It’s the moment all the world has been waiting for, the announcement that defines civilization for the next century, the development of such import that nobody has even looked at their phones for the past two weeks, for fear of missing this incredible event. Yes, it’s time for the 2023 Dad Writes Word of the Year, the single combination of letters and, every so often, an apostrophe, that reflects the trends, the vibe, the absolute geist of the zeit. Years from now, you'll recount to your grandchildren exactly where you were when you first heard the news. There was a time we left the annual WOTY choices to the self-proclaimed "experts" at the so-called "dictionary publishers," the elitists who think they know more words than the rest of us simply because they know more words than the rest of us. Those days are gone, though, as even the world’s biggest idiots are now empowered to make any choices we want and issue any judgments we want and declare any truths we want inside our bubbles. God, I love the smell of My Truth in the morning. Frankly, we’d be happy to leave the choices to the nattering nabobs among the “educated class,” but they have shown an inability to perform that’s even sadder than that guy in the ED commercials. The Cambridge Dictionary anointed ‘hallucinate’ as its winner this year, for reasons nobody can comprehend, while Merriam-Webster chose ‘authentic,’ which has been used much less frequently than ‘fake’ for many years and shows no signs of making a comeback. Oxford English Dictionary came up with ‘play harder,’ which is both two words and also ridiculous. Collins Dictionary landed on 'AI,' which is actually an abbreviation, not a word, although they did allow the use of 'artificial intelligence,' which is, again, two words. If we were going to consider abbreviations, AF would be more deserving than AI, but they’re much too prissy at Deep Words to deal with real, tough, manly, hard-core, tough-guy language. We struggled to sift through literally several options for this year and we’re exhausted from the challenge. So many words have dominated the conversation, including fascism, communism, wokeism, socialism and Nazism. We considered all of them, but we disqualified the whole group because the people using the words have no idea how those words are actually defined. A good WOTY must be more than popular. People must know what they’re talking about when they say it. We had to reject genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, terrorism and occupation, as well, because people who use the words cannot agree with each other about what they mean. We dallied with hip new words like bougie/boujee, rizz and sus, partly to honor the incredible productivity of Gen(whatever-is-hip-now) linguists and partly to confuse the rest of our generation. We had to drop the idea, though, because the hippest hipsters would ban those words immediately if old people started using them. Boom!! Amiright? LOL. Fortunately, we found the perfect word for 2023, as all our loyal fans knew we would. It’s not only one of the most heavily used words in America, but it’s one that everyone understands to mean the same thing. It’s the perfect word to represent our social and political discourse and, most important, our blood-lust for revenge. That’s why the Dad Writes Word of the Year 2023 is: WEAPONIZE. Whether it’s the criminal justice system, social media, libraries, Congressional committees or school board meetings, somebody somewhere is weaponizing it. Nobody objects to anything anymore. Nobody argues about anything. Nobody even tilts the balance in their team’s favor. They weaponize it. And while we recognize that some exercises truly convert basic systems into weapons, our WOTY is already so overused that it’s starting to resemble ‘literally,’ a word that now means exactly what it doesn't mean. The perfect choice, right? We agree. Now, let’s all observe a moment of silence in sympathy with the elitist dictionarians who are considering their 2023 WOTYs and muttering, “Weaponize. Why didn’t we think of that? SMH!!” Clearly, in 2024, they need to play harder. Also in 2024, they need to click here to subscribe to Dad Writes and learn a few things about wordification.
2 Comments
I’m really beginning to dislike Betty, well on my way to hating her. To be fair, though, I might just be jealous. I never knew Betty existed until a couple of weeks ago, but then I started getting emails addressed to her on AOL. (Yes, I admit to still having an AOL account and I am lame, but let’s move on from that embarrassment to the real crime.) It looks like someone mixed up her email address and mine and they sent me some incredible offers that are much better than the ones that I’ve been getting. Yes, my email feed is chockablock with all kinds of special deals, from time-shares in North Korea to 5% off on furnace filters when I buy 12 cases. I get offers of incredible savings on everything I bought just two days earlier and invitations to learn the secrets of real estate investing from a guy who’s living out of a dumpster. And, if I send in just $5,000 to prove my creditworthiness, I’ll gain access to the personal bank account of Prince Akeem of Zamunda. As wonderful as all those deals are, Betty’s are even better, or maybe she is simply more worthy. One company is offering her $50,000 to fund her business, even if she has bad credit, and another is so confident in her that they’re ready to hand her $5,000 for whatever she wants. Clearly, everyone knows Betty is going places and they want to get in on the ground floor. She’s also a genius, it appears, because pretty much every college I’ve never heard of wants her on their campus, or their screen for the remote-learning joints. They’re tossing all kinds of scholarships and financial aid at her, because they are deeply concerned about her needs and her goals, and the colleges in Florida won’t make her study anything that makes her uncomfortable. Okay, they didn’t say that explicitly, but I can read between the lines. Betty is a hot prospect and the deans will bend over backwards to make sure she only learns about the things she wants to know and only with the slants she wants to slant. Betty has Her Truth, an unshakeable belief in the rightness of her beliefs, and there ain’t nobody gonna mess with that. She’s guaranteed to get straight As, because she already has all the answers. All she needs is a diploma. I’m really tempted to take advantage of these incredible opportunities, especially the free money with no strings attached. A casino opened down the street a few months ago and I just learned a foolproof way to beat the house at blackjack. Maybe I can present my system as an alternative investment vehicle that's even safer than cryptocurrency exchanges, which would qualify me for the full $50,000. I could be on Easy Street within a few hours. So far, though, I haven’t been able to figure out Betty’s last name or what grade school she attended or her mom’s maiden name or the last four of her Social. Without that critical information, I’m stuck on the outside, looking in longingly as savvy businesses and colleges shower her with their largesse. Life is so very unfair, unless you’re Betty. I really hope she appreciates how lucky she is. If you know Betty, please have her contact me to teach me the secrets of her success. Also, tell her to click here to subscribe. I like big maps. I cannot lie. There’s something about a 30-by-40 sheet of paper with a million lines and colors that just begs to be savored. A real map is a lesson in geography, human history, and politics, a tutorial about where we are and how we got here. Here’s the river bend that drew settlers and here’s the forest that still counts humans as an alien life form. These are the spots the politicians thought important enough to connect with roads and here are the blockades demanded by land owners who wanted a barrier around their properties. Governments have always picked winners and losers. Highways, or lack thereof, are Exhibit A. The difference between a dot on a screen and a real map is the difference between data and knowledge. When you locate yourself on a screen, you can find out where you are. When you look at a real map, you can find yourself. With a real map, you can discover the road less taken and, as we know, that could make all the difference. Online maps make us dumber, and there’s no better proof of that than a ride-share trip. I take a dozen ride-shares every month and the experience is always the same. The driver has been carting people around for five or six years and they still have no idea how to get around downtown. There’s a screen in front of the dashboard and a street with signs and actual traffic in front of them, but they only know how to read one of the two. Half my trips involve me asking why the driver is going in the wrong direction, although I know the answer before I bother to ask. It’s what the app says and they don’t know how to find anything IRL. To be fair, I’ve fallen into the same trap, at least partially. I can’t remember the last time I needed to memorize a phone number, and I’m much more likely to check my phone than step outside when I want to know how warm it is. Yes, I’ll use GPS when it’s the only option, but I recognize this poor substitute for the impostor that it is. I’ll also settle for Jack Daniels when there’s no Maker’s Mark available, but I’ll know I could have done better. Soon, maybe it has happened already, reading a real map will be a lost art, much like memorizing a phone number and paying with cash. On the upside, I’ll feel like a Jedi, knowing how to redirect the force while those with weak minds must depend on Google Maps, but it’s going to be a loss for the rest of civilization. Unlike online maps, life doesn’t follow only one path and the closest connection from A to B isn’t always the fastest, or vice versa. Sometimes, the best route is slower and scenic, maximizing enjoyment along the way. Watching yourself as a dot on a screen, tracing a predetermined path like a miniature Pac-Man, is the fate of avatars, not people. Real maps liberate us to see both what is and what could be, to consider all the potential of our physical and allegorical journey. The smaller your screen, the smaller your world. Full-sized maps can save us, if only we believe. How else will we command The Force in order to navigate the galaxy? Click here to subscribe and learn the secrets. I came back from Antarctica with 1,200 photographs and maybe a dozen memories, which made my bucket-list trip an allegory of my life…so far. All the photos remind me of something I saw while tromping around my seventh continent, which makes sense because they literally are the things I saw while tromping on my seventh continent. Or, maybe, they aren’t the things I saw at all, just the photographs I took along the way. It’s a challenge for every photographer, and I’ve commiserated with dozens of them, but it’s also a challenge for every humanoid. There’s a balance point in the struggle between enjoying the moment and capturing the memory, and it’s damned tough to get the right balance. I mock people who take pictures of their food instead of just enjoying their dinner, desperate to memorialize a bunch of calories that will be gone before they get their first like. Maybe that’s part of their enjoyment, though, sharing with friends or crowing about snagging the hot reservation. And I’m as guilty of anyone, texting my wife or kids when I’m dining alone somewhere or posting something goofy to Facebook so I feel more connected to all my “friends.” Back in the old days, we spent vacation evenings writing postcards* to people back home, so none of this is anything new. Still, there’s a time for sharing and a time to simply be, to absorb the wonder, to just sit down and shut up and take it all in. That’s the part where I really suck the worst. I’m especially bad at nature, since I work on a tight schedule and the animals should be polite enough to show up as soon as I get there. There’s nothing more irritating than waiting a whole ten minutes before the aardvark aarives. I went to Antarctica, it turns out, not to see the beauty of nature but to take pictures of the beauty of nature. There’s overlap, sure, but these are not even remotely the same experience. To my credit, I remember seeing everything that’s in the 1,200 images. To my regret, I remember rushing on to the next shot, without soaking it all in before I moved on. “That must have been incredibly beautiful,” friends will say, and I will reply, “You might be right.” I’ll look at the image and think, “Wow, I wish I had seen that myself,” and then I remember that I did. All of this makes me human, I suppose. In the race to see and do, to strive and achieve, it’s pretty easy to forget the part where we absorb and reflect. Every day in my world, some sound or scent or scene will evoke a memory from years ago and I’ll smile at the recollection. But I notice I’m not stopping much to capture the new sounds or scents or scenes for my future nostalgia. The redeeming quality of the photos is that each sparks some memory of the moment I captured the image, the thought that led me to aim and shoot. Memories fade, but photographs revive them, giving them renewed energy to captivate and inspire. Still, there’s wisdom in the advice that we stop and smell the roses, even if the closest “roses” consist of kelp and penguin poop. Next trip, next year, next part of the journey, maybe I’ll get it right. * (Postcards were 3D text messages prepared by artisans who employed recyclable tree fibers, organic plant dye and a self-lubricating stylus to communicate with people who could not be accessed online. These masterpieces were so valuable the creators had them delivered personally by federal agents. Unfortunately, the art of postcard workmanship has been lost forever.) If you want to know how I screw up my next vacation, just click here to subscribe. I got to attend an exclusive event a while back, with a promise that I’d get an inside look at an organization that is big heat in our area. How could I resist? So I took a shower and put on clean underwear and combed my hair and shared the secret word with the security guard to gain entry to the super-special event. OMG, it was absolutely… … a gigantic waste of time. Everything was a platitude, a generic comment, a flowery statement that was supposed to sound like it had great meaning even if there was no there there. Over the course of an hour, I learned that:
I wanted to leap to my feet and do my best Clara Peller impression as I shouted, “Where’s the beef?” I held back, though, and just listened, waiting in vain for a fact or an insight or a bit of wisdom that would justify the environmental impact of my commute. It never arrived. I started squirming in my seat as I looked at the door and wondered how much longer this parade of pablum would continue, but then I noticed something. All around me, people were nodding and smiling. Not nodding off, though; nodding in agreement. When the speaker said it’s important to meet challenges, everyone but me was thinking, “Oh, yeah, you got that right.” I was a bit confused, at first. Why was the audience enthused about a pile of word salad that could be applied by anyone to any situation in life? Why wasn’t everyone else staring at the door and wondering how quickly they could get to their cars? At first, I thought I must be missing something, but then I realized I was viewing it all through a different filter than the smiling throng at the other tables. While I was curious about the organization on display, I had no particular emotional attachment to them, their success, their past or their future. I was merely interested in gaining some understanding about a local institution. At the worst, I’d have some newsy tidbits to impress my friends at a party, if I ever made any friends or got invited to a party. Pretty much everyone else in the audience felt more of a connection to the organization, or at least that’s how it appeared. They had an emotional or financial investment in the history and opportunity, the success and failure, of the people on stage. They came to see someone smart and decisive and strategic and that is apparently what they saw. I’d like to feel superior about the whole thing and think of them as saps who’ll fall for anything, but that would be unfair. In fact, they’re probably smarter than I am, because they found a way to gain more enjoyment and a greater sense of intimacy from their engagement. Maybe I can still salvage something from the experience. Next time someone mentions the organization, I can relate that I actually spent some time with their leaders. I can relate that they need to get the entire team involved to make the tough decisions that can be hard to make because you can’t predict the future on your way to improvement. I'm sure those insights will make me sound like a real insider. If I ever attend a program where I actually learn something, I’ll be sure to share it with all the people who click here to subscribe. Time has a way of smoothing out the edges, shifting the focus of our memories. At a funeral, everything is fresh. Everything is raw. Individual details about life and death are more striking and more urgent. Even if you’re trying to put an entire life in perspective, your thoughts and comments are weighted more to the aging shell, the recent conversations, the final day. When I delivered mom’s eulogy a year ago, I spoke openly about the two different people we had come to mourn. The challenging person who made life more interesting shared equal billing with the woman who made a home and welcomed her family. Everyone at the service had gotten to know her well during her 94 years, and I wanted to recognize the full arc of that life. By the time we gathered a couple of weeks ago to unveil her marker, though, the focus had shifted. We acknowledged the difficult parts, but stressed more of the positives. We spent more time with the woman who hosted the holidays and kept up the traditions, who showed up at all her grandchildren’s events and became a pen pal to two of her great grandchildren. Her grandchildren spoke about the blooper reels, of course, but they also described the lessons learned and traditions continued, the legacy she passed on to a new generation. During the year since she left, my sister put together a gathering of cousins from mom’s side of the family and it was truly eye opening. We knew about some of the dysfunction and some of the tough characters who came before us, but the reality was worse, and it re-framed my view of mom’s life. She was a tough contract, absolutely, but things could have been a lot worse. I had not thought previously about her struggle to get past the family culture she inherited, but my new awareness put a softer filter on my memories. Life is graded on a curve, with a million relevant factors for the ultimate judge. Where did we start? What tools were we given? What was the degree of difficulty? How hard did we try? In the day-to-day, we measure people on an absolute scale and find them wanting. With the benefit of hindsight, or distance, we can and should be more forgiving. After the dedication, we all went back to my sister’s house and spent the rest of the afternoon together, talking and reminiscing and being a family. Looking around at the people, enjoying the ease of our conversations and the closeness of our bonds, I was reminded of the woman who did so much to set the table for us. I went home that night and pulled up the eulogy I delivered a year ago. If I was doing it again, I’d add more stories to emphasize the effort she made, the challenges she had faced in her own family, and the traditions she passed on to the generations that followed. Time has a way of smoothing out the edges. Maybe I’ll mellow out a bit more as the coming year progresses, but you’ll only learn about it if you click here to subscribe. |
Who writes this stuff?Dadwrites oozes from the warped mind of Michael Rosenbaum, an award-winning author who spends most of his time these days as a start-up business mentor, book coach, photographer and, mostly, a grandfather. All views are his alone, largely due to the fact that he can’t find anyone who agrees with him. Archives
January 2024
Categories
All
|