My Sick Mind

"Exclusively and only at Raymour and Flanigan." - Kathy Ireland, from a TV ad. Language and grammar are funny things. I play with them frequently, and I wonder if a lot of it flies over the heads of readers, just as most of my physics classes flew over my head in high school. The advent of the Internet brought about a new mode of communication. No longer did people merely speak to each other. Now, they write down their thoughts and offer them in the written form more than they did in the 1960s. Phone calls were replaced by text messages, and letters and post cards are replaced by blogs and Facebook updates. Once blogs became popular, I wondered how former students who couldn't grasp the simple rules of grammar would acclimate to the Worldwide web and make their ideas palatable to those of us who find the rules of grammar akin to the way Christians view The Bible. We used to have to endure bad speech patterns and pleas of "you know what I mean....

I don't read as much as I write. I read the newspaper every day, but rarely indulge in a book or anything longer than a magazine article. I suppose it's my child of the 60s-induced short attention span that limits my interest to anything shorter than an average television program, whose length has grown shorter over the years as well. I recently purchased the first season DVDs of Newhart , the Bob Newhart sitcom where he owns an Inn in Vermont. I watched a few episodes (before becoming interested in something else) and noticed that the commercial-free programs were between 24 and 26 minutes long. By contrast, DVD episodes of last season's Parks and Recreation are around 21 minutes long. Both programs occupied a half-hour of network air time, but have gotten 5 minutes shorter over the span of 22 years. How long will it be before the program is shorter than the commercial breaks? By those standards, it will take 44 years. Lucky teen aged readers have that to look forward t...