July 21st, 2011

OMG. Like, Awesome.

by Wayno & Piraro

Bizarro is brought to you today by Signs of the Times.

It occurs to me that today’s texting shorthand is the same thing as cave paintings. For the most part, cave paintings fall into three categories: here’s what I saw, here’s what I believe, here’s what I hope for.  I don’t think we’ve changed all that much in what we feel the need to communicate.

“I saw Crystal at the mall…I think she hates me…I hope she dies.”

At least, that’s my belief based on what I’ve seen. I hope you’ll agree.

Next up, we have some people arguing in Italian food. What could be more delicious? As a vegan, I don’t eat dead animals, but I will concede that if you go to the lengths it takes to prepare them so that they will not kill you shortly after consumption, they are delicious. That’s why humans eat them in the first place. This idea came from my known associate, Wayno, and here’s what he has to say about it.

My last cartoon today is a depiction of how a single word can be appropriated to mean everything except what it originally meant. Which is to say it means virtually nothing at all. For the benefit of those of you younger than twenty, “awesome” used to be reserved for uniquely amazing things. Things like God, the Grand Canyon, Sarah Palin’s chutzpah. But now it basically means, “I like this anywhere from mildly to more than anything in the world.” These things happen in a living language, so there’s no point wasting your time lamenting it. Believe it or not, “like” used to be used to connote something one found pleasing, or two things that were similar. But now it is a word that most frequently has no actual meaning at all, but is a kind of adhesive that holds other words together so that a sentence does not simply disintegrate as it leaves one’s mouth: “I was, like, do you like my new haircut? and she was, like, I like it but, it’s like, the same as, like, your old haircut, but like, I like it, yeah.”

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