Ellipsis

I think my favorite thing about this Mark Foley sex scandal is the e-mails. I know the instant messages were a lot of fun for everyone, but now that we have the e-mails, we can see: Congressman Foley is an ellipsis user.

I am in North Carolina.. and it was !00 in New Orleans... wow thats really hot... well do you miss DC... Its raining here but 68 degrees so who can argue..did you have fun at your conference.... what do you want for your birthday coming up...what stuff do you like to do

I do not understand why people write like that. About 25 percent of internet users punctuate everything with an ellipsis. I guess ellipses can, without looking too bad, stand in for a period or a comma, and it might be handy to have them around so you don't get stuck like the ass between the two bales of hay.

But are there people who think that using it for absolutely everything looks good? Surely they can see that normal writing doesn't look like that. This doesn't excuse most other people, but perhaps Congressman Foley just didn't have the time. If you're stupid, I guess it takes a while to think, "semicolon or period? Or is it comma?" I'm willing to accept that he is a busy man, and doesn't have the time to do more than the bare minimum of syntax.

Still, it's funny. I can just imagine him breathing heavily into mouse, pretending it's a telephone receiver, as he types. Almost whispering into it, and the elipses stand for rough, raspy breaths. I don't want to say he was typing with one hand, 'cause that's a dumb joke, but he definitely captured the spirit of molestation with his punctuation style. So watch out, internet people. From now on, if you use an ellipsis at me, I am reporting you to the page board.