One Word Is All We Need to Survive. (Also Food and Water, But That Doesn't Get My Point Across)

(Guess who's back, back again, I am back, tell a friend. Tell a lot of friends. Only the cool ones though. I don't need uncool people around here. We already have enough of them. Me. For 2011 I'm going back to my roots. The place where it all began! Now if only I was writing from my sublet studio apartment with no oven would we come totally full circle.)

Anyone that knows me knows that I am a lot of things. I’m a human. Aside from that fact I can’t really think of anything else that I am. As the world famous Popeye the Sailor Man once said, “I yam what I yam and that’s all that I yam and Wimpy, you said you would pay me back today for that hamburger I gave you last week. I will not fall for your clever ruse again!” At what point do people realize that Wimpy isn’t going to pay them back? It has to be by the 4th Tuesday where you haven’t received your money from him that you probably wouldn’t give him a hamburger any more. I’m still debating as to which is more outlandish. Constantly giving Wimpy hamburgers and receiving no money in return or the coyote running off a cliff, holding in mid air for a second, looking down, and THEN falling to his inevitable doom.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me enough times for a running gag on a cartoon where no one questions us, shame on the American public.

But back to me. The one thing I’m definitely not is a grammarian or wordsmith of any kind. I don’t really care for the detail that goes into finding the proper places for commas or whatever a semicolon is supposed to do, but there are some words that I like that make me think. One day I was sitting around and thinking about the word “green”. I started thinking about where it came from and who thought of it. Then I started thinking about how weird it sounds if you say it over and over again. Go ahead try it. I’ll wait. Ok, I’m done waiting. After doing all of that thinking I realized that I hadn’t left the house in 5 days because I was pontificating about something on the color spectrum.

I’m sure this is what Martin Luther King Jr. went through. Color wars.

Since I like to dissect words, I also like to think about what people say to me while they’re saying them. Whenever I’m having a conversation with someone there are just certain times you don’t know what to say that person. In some instances it’s obvious what you should say to the person. If they tell you that their dog died you say “I’m sorry to hear that.” If they tell you that they can’t find their keys you say “I’m sorry to hear that.” If they say that they wish you were at their party you say, “I’m sorry to hear that.” If they say they caught their significant other sleeping with a midget that oddly resembled the miniaturized version of a young Seal you say, “What?!!? Totally Cool! Um, I mean, sorry to hear that.”

I would get my Seal cassette tape signed. Retro autographs.

In most conversations there is always a back and forth and one of us profusely apologizing for something the person is going through. That’s the human way. Lately I’ve noticed that there is one word that there is no comeback for. No saying you’re sorry or that you would like give that guy a piece of your mind. Nope there is absolutely, positively no response when someone says…

That is unacceptable.

There is nothing you can possibly say to someone after they say that to you. After someone spouts off the “that is unacceptable” phrase you just have to sit there and take it. What are you going to say? “Well, you see, it was kind of acceptable because you took some of…” “SILENCE! Your insolence will not be tolerated any further!” When someone says something is unacceptable all you can do is silently nod your head. You can’t even drop the “I’m sorry to hear that” phrase back at them because it makes no sense. Nothing makes any sense at this point. That’s it. Conversation over. Feel free to move about the cabin and hang your head in shame.

We’ve all had those days where we’re talking to someone, but we don’t want to and can’t figure out a way to get out of the conversation. All you have to do is say “that is unacceptable.” Bam. There is no response for that and you can go on and get rejected by every girl at the bar because they don’t accept your coin behind the ear magic trick since it’s “so hack”. Whatever mom.

Unacceptable has become the ultimate game changer in American linguistics. It makes you seem tough and tells people to get out of your face. It’s a jack of all trades word. When “they” came up with this word “they” probably didn’t know how much it would affect all of us. Well, it does. It’s an abrupt stop on a lame conversational rollercoaster like the wooden one they still have at Six Flags. A wooden rollercoaster is as exciting as watching the coyote not catch the roadrunner for the 450th time even though he has explosives.

Now, THAT is unacceptable.