Aquí les dejo una selección del editorialista Charles Nevin de las horteradas que deberíamos aparcar en 2014. Va en inglés y respeto su edición.
En España yo suprimiría la odiosa muletilla de :"con la que está cayendo" en referencia a la crisis.
Los políticos de todos los colores y sabores se aferran al mantra de que no han hecho lo que prometieron sino lo que era (dolorosamente) necesario para evitar el siniestro total del chiringo ibérico. Y sí, los puñeteros
hobbits también nos amenazan, lo que unido a la ley de interrupción de embarazo, el
gallardonazo contra las mujeres, es como para tirarse de los pelos. En Spain padecemos de todas las modalidades posibles del ridículo semántico. No tenemos identidad nacional. En su lugar se han inventado la "Marca España", con lo que le tocan las noses a una parte de los ciudadanos. Así que somos Spain Limited Co. Al servicio de la banca. Sale el personal importante a "vender España". Hasta en Hollywood montaron un lucido circo de glamour. Si el pobre Cervantes resucitara le da un jamacuco. Sus señorías en el Congreso incurren en una memez persistente, como la sequía de Franco. No les escuchamos citas, ni siquiera bíblicas. Nada de nada, padecemos una profunda inopia intelectual. Y claro, los tatuajes arrasan. Ellos y ellas se decoran el pellejo para imitar a futbolistas y demás ídolos del tinglado. Respecto a la manera de nombrarnos vale lo de tíos/as. Pero no se les ocurra dar semejante tratamiento irrespetuoso a un madero en funciones. Ah y mucho ojo con las presunta faltas de respeto a los símbolos patrios.
1. Baking
For goodness sake, how much more goodness of the bland and wholesome Berry-knows-best can we take? Did Marie Antoinette die in vain?
2. Selfies
Just look at yourself.
3. Politicians' incessant use of the expression 'the right thing to do'
Used as a self-validating moral justification for everything up to and including coalition, invasion, food banks and knowing everything about us, especially what's best. They are, you might say, making right Kants of themselves.
4. Guys
Why are we all called guys now?
5. Hobbits
There's a third one coming, you know. Forgive me if I echo the loud groan of an occasional attender at meetings of the Inklings, the Oxford literary group where Tolkien would read his early drafts: "Oh no, not another fucking elf".
6. The expression 'nailed it'
Employed achingly often to show one is daringly au courant with the demotic.
7. Sanctimonious celebrities
Encouraged by invitations to appear on Newsnight et al into believing their ability to lightly entertain gives their views some intrinsic interest and authority. Thank you Hugh, Steve and the bloke from Friends. See also guest editors. Please make it stop.
8. Payday lenders
I do hope they know their Dante: he came across them in the third ring of the seventh circle of hell. "Their eyes burst with their grief; their hands jerked about their bodies, warding off now the flames and now the burning sands. Dogs in summer bit by gnats or fleas or gadflies, jerking their snouts about, twitching their paws now here, now there, behave no otherwise." And they have spoilt that lovely old word, wonga.
9. Twerking
Ah, yes, the inexorable progress to equality and respect marked by the example and struggles of, among many other redoubtable figures, Austen, Eliot, Fry, Curie, Pankhurst, Davison, Stopes, Greer, Malala, and, now, Cyrus. Twerking marvellous. What's wrong with the Twist?
10. Historians who use the present to describe the past
"Caesar is now faced", "England in the 17th century is a far different place" etc, presumably under the impression that it lends immediacy, accessibility and vitality rather than just being really, really annoying and tense-making.
11. Misusing prepositions
Can we all please stop having "issues around" misusing prepositions in the belief that it also lends immediacy, vitality etc?
12. Tattoos
So indelibly last year, so indelibly the preserve of elderly attention seekers.
13. Curmudgeons, grumps and dystopians who go on like this
Let's put it all behind us and literally start on a journey with a narrative leading to the big society, triumph in Brazil and a country that even welcomes poorer people and badgers. Who knows, by being in this together, and with renewed striving, we might get yet closer to the dream of lovely cupcakes, swimming pools in excavated basements, personal-number-plated Mitsuboyan 4X4 SS Landbruisers, large sofas with forward recliners, box sets of interminable foreign crime programmes and surveillance for all. Are you up for it, guys?
