Language. What a stupid thing for humans to design. Sure, it can be beautiful and breathtakingly powerful… but let us be honest here: for the most part, it feels misused, redundant, stupid and utterly misunderstood.

Take one look at absolutely any social networking site and you’ll see that people just don’t give two hoots about language, where punctuation has been replaced with pointless laughter. Seriously. Have you noticed?

It started with LOL and currently resides in an awkward ‘ahah‘.

For some irritating reason, people are becoming unable to close a sentence with a fullstop. Like a living hashtag, people need to eschew the wondrous variety of words to convey their feelings by simply sticking a laugh on the end of a sentiment to show that they’re not being wholly serious.

“God I hate work ahah”

If you walked into a room and said that, followed by either uproarious or nervous laughter, you’d be rightly booed at and chased out of town under the threat of being beaten with a rubber hose. What that sentence is actually saying is rather clunky (much like this whole article, obviously): ‘God, I hate work… well… I don’t really hate it, but I need to give it some context. Basically, I’m just letting you know, with a laugh, that I have had a lousy day. It isn’t really that funny, granted, but I’m hoping that you don’t find me immensely irritating when I keep mentioning things that are incredibly boring to everyone but me. In fact, I’m boring myself now. Ahaha. Oh God. I hate myself.‘

While ‘ahah’ is a wonderfully succinct way of pointing out all of that awkwardness, it doesn’t make it a good use of language. A better use of it would be to shut up and think of something more interesting to say.

And ‘ahah’ (not to be confused with ‘haha’ which denotes being amused at someone or something) is the cousin of LOL, which is fast becoming the way to end absolutely every sentence ever.

Hipsters use it ironically (and, annoying, have begun to say it out loud, usually when something mildly depressing wanders by their worthless lives) and many use it for… well… everything, sometimes stretching it out to LOOL to portray actual amusement.

Imagine a world where a stand-up comedian is met with an audience actively replacing their laughter with a chorus of literal LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLing. Terrifying.

It goes without saying that language is a living thing, constantly adapting and in flux. Words are added to the lexicon all the time. The English language is especially good at forming and adapting new words, unlike our German cousins who simply stick a load of existing words together to make very, very long compounds like rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz, or ‘beef label regulators’ if you prefer.

And, despite the protestations, it’s this stupid, wilful approach to language that we humans have that makes it so wonderful and rich. While the Queen’s English promotes itself as the truest form of our baffling tongue, the common vernacular is the real word on the street. It is something that has obsessed us for years.

In 1959, the New York Times’ Carl Sandburg said:

“Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands and goes to work.”

So while we complain about the LOLs and the ‘ahah’ which has crept into our communications, instead of simply bemoaning it, we should invent new ways of complaining and protesting.

In short: STFU.

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People who exercise are sickening. People who have gym memberships should be flogged in public. We’d do it but we’d get a thousand stitches trying to catch them and, when we finally did, we’d be too tired to raise our hand to successfully thrash them. Good thing some lazy oaf invented guns.

Exercisers spend so much time running on the spot to attain so body ideal (that they’ll never, ever attain), that they miss the world around them. They run and run, without ever moving forward. Sure, they’ll develop abs… but that is always overshadowed by their pious attitude to the lovely, nourish tubby gut.

And yet, gym bunnies feel like they are maximising their potential. They’re not. They’re performing seals for men in vomit inducing lycra who have hoodwinked a world that we indeed, need a building where aerobics is the name used to cover up what is ostensibly yuppie bulimia.

Man is capable of so much more than mere exercise. Even the first man on the surface of the moon agrees. Neil Armstrong, one of the greatest human beings who ever lived, in an interview, said of exercise:

“I believe that the Good Lord gave us a finite number of heartbeats and I’m damned if I’m going to use up mine running up and down a street.”

Neil Armstrong! There’s a man who has aimlessly plodded around on two completely separate orbit spheres. Not like you. You’ve just run on the spot, trying not to puke and idiotically justifying that little treat you’ll allow yourself when you get home.

All the while, the good folk have caught the bus home, missed out the notion of a stupid gym, tucked into enough cream filled tasties to fell a herd of elephants, opened a bottle of booze, watched 2 films, wriggled their toes in relaxation, written a terrible joke on twitter, been to the pub and back, swallowed a battered sausage, shared a fine cigar, laughed, loved, brawled and lived, lived, LIVED… while Gym Person is still stinking up the place with B.O. and self-worth.

Yet, this projected self-worth is only masking a gigantic self-loathing.

The gym-goer has proscribed to a culture of disgust. In an effort to maintain this body of yours, which will absolutely fail you one day, you spew your energy to attain some imagined ecstasy of absolute fatigue. You are becoming mechanical. A thing designed to occupy a space with grunts and a total thrill of thwarting death just that little bit longer, ’til you realise that, you’ll be down the hospital dying of absolutely nothing, having outlived those who gorged and indulged themselves in whiskey and cake.

And all the while, the bone idle woos your partner with chips while you row your tiny boat on the floor of some fitness factory, filling your ugly jogging bottoms with sweat, unaware that those who have truly lived may repulse you, but they’ve been learning how to fulfil someone’s needs, as opposed to merely looking good with no shirt on. You were too busy working on a specific definition required for your glutes, staring at them in the mirror, to even notice that life was happening around you and your wretched equipment.

You can’t make love to a dumbbell.

Six packs may stimulate the eye on the cover of a glossy magazine, but everyone knows that there’s more fun to be had with a variety pack.

Gyms. Who needs ‘em?

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There’s no questioning Madonna’s ability to sell a record or two is there? There’s not much better than hearing ‘Into The Groove’ on a Friday night. Even some of her more recent work has sold a bucket load.

However, it’s elsewhere in life she seems utterly hopeless. She’s rubbish at having relationships and even worse at making films. That part of her CV doesn’t read well at all.

Still, that’s not stopping her from branching out! Weirdly, Madge and her manager Guy Oseary are in the process of opening of a fitness centre which they plan to go global.

You heard.

Madonna and some bloke are going into the business of health. That means, no doubt, a series of gyms that will be filled with stupid spiritual nonsense as well as machinery which will give you the body of a boiled camel and a more veins than a particularly angry erection.

The Material Girl (we’re legally obliged to call her that at least once in an article) is working away to bring the world Hard Candy Fitness, the first being in Mexico City.

And it’s not some poxy little room with dumbbells and an opened window to let the body odour out. Hell no. This is Madonna – Madonna likes to show off.

Hard Candy will be a 30,000 square foot venue which will open next month and she’ll be on hand for the grand opening, just so everyone can get a really good look at how horrifying overt exercise can look.

It is hoped that the venture will expand internationally with 10 more locations around the world.

Of course, should exercise fail, you could always get some nerd in thick rimmed spectacles to photoshop the living shit out of your face so that everyone thinks you look really great for your age.

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This week’s ups and downs.

Folded:

• Top 50 US All Stars with Idris Elba (Stringer Bell talks hip-hop in what must have been a seriously surreal few hours for The Wire fans)
• Wimbledon has finished (goodbye to the only sport in the world players fall asleep through. Still, kudos to Roger Federer and his gold lamé tracksuit)
• Best phishing scam ever (must have caught millions)
• Local gyms (full of middle aged Dorises, but at least no muscle men gazing lovingly at their own biceps)
• Spotting people on the Underground who don’t use an Oyster card (tourist – we’re going to pick your pocket now)

Creased:

• Funerals (or macabre pop concerts. Whatever)
• When Love Takes Over by David Guetta feat. Kelly Rowland (Cascada wasn’t available)
• Wimbledon has finished (but what will the BBC put on its red button now? The Royle Family Christmas Special? International Tiddlywinks? 24 Hours on the lash with Sophie Raworth?)
• Online voucher codes (‘expired’ – they’re all bloody expired)
• City gyms (even Peter Andre would feel uncomfortable around that many mirrors)