So this morning I thought I’d partake in some ‘retail-coffee-therapy’ and head over to Starbucks for a ‘Skinny Vanilla Latté’ and on a whim I took my laptop, glad I did, what follows is both factual and timely:
Her: Oh nice laptop, I hear Apple is the new Microsoft…
Me: Ha, sure (rolls eyes, turns away)
Her: You do realize I was be ironical (sic)
Me: Alanis Morrisette would be proud
Her: (well she said nothing I want to type here, but she DID leave)
Now of course I could have been friendlier, I could have also corrected her - I’m pretty sure she was attempting to be ‘sarcastic’ rather than ‘ironical’ which sadly (for her) isn’t a word. Her life would have been much simpler if the english language had kept up with society and we had Sarcasm Marks, some graphical adjunct to quotation marks that specifies:
“This is a quote spoken in a sarcastic tone, please accept it in the spirit it was intended.”
Think of how handy that would be, emails would take on a brand new dimension, court transcripts would have flavor and attitude, twittering would be clearer (because like MOST twitters, I assume almost EVERYTHING is sarcasm). Sadly the graphical glyphs of the proposed Sarcasm Marks would have helped ‘HER’ but I’m assuming that with the acceptance of the proposed marks, women like ‘HER’ would adopt a pithy hand gesture to indicate ‘I AM ABOUT TO BE SARCASTIC, OR AT THE VERY LEAST MAKE AN ATTEMPT AT SARCASM’. Of course all the punctuation in the world wouldn’t help her vocabulary, but that’s a different post.
I think it’s a great idea, and if I knew what governing body made such decisions I’d start a campaign, but for now I’ll just draw the marks on my keyboard and smile knowingly.