Etymology: A Cautionary Tale.

You know the type, those kids who've taken to their studies a little too conscientiously but still manage to be 'cool' and 'hip,' the ones who pick you up on your grammar even though you're the guy with a reputation for doing that even at three in the A.M. whilst holding some girl's hair back so she can spew on your shoes. Those guys. Don't think that you can get away with pitching up, late, worse for wear from having stayed up all night watching Blade Runner, The Empire Strikes Back and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (in that order) and get away with it. The first couple of hours may go relatively without hitch, aside from a few failed attempts to turn the conversation to an area more to your comfort. You may miss some literary/cultural references your soaked synapses may have connected with had they been given a fighting (less booze-sodden) chance, but they're still laughing at your anecdotes right? But don't think you've gotten away with it friend. They're on to you. These are the future pillars of society, industry, commerce and ideas. These freaks can bore you with talk of employment law one minute and amaze you with as yet unthought of implications of extented human longevity the next. Don't get caught out now, you were so close! Don't lapse back in to school playground slang that you're not even aware of the last time you used. Yesterday or yesteryear? Don't do it. You did it.

"Yeah, so I pretty much got jipped."

"You got what?"

"Jipped."

"Gypped?"

"Yeah...?"

"You realise how un-PC that is, right?"

"What'chu talkin' 'bout, Willis?"

"The implication was that you got the bum end of the deal because you were dealing with a Gypsy- racial stereotyping what it is -reputed to be wiley, even thieving, bargainers. Hence you were 'Gypped'."

"Err, um no. No I was 'jipped' as in......umm. Well that's not how I understood it as..... a Year 7. In fact I'm not even sure the two are related. If I wrote it down I wouldn't spell it with a 'G'."

"Man, the Gypsies, Romas and their nomadic brethren have been getting a bum deal for thousands of years and you're just adding to their greivances with Western Civilisation with your thoughtless perpetuation of racial stereotype. You call yourself a liberal? You ought to be ashamed."

"Hey look buddy if I was American and enfranchised I'd vote Obama. I'm liberal with a capital 'L'."

"Not if you're spouting B.S. like that."

"Can't we change the subject or something? I like Mountain Dew and Seinfeld.....Who's excited about Star Trek XI?"

Needless to say no one was excited by the next Star Trek picture. I'm still not sure if it was totally fair that I got called up on this. Maybe I got jipped. Or Gypped.

Alex B.