I f#cking hate the word awesome.

And “literally”? Don’t get me f#cking started.

I promise you, “it” is not awesome. Whatever “it” is, It’s not. Unless you are gazing at the Grand Canyon, the Aurora Borealis or Donald Trump’s hair on a windy day, it might be great, cool, excellent, very wow…

… but it is not awesome.

Using the “a” word  makes you sound like Crush, the surfer dude turtle from Finding Nemo; you can picture Crush holding in the pot smoke while squeaking out the word “awesome” to any of the following questions: 

• How are you?
• How was your weekend?
• How was your father’s funeral? (Ok, so maybe the turtle would say, “Bogus” instead. But “bogus” is just the flip side of “awesome.”)

Please understand there are two kinds of people in the world:

I am a crust-eater myself who likes to hang with non crust-eaters because then I can eat theirs.

Ok, we are getting off track.

Let’s try this again. There are two kinds of people in the world: people who use the word “awesome” and those who refuse to. And our numbers seem to dwindling day by day.

I know very smart people — writers!! business types!! school principals!! — who throw around the word “awesome” like pepperoni on pizza. (I really like pizza.)

Do you know when this piece of crap expression got started? Jeff Spicoli, Sean Penn’s character in the movie “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.”

In fact, it was this stoner character, this happy-go-lucky slacker wearing Van sneakers (ok, “trainers”) that inspired teens to check out the film and made the movie a huge rental hit even though it bombed at the cinema.

LOOK HOW STUPID HIS FACE LOOKS. That’s how YOUR face looks when you say the “a” word. Really. Stop. Just stop.

It makes me want to rock my head in my hands and cry inside. Or do this:

I am not alone in the crusade against this horror.

(Marlon woulda been with me on this. He would never have said, “I coulda been an AWESOME contender.” Never.)

Back in 2012, John Tottenham a British poet who lives in Los Angles launched a campaign to stamp out the word awesome. He even created posters and bumper stickers for his movement. He once told the Los Angeles Times that hearing that word is like ‘waving a crucifix in a vampire’s face’. I couldn’t agree more.

He has since moved on to a procrastination project (“The Inertia Variations”) but I feel proud to stand on his shoulders.

And there are others. Type in “the f#cking overuse of the word awesome” and you will get lots of results. So we do have our heroes but we are a fighting a sea of lazy word users. 

I would like to offer an alternative: “staggering.” Try it.

• How are you? Staggering.
• How was your weekend? Staggering.
• How was your father’s funeral? Staggering. (Works better than even “bogus.”)

Staggering. Just try it. Humor me. Oops, I mean, humour me. And take the poll.