Category: Pedantic Ponderings

We begin this year with a revelation… a proclamation… nay a declaration, that the world yet again forces upon us a wrong that must be righted, an injustice that must be justiced! And so I come to you dear readers, to ask for your aid.

We as a people have drifted afar from something that must be re-claimed before it is lost to us for all time. I am of course speaking of the art of combobulation.

We know how to discombobulate, and we certainly retain the ability to recombobulate… But no one combobulates. Candidly, based on how 202o panned out, it is clear to me that our lack of combobulation is a key factor in our societal decline.

I would encourage you to combobulate. Engage in conversation and announce to those you are speaking with that you are very combobulated by their points. Combobulate your friends, your family, and all of those you love. In fact lets make 2021 the year of combobulation.

Why is no one ever described as gruntled? Why have we abandoned such a perfectly serviceable word to the forgotten depths of the Merriam-Webster graveyard?

We have no problem describing people as disgruntled. We can splash it on the front page of our newspapers, we can print it on shirts and scream it through our megaphones… We know what it means, it resonates with power and drives us to fist shaking fury.

But why? If the level of our gruntle has no value to us. If we are not announcing our gruntle and celebrating our gruntle and asking people each day how gruntled they are… Why do we only focus on how disgruntled we are?

Perhaps the answer comes from the wise words of a killer artificial intelligence in a stiff black suit:

Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world. Where none suffered. Where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost. Some believed that we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world. But I believe that as a species, human beings define their reality through misery and suffering. The perfect world would dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from.

Mind you… He didn’t use this opportunity to call us gruntled either… Clearly another flaw in the Matrix.