the official unauthorized blog for oneword.com

I've written about my criteria for moderation of oneword.com entries before. This post is very specific, prompted by an ever-growing pattern I've noticed over the last few years. Let me start with one example:

The day's word: bee

"Nothing more than a struggling person trying to live their lives off someone elses salary who actually reaps the benefits of all his or her worker bees. More like his benefits, women don’t get to do shit in this world, but so what? It’s just a shitty game we all play, too bad we don’t know any other games. Fuck."

The above example is not profound, well-written—or even grammatically correct—but it follows oneword's admonition to "just write" well enough. The puzzling part is the lone, irrelevant f-bomb tagged onto the end of the entry. The term "f-bomb" is perfect here, because it really is like dropping a bomb on an otherwise relevant piece of writing. And I get anywhere from two–five entries that follow this pattern daily.

So we're clear, I have no problem with a strategically placed f-word. For instance, another entry on yellow and black, fuzzy, buzzy things:

"I am absolutely terrified of bees. A bee landed on my brand new white tee shirt in gym class when I was thirteen and it was huge. It scared the living shit out of me and I screamed and made a huge fool of myself amongst my snotty peers. I hate bees. Fuck bees."

In this example, though I don't personally hate bees, I'm right there with her.

In both cases, the entries will get approved. However, I'm taking the liberty of deleting all f-bombs as illustrated in the first example. Why? Two reasons: A) it takes the real firepower away from other people using the word intelligently, and B) it screams "I'm insecure!" which is not a part of flowing or stream-of-consciousness writing.

My mom vehemently disagrees, but I think it's the perfect word—not as a parachute—but when the parachute doesn't open.

Jane: yo wz up
Ted: nt mch wut up witchu?
Jane: kickn it gettn it poppin whtchu kno boutt thttt ?!
Ted: roflmao

Let's stop here. Not for the obvious—but for logistics. How is it that one might roll on the floor and laugh their ass off while simultaneously typing “ROFLMAO”? Second, how ass-less can one be? It stands to reason that there would at least need to be a buffer between asses being laughed off to allow for a new one to flourish.

Ted: cme ovr
Jane: yeaaaaahhhhh babyy

In addition to liquidating the English language to a series of sputters and blips, it now appears to be somewhat cool and hip-hop-y to add an extra letter or three onto the end of words. This screams, “I'll follow a trend no matter how stupidd!”

Jane: i wuld bt im grnded
Ted: lololololololol for wuttt?

“wuld.” It's an interesting choice to keep the one totally silent letter. And, Ted, “laugh out loud out loud out loud out loud out loud out loud” makes zero sense.

Jane: rprt cd 2day
Ted: dam grrrll!!! tht sux.
Jane: yea flnkd englsh 101 fml 

Shocking.

If someone is gay and wants to serve in a military rampant with John Waynes and Pattons—they should. That's courage and determination if I've ever seen it.

I'm happy to hear that someone in the US government has seen the light. In fact, the only people that should be banned from the military are, well, people like me.

For the people that are furious about this; for the ignorant hoards that spent millions pushing Proposition 8 in California—I have a proposition for you:

Why not go all the way? Why be half-assed? Why not boycott everything involving gay people?

It won't be easy, but it's your cause, right? And causes aren't easy.

Let's start with something close to home:

HOME
No more furniture or décor designed by homosexuals. This includes all art, knick-knacks, and appliances. Not forgetting the exterior and general design of the house itself. (Straight knockoffs are not allowed.)

Great, you live in a log cabin, let's move on to:

FASHION
Okay, you look like a polygamist, next:

TECHNOLOGY
You can't read this article. The father of modern computer science, Alan Turing, was totally gay. Oh, and what in technology didn't DaVinci's gay hand remotely touch? Let's take a steam train on over to:

ENTERTAINMENT
Well, at least there's Pixar. Oh wait, nevermind. Let's see, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, HBO, Showtime, Dreamworks, Imagine, any feature film company. Nope. West Side Story? What about Star Wars or E.T.? Nope. Don't say it... don't say it... Disney's cool right?

So you're sitting in a burlap sack on a barrel enjoying KBYU, the Mormon church's public station, if you can stomach the homoerotic tension between Bert and Ernie on Sesame Street. (Oh, and your TV is black and white and ugly.)

MUSIC
It's nearly impossible for an artist, if not gay themselves, to make it from mic to master without involving the talents of a gay person.

Then there's "the blues," all-American and infused into every rock-n-roll song, which could hardly exist without the very lesbian "mother of the blues," Ma Rainey.

That's fine, since KBYU has the Mormon Tabernacle Choir (so long as they don't riff off Tchaikovsky). Oh, and Justin Bieber, for at least another year.

Rufus Wainwright is okay since he is so gay, it's neither here nor there.

HUMOR
The ever-flaming Oscar Wilde and gay-laced troupe of Monty Python directly or indirectly inspired any popular comedian alive today. Plus, what would Dane Cook talk about?

TRANSPORTATION
You could attempt driving, but there are too many design elements intrinsic to driving, from road signs to street layout and traffic signals, that likely had a gay hand involved. Plus, a gay pencil almost certainly graced the drawing board for even the most modest of minivans. And you can forget BMW or Mercedes.

I think the Model-T suites you just fine.

I could continue with advances and triumphs in Medicine, Cosmetics, Literature, Politics, Science, Physics, Education, ad nauseam. My point is that, like it or not, we'd all be looking pretty shabby (not shabby chic, mind you) without the astounding contributions and influence of gay men and women.

The word of the day is equality. This is a big step toward it. The next step is to remove the labels altogether, and recognize that we're all just human beings trying to make the world a better place.

In an earlier post, I had mentioned being anti-stupid.

This was in response to multiple (some harsh and rude) allegations of the site being against freedom of speech. This, to me, is not only comical—but the antithesis of oneword.

Rather than being anti-stupid, I would like to offer a revised, more accurate statement:

oneword.com is pro-intelligent

The kid who sprays a litany of racial slurs, or pastes "your mom has sex with horses" a thousand times, is intelligent. Somewhere in there. Deep down.

Everyone has the capacity to act stupid, though it's just that—an act. And usually one of insecurity; of being afraid to truly express themselves. And, if anything, that's what oneword.com is all about: expression.

Yes, pro-intelligent, is the [compound] word of the day, and here's to shining a light on the brilliance inherent in everyone, in hopes that others—and, importantly, you—will see it, and be it.

When I was nineteen, I inherited a pet peeve. I was at a party and we were on the subject of peeves that were pets and a guy said, "I hate it when people say anyways." I hadn't given it any thought before, but I then realized the stupidity of this non-word. And it has peeved me—and my pets—ever since. So, it gets the number one slot.

1. "Anyways."

I've already gone off about dashes, so I'll be brief.

2. Spaces surrounding em dashes.

When did it become okay to put spaces before and after dashes? I can't figure it out.

Read Great Expectations or Catcher in the Rye or the New Yorker—hell, read The Elements of Style by Strunk and White or the fucking Chicago Manual of Style.

3. Courier.

(The typeface, not people who deliver stuff.)

In a failed attempt to imitate the typewritten screenplays from days of yore, we somehow ended up donning this piece of shit font the industry standard for screenplays. As made apparent above, I have deep-rooted childhood dash issues. And guess what a hyphen looks like in Courier? This: "-"; an en dash? This: "-"; an em dash? This: "-". 

Don't even get me started on Courier New.

4. "I could care less."

Well, I couldn't.

5. "Awe, cute."

It's probable that one could be in awe of cuteness. However, it's about 10,763 times more likely that what you meant to write was "Awwww... cute!" (The number of "w"s is subjective.) It's an onomatopoeia (a Scrabble player's wet dream that means "written interpretation of a sound"). Yes, I know that your spell-checker automatically changed it, but if I just went with everything my iPhone's spell-checker suggested, I'd have alienated most of my address book by now.

And, last:

6. "I'm nauseous."

I'll say.

Admittedly this is straight outta The Elements of Style and, equally admittedly, I've misused this word many times myself. However, after I learned the error of my ways and what it really means—it's worth repeating.

What you meant to say is "I'm nauseated." This indicates that you are sick to your stomach. To be "nauseous" is to cause others to be nauseated. Just like to be contagious causes others to be contagiated.

. . .

I could probably go on and on about you're/your, it's/its, there/their/they're and other things that are like a flea driving me up a chalkboard. But I have a feeling we've both got better things to do.

(via our Facebook page)

We've had quite a few people accusing us of being anti-freedom of speech lately. Not the least of which was someone saying "Fuck you" on our Facebook page earlier today.

Really, we're all for freedom of speech. We're PRO-freedom of speech. We're PRO-stream of consciousness. We're only anti-stupid.

How do we define stupid? We don't. It's so stupid, we don't need to.

If you're reading this, and are stupid—sorry—we weren't banking on your making it this far.

We are not anti-profanity either. Dialects, idioms, profanity and colloquialism help to define characters and stir emotions in writing. And we will agree with great fortitude that sometimes there is no other word that quite gets the fucking point across.

However, after many years of running this site, I can, with confidence, offer the following statistics:

50% of entries that contain the word "fuck" are spam or stupid.

60% of entries that contain the word "shit" are spam or stupid.

70% of entries that contain the word "cunt" are spam or stupid.

80% of entries that contain the word "pussy" are spam or stupid.

90% of entries that contain the words "bestiality, incest, slut or cock" are spam or stupid.

99.9% of entries that contain the words "nigger, chink, wop, dago, kike, paki, jihad" are spam or stupid.

So, those words get flagged. If your inspired prose birthed one of more of them, then they go in a "pending" bin and wait, in all their brilliance or stupidity, for me to sift through them.

If the entry isn't stupid—which it's not if you read this far—then chances are it's just waiting to be approved. And it will be. I swear.*

*pun intended.