Comments: Nothing is wrong with nothing

On Aug 10, 2007, at 3:14 PM, BF wrote:

Hello Xymyl:
I have been enjoying very little about your blog. I hesitate to say "nothing" about it, but there is something about your nothingness you may have overlooked. That "is" this: Nothingness has "it's" flaws. "It's" flaws are an unnecessary apostrophe at the least. "Its" is a word which is possessive without adding an apostrophe. So the unneeded punctuation adds something to an otherwise quite clean and featureless nothingness. Please ignore any typos of my own, as they must be construed as nothing of importance. Have a day!
Your whatever,
B. French

To which I responded:

Hi BF,

Glad to see that you are unjoying the blog. Thank you too for your con-structive comments. However, I take exception to the idea that there is anything to my nothingness.

Actually, I can't remember the original reason that I started doing that (by "that", I mean "it's"). Although it probably had something to do with the fact that pure nothing, the REAL nothing, the "best" nothing, isn't. Thus, when referring to nothing "it" isn't a pronoun (which is also why it's in quotes). I believe that the original thought was along the lines that "it" was going to be separated from its "s" by an apostrophe as a way of further defining that the possessive form was merely a literary tool and not in any way an indication that "it" was anything.

Since I have noticed over the years that this device has not necessarily cleared up the issue, I have often thought of changing my "it's"'s. But a coping device I can use is to pretend that having the point obscured means that nothing (nothing being the general comprehension of nothing as a concept) makes sense, thus everything (everything being the literal devices required to explain nothing) makes sense. Any intelligent person can see that this is a feeble way of reasoning, but it seems to be working anyway. Besides, I can't go back to 1995 and edit those old e-mails up to the present day. So, I have mostly chosen to stick with it. It, of course, being my use of "it's"'s.

None of us should take this here mutt language of English too seriously. We should embrace its flaws and capitalize on them, of course. But we should also feel free to make up new words as needed, and change spellings to fit road signs rather than changing the sign width or font size. Put some florp in your snazzle, because your lingo won't have any flavor if it ain't got juice. People may come here for the grammar, but they stay for no good reason.

Thanks for your general disinterest in nothing. Please keep up the good work.

--Xymyl (KON)