Gender bender

I keep wondering from time to time how much more weird common English usage is going to get. In connection with politically correct gender-sensitivity, they started saying chairwoman instead of chairman when women became increasingly more visible in high places. Then they decided it would be more convenient (or egalitarian) to write ‘-person’ instead of ‘man’ and ‘woman’, so we stopped hearing of chairmen and chairwomen, and grew familiar with just plain chairpersons.

Then somebody somewhere may have started wondering what to do about postman and milkman, and even hu-man… would it be okay to write that we are all huperson beings? By and by someone came up with the really brilliant idea to drop the suffix altogether. So these days we hear that Dr. So and so is the Chair of the department of economics or physics in such and such university. Fancy that it should be considered a great step forward to reduce a person to a thing! The chair sits on a chair, I suppose, but which is which? I’m sure a Martian newly introduced to the charms of the English language would tie him- (it?) self up into knots puzzling over it.

And yet we still hear that Congresswoman Ms. X has just given a fiery speech. How long before she is referred to as just plain Congress?

You can't call anybody a moron these days

[A friend sent me the following delicious piece which I want to share with my readers (especially those who enjoyed the post titled ‘The death of Common Sense’). You can do a google search on Stella Awards yourself; I do not vouch for the authenticity of the contents here. Some of them do strain one’s credulity, although God knows I have encountered enough morons in my own life, and I know that silica gel sachets that come with things like cameras carry the warning tag ‘Do not eat’!]

It's time once again to review the winners of the Annual "StellaAwards." The Stella Awards are named after 81 year-old Stella Liebeck, who spilled hot coffee on herself and successfully sued McDonald's (in NM). That case inspired the Stella awards for the most frivolous, ridiculous, successful lawsuits in the United States. Here are this year's winners:

5th Place (tie): Kathleen Robertson of Austin, Texas, was awarded$80,000 by a jury of her peers after breaking her ankle tripping over a toddler who was running inside a furniture store. The owners of the store were understandably surprised at the verdict, considering the misbehaving little toddler was Ms. Robertson's son.

5th Place (tie): 9-year-old Carl Truman of Los Angeles won $74,000 and medical expenses when his neighbor ran over his hand with a Honda Accord. Mr. Truman apparently didn't notice there was someone at the wheel of the car when he was trying to steal his neighbor's hubcaps.

5th Place (tie): Terrence Dickson of Bristol, Pennsylvania, was leaving a house he had just finished robbing by way of the garage. He was not able to get the garage door to go up since the automatic dooropener was malfunctioning. He couldn't re-enter the house because the door connecting the house and garage locked when he pulled it shut.The family was on vacation, and Mr. Dickson found himself locked in the garage for eight days. He subsisted on a case of Pepsi he found, and a large bag of dry dog food. He sued the homeowner's insurance, claiming the situation caused him undue mental anguish. The jury agreed to the tune of $500,000.

4th Place: Jerry Williams of Little Rock, Arkansas, was awarded $14,500 and medical expenses after being bitten on the buttocks by his next door neighbor's beagle. The beagle was on a chain in its owner's fenced yard. The award was less than sought because the jury felt the dog might have been just a little provoked at the time by Mr. Williams who had climbed over the fence into the yard and was shooting it repeatedly with a pellet gun.

3rd Place: A Philadelphia restaurant was ordered to pay Amber Carsonof Lancaster, Pennsylvania $113,500 after she slipped on a soft drink and broke her coccyx (tailbone). The beverage was on the floor because Ms. Carson had thrown it at her boyfriend 30 seconds earlier during an argument.

2nd Place: Kara Walton of Claymont, Delaware, successfully sued the owner of a night club in a neighboring city when she fell from the bathroom window to the floor and knocked out her two front teeth. This occurred while Ms.Walton was trying to sneak through the window in the ladies room to avoid paying the $3.50 cover charge. She was awarded $12,000 and dental expenses.

1st Place: This year's runaway winner was Mrs. Merv Grazinski of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Mrs. Grazinski purchased a brand new 32-foot Winnebago motor home. On her first trip home, (from an OU football game), having driven onto the freeway, she set the cruise control at 70 mph and calmly left the driver's seat to go into the back & make herself a sandwich. Not surprisingly, the RV left the freeway, crashed and overturned. Mrs.Grazinski sued Winnebago for not advising her in the owner's manual that she couldn't actually do this. The jury awarded her $1,750,000 plus a new motor home. The company changed their manuals on the basis of this suit, just in case there were any other complete morons around.