Oh So Clear

Imagine trying to write without a computer, typewriter, pen, paper, or pencil. You could still do it. You could use a toothbrush loaded with eyeliner or a cigarette dipped in soy sauce. Heck, you could even write without any tools, just using your favorite body part and whatever secretions your squishy human self can provide.

But now imagine trying to write without words.

That’s like trying to fart without a sphincter. You might get something out — but no one’s going to call it communication.

You see, we need words to communicate effectively. We’re not bees — we can’t just wiggle our butts in a circle and expect people to know where the snacks are. We’re verbal creatures. We use words. Words are our way of pointing to ideas, concepts, things, actions, events, or the location of a particularly juicy flower. Words are the essential ingredient we need to beam the contents of one brain to another.

TV gives us new powerful words

Here’s the thing: we’ve got way more words than we actually need. We’ve got extra words.

Take eating, for example. We’ve got gobble, nibble, munch, slurp, devour — all different flavors of eat. But really, they’re just fancy ways of saying “put food in face.”

But do we really need five different words for that? If we already have a word like eat, and a few extras for speed, texture, sound, and desperation level, the rest are just seasoning. We don’t strictly need these extra words:

• Instead of gobble, we could just say eating fast and loud — like your grandma’s dining rules fled your mouth in a panic.
• Instead of nibble, we could just say eating in tiny bits — like a nervous woodland creature trying not to ruin its lipstick.
• Instead of munch, we could just say eating with steady crunching, probably while watching a telenovela.
• Instead of slurp, we could just say eating liquids with suction and the sound of a microphone stuck between your teeth with the volume cranked to eleven.
• Instead of devour, we could just say…