Commonly misused phrases? I could care less!

Picture with me now... a dramatic moment in your favorite reality television show. A contestant is fed up with his opponents, and in a moment of high drama, cutaway to an interview clip where he exclaims, "I could care less what they think of me!"

... and... SCENE!

Last night I was watching my DVR'ed episode of The Amazing Race from Sunday and this exact thing happened. All I wanted to say was, "You're an idiot."

Let's face it, we all stumble over words occasionally. And as much as I wish the real world had a backspace key to clean up those little errors, it doesn't. But consider how useless some of these commonly used words and phrases have become. If I were parsing the phrase--not that I do that, well, not too often anyway--I would take "I could care less" as one big chunk and give it the part of speech "meaningless idiom." Phrases like that are so overused, nobody takes them literally anymore. Certainly if they did they'd be as confused as anyone. "So wait a minute. If you could care less, you must still care some."

Now I'll try to assemble as many misused, useless, or generally redundant phrases as possible:

I literally flew off the handle when I couldn't eat nor sleep forever. Like I eluded to prior, it was a very unique experience, most everybody would agree. Due to this affect, I am a man who will be easily aggravated in the forseeable future.

See how many you can find in there. :)