Twenty Ten Chances Ruined

For nine years I've been thinking about ways to change people from the long winded reading of the date Two Thousand and TEN to the much more sensible Twenty Ten and so far no dice. Correcting people in a grammar-nazi fashion has little effect. Using logic "we never say "SNL was funnier in One Thousand Nine Hundred and Ninety" yields much the same. This shouldn't be a problem really, since vibrating an extra syllable on my delicate eardrum does not truly make it bleed, but I can't help but think of Fox News dictating the nation's thoughts every time I hear the venomous version of our years.

It just doesn't make sense. We're a nation of corner cutters. We're lazy and simultaneously in a rush so we stand on escalators which allows us to get there quicker with less effort, the exact same way that Twenty Ten does. But still everyone rambles on just like they're taking the stairs but without the benefit of exercising those forgotten glut muscles. Sure I'd say Two Thousand and Ten if I thought my pants would look better on me over time, but it is not the case.

Finally I realized why I'm not going to win this one woman war against words and the reason is science fiction and nerds. Think back to every sci fi movie that took place in the DISTANT future. Terminator happened in Twenty Twenty-Nine; Red Planet Twenty Fifty; Bladerunner Twenty Nineteen. People hear those dates in sci fi style historical narrative and start thinking next we'll be saying Stardate before perfectly normal days when we're not even in space. I bet if any normy actually started reading this blog the moment their eyes scanned the successive numbers Twenty Ten they immediately imagined a greasy nerd pushing up their glasses and snorting. That's what I've got to compete with, nobody wants to admit that this shortcut is uncool.

My nerd friend said it best however when he explained "Two Thousand Twelve is just a couple of years away, but Twenty Twelve is the future, and that's scary."

Back in the Swing of Things

Over a decade ago I wrote in a journal every night. I got the idea from watching Se7en when the deranged serial killer's wall of identical notebook logs was discovered by the illustrious Brad Pitt and I thought to myself I wanna do that! And collect my crazy thoughts I did. Granted mine weren't about how I was going to murder people in an elaborate biblical display but a teenage girl's rants aren't far off from that. Somewhere in closets and attics are teal spiral bound college ruled notebooks with fanciful titles such as Manifest Destiny erased crudely into the cover paint. And while most of the words are probably trite crap I remember fondly a few times I read aloud to people who encouraged this hobby of writing. But instead of blossoming into the next David Sedaris I discovered the Nerd Crack known as fantasy and sci-fi novels and got distracted for a long, long, long time.

Now I'm back (well mostly, because frankly once you dabble in Nerd Crack, you always dabble) and I'm on a mission. My continual goal since the lowest point in my humanity [remember the India blogs?] is to be a better person, a more interesting person, a kinder person, a healthier person, a more productive and creative person. This blog is the newest portion of that goal. Instead of mindlessly clicking glowing pixels in the latest facebook application, or tweezing missed leg hairs I'm going to write. As some of you know I'm co-writing a novel with my friend Justine that has been in the works for *cough cough 7+years COUGH*. I'm attempting to get addicted to yoga and pilates and I'm studying Spanish along with that whole extra degree in biology with teaching licensure thingy. Even if it takes a melon baller to scoop the inside of my brain for ideas, I figure somewhere in that infinite cavern of wrinkled gray matter a topic can be found.