semantics

"So where do you want to go to dinner?"

"Meh, I could care less."

Your brain freezes for a moment. Is that their subtle, passive-aggressive way of suggesting they have a restaurant preference, but that you have to play twenty questions if you ever want a hope in hell of figuring out what it is? Do they want burgers? Maybe thai food? Do they want to go to IHOP again? Perhaps they're in the mood for Chinese or Indian? It IS Monday, maybe they want the spaghetti special or their taste buds are screaming for-

"Just not IHOP again"

Oh, well that clears that up.

Then there's our second scenario. It's two thirty in the morning and you're watching tv (because what else would you be doing?) An ad comes across your screen pitching something that's "free with subscription". Again, your brain freezes (or maybe not, it IS two-thirty, there's a good chance your brain has been off for awhile). Your neurons struggle with the definition of "subscription" and it occurs to them that anything included in the subscription is thereby covered, in cost, by the subscription. Then the next commercial features a young WASP couple saying, "We used the money we saved to buy Product X!" Later the coroner will declare CoD to be an aneurysm.

While we're talking about semantics, what is up with "sub par"? Someone unfamiliar with golf had to be the originator here. It had to have gone down like this; Bob, in his weekly TPS report (with the proper cover sheet) demonstrates a new shipping model that will save the company millions and Alice, his boss, compliments him on doing a sub par job. Bob, being an idiot and knowing nothing about golf, thinks Alice is going to take credit for his work and continue to climb the corporate ladder and leave Bob behind, so he hatches a scheme. One night when Alice is staying late, Bob locks Alice in her office and burns the building to the ground. The next day the PTBs from corporate meet with Bob and promote him into Alice's old position and mention that Alice had emailed them - the term only recently entered the lexicon... - Bob's idea for saving the company money and credits Bob with doing a "superb" job. Bob then changes his name to Karl Rove.

I try to present my concerns over language to "friends", but every time I start describing the need to use proper semantics I'm met with

"Meh, I could care less"