Kid Tetris

There's a phrase I really dislike: rip, as in requiescat in pace/rest in peace. It's kind of a slightly different kind of thought terminating cliche, but I think it's kind of worse than those thing. Those other things are sort of innocuous, but this I don't like it for a lot of reasons. It says nothing, other than being a crude way of saying "the person is dead." It is often applied equally to the good, the bad, those people know and those they don't.

The alternative to "rip" is simply giving it more thought and expression - instead of reflexively announcing their death, taking the time to think about a person and try to understand their life more.

My sister has rip on her facebook page, about our brother. I haven't told her how much it bugs me, because a) we don't talk about our brother that much (only when we are alone), b) it isn't that big of a deal, c) I kind of understand what it is for: it is overwhelming to think about, and it is just a kind of punctuation mark, d) words are not her thing as much as images.

I just never liked they way "rest in peace" sounds, either. "Rest peacefully" sounds better, but I generally like adverbs. It was once a prayer or a hope or a wish, but now it sounds like a command. I don't even like the translation of the Latin to "may he rest in peace" - it sounds like an apology. T Maybe something you'd say to a kid that won't go to bed and keeps complaining from his room that he isn't tired: "REST IN PEACE DAMMIT"