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I am in awe of minds such as those attached to the shoulders of Bill Buckley, William Safire and James Kilpatrick. Minds simply bursting with knowledge of etymology, grammar and usage. My mind has neither the capacity nor the patience to gather such a mass of arcane but wonderful knowledge about the English language and how to best put it to use.

I may not be a wordsmith, but as a confirmed grouch I sure know what I hear and see and heartily dislike. Today I want to focus on just two little expressions that absolutely drive me out of my mind.

In the beginning, "like" was a fuzzy word at best. Used in the conventional way it carried meanings as diverse as "similar to", "enjoying", "preferring" or "being fond of". Generally speaking, one ought to avoid the overruse of words this flexible, especially when there are so many good subsitutes. But I am not going to chide anyone, myself included, for the overruse of a perfectly good word. That is not my problem with it. At some point in the sixties, which in retrospect appears more and more as the source of all bad things, the word "like" took a wrong turn and has never come back. Who hasn't seen the cliche of the drugged-out hippie, staring glassy-eyed into the ether and muttering "Like, Wow, man!" So began Like's career as an all-purpose place holder for the ignorant and the besotted.

Listen today to a group of teenagers talking and I guarantee you that Like will be the single most used word, often showing up three or four times in a sentence. Traditional placeholders such as "Um" and "Ah" served primarily to keep your mouth moving until the next word was ready for insertion. Like can be used in this way, but is usually just forced into a sentence for absolutely no reason other than because it can be. Even worse, it is becoming an all-purpose replacement for perfectly good words and phrases. An example drawn from a hundred real-life conversations overheard: "And then she's like, 'where'd you get those shoes?'. And then I'm just like 'none of your business'. She's just like, so nosy." So it is that Like has become far more than a mere annoyance. It has become inimical to clarity and effective communication.

And so I have boycotted the offending word. I will not use the word "like" at all, properly or improperly. Indeed, I have gone so far as to instruct my chilren to whack me on the head if they catch me using it. And I won't even tell you what happens to them if I catch them using it. Somewhat similar to tilting at linguistic windmills, but we must do what we can to preserve the language.

My second peeve of the week is "It's about....". "It's about time!" has been a perfectly acceptable colloqialism for Lord (and probably Kilpatrick) knows how long. But lately there has been a disturbing trend in politics and the media (same thing?) to use "It's about..." as an all purpose sentence starter. There must be three or four commercials on the air right now, from major companies, that are all variants of "It's about.....". Picture it: open to a gauzy scene of Grandpa running hand-in-hand with little Johnny through gently swaying green grass under a blue sky. A voiceover comes on: "It's about caring. It's about security. It's about responsibility". And goes on to tout the advantages of Life Insurance Company A.

I have reached that horrible point where I am beginning to yell back at the TV. "WHAT is about? What is IT?". The answer of course, is that It, isn't, at least when It starts a sentence with no prior context. It is an utterly meaningless phrase. It is a fill-in-the-blank phrase. "It" becomes whatever we think it ought to be. I am certain that some clever speechwriter/ copywriter came up with this as a conscious ploy. "If we don't tell them what IT is, they will have to fill in the blank mentally, and then our product/slogan/campaign will be the correct answer for whatever they think IT is!". Give that man a bonus! Then shoot him. Fortunately, I recently discovered a microscopic Mute button on my remote. I don't have to hear them any more. But I know they're still saying "It's about....". And it about makes me crazy.