The Amazing Amazingness of Amazing Stuff

Creation of Man

Amazing.

Did it creep up on you as well?

This overuse of the word “amazing” just sort of … appeared.

Amazing.

Here I was just a moment ago trying to read about the Dodgers, and Don Mattingly wanting more instant replay — they’d lost recently to the Brewers on a questionable call to end the game — and up pops a Weight Watchers advertisement, with Jennifer Hudson allowing as how yeah she enjoyed the first iteration of WW she tried, but their new Points Program is … wait for it … amazing!

The word is effortlessly everywhere, with an emphasis on the word “effortless” because something that easy is surely not going to have any power or weight (no pun on the Points Programs intended) at all.

And lo and behold!

It doesn’t.

I swear to you that within the last week someone at a conference posted some social media saying, essentially, I’m at an amazing place with some amazing people, and I’m having a blast. Amazing. It was not significantly different. Fewer than 140 characters, and 21 of them were that word … times 3.

Amazing.

Here’s where I should be all lathered up about the decline of Western Civilization, but honestly, it’s not a big enough deal. Not amazing, if you will.

Because this too will run its course, and some new depredation will take its place.
Because the suppleness and subtlety of English means it can survive even this.
Because there are dozens of other violations of this sort every single day.

And maybe if we ignore it, the self-promotion tweets that start, “So pumped/jazzed/stoked to have my new blog/book/video out tomorrow. … ” — faux excitement as ways of mentioning something that you’re kinda sorta supposed to mention to “promote” events you’re involved in — will die die die die die.

Though no doubt many super amazing people were involved.

Doesn’t anyone just say thank you anymore?

It’s nothing short of

You know.

Recent

True Romance

Mentioned last week the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, a term used in film to refer to a female — not a woman, mark you, but a girl or perhaps female, depending on the level of [im]maturity — who exists in a story not for herself, more deeply not as a Self, but only for the

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On Real

Learned of late that several people — at least three husbands in young marriages, two with young children, everyone in his 20s — had not only never read The Velveteen Rabbit … but hadn’t heard of it. That sorta explains why it’s public domain and I can link to it here. Also explains why when

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Subjective, Objective

The other day I wrote on a wing and a whim … and misremembering. Or as Prufrock put it, quoting Woman — That is not it at all, That is not what I meant, at all. Nearly nothing I recalled happened in that way. Except of course the recalling. And a bit more. Wasn’t a

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People do the Craziest Things

Adam — did he do what he did for love? Did he say, ‘I will join her; I can’t bear to be without her.’ — is that how it went down? He at after Eve; was it because he’d rather skulk around the earth a sojourner and pilgrim at the mercy of the people in that

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Random

Idea: Inspiration

They asked Newton* how he did it and he’s supposed to have said, I thought about it all the time.  * Yes, it’s Archimedes. Keep reading. Inspiration is for amateurs. Chuck Close You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club. Jack London Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.

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The Simple Art of Murder (Excerpt)

Raymond Chandler In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption. It may be pure tragedy, if it is high tragedy, and it may be pity and irony, and it may be the raucous laughter of the strong man. But down these mean streets a man must go who is not

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Like A Rolling Stone

A totally unscientific survey — texted my brother-in-law on the other coast — shows [my] fears of the death of the ice cream cone have been at least mildly exaggerated … tho looking, literally, a little topsy-turvy. A’course, I’d not heard anything specific; the reports were only in my head because about nothing from this

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Related

I See That Hand

We imagine Thomas even doubted himself. When the other disciples said Christ had risen, this earnest empiricist first said, “unless I see” … then he realized it wasn’t enough. So he demanded to “thrust my hands into His side.” For Thomas, seeing wasn’t believing. But touch … that he had hopes for. * Seeing isn’t

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Inglorious Bastards

This is a post borne of a recent article in Leadership Journal, by a guy who’s been meeting with Ted Haggard. I don’t usually write on stuff like that — it is cheeseball to even appear to piggyback for one’s own benefit on somebody else’s popular post, or to try and capitalize on an au

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Ark Of The Christian Life

Not God is the phrase they use in AA for realizing we are, well … not God. And no, I’m not an alcoholic. No really — I’m not. Not God is also the answer to the question, WTF? What is wrong with people, this place, my parents, and our upbringing, education, choices and decisions, and probably

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