October 3rd, 2008 by Jemaleddin Cole

If only one good thing can come of this elec­tion, let it be this: let’s agree on a bipar­ti­san basis that “precondition” is a bull­shit word. If I’m will­ing to meet with you only on the basis of you fuflilling cer­tain con­di­tions, when do the pre­con­di­tions kick in? Before the con­di­tions? After? Bullshit.

George Carlin had a sim­i­lar prob­lem with “pre-” any­thing, and I think it’s best to quote him:

“That’s another com­plaint of mine, too much use of this prefix ‘pre-.’ It’s all over the lan­guage now. ‘Pre’ this, ‘pre’ that. ‘Place the turkey in a pre­heated oven’ - it’s ridicu­lous. There are only two states an oven can pos­si­bly exist in, heated or unheated. ‘Preheated’ is a mean­ing­less fuck­ing term. That’s like ‘pre-recorded’ - ‘this pro­gram was pre-recorded,’ well of course it was pre-​recorded, when else you gonna record it, after­wards? That’s the whole pur­pose of record­ing, to do it before­hand! Oth­er­wise it doesn’t really work does it? ‘Pre-existing,’ ‘pre-planning,’ ‘pre-screening,’ you know what I tell these people? ‘Pre-suck my gen­i­tal situation!’ And they seem to under­stand what I’m talk­ing about.”

Wow, do I miss that guy.

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