I know I haven’t written a lot lately, and I feel badly about that. It isn’t so much that I haven’t had any ideas on what to write about, but it is more that some things are best not documented. Anyways, I have made a couple observations lately that I feel are worth sharing, and by that I mean I feel they are preposterous enough to perpetuate the perception that I’m weird. (My high school AP English teacher would be proud of my use of alliteration).
First of all, let’s tackle the phrase “I could care less”. I could care less that people don’t correctly use the phrase “I couldn’t care less”. See what I did there? I combined the incorrect usage with the correct usage. If you COULD CARE LESS that implies you DO care! Clearly, if you “could care less”, you must care at least enough that there is some room where you could decrease your amount of caring to be less that it currently is. The point is that you are saying you DO care when you are trying to imply that you DON’T care. If you are trying to communicate the sentiment that you don’t care about something, why would you say something that implies you care? It just doesn’t make sense. This is a perfect example of how people regurgitate things they hear without thinking about what they are saying at all.
Really, what people are trying to say is that they COULDN’T care less. Let’s say there is a scale of 0 to 10 where 10 means you care a lot and 0 means you don’t care at all. If you could care less, you would care anywhere from 1 through 10 because there is room to decrease your caring. If you COULDN’T care less, you care 0. You can’t go lower than 0. Therefore, if you don’t care about something, which is really what people are trying to say 99.999% of the time when they use this phrase, then you need to say you COULDN’T CARE LESS. Have I made myself clear? We all understand? Good. You will hear this incorrectly used every day for the rest of your lives and it will now begin to drive you crazy.
Second of all, let stalk about the glass being half full. There is a glass. The glass is filled to the midway point. The common reference is that an optimist sees this glass as being half full while the pessimist sees the glass as being half empty. I have several problems with this. There are simply far too many assumptions. The assumption everyone makes is #1 that I am thirsty and #2 that I want to drink whatever is in the glass. What if I am thirsty and I come across a glass that is half way full but it is full of pee. I have no choice but to drink this glass. I believe in this situation, the glass being half full would be a pessimistic view. I would much rather the glass be half empty. What if I’m not thirsty? Again, if I don’t want to drink the glass, then an optimistic view would be that the glass is half empty. I could go on all day. I’m just saying that whether a glass being half full or half empty can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on the circumstances, but no one ever bothers to clarify what the circumstances are. Going forward, people should provide context. If I’m stranded in the desert and I cross a magical lemonade stand with a half filled glass of lemonade, then the glass being half full is a very optimistic perspective. If I am in the middle of the gallon challenge and just puked for the 10th time but still have to chug the remaining half of the milk jug, then the perception that the jug is half empty is the optimistic perspective. I’m just saying. I’m an optimist. I always see the glass as half empty but I’m never thirsty. I ain’t drinking that cool-aid.
