From shadows to the stars

No, my dear reader, I am not going to bore you with details of how my personal life has been dulled due to the lack of a sustained love interest. I am quite certain you already know enough people who do that. But if you came here led to believe that I was going to do so and interested to hear what I had to say, I am sorry to disappoint. In fact, I am going to discuss how the lack of a sustained love interest can make life better... albeit for TV shows (sitcoms to be more specific) and their characters (and for the networks too). If you do not possess a reasonable amount of information on sitcoms, I advise you to stop reading on. Almost every sitcom's cast is made up of characters that include various stereotypes. This of course, is understandable. It is much easier to produce situations that can generate laughter by including stereotypes. We see many cultural, gender based and racial stereotypes, mostly - but not exclusively - for the purpose of comic relief. What spoil...

Imagine that you are a surgeon. You have just worked your socks off for twenty straight hours to save someone's life. You come out of the operation theatre, to give the good news to the patient's family. You walk up to them and tell them that their loved one is out of danger.  You expect a shower of praises and hundreds of "thank you" and "you are amazing" and the like. But what do you hear? "Thank God!". Or "I prayed with all my faith to the mighty Lord to spare his/her life". I don't know about you, but if i were the surgeon, I'd be pretty pissed off at this situation. I have just toiled for hours, all to save the life of this person whom i probably wont see ever again. Instead of me getting the credit or admiration, there is this invisible, unavailable bloke who is getting thanked for my hard work. This is my opinion and maybe most of you agree with me. It is okay with me if the patient and his family don't fa...

The word kidnap, for me at least, is a very misleading one. Imagine that you have never heard the word "kidnap" before. When you see the word for the first time, what comes to your mind? I imagine that a kid is taking a nap. One would logically assume that “kid + nap = kidnap”. In truth though, as we know, the word has a completely different and shocking meaning. It means that a kid has been abducted by someone with rather ugly intentions. This made me think. Why the hell would you want a word that is seemingly so innocent to describe such a monstrous activity? Then I struck upon something. If you alter just one letter from the word "kidnap", what you get is a much more accurate and suggestive word. That word of course, is kidnab. Kid is still a kid. But "nab" means "grab or seize something/ someone suddenly, unexpectedly". Therefore, “kid + nab = kidnab”. Don't you agree that kidnab is rather more accurate than kidnap. As I typ...