Yet another pet peeve.

swag

noun /swag/  swags, plural An ornamental festoon of flowers, fruit, and greenery - ribbon-tied swags of flowers A carved or painted representation of such a festoon - fine plaster swags A curtain or piece of fabric fastened so as to hang in a drooping curve Money or goods taken by a thief or burglar - garden machinery is the most popular swag A large number, amount, or variety - a swag of events including fleece competitions, poultry and water fowl competitions, and a tractor pull A traveler's or miner's bundle of personal belongings

Yes, I am going to go on another pet peeve tirade.  Yes, I know I am not the grammar queen; more like the run on sentence queen.  This rant is about the proper use of the word "swag".  It's been bugging me for so long now, I finally had to come out with it.  Let me give you a peek into my brain and how it works.  The sentence I will use is (swag being a noun in this instance):

"I love working as a bartender!  I get free swag all the time!"

So you are saying you get free ornamental festoons?  By working as a bartender? Maybe.

You get free droopy curtains? Highly doubtful.

You get free(?) stolen goods from a burglar?! It's a burglar, they are most likely selling the goods.

You get a large number of free? This doesn't even make sense, you get a lot of free what?

You get free bundles of miner's belongings? Maybe if you bartend in a mine.

No, none of the above.  The sentence is in reference to receiving free chotchkies of the alcohol related variety.  Quite frankly unless it is free good booze or a high quality polo; keep the free plastic crap.  I don't need Mardi Gras beads with a plastic shot glass attached to it.  Don't even get me started on the usage of the word "swag" as a verb.  Being a woman I already have to fight gravity for the free 'swag' it intends on blessing me with.  So I definitely would not love working as a bartender if that was the free swag I would get all the time!

Maybe it's something the cool kids say all the time now?  No, according to Urban Dictionary it's not used by the cool kids.  But then again I was asking Urban Dictionary; such a wealth of information that site!  I learned today what pink sock means..... moving on now.  So I dug a little deeper, okay well not really I just searched Google for 'is swag free stuff' and got this.  Turns out I can interchange swag with schwag which just made me punch myself in the face when I tried to use it in a proper sentence.

***Warning do not read this out loud, you may end up with a self inflicted black eye:***

"Today was my first day interning at the local television station and they hooked me up with some much free schwag!"

Is it me?  Am I just not down with the hip lingo of today's youth?  Or is the hip lingo getting stupider?  Maybe I will come to accept it like previous generations came to accept 'cool' and the like?  Or maybe each generation has it's handful of obnoxious words that don't carry on through to the next generation?  I think that may be more what happens.

I guess while I am on the topic I may as well throw 'YOLO' in with the pile of stupid shit people say that I can't stand.  Is it really that hard to say 'carpe diem'?  Do people not know carpe diem?  Or is today's youth just spending more time watching crap television instead of paying attention in school?  Or perhaps the quality of education has gone down?  I nominate all of the above, well not the carpe diem part.  That's easy to say!

Okay I am gonna get off my soapbox before I get hauled off to the retirement home before I am even 35.