bit.
The origin of "Word Salad" is thought to be about 1894, used as a psychiatric term in regards to schizophasia "a confused or unintelligible mixture of seemingly random words and phrases" used then to describe a symptom of a neurological or mental disorder. In recent years the term has taken on a different use, referring more to "nonsense" reflecting on the logic or intelligence of a person's language. Kinda like "Mad Libs" only instead of it being a fun party game to play with friends over cocktails it's done either accidently by people who don't know any better or by intentional word salad tossers dabbling in the black art of Double-Talk.
So, yeah, this phenomenon can be found in a multitude of forums, particularly on the internet. A lot of it, unfortunately, is due to people who have no conception of how to construct a paragraph containing cohesive sentences designed to express an idea, begging the question, "Shouldn't there be a mandatory pass-fail test taken before anyone's allowed to purchase a keyboard?" Just sayin'. It's also pervasive in politics where those elected (pick a party, any party) have vaulted "Word Salad" to an artform. They know they're talkin' gibberish and make no bones about it and if you watch closely some of them even seem to be preening as they talk, like they're showing off some kind of super power. As if, secretly, they're all wearing capes under their suits.
Indeed, this tommyrot, this flapdoodle, this complete flummery (all valid words, I assure you) continues to erode our language and general sense of communication as we speak. So, what do we do? How do we fight back? "Blocking" and "unfriending" on Facebook is a start. For other forums a little snark can go a long way (for advice feel free to check out the t-shirt collection on this website) and when it comes to the political snakeoil salesmen on your daily news?... Yeah, we're gonna need more firepower.
So, here's a thought: We get all the news organizations (left, right and in-between) on the same page so that next time a politician goes into their spiel, hitting us with a barrage of doublespeak, refusing to answer the question multiple times in a row, the commentator stops them in their tracks saying, "Just so ya' know, the door to this room is locked, your handlers are being handled by our handlers and our camera isn't going anywhere. So, for the fourth time, what's your take on the new tax bill?"... Just a thought.