The ol' Bloviator has been around long enough to know that when you speak to a reporter for the student newspaper, the chances of coming off well in whatever appears in print are roughly the same as those of the Super Bowl passing without notice from ESPN. In his most recent misadventure along these lines, the O.B. was actually interpreted reasonably well, but the words attributed to him could have come out of his mouth only if he were high on Skoal and channeling Larry the Cable Guy.
The purpose of the newspaper story was to explore the motivations of University of Georgia graduates who have returned to their alma mammy as faculty. Instead of my actual statement about the attractiveness of joining a department with an excellent academic reputation, our young scribe got things off on a bad foot by indicating that I had referred to the "notoriety" of UGA's history program. This, in itself, was very nearly grounds for one of the O.B.'s patented profane tirades because nothing chaps him worse than this use of a term which has come simply to mean "fame" or "widespread recognition" when, since the 17th century at least, it has been used to connote "ill fame" or "infamy." This, I fear, is yet another example of widespread and repeated misuse of the word simply bullying its way into the lexicon in much the same way that "impact" became a verb and then, God help us, proceeded to beget the modifier "impactful," which in my own little black grammar book should only be used to describe something likely either to constipate you or make your tooth hurt.
Unfortunately, this irksome use of "notoriety" gave way in the very next sentence to a purported quote from yours very truly to the effect that "the Georgia history department was becoming one of the best to teach at." The horrified O.B's first reaction to this woeful example of putting not just words but god-awful grammar in his mouth was less one of personal embarrassment than gratitude that his Mama has long since passed on to her reward. Surely, if she were alive today, she would be spinning in her grave to see this indication that her little boy had benefited so little from her unfaltering efforts to ensure that he spoke the English language as God intended it to be spoken. No grammatical transgression that the youthful O.B. was wont to commit ever struck her as more egregious than "Mama, where's the jelly at?" and her emphatic and unvarying retort was "It's behind that at, Jimmy!"
Although I always believed that Mama's proscription against this sin against the language would remain forever absolute and universal, I began to sense otherwise when a certain story began making the rounds in this part of the country. In his first day as a student at a snooty northeastern university, a wide-eyed young Southerner had occasion to ask a classmate if he could tell him "where the library's at." When the classmate had finished laughing and mocking his supposedly stereotypically southern ignorance of proper grammar, the lad from the South obligingly modified his query to "Okay, where's the library at, asshole?" Regrettably, it appears that even some of the hard-core grammarians (including my very favorite one, in fact,) have now relented on this point by indicating that the old rule against ending sentences with a preposition is no longer one with which we must up with put.
Nowadays, of course, in addition to the old standard low-tech method of being misquoted in a reporter's notebook, there's also the likelihood--make that certainty--of being heard wrongly by some infernal high-tech contraption such as the regrettably omnipresent voice menus constructed by corporate types who are intent on thwarting even the most earnest attempts by a customer to speak to an honest-to-God human being. For the O.B., who easily ranks as humanity's most typing-challenged specimen, there is also the frustration of working with what some generally consider to be the most effective voice-activated word processing software. This particular version is so sophisticated that it allows you to choose "southern U.S." as your accent referent. Judging by my experience, however, I would guess that selecting this designation actually triggers the following internal directive: "<//> frustrate this cracker bastard to the max!<//>" A couple of days ago, for example, the O.B. was merrily rattling off some spectacularly brilliant prose until he said something along the lines of "wide smile," which his backstabbing voice program interpreted as the command "hide file" and proceeded immediately to whisk several days' worth of work away to some impenetrable and immaculately concealed cyber-dungeon.
There ensued such an eruption of frustration and outrage on the O.B.'s part that the poor Ms. O.B. was forced to shut her door and crank her iPod well into the db danger zone. Throughout the ensuing two hours, the O.B., sweating bullets and spewing rage all the while, struggled blindly (this being a situation apparently not envisioned by the so-called Help menu) to find the requisite utterance necessary to reverse this seriously high-stakes failure to communicate. Unfortunately, "show file" yielded only "show full?" while "find file" elicited "pine isle?" and, finally, to his utter disgust "display text" produced "fish fillet next?" Finally, after stumbling across several variations of an "undo" command, the O.B opted for the not particularly grammatical "unhide file," which first brought forth only "underline file?" until he finally hit on just the right articulation and inflection, and as the French like to say "Viola!" There sat the abducted text, intact to its every jot and tittle.
If there was an upside to this ordeal, it was the discovery that one may actually write individualized commands for particular situations not necessarily anticipated by the software geeks. Now the O.B. just can't wait to see what happens when he hollers "Where's that damn file at?"
P.S. the Ol' Bloviator's love-hate relationship with stereotypes compels him share this little tidbit from the New York Times:
"Heaven is where the police are British, the cooks are French, the mechanics are German, the lovers are Italian and it is all organised by the Swiss. Hell is where the police are German, the cooks are English, the mechanics are French, the lovers are Swiss, and it is all organised by the Italians"
