Parenting And The Moral Superiority Index

The following is a guest post by my husband. He wishes to state for the record that he does not actually “post”, nor does he “blog”, nor does he type (if he doesn’t have to). He is, however, hilarious, and he dictated the following “post”. Any and all typos are attributable to me.

The Moral Superiority Index. Are you not aware of this metric? This is the metric by which all parents are judged (by other parents). As I explain in my seminal work, “Moral Superiority and You: Why I Am Morally Superior To You”, this is a floating index which, through multi-variant analysis, and a variety of other statistical methods to which I am entirely oblivious, I can pretty much do whatever I want, as long as I compare myself to something you did that is worse. I can thus prove myself morally superior to you. 

Kindly do not look at this graph too closely. My husband has informed me it's not entirely accurate. I was just excited that I figured out how to make a graph on Power Point, but I was too lazy to figure out how to make it do exactly what I wanted. Whatever. It makes me feel smart.

For instance, when I dress my child in clothes that are clearly clashing and too small, I feel like I am doing something wrong. But the moral superiority index dictates that when a picture of your child appears on Facebook equally ill-attired, I am morally superior to you because I did not post a picture of my inappropriately attired child on a public forum, and I did not thus ruin their hopes at the 2027 presidential 

election. I retain moral superiority. 

Example 2: I feed my child sweetened applesauce, while you feed your child unsweetened applesauce. My moral superiority numbers decline. But it was an accident in that I thought I had purchased unsweetened applesauce.  Moral superiority numbers increase somewhat however, not knowing what you are feeding your child causes a dip in the index. Fortunately, due to the fact that my applesauce was organic and yours was…well…not, numbers again return to their pre-applesauce incident level. 

The moral superiority index is a convenient method for assessing one’s parenting abilities relative to others. Unfortunately it does not work as an internal quality control by which I can become a better parent. It only serves to decrease my overall parametric guilt levels (I do not know what parametric means.) So, in our modern world of Twitter, Pinterest, and dependence on oil, what does the Moral Superiority Index do for you? 

Trying To Be Smart? Don't Use These Words

I am certainly not a grammarian, my vocabulary leaves something to be desired, and spell-check saves my butt far more often than I’d like to admit. This, however, does not stop me from judging others for their inadequacies when it comes to the use of the English language.

As a sequel to "Trying To Be Funny? Don't Use These Expressions?", I now present you with “Trying To Be Smart? Don’t Use These Words”.

Unkept- You could maybe have an “unkept” promise, but please promise to say “unkempt” when you are referring to a person’s disheveled appearance.

A “mute” point- The point is not mute. It, in fact, does make a sound. The sound it makes, however, is irrelevant, because the point is “moot”.

Shmozzle- Simply put, this is not a word. However, I often hear people use it to describe a situation that is messed up. Eg. “It was just a big shmozzle”. First of all, the word is “Shlemazel” not “Shmozzle”. It is a Yiddish word used to describe a person who is down on their luck, a failure, and kind of generally pathetic. Thus, a situation cannot be a shlemazel. A person is a shlemazel. George on Seinfeld, for example, was kind of a shlemazel.

Orientate- This is used so much that I think it’s actually become a word (my spell-check thinks it’s a word, so it must be a word, right?) But if you’re a traditionalist like me, you know that you are not getting “orientated”, you are getting “oriented”.  In the same vein, you are not conversating, you are conversing. By the way, “conversate” really isn’t a word. Even spell-check agrees with me.

What are your favourite misused words? (No, I did not just misspell "favourite". I'm Canadian, and that's how we spell it here.)

Trying To Be Funny? Don’t Use These Expressions

For whatever reason, (maybe because I've been spending way too much time reading random crap on the internet when I should have been cooking/cleaning/being generally productive) I have been thinking a lot about overused expressions and words. So, as long as I'm already wasting time, I figured I would compile a list of these overused expressions. I will preface this list my admitting that I use all of these expressions, so I won't judge you if you do too.

1. The word "hilarious" is often used when the more appropriate word would be "funny". See, "hilarious" means "really really funny", but it is frequently used to describe things that are just regular-funny.

        Eg. "Did you just eat that entire box of cookies? That's kind of hilarious."

No. No it's not kind of hilarious because things can't be kind of really really funny. It just doesn't make sense. But then, maybe it's the juxtaposition of "kind of" and "hilarious" that makes it....a little bit hilarious? I don't know, but we're all over the over-the-top words. Awesome. Perfect. Fabulous. It's a big superlative party, and I want to go home.

2. “…Just Saying.” I think people think that if they follow whatever they say with “just saying”, it allows them to say whatever the hell they want (and makes them funny?)

        Eg. “You probably shouldn’t have eaten that entire box of cookies. Just saying.”

Um, no, you are not just saying, you are “just” being a douchebag.

3. “Remember the time when…”  to refer to something that happened 30 seconds ago.

       Eg. Person eats entire box of cookies. Said person then says “Remember the time when I ate an entire
       box of cookies?”

Okay, this joke is seriously overplayed and passee, and it’s not even funny. Remember the time when we used to make Remember-The-Time-When jokes? Well, that time has passed. Move on.

4. “May or may not have” used to mean “did” with a hint of guilt.

        Eg. “I may or may not have eaten the whole box of cookies”.

Yeah, it’s an annoying, overused expression, but I contend it’s still funny, and I may or may not continue to use it.

5. “And by____, I mean _____.”

        Eg. “I ate a few cookies, and by a few, I mean the entire box.”

Yes, we all know this one. We also know its not-so-distant cousin, the strikethrough,

        Eg. "I just ate a whole box of  a few cookies”.

I personally love the strikethrough, and you will likely see me overindulging in its deliciousness from time to time. And cookies too. I was the one who ate the whole box, in case you were wondering.