Drilling in the Dark?

It seems to me that my fellow contributers are missing the mark on these first few posts, with all due respect to them, . . . of course. However, when I think drilling in the dark, I think backwoods mining practices of a bygone era (1970s or so, maybe?) or uncomfortable sexual liasons easily forgotten the next day. Perhaps I am posting to the wrong blog, but since everyone else has ignored the mining practices and obvious sexual euphemisms thereof, I too will post on whatever I feel like:



There have been a lot of posts in the early years of the blogosphere concerning grammatical correctness and how everyone should stop bastardizing the English language. After all, it is clear that Frankenstein's monster (er, English) was born way far out of wedlock, not even near wedlock. Anglophones and Anglographs cannot help but marvel at hodgepodge of transparent cognates stretched over the rigid forms of grammatical rules with sinewy figures of speech connecting the allowing it to move back and forth. Sure there's old English to hearken back to, like a kind grandparent who is willing to shelter, feed and scold the unruly runaway teenager of a language English has turned out to be; however, that's not much of a moral highground from which to maintain the language's purity.

I myself am all for experimental diction as long as the user understands that what they are doing is not necessarily kosher. Bottom line everyone should learn all of the rules at some point, because professional human beings should communicate professionally. I'm all for proper nouning things, then gerundizing those bad boys . . . "How did your Googling go?" or "This floor needs a good Swiffering." or "Can you start Magic Erasering that scuff on the wall?" (Evidently the proper noun gerundization process works best with cleaning products, or maybe I just need constant reminders to clean?!)

As far as I'm concerned, the only people that this usage really hurts are trademark holders and my mother, whose moral sensitivities are predicated more on the Blue Book of Grammar than the Five Books of Moses. However this is a story for a different blog with fewer sexual undertones . . .