Lost Art

I'd like to think that I'm pretty good a t turning a phrase.  My vocabulary is wide and varied, I try not to use the same adverbs or adjectives more than once in a post.  I use spell check.  If I don't know the meaning of a word, I use a dictionary.  I try to be specific in my language (I just used an online dictionary to see if the word diction is actually a word - according to dictionary.com, it is not).

In an article about my favourite baseball team, if you search for Fri. Nov.9, Miami, Toronto, you'll see a quote by Blue Jay's G.M. Alex Anthopolus:

"I prefer the phone, so does Larry," Anthopoulos says. "You can't judge a person's tone in a text or an email."

I don't agree with that statement.  For 2 reasons:

1)  When did texting become the preferred method of communicating million dollar deals!?!

2)  With the properly chosen words, it's possible to convey any emotion to the reader.  I offer the following in illustration (I just used an online theasaurus)

      
Executive Mansion,
Washington, Nov. 21, 1864.

Dear Madam,

I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.
Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,

A. Lincoln

Wow!!  I love the way the verbage flows.  Nobody writes like that any more.  Everybody, at the time that this was written, did!

The problem with texting, which I'm sure we all see, is the brevity in which it resides.  For some reason it has become viewed, as acceptible, the bastrardization of the English language, for the sake of speedily dispatching our spur of the moment missives.  I hate to say it, being a product of that age, but Televison killed the writing star.  It's become easier to watch the news than to read it.  If nobody is reading it then why learn how to write it.

It almost seemed that writing would rebound what with the advent of the internet.  A text and written media Mecca to begin with....ahhh but then You Tube, streaming video.  I'd like to stream something on that!!

When, in whatever form of chat I am using at that instant, I invaribly get left behind in the conversation or my comments get  overlooked because the topic has moved on as I was responding in an intelligent way to a conversation replete with "OMG's" and "u's" (for you).  I refuse to use those "abbreviations" for the grammatically correct choice.

I am to a certain extent a frustrated writer.  I can be very descriptive and concise in my writing.  I believe that had I applied myself while in college, I could have become an investigative writer.  Alas I was young and not imbued with the common sense time has bestowed upon me.

I believe that that succintness is what draws me to this.  This blog, this discourse, this verbal diarrhoea and meanderings of a drug addled mind.  It allows me to put poison pen to paper.  I have long cherished using my words to intimidate.  I can determine who is well read, who is not and who believes he/she is but sadly is unprepared for the battle.  It is with the last of the group in which I take my greatest pleasure.  I am relentless.  Lamentably however it is sometimes lost on those sad few, but I know.