That Sky. Those Waves.

The weather has been miserably hot.  Miserably humid.  I’ve maybe been whining about it without ceasing a bit. 

But all that weird weather has been making for some stunning skies and amazing evenings at the beach this last week.  I. Can’t. Even.

So, can I make a confession?  I get kinda judgy about words.  And I get kinda really judgy about “grownups” adopting kids’ trendy verbiage.  And I’m all like, I get really REALLY, like, I-Can’t-Even judgy about my peers sprinkling their conversations liberally with “likes”.  It literally makes me crazy.  (see what I did there? and even inside these parentheses?)  Judgy isn’t pretty and I’m not making a case for my-way-or-the-highway.  I’m just confessing.  And linking – for the first and likely last time ever – to Slate, who’s making a pretty solid case for defending the usage of I-Can’t-Even.  The author equates this silly phrase with the ancient Greek rhetorical device of “aposiopesis”, which is a “figure of speech wherein a sentence is deliberately broken off and left unfinished, the ending to be supplied by the imagination, giving an impression of unwillingness or inability to continue.”  (definition source: Wikipedia)  The Slate author shows how this particular rhetorical device has been brilliantly used by Virgil in the Aeneid, Shakespeare in King Lear, and even more [relatively] recently by … the Three Stooges.  I really like arguments that use the Ancients’ wisdom to justify and educate.  In her conclusion, the author asks & answers the question: “So are Americans suffering from a profound lack of ability to process their emotions? Maybe. Are they suffering from a profound lack of communication skills? Definitely not. They're simply doing more with less.”   But.  Much though I appreciate ancient wisdom and smart wordsmiths like Virgil and Shakespeare, I completely disagree with this journalist’s conclusion.  I think people today just want to sound trendy. 

And so, I-Can’t-Even has become the newest mock-worthy phrase in Kellerville.