I’ve been off of my game this week.  I can’t really say for sure what is causing it but I’m playing the victim and placing blame on something or someone.  The mystic inside me blames the last quarter moon dwindling to waning crescent.  The rationalist, blames late night television and wacky things on the internet which prevents me from sleeping.  The hypochondriac is still searching for the disease it could be, encephalitis is the front runner.

It’s just not me, I see this overall — insert German word for global malaise, distate, and discomfort here — unbequhlsscheuen perhaps?  Driving into work today on the expressway, one poor soul suffering from unbequhlsscheuen was having a bad day.  Approaching the accident, there was a broken down mini-van in the far right lane, two cars on the shoulder and what I could gather is meister unbequhlsscheuen’s car – flipped over and perpendicular to the direction of the road.

For now, I’m counting my blessings and offsetting my juu-juu with coffee and cigarettes.

There is an independent organisation (yes they are British) out there that is fighting for a more clear and concise language for all public information. I can understand and appreciate the need and the mission for this group, but fail to see how it applies to me and all the other bloggers out there. I have not been approached by this academic troop, but I was directed there while looking for ways to improve content on blogs.This group claims that “plain English” is “something that the intended audience can read, understand and act upon the first time they read it.” The key words here are ‘intended audience’. To me, blogs are inherently filled with complex insight and aren’t intended for mass consumption. Readers of blogs tend to flock to blogs based upon their interests, regardless of the scope. Furthermore, I think that readers generally understand or are in the process of understanding the point of view and language of the blogger.

Sarah Vowell, noted essayist and self-proclaimed civics nerd, said in the chapter “The Nerd Voice” in her book The Partly Cloudy Patriot:

Geeks tend to be focused on very narrow fields of endeavor. The modern geek has been generally dismissed by society because their passions are viewed as trivial by those who ‘see the big picture’. Geeks understand that the big picture is pixelated and that their high level of contribution in small areas grows the picture. They don’t need to see what everyone else is doing to make their part better.

I may not be a stellar writer, but I do put forth the effort to write about the things that mean something to me. If I happen to use run-on sentences, disjointed metaphors, and overtly erudite language, then so be it. Jargon and gobbledygook are tools for us bloggers to get our point across. If we just simplified our content, we’d be insulting our readers. Ignore plain English… it takes away from your voice.