Monday, December 06, 2004

Rurality, meetingosity, and the trafficking of cows.

The English language may not be dead, but it is certainly choking on a piece of meat. Now that the likes of Pierre Berton (RIP) have ridden off into the sunset, there are less and less "groups of folks" (thank you President Bush) to adminster grammatical heimlich manouevers.

Some examples: The other day, while visiting Halifax, President Bush referred to the ban of Canadian beef by American special interest farmers that just want to be able to gouge American consumers... and I quote:

"I don't know if you've got bureaucracy here in Canada or not, but we've got one in America, and there are a series of rules that have to be met in order for us to be able to allow the trafficking of cows back and forth," he said. "So we're working as quickly as we can. And I understand the impact it's had on your industry here."

Trafficking of cows? What the hell? I don't remember the last time I felt the urge to snort a whole side of beef. I'm absolutely blown away.

Today in a meeting about servicing rural and remote regions, a colleague referred to the "rurality" of the situation. At that point, the meetingosity of the whole situation became too much for me and I started sniggering a fair bit.

These are just some examples of the English language gone bad. I'm not prince in this respect, but most of my maligning is usually deliberate. These folks aren't even trying.

Snerg.

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