empowering ourselves

You’re right that the Oxford comma doesn’t have much to do with Oxford. In some places it is known as the Cambridge comma, and who knows what all. At some point Oxford probably endorsed it and the name got connected to it. A guy named Pete who I used to know in Champaign briefly worked in a liquor store at a time when we knew another guy named Pete, so he became Liquor Store Pete. Fifty years later he is still known as Liquor Store Pete.

The word I hate the most is utilize, which means simply use, so why use a longer word when a shorter word will do just exactly as well? Well we all know that a longer word always sounds more high toned. And I guess it sounds more scientific and specific. It seems like a lot of these kinds of words come from the military and to a lesser extent the government.

Speaking of the government, well more specifically the politicians is one I really hate, the phrase that passing some bill or electing some jerk will empower people, and you wonder gee how will it empower them and then you realize that the phrase itself has no meaning. When I worked for my little state agency I remember how I would go on rants there about the stupid phrase, and I guess it is a show of the high regard in which they esteemed me that the next time we revised our mission statement, there was the word empowerment plumb in the middle of it. Not only did we prepare the workforce for the twentieth century, now we also empowered them.

I am proud that I spent eleven years serving, and empowering, the people of the state of Illinois and never ended up in the slammer.

When I had my brief flirtation of becoming a lawyer, (I think I would have wowed them at courtroom theatrics, but at poring over dusty tomes late into the night, probably not), I ran into standard written English which is the form that you have to use in your lawyerly writings. I perused its canons for a bit and I saw where it didn’t approve of talking about a bunch of people. Well that’s a bit stodgy, but then the phrase has a sort of slangy sound to my ear. But then I learned that you can’t even refer to a bunch of bananas. What the hell? What is it, a conglomeration of bananas?

Part of the reason I never became a lawyer. Well compared to the poring over dusty tomes late into the night not so big a reason, but anyway I never empowered myself in the law, and I never got to pride myself over that.

Well you know me Beagles, I have always prided myself on being a man of the people (except when the people don’t share my views on a subject, and then I scarcely admit to knowing them), and this rubbed me the wrong way. This whole thing where only the language that the upper crust speaks is worthy and other forms are wrong is just another way to keep the uppers up and the bottoms on the bottom. Well that may be just a sentiment of the sixties, the sort of thing you could roar at a demonstration and all your buddies would reply, “Right on.” In the cold light of day, you have to wonder why THEY (the upper crust) would even bother with using language to keep the lower crust down when they have so many other more effective tools, like paying to elect gasbags and all that hedge fund type of crap where they come back dripping with money.

What the hell does hedge funding have to do with making shoes, growing corn? Oh, it performs some important sort of market function, they tell us in their breezy standard written English, nothing you would understand, all you need to know is that by not cracking down on banking practices you are actually empowering yourself, and you could empower yourself even more by voting for Joe Blow who is against ever raising taxes on us job creators, make that job empowerers.