If You Can't Say Anything Nice..

Who would have thought that years of incremental insistence on political correctness would ultimately end with our own government directing us to contact Them, please, when anybody you know disagrees with anything They say?

Welcome to the brave new world of SING (Send In a Neighbor's Gripe). Yep. The same drones who were aghast at the terrorism-targeted Patriot Act now bring you sanctioned subdivision snitching.

It's odd to now look back at the age of the PC posse and their addled allies, the revisionist textbook scrubbers, as the "good old days."

It's weird. And it's confusing. Forget being honest: you can't even be accurate anymore.

"Minority" can no longer simply mean 49%. Too cruel, I guess. Better to say "historically underrepresented group," which would also include people with two heads, and honest politicians.

You can't be able-bodied anymore: you're "non-disabled." Nobody is poor: they "live below the poverty line." And the homeless aren't: they're just "people without homes." I guess that would make John McCain homeful.

And you're no longer an "American." You're now a vapid, verbose "person of the United States."

I non-agree. That's just stupid. Excuse me - that's just non-moronically-un-enabled. Maybe the scrubbers get paid by the syllable.

These days, you need a secret agent decoder ring just to idly chat at the water cooler:

"So last night, my non-gender-restricted personal companion and I headed down to the smoke-free ocean-depleting conclave for some boiled diminutive crustaceans, but there was a non-orchestrated atavistic device interaction on the non-shackled public tarmac unit, so we had t..."

"Whoa, Mr. Spock. There was a which? The what unit?"

"Lois and I went out for shrimp, but there was a wreck on the freeway."

We all try to be polite. Well, most of us. Well, some of us. Well, maybe those guys over there. Okay, never mind. But some comments just cry out for a rabid rejoinder. Once, in preparation to host a card game, I visited a local deli, alone, and ordered three platters of food. Eight foot-long sandwiches per platter. Twenty-four linear feet of feast.

"Is that for here or to go?"

I had to be physically restrained.

So, before the SING Troopers start parsing my "fishy" screeds, and I vanish into some subterranean beltway gulag, allow me to share the following anecdote. I may not get another chance.

Once, at work, someone whose job title actually included the word "computer" kept asking me to re-explain how to copy a computer folder. Good manners (well, that and a mortgage) kept me from responding as I might have wished.

But oh, how I wished.

Note: feel free to use any of these potentially bridge-burning responses yourself, as long as you promise to let me turn you in. I'm a bit short this month on my SING quota.

"Can you tell me again how to copy my folder?"

* Sure, it's all right here: www.google.com.

* Just tilt your computer toward the destination folder. All the data will roll into it.

* Easy. Click your heels together three times and say, "A mind is a terrible thing to waste."

* No, but I'll have my 7-year-old niece explain it to you.

* It's all explained in the first sentence on page one of "Computer File Management for Dummies and Other Seriously Clueless People, Like Politicians."

* Copy. You know, like "mimic." Whatever the folder does, you do, too.

* I'm not sure I'll have time to explain it before your ship returns to your home planet.

* Take a photo of the folder, print the photo, and store it under your mattress.

* I'll get back to you. Right now, I'm kinda busy securing Fort McHenry from the British.

* And stop sniffing the 'Paste!'