Chances are few people agree with me, but I like the English language. I like the way it breaks its own rules with impunity. I like the way it rolls off the tongue without any unsightly throat-clearing or lisping. It could of course benefit from a few Swahili-like clicks, but then what language couldn't?
I even like the way it's written. Of course there are various foreign locales who have no concept of spelling, and even spell such simple words as humour completely wrong, but this in and of itself has its own special charm. Hinglish is fascinating and American English apparently follows rhyme to the detriment of reason - Fo' Sho' Mofo! But these can be explained away as mere regional oddities, relics of a bygone era when there was no Oxford English Dictionary and spelling was still a contact sport played by dangerous men with stupid haircuts and jackets made especially for smoking.
However sometimes one encounters a perversion of this ancient tongue so hideous, so god-awful that it can only be explained through either example or through analogy. To save the tender eyes of my extremely limited readership, I shall use the ancient pony metaphor.
Imagine that you have raised a pony from birth. You've handfed it carrots and sugarcubes, brushed it every day, plaited ribbons in its mane (if you're so inclined) and kept it in a field replete with green grass, flowers, the occasional rabbit and a white picket fence.
When you come to sell it, the first rider digs his spurs into the pony's side and threshes off the pony's skin with a riding crop. The creature you've invested so much time and love into has been violated with total barbarity.
So it is with language. When I see a 'kthxbye' outside the free trade zone of the mobile phone a shudder of disgust flows through my body like a runaway train through an explosives factory. 'l33t' makes me wish that I could be violently ill on command (purely for dramatic reasons; not for the weight-loss benefits). When such obscenities are sighted on the screen of the computer it is ten times worse, for one sees the horror in the full knowledge that a spellchecker is but a moment away and the abomination did not even care.
Perhaps with time and possibly a 10-step program (as a liberal I don't deserve 12 steps... GTA:SA joke there) I shall be rid of this terrible affliction. Perhaps I shall walk this earth for all eternity, moaning and whining about the decline of the English language like someone who writes indignant letters to the newspaper about unruly school children. If there is a god this shall not come to pass, but to all those who are about to embark upon my path, know ye this: the salary of virtue may lead to heaven, but at least with the wages of sin you get Sundays off. Just say NO to pedantry.