I spend a large part of each and every day screaming silently inside my head. (In space, no one can hear you scream.) It makes me bellow in silent rage whenever our language, the feel and taste and of course sound of which I love, is treated like a two-dollar whore, a fuck-and-forget. "Whatever, as long as I get my point across, you know?" No, no, I do not know. My bland blank-eyed smile at your idiotic assertion masks the fact that inside my head I am screaming, "Nooooooooooo!" and a murder of crows is flying out of a tree against a sunset sky. (Yes, there are trees and crows inside my head. And a chocolate fountain.) (White chocolate, because of how I'm allergic to cocoa.) I'm not talking about usage mistakes; I'm talking about willful ignorance, sloppiness, pretention and pomposity. Say "ain't" all you like; I grew up with and respect "ain't." Say "fuck" all you like; I've already expressed my fondness and dependence on that word. Say "gnarly," "awesome," and "dude" all you like; ever since Buffy, I've loved dudespeak. (Fine, think of it as Valley Girl; I have my manly reputation to protect, also and only inside my head.) Just don't fucking say "prioritize," because a) dude, that ain't a word and 2) it totally makes you sound like a fuckwit.

A long time ago, when I worked for Zenith Electronics Corporation as a young hopeful software geek (that's how long ago it was; there was a Zenith, and I had hope), I walked into my boss's office--he knew my grammar douchery well--and lay down the pamphlet for the chip I was supposed to write code for. "I'm not programming this," I said. He glanced at the pamphlet; on the cover I'd underlined, "Fully prioritized interrupts." He laughed. Then he told me to get the fuck back to work and docked my pay. Which, you know, fair enough.

I am currently screaming inside my head at the misuse of presently. "Presently" does not mean, "at present." That's "currently." Or "now." "Presently" means, "in a little while." So when the pilot announces that "We are presently at our cruising altitude of 35,000 feet," I want to scream, "So where are we now?!?!" then do a lap around the plane, throwing  dictionaries to the passengers and crew. Until I get tackled and Tased by a Federal marshall, then handcuffed and shackled and rendered to Gitmo. (I'm not going to do it; I do have some rudimentary impulse control, the testimony of those who've seen me with a bag of yogurt peanuts to the contrary.) A word does not mean just what you choose it to mean, Humpty Dumpty; "glory" does not mean "a nice knock-down argument" and "presently" does not mean "currently."

I've more or less given up on trying to convince people not to use "hopefully" to mean "I hope." (It doesn't.) I haven't given up on screaming inside my head whenever I hear it, though. (Seriously, it's a wonder those crows even go back to that tree, what with how often they get startled off it.) "Hopefully, we will have lunch on Tuesday," means "On Tuesday, we will have lunch with hope in our hearts," (and, depending on where you eat, possibly also burn in your hearts) not "I hope we have lunch on Tuesday." Now, this has been a pet peeve of mine (I've bought it a leash and collar and a stupid little pet-sweater) for a very long time, since I was a wee little grammar douche (not that at 5'3" I'm a giant) (except in the midget bars where I like to hang out), so I was surprised to find that David Foster Wallace didn't mind "hopefully."

Wallace, who was even more of a grammar douche than me, despised solecisms so subtle that neither I nor my BFF who teaches college English (and is a fine grammar douche in her own right) could figure out why they even were solecisms. Wallace argued that "hopefully" was a general "sentence adverb," like "clearly," "surely," or "luckily." I think that's wrong--"hopefully" used that way doesn't indicate the mood of the sentence, but specifically that the speaker hopes something will happen--but Wallace definitely gave me pause. (Sadly--and yeah, that's another one--he didn't give me paws, because I'd be way fucking cute with paws.) (And, like a raccoon, I would open up all the neighbors' garbage cans and toss their trash around.) So, fine, go ahead, use "hopefully" to mean, "I hope." Just remember that every time you do, a cute little baby seal will die. Even if I have to kill it myself.

If you really want to immobilize me in order to rob me at leisure of my wallet and my iPhone, just make me scream inside my head by using "That begs the question of…" (Not my iPhone, dude, come on; I love my iPhone.) (Take my kid instead.) (Which one? Why, that's like Sophie's choice, but easy: whichever one is costing me the most money.) So let's say you're a brain-dead TV newsmannequin. (Oh, stop crying; it's just hypothetical.) Let's say that one day, back when you were in college, you happened to come out of your decerebrate coma in the middle of a logic class where the professor had been attempting to pound the concept of logical fallacies--specifically, that day, the logical fallacy of "begging the question," meaning, assuming the thing you're supposed to be proving--through your impermeable skull and somehow that phrase wormed its way into what passes for your consciousness, though not its actual meaning. And then, that night, at the kegger at your frathouse, you were chatting up some hot babe and you said, "Well, that begs the question: do you put out?" And she did! So you kept using that phrase, and others heard it, and they started using it in the totally ridiculous and fucktarded way that you had (and many of them also got laid), and then all of you went to work for television news shows, where one can hear your smooth baritone voices intoning, "Well, that begs the question of…" followed by some idiotic and obvious question. Despite the fact that "to beg the question" does not mean and has never meant, "to bring up or lead one to the question of..." You know what else you can hear, if you are inside my head? Me screaming. Again. Some more. The fucking crows just sent me a cease-and-desist. And give me back my fucking iPhone. Don't make me pretend to know karate.

Also, just as a courtesy, the crows would like you to know that they would appreciate it if you--you being the writers of articles, essays and posts in the blogosphere, or blogiverse or blogateria (I'm not up on the latest blogging lingo that all the kids are using) (or should that be blingo?)--would also cease and desist from using the phrase "A Modest Proposal" in your titles. The original "A Modest Proposal," Jonathan Swift's, is the  masterpiece of satire in the English language and remains, to this day, perhaps the most outrageous and fucked-up essay ever written. If you are not writing satire, you may not use that title. Seriously, I will hunt you down. And if you are writing satire, and you use that title, it had better be funnier and…satirier…than Dean Swift's essay. Here, read it, then think carefully before you slap that title on: is your modest proposal funnier and weirder than selling Irish babies for food? Do you have a better sentence than, "I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout?" Because if not, just put the title down and walk away quietly, and no one gets hurt. Except, of course, the Irish babies.

Look, I don't expect you to take pity on me, or the crows in my head. (And we do have that white-chocolate fountain.) There's probably like three people alive who will know or care how you made me scream in my head. (Six, now, including the three people who'll read this essay all the way through.) Plus, you get an iPhone out of the deal, or at least one of my kids. (Dude, really, give me back my iPhone.) So, sure, go ahead, make yourself sound moronic. I couldn't care less. (Not "I could care less," because of how that doesn't even fucking make sense and also makes me scream inside my head some more, again.) (So I guess I lied, and I could care considerably less.) Knock yourself out, you know?

No, really, knock yourself out. That'll make me laugh inside my head. The crows too. Like me, they're kind of mean.