Monday, November 10, 2008

I have a raging semi

I;d like to share something with you. Are you ready? Pay attention.

;

Did you catch that? Here it is again:

;

Do you know what that is? A what? A semicolon? I thought you might say that, but you;re only half right. It also happens to be the Mark of the Beast, QWERTY edition, and it will in all likelihood one day very soon drive me to go completely penguinshit crazy and throw my laptop off the balcony onto the street, followed by everything in this apartment that isn;t nailed down and eventually myself as well, ending this keyboard-induced madness once and for all with the sharp thwack of my skull on the asphalt below.

I;m sorry, did I lose you somewhere? I didn;t mean to get all descriptively suicidal on you (or perhaps suicidally descriptive?) It's just that the fucking (;) key is driving me nuts. Not the punctuation mark itself, mind you, but the key that creates it. I;m actually a huge fan of the semicolon, using them like crazy ever since one of you (I can;t recall who exactly) mentioned your extreme disapproval of their usage. I just hadn;t really thought about them much at all before, and since then I find exciting uses for them all over the place.

That, however, doesn;t include inserting them into contractions in place of an apostrophe, and that;s the rub. I;m not sure if the engineers at Compaq are playing a cruel trick on me by shifting the keys on my keyboard just slightly to the right enough to cause me to hurl myself to a messy death, or maybe the fingers of my right hand have shrunk a fraction of an inch, or possibly I;m just a terribly inaccurate typist with only myself to blame. Whatever the case, whenever my hand stabs out to the right on the keyboard in search of a good, wholesome apostrophe, it comes up with naught but that evil, uninvited semicolon. What;s worse, it;s winking at me.

And I;ve had this computer for over ten months now, thus my impending insanity. I don;t now how I;ve lasted this long, to be honest, since almost every single apostrophe I;ve typed in that time has been preceded by a semicolon and a backspace. It really is monumentally frustrating.

This post has been therapeutic, though. It;s nice to finally have an excuse to just let all those semicolons lay where they fall, rules of punctuation and my own pickiness be damned. It really feels good. Maybe I;ll just go with it from now on. You guys;ll get used to it, right? Hey, if nothing else today;s catharsis may keep me off the balcony just a little while longer.

13 comments:

Courtney said...

Dude. Deep breaths.

Could you spare the other stuff in the apartment before you hurl yourself to your death? Thanks.

Jacob said...

It was probably me, but I don't think my opinion can really be described as "extreme disapproval of their usage." More like apathy toward the punctuation mark's existence.

And your balcony is only like two floors from the ground. You'd only sprain your ankle or throw out your back. Then you'd really want to kill yourself but would be temporarily too hobbled to do anything about it.

Anonymous said...

Are you drunk?

Sid said...

When I went to Italy I had the same problem. They shift all the keys around. I understand your pain.

Julie said...

I;m sorry. I really want to sympathize but I;m watching the news as I read your blog and all the rage I;d built up to tear down the laptop manufacturer has been giggled away as I saw Barak & Michelle Obama arrive at the White House and President-Elect Obama says to President & Mrs. Bush, "You both look autumnal."

Perhaps there;s a lesson here. Perhaps your rage should be giggled away. You have enough time to watch the news all day. They provide ample material for such. Good luck.

The Dutchess of Kickball said...

I feel your pain. One of the dogs popped the . key off my laptop so now whenever I am in need of ending a sentence I have to pound on the empty space until it finally gives in. I've become a fan of the run on sentence even more now.

Noelle said...

Wow, that was hard to read. I remember learning to type, and being completely mystified as to why the ;, of all possible keys had such a prominent position.

Anonymous said...

The D key was broken on my mac for months and I wanted to die. The good news is that I got it fixed. The bad news is that shortly after my mac died altogether and I haven;t had a chance to fix it yet.

Stefanie said...

The semicolon (when used correctly) is my favorite piece of punctuation. I have a necklace with a semicolon on it, actually.

That said, I feel your pain. My work computer has its Delete key in a different place than any other keyboard I've used before, and it took me MONTHS to get used to it. Argh.

Chris said...

It's always the little stuff that pushes us over the edge.

I hear a little marijuana now and then can really balance you out.

arbyn said...

Could you please stop overusing the semicolan? It's my pet peeve.

Or else I will come over to your apartment and throw your stuff over the balcony myself.

Hmm... actually keep doing it. That sounds like fun.

Aaron said...

Goddamn, I loves me some semicolons. Seriously.

The Modern Gal said...

Mickey, it may be time for you to lay off the NaBloPoMo. I think it's having ill effects.