There are so many notorious rapes and assaults I’m feeling decimated!

It often seems to me that the routine use of hyperbole and overwrought language is rendering ordinary communication ever more difficult. The word “decimate” once meant killing one in ten. Now it is used to denote massive destruction. “Notorious” once had a negative connotation. More and more I see it used as a synonym for “famous.” This morning I was rudely awakened to learn that Google saw fit to feature a Google Doodle to celebrate the birthday of the father of Origami. Not that there’s anything wrong with Origami. I love Origami. But what makes Akira Yoshizawa so much more important than Alexander Graham Bell? I could get all snarky about the reasons, but I want to stick to the annnoying topic of butchered language. For reasons that escape me, Origami had been described as “infamous art“:

This article was amended on 14 March 2012 because the original described origami as an “infamous art”, when what was meant was a famous art form.

Well, at least they amended the piece and at least they didn’t say notorious art, but I see that sort of thing a lot, and it slows me down, because I have to pause and wonder what is meant, and then I get all distracted.

If that wasn’t bad enough, I soon read about Courtney Love’s claim that her deceased husband Kurt Cobain is being RAPED by Kermit the Frog. So I read beyond the headline, and I learned that she is not really claiming that HE was raped, but that his memory was raped. (Can a memory be raped?)

Courtney Love believes Kermit the Frog and his gang of Muppet friends “raped” the memory of her late husband Kurt Cobain — by bastardizing Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” in their 2011 movie … without her permission.

Courtney says she has the absolute power to approve or nix the use of Kurt’s music for commercial purposes, and she never gave the OK for the 2 companies to use the song for the 2011 Muppets movie.

But there’s another side to this … We’re told Courtney sold off half of her rights to Kurt’s music to a company called Primary Wave Music. And there’s more … Courtney also gave Primary Wave the exclusive right to distribute Nirvana’s entire catalog.

Which means that the underlying claim may be as phony as her word choice. It also seems fair to point out that her misuse of the term may be in retaliation for an earlier claim by her manager accusing her of raping him.

What’s next? Will Sandra Fluke claim that Rush Limbaugh raped her?

Anyway, as I tried to recover from the rape allegations, I decided to switch to purely local Ann Arbor news. No relief there.

A hike in the price of University of Michigan basketball tickets is being called an “assault.” Here’s the headline:

New U-M basketball ticket fees are an assault on the most loyal and long-time fans

Well, if higher basketball tickets are an assault, then what are we to call Ann Arbor’s property taxes? Highway robbery? (No, that’s what the highwaymen do when they pull people over for speeding.)

Trying to make sense out of anything is murder.