Make It Stop!

There are a couple of phrases that I hear a lot and they drive me up the wall. They make no sense and I really feel that I need to spread the word and hopefully, little by little, they can be stopped.

The ball is in your court: Meaning that it's your move. I've done my share, said my piece, and now it's your turn. Now, if the move you made was in your court, and now the ball is in my proverbial court, then I guess that means we have two courts and that we are not even playing on the same court and could possibly be playing two completely different games. Does that make a lick of sense? NO! How about, "The ball is in your half of the court" a la tennis or ping pong? Or simply, "It's your move" alluding to chess? What game do you play on two courts? It's ridiculous and it must be stopped. Inevitably, this phrase always comes up in a tense situation, so I can never point out the ridiculosity of that statement. I know it's a figure of speech, but it's a really dumb, nonsensical figure of speech. I hate it. But not as much as I hate....

Day in and day out: AUGH!!! I want to scream every time I hear it and even moreso when I read it! WTF is a DAY OUT???? Night time, you say? OK, then explain to me why people say "week in and week out" or "year in and year out" or any variation of said excrutiating statement!!! It's supposed to mean "all the time without fail" but dammit, don't people hear themselves when they say it? Can I possibly be the only one who has heard it and thought, "That doesn't make any sense." I mean.... for that matter, what's a day in? I mean, no one ever says, "Well, I really only go to work day in, Bob works day out."

Now, I put up with these phrases for a long time because I thought that maybe they were just some sort of regional colloquialisms that I just needed to suck up and deal with. For heavens sakes, I live in Texas and I probably say "fixin to" on a daily basis and don't even realize it. What is that about? But then I started seeing these vile phrases in print. In NATIONAL publications and I just couldn't freakin deal with it any more. I had to vent. If you've gotten this far, you know like, thanks and stuff and maybe you'll want to join my army of colloquialism police? The CPD? I could really use some deputies.