Just another little rant: sunglasses indoors

I'm sitting here studying in the library, on the second floor, and a student walks by with sunglasses on, presumably going outside. A few minutes later, he passes by again, in the same condition. He is not carrying anything in his arms that would prevent him from removing the sunglasses from his face. I am confused. I was under the impression sunglasses were intended to protect your eyes from the sun and bright reflections while outside.

However, I do recognize that there may be some good reasons for wearing sunglasses indoors. Something else sunglasses do is obscure your face, making you harder to be recognized. Thus, they can be very useful to people such as celebrities and criminals. Celebrities, because they don't want to be mobbed by fans everywhere they go. Criminals, because they don't want to get caught and turned in.

But what about when people who are neither of these wear sunglasses indoors? What's the point? Is this some attempt at looking cool? At remaining aloof and disinterested in the affairs of people so unimportant they don't even deserve eye contact? Or is this a way for you to check out girls without them knowing it? I'm going with all of the above. Therefore, the only explanation I have is that these people are tools. Well here's some advice pal: if you want to look good or tough, hit the gym and lose weight. That'll do a lot more for you than those sunglasses.

(One notable exception to this rule is the people in the Matrix. Everyone seems to like wearing sunglasses there, regardless of where they are in the matrix. There's probably some deeper meaning behind this (the movies are quite deep, actually), of which I am not aware. So I'll refrain from holding the matrix people to the same standard...for now.)

I could care less that people could care less

Ok I don't mean to mince words, but this oft-used expression has always bothered me. People use it incorrectly. Typically, people will use this expression to convey the notion that they really don't care about something or other. For example: "I could care less what people think of me." Now what this literally means is that the person does care what people think of him, even if just a tiny amount, because if he didn't care at all, then the correct expression would be "I couldn't care less what people think of me." The latter version correctly expresses the thought that this person cares so little what people think, that he couldn't possibly care less. Try as hard as he might, he just can't do it. It is beyond his capability to care any less than he cares now. This is how the expression should be used. (This of course assumes that it is impossible to have "negative" caring, if that even makes sense. P.S. It doesn't.)

By saying "I could care less," you're actually selling yourself far short of even the less-emphatic "I don't care." This latter expression actually denotes a lesser degree of caring than the incorrect "I could care less," because it uses a more absolute negative than the former: "do not" as opposed to "less." I think it's safe to assume that, absent any modifier, "I don't care" should be properly understood as "I don't care [at all]" as opposed to "I don't care [much] or [a lot]." On the other hand, "I could care less" is a qualified statement from the get-go. The listener is left wondering, "Well, how much less could you care?" If the listener is at all like me, he's probably stopped paying attention to exactly what you could care less about, and instead is now pondering how much less you might care about it. He'll probably snap out of it in a few seconds and then smile and nod, and then change the subject. If you're lucky, he won't lecture you on your poor mastery of idiomatic expressions and the english language.

But wait, you hypocrite! You just used this expression incorrectly in the subject line to this post! Perhaps you are smugly thinking this to yourself. Well look again. By saying "I could care less that people could care less" I am telling you that there is a lot of non-caring I could do about this subject, compared to the caring that is currently going on here. For example, I could care so much less that I wouldn't have had the desire to write this ridiculous blog about it. See how that works?

Anyway, readers of my blog, I implore you to spread the word. The correct expression is as follows:

"I COULDN'T CARE LESS!"