Wrong Words

The kids have been saying it for ages. I have ignored them. But now grown people, people that have left school for many years, are using this word all the time. It's beginning to piss me off.

Random.

The amount of people that say this word in the wrong place really grates on me. Perfect example.

Last Halloween I went to the supermarket close to my work. I went to buy twelve pumpkins for us to make a display for the window.

On the way back to work I passed some emo kids. One of them said

"That's random" and pointed at my trolley.

NO! It's not random. I had purpose. I went to the supermarket with the sole intention of buying twelve pumpkins. I had then planned to go back to work with them. I organised to use a trolley as I would be unable to carry them all in one trip. So from my point of view this was not random in anyway.

But maybe I am getting ahead of myself. Let's see it from his point of view.

"It's nearly Halloween. This gives me slight justification to cover myself in blood and dress in even more black. Plus if I am really lucky all of the females will dress really slutty and I get to stare at them and pretend to be unhappy about it all. Oh, look a trolley full of pumpkins.....at Halloween. That's not a rare sight to be fair. It'd be like seeing a trolley of Xmas presents at Christmas, but I only have a limited vocabulary. How do I point out this sight to my friends? I've got it! 'That's Random'. Why are the hitting me? Is this random?"

That's how I imagine it anyway.

In all serious it annoys me how everyone keeps labelling things random, because it's easy. I left an item on a persons desk the other day. I just happened to be walking past and got called to do something else, so put it there to come back to. On my way back to this persons desk I saw them holding the item and saying "Look what someone left on my desk. That's a bit random!"

Again. This is not random. I could understand if the item in question was a bulls head. Or perhaps if it was a bag of thirteen human forefingers. But it was a stapler. Was this a random item to find....on a desk.....in an office? The only way I could see this being read as a random act was the fact that the stapler had "Craigs Stapler" written on it and why on Earth would my stapler be on someones desk that is not mine.

Again, I had purpose, I had reasoning for what had happened. This takes away any random aspects. I wasn't walking around without aim carrying any old thing, then blindly walked into a room disorientated and threw the item away with no form of selection of where it was going to end. This would have made the discovery of the stapler on a desk random.

You could try and argue that the discovery of my stapler on someone else desk was random as it was not their stapler, nor my desk. However I would argue that it was more unexpected.

So unless, you want me to rant at you about the misuse of this word I wouldn't start that one.


So listen up world, stop using the word random.

Lest I slap you in the face with a salmon.