"…and
I was, like, where did you get that? And he goes ‘I found it’ and stuff and I
was, like, wow."

This I’m overhearing from the young girl in line in
front of me at the grocery store.  I look
at my wife, who gives me the look.  She is silently telling me to keep my mouth
shut.  She knows that I get mightily
perturbed when I hear someone speaking sub-standard English.  But I am more than perturbed; I am sick to my
stomach when I witness scenes such as this, when our mother tongue is so
mutilated that you couldn’t parse the sentence because there is no sentence. 

Contemporary society has so loosened the corsets of
our language that today normal high school graduates slobber on her breasts
with impunity.  What, if anything, are
they teaching these people in high school that leaves them apparently incapable
of verbally constructing a set of words that is complete in itself, containing
a subject and predicate, conveying a concise thought without deteriorating into,
like, mumbo jumbo and stuff. 

Am I being elitist?  Am I expecting too much?  Hell, I
had a woman show up for an interview one day who wanted me to hire her as a
prosecuting attorney.  As soon as I heard
her speech sprinkled with the word like I wrote her off and shortened the interview.

I know the world evolves and things change,
including our language art.  But I wince
in pain when I hear it.  This is not
evolution; it is devolution, degeneration, sloth.  It ought to be at least a misdemeanor!