I am officially putting a moratorium on the overuse of rock song lyrics by lazy writers. Offenses will be punishable by something that I haven’t decided upon, but trust me, it will not be pleasant.
On my very first day of college, my Comp 101 teacher (the one who wore the stormtrooper boots) handed us a copy of George Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language.” In it, Orwell warns against using “dying metaphors.” I always took that to mean that you shouldn’t use something that’s already been overused. Hence, today’s rant.
This morning, the Ars Technica blog includes an article called “It’s the end of the ‘Net as we know it (and I feel fine)” by Eric Bangeman. Congratulations, Eric: you are officially the last person to be allowed to use this phrase. (By the way, do a search on your title and you’ll see that it’s been used about 75 times before, at least according to the search engines.)
A quick AltaVista search came up with the following results, all based on the REM song (“It’s The End of the World As We Know It”) in question:
“It’s the end of Windows as we know it, and I feel fine”
“It’s the end of Geekcorps as we know it, and we feel fine”

“It’s The End Of Capitalism As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)”
“It’s the end of Testing as we know it, and I feel fine”
“It’s the end of Spain as we know it (and I feel fine)”
“It’s the end of Lunar as we know it and I feel fine”
“It’s the end of democracy as we know it??…. and I feel fine!”
“It’s the end of baseball as we know it, and I feel fine”
“It’s the end of movies as we know it, and I feel fine”
“It’s the End of QA as We Know It, and I Feel Fine”

Note to each and every one of you:

Knock it off. Right now.

I feel better. And Lisa, you’re welcome.

“It