The Column Formerly Known As The Last Word
June 19, 2002

I’ve decided to change the name of my newsletter. I haven’t decided yet what to change it to,
but there are so many other publications out there in electroland that go by that same title that I
really must find something different.

What I Want for My Birthday

I’m at that age: you know the one. That age where we loiter around the sociopolitical dressing
room, trying on ideologies (hey, does this economic theory make me look fat?). All you older folk
who have survived this age already can shake your heads and smile indulgently, but humor me
anyway. I’m in a somewhat anti-materialistic phase at the moment; I’m trying very hard to sort
through all my stuff and decide how much of it (or how little of it) I really need, which things I
actually want, and which things I hold onto because it hasn’t occurred to me to get rid of them.

My birthday isn’t for another two months: that’s fair notice, right? Those of you who aren’t in the
habit of buying me regularly scheduled presents (the birthday-Christmas cycle) can just ignore the
rest of this. Here’s what I want for my birthday: a little of your time. Please don’t buy me anything.
I want you to write me a letter instead. If you can’t manage a letter (for example, you checked the
box for dyslexia/hand injury/chronic debilitating writer’s block), perhaps you could borrow a book
from me. I find book lending enormously gratifying (especially when the borrower actually reads the
book). And if, in your head, you simply cannot detach “birthday” from “monetary transaction,”
perhaps you could send $20 to a charity of my choosing. Just don’t send me any things. And if
the psychosocial theorists are right, I’ll get over all this soon enough to send you my Christmas
book wishlist.

Sweet Land of Liberty

Freedom is a funny thing. The word is embedded deep in our consciousness - Land of the Free
and Home of the Brave, y’know? We’re proud of our freedom; we’re a free country, free people. Or
that’s the theory. The practical aspect - real, actual freedom - is something most of us would rather
not deal with.

Sure, freedom is a nice thing to think about, polish up and set on the knick-knack shelf, but
actual personal liberty? What? Plan for my own retirement? Contract for my own trash pickup?
Pay the actual, unsubsidized price for my groceries/electricity/ education? I can’t be bothered.

But really those things probably wouldn’t be so bad. So freedom equals responsibility - it
wouldn’t kill us to be a little more responsible for ourselves. It would be healthy, like going to the
gym or giving up smoking. We could probably develop some transitional programs to help: “How to
start a neighborhood grocery co-op in ten easy steps.” “Lose that unwanted government dependency
in time for swimsuit season!” The transition wouldn’t be really difficult, and we’d feel better about
ourselves.

The thing we get really hung up on is the whole concept of liberty [and justice] for all. We
wouldn’t mind too much being free ourselves, but what about the neighbors? I mean, what if the
creepy, fat guy two doors down wants to sunbathe naked on his roof every Thursday? And I
wouldn’t be dangerous to anyone if I owned a Super Magnum Automatic Special, but what about
those other people? I don’t want the wrong people to have those. And what if those other people
don’t want to send their kids to school? And I don’t think my neighbor should be allowed to paint
her house construction-site orange and replace her lawn with astro-turf (what about my property
values?). We are much too afraid of what other people might do with freedom-we want to be able
to control them. I should have freedom, but you shouldn’t.

They’re Extremist Militants (of course they deserve to die!)

I’m a news junkie; a weekend without checking the headlines leaves me with hand tremors and
blurred vision (but that could be because my glasses need cleaning). Oddly enough, the news still
confuses and exasperates me more than it enlightens me. What actually filters into my brain isn’t
the information, but the language-the syntax, the word usage. It is so uniform - across the networks
and down the columns and over the internet. It’s like they’re all reading from the same teleprompter.
Normal people just don’t talk like that.

The latest thing to offend my ears (I never really like what I hear, but like I said, I’m a junkie) is
the unqualified use of the words “extremist” and “militant.” I haven’t discerned any clear criteria for
labeling a person or group “militant” or “extremist.” It seems to be enough just to say that they are.
What bothers me most is that in our current political atmosphere, those terms are instantly
dehumanizing-they seem to justify any action taken against the people so labeled.

I’m not satisfied with this. I don’t want to hear simply that our troops or someone else’s troops
killed three or twelve or twenty extremist militants or militant extremists. I want to know why they
were considered dangerous enough to warrant killing. What was it about them that made them
extremists? Were they militants because they were blowing up crowded cafés or simply because
they possessed weapons?

“Militant” and “extremist” are very subjective descriptions, rather like “sexy” or “devout.” I
mean, a lot of people think John Travolta is sexy, and to me he just looks dough-faced and smarmy,
but we are all still talking about the same person and none of us can really be wrong, because that
sort of thing is subjective. And what about some of those early Catholic saints? Their contemporaries
probably thought they were devout, but by modern standards living for ten years at the top of a
column or hearing voices in your head is mental illness. And what of our own much-mythologized
revolutionary heroes-Washington and Jefferson, the Minutemen and Sons of Liberty? They’d be
militants and extremists by about anybody’s standards.

The mere application of an adjective should not have the power to strip someone of his
humanity. The use of those words implies a lot of breezing-over of the particulars. I’m a news
junkie. I want to know what’s going on, not what the AP wires think about it.

Different From, Frogs, and the Apostrophe
(an amphibious grammar lesson)

Here they are: my two biggest grammatical peeves - and in the same article, too (you might want
to wear your safety goggles).

Every day, from the mouths of all kinds of people - from shrill sidewalk evangelists to well-versed
intellectuals - the same horrible phrase rasps across my eardrums: “different than.” I feel a bit green
just writing about it. The two words simply don’t go together. The appropriate phrase is “different
from.” In order to use the word “than,” I have to be making a value judgment. A frog can be “bigger
than” or “greener than” or “more poisonous than” another frog because a specific, qualitative
difference between the frogs is being pointed out. If I just say that the frogs are different, then they
are “different from” one another. This is because words like “more,” “less,” “bigger,” and “greener”
are comparative adjectives. “Different” is just an adjective, and is used in the same way a host of
similar adjectives (like “divergent” and “distinct”) are used. In fact, “distinct” and “different” are
interchangeable, so if you can’t figure out why “different than” is wrong, try using “distinct” instead
and the dissonance will be easier to hear. If it still sounds right to you to say that one frog is “distinct
than” another frog, then there’s no hope for you and you should never become a newscaster.

The misuse of apostrophes is something that puzzles me more than it irritates me. I really don’t
understand why people find them so confusing. They’re only used in two circumstances - possessives
and contractions - and there’s only one exception: possessive pronouns (its, hers, his, theirs). Even if the
rules were convoluted and vague (like the one for “that” and “which”), it still wouldn’t explain why people
tend to use too many apostrophes instead of simply avoiding them. They pop up on professionally-made
business signs and in otherwise articulate websites. I’ll be happily reading along and then - oof ! - an
apostrophe used for a plural. It’s a literary toe-stubbing.

So here’s a basic guide for apostrophes (not apostrophe’s). Don’t use them for regular plurals: The
two frogs are quite happy without any apostrophes. Do use them when a letter or letters have been dropped
(contractions): “That is” = “That’s,” “you all” = “y’all.” And do use them for possessives: The (singular)
frog’s skin was slimy, like most (plural) frogs’ skins are slimy (now say that over five times). If you can’t
decide whether something needs an apostrophe or not, you’re safer leaving it out because then you can blame
it on your faulty printer cartridge or your inadequate word-processing program. But please don’t just use
them randomly (“oh, an apostrophe would look pretty there!”), or for geometric balance, or for every other
word that ends in “s” (or whatever illogic it is that people are applying to them).

The Swiffer™

For those of you who may not be familiar with it, the Swiffer™ is a plastic rectangle about a foot and a
half long and five inches wide, with a long aluminum handle. By itself, the thing is completely useless, but
wrap a one-use, static-charged Swiffer™ sheet (essentially a glorified dryer sheet) around the rectangular
end, and it is miraculously transformed into . . . a dustmop!

Yes, now you, too can shell out twice the price of a regular dustmop to get yourself a Swiffer™. And you
pay an additional 25 cents for a new Swiffer™ sheet every time you clean your floor with it! This is the best
thing to hit landfills since disposable dishes, proving once again (as all good marketing people know) that
invention is the mother of necessity, not the other way around.

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I, Lilith, am solely irresponsible for the content of this publication. Send your money, marriage proposals,
and comments to Elleason@aol.com . I would also welcome your burning questions for my still-in-the-works
advice column. If you have complaints, pornography, or a super pyramid scheme, feel free to send them to
Georgewbush@whitehouse.gov . ..................... Lilith