First Blog 2012

The first blog of a new year should be carefully considered, deeply contemplated and skillfully crafted. Lacking the were-with-all to do any of those things, I'll just call this the the second blog and do what I do best which is spit out whatever is on my - some call it a mind but they are not to be trusted - and declare it a blog. I will be blogging a bit more this year as I'm in the process of writing a novel and when I get bogged down in it, a thing that happens with uncommon regularity (uncommon regularity sounds like a phrase from a laxative ad)I find myself not writing at all and that scenario leaves me feeling that time is a wasting. If I'm going to waste time, I might as well choose how to do it and not have it thrust upon me like that. Today's waste of time is as follows.

Football announcers have been annoying me of late. When one comes up with a word or phrase to describe the action that is new, the others snatch it up and make it part of the lexicon as if it were there all along. For instance, when was the last time you heard an announcer say a team used a time out? Teams don't use time outs anymore, they "burn" them. And you might note that players no longer have skills, they have a "skill set." A team's secondary or defensive backfield has become the "back end" or the "back side." I don't know about you but back side conjures something different for me. Here's another that's getting worked to death: Running backs are no longer difficult to tackle, they are "hard to get to the ground." They also rarely turn the corner these days, they first have to make it to the "edge." "Edge being the new end. The one particular word that most drives me to distraction and a refill is the word used to describe a trick play or trickery. It is "trickeration." That's right, "trickeration." You know what, you mindless copycat announcers, I got your "trickeration right here!