Friday, June 5, 2009

Stop Word Abuse

I love words and it hurts me to see them suffer. How do they suffer? They suffer when they are spelled/spelt wrongly, used incorrectly or exiled from either the language or from their original God ordained meaning.

I am starting a new organization which will change the world. Slight exaggeration. It is called P.A.S.S. It stands for People Against Subversive Semantics.

Join me in this fight. Submit examples of word abuse and we, as members of P.A.S.S. will battle this insidious evil together.

There are 3 categories of word abuse. 1. An oxymoron is a union of words which contradict each other. For example 'gay marriage' is an oxymoron because the definition of a marriage is a legal and spiritual union between a man and a woman. 2. Devolution. (the name of my novel) This is where words have their meanings changed or have meanings added. E.g.. 'Wicked' now means 'good'. 3.Newspeak. Borrowing from Orwell's 1984, this is where new words are invented to obscure the true meaning in order to deceive people. For example 'downsizing'.

The war is on. Enlist today.

Axe video referees

I'm sick of the video referee system in the NRL. I have been a supporter of it from day one but I believe it is ruining the game. They said that using the video referee would mean that the officials would get most decisions right. But it's not happening. The standard of referring is going down the gurgler and I've had enough. Let the guys on the field make the calls so we can focus our anger and disappointment on them, instead of on an invisible third referee hiding in a box somewhere.
We can't blame our own teams for their performances. If we lose it's always the referees fault. Everyone knows that.
Furthermore they take too long to make decisions. Endless replays from all different angles, slow mo, super slow mo, forwards, backwards...yawn. Players waiting, fans waiting...yawn. If we aren't careful we'll turn our great game of rugby league into an altogether beast like the NFL.