FEELS

Draw a line in the cocaine. This is the moment I exit popular / youth culture. The word is FEELING. Having emotions isn’t funky fresh. I mean, the word vegetables is shortened to veggies, but this is like that process on speed and adrenaline. Don’t get me started on the ISO trend of lockdown. It’s disrespectful to the mental illness community who were experiencing stone cold isolation before and after Covid. Just use normal words around the fundamentals of human psychology so we don’t run the risk of oversimplifying or nullifying them. Feelings aren’t f^%&^g cute, at least not from where I’m cradling them.

DOGGOES / WOOFOS / FUR BABIES

They’re called dogs. We are grown-ups. It’s folksy, it’s hokey, it’s overly familiar and infantilised. It sends a weird message to non-dog worshippers, especially on dating apps. I’m looking at you Dimity, 39.

INTENT

Drinking game: watch the cricket commentary and have a bite of schnapps when Ricky Ponting drops the ‘I bomb.’ You will be morose and plastered by the time Steve Smith has been dismissed for playing some bizarre shot.

LEARNINGS

The language equivalent of a gargoyle who has risen up from the earth to destroy all of mankind. The worst corporate mutation to infect society since the on-sell / thru-connect era of the mid 2000s. Anyone using LEARNINGS should be placed in a vault for retooling. (That said, Max Gawn dropped it on The Front Bar last week and I don’t really fancy taking him anywhere, so free pass for Max if he corners me in a dark alley.)

P.S. The word is LESSONS by the way.
P.P.S. I will accept Learnalilgivinanlovin by Gotye.

COSTINGS

See: LEARNINGS. Sounds like it was made up by a small child.

PRESSURE

The AFL would do well to relieve its own ‘commentary pressure’ by pulling the pin and taking a chill pill on the P pill for a pre-set period. If the word pressure was a commodity it would be extracted from a mine in South America by small children, as it has been well over-mined. It undermines what would be an otherwise quite-boring, low scoring modern game.

STRESS

Pressure is to sports commentary what Stress is to TV journalists. Rent stress, food stress, how about syntax stress? Ever considered that hearing the word STRESS every five minutes is, I don’t know … stressful? Lord, get a thesaurus people. Housing concern, food tumult, climate botheration? Those ‘S’s’ are stirring my hypervigilance. Repeating the same word is just bad writing, he said non-pretentiously.

^_CHIPPIES

See: DOGGOS. Never say this around me or at any other time, unless you still enjoy single digit birthdays. Exception: the musician Wilding because he is English and lovable and I fancy my chances encountering him in a Melbourne laneway.

SUPER

The biggest weed word since ‘like.’ People are ‘super something’ instead of the 36 other choices. Super excited? Super grateful? Why not try uber, ultra, unbelievably or bloody turbo. I am like, super-vulnerable to the innate trashiness of this extremely popular adverb.

Super used to be a point of derision. Remember the impression you’d do of a perky Canadian saying ‘that sounds super!’ Super was going the way of Awesome which raised the ire of wordsmiths for conjuring the tone of an evangelised Christian camp.

Adults inevitably appropriate the language patterns of youth subcultures as society is still beholden to its over valuing of youth. Does social media speed the process up? Or, are you actually young. It’s a pity as Iga Świątek is one of my favourite tennis players and every time she is interviewed she pollutes her unforced error count with a barrage of S***r prefixes.

Am I reading too much into this?
Should I get a doggo intent on iso and enjoy some learnings pressure?

Sounds like feels stress.

WORDS THAT SHOULD MAKE A COMEBACK AND BE USED IN A SENTENCE BY A COMMENTATOR IMMEDIATELY

Skedaddle

Shemozzle

Kerfuffle

Notwithstanding (a supergroup!)

Curtail

Mesmerising

Crestfallen

Sun-dried tomato (no wait, this is my sandwich order.)

Wisp

Prescient

Onomatopoeia

Curmudgeonly

Phosphorescence

Pillock

Inkling

Tessellations

Discombobulate

• August is poetry month and Red Room Poetry have selected me as one of 30 poets who will be featured each day. I’ll be performing some of my poems as part of the stanza extravaganza August 3 at MONA, 2-3pm. It’s hosted by Daniel J Townsend, who is a good egg.
  
  My poem 13 Ways To Drink Chocolate Milk will also be published in the Guardian at some point during August. Follow my online interactive sharing squares to catch my piece as it drops. More info HERE.