Our language has grown lazy. Maybe it’s the internet and the urgency to get your post out there before anyone else comes up with the same thought. The need to be first in the twitter world. Maybe it’s the 140 character limit that has reduced our expressions to jingoistic utterings that have no meaning, repeat – no frigging meaning whatsoever. Someone says something nonsensical and like a swarm of vuvuzela horns the television, cable, and the internet light with a increasingly cacophony of annoying sounds.
As such, I am starting today my small effort to call attention to words, phrases, and other sounds that annoy me to hell. I have chosen for my first offering:
“at the end of the day”
O.K. Whose day? What day? Why must you punctuate your comment always with, “at the end of the day.” Does that make your nonense any more erudite? There is no “end of the day” in a 24/7 (soon to be the subject of another rant) internet world. Are your producers sooo lazy or have they been threatened with dismissal if they can’t fill in a five second spot?
I guess “at the end of the day” takes longer to say than the ubiquitous, “uh.”
Philip Chen - Author/Cartoonist 
Looking forward to this series. “Uh” gets on my nerves worse than anything, since I am on the receiving end of drive thru orders day in and day out. Some days I count how many times in a sentence a person says that one “word” (sound), and I think anything over 2 is a bit excessive. I think I’ve counted up to 12 in one short sentence. It’s enough to make you want to scream.