Perhaps the most malleable of Generation X quips.

Two examples follow:

1. Used in a drawn out fashion: "What...ever" indicates a subtle blend of loathing, disbelief, and haughty disdain.

2. Used in a casual manner (usually paired with a shrug): "Whatever" indicates a mildly apathetic stance on the subject at hand.

A word I can't stand when my friends say, particularly during an argument. Translation: "I disagree with you, but don't want to argue about it any more."

Example:

Person 1: Fight Club is the best book, you should read it.

Person 2: No, I think I'd rather read Girl, Interrupted.

Person 1: Read it, dammit!! Come on!!

Person 2: Whatever!
Smash my teeth until they crumble , coat your hands with shards of white against the clotted slime of my blood.

Pick up a mallet and pound my feet until I can't stand and fall to the red-spattered floor.

Kick my ribs over and over, pick up your black boots again and again and put all your strength into my demise. Once my middle has caved in be sure to dig in your heels and lift my bones up through my broken skin.

Nail my hands to the floor and jump on them so I can hear the tendons creak and bones crack. Jump until they swell and split, unrecognisable to both you and I.

Clutch at my face, dig out my eyeballs, pull until I'm left with two blood filled cavities and you with two unclean orbs in your hands. Stuff them into my gaping mouth, spit into my hollowed sockets, stir the saliva-mess that is a mixture of mangled teeth, clots of blood, broken lips and torn eyes.

Piss into my eye sockets, throw stones and boulders at my head, jump on my torso and saw off my legs. Rotate my arms until they snap, chop at my neck until I'm decapitated, pull my nails from their beds.

Do what you want.

Whatever.

On The Van Zandt

There are times in life when there is never enough Townes Van Zandt, nor enough whiskey to wash down even the most inarticulate feelings raining down on a man. At times I think a zeppelin follows me casting perpetual showers over my head, and as poor as my planning has been as of late, I never seem to have an adequate umbrella to keep the rain out of my eyes. It’s times like these a man like myself looks to the horizon with naïve eyes longing for something better to round the next corner. This, however, is something that rarely happens to fellers of my demeanor and stature. I walk amongst a ragged bunch of lonely sinners too poor to feed themselves off anything other than their own dreams – most of which are far too expansive to ever merit chasing. Tales of depression and skulking mark my blighted halls, or at times, outright lies about the stature of my character and my over(under)whelming resolve.

I know, however, I’m not the only poor soul walking this seemingly desolate road. We have a whole nation of underdogs, low-rates, rascals, po’ folk, lonely rich folk, crack whores, sex slaves, and a whole god damned raggedy bunch of peoples walking the run down streets of this over zealous nation. We all got the Cocaine Blues being weaned off cheap credit, cheap gas, cheap oil, and the whatnot. You won’t find a nation in this big of rut west this side of the pond - of course west is relative when you run it around a globe. We’ve been handed Dead Flowers at each cordial event – a nice thought I suppose, but what’s the point? I suppose it’s only the least of the most disenchanting ideas a person like myself, or anyone else for that matter, can entertain when you think about it. I could have fathered my own mother after falling through some rip in the fabric of space time. Thanks Dr. Michio. After which, our sun expires and the whole of human existence is lost to lack of energy or our universe expands so rapidly we freeze after spreading to far away from any other star in our galaxy while we were too busy feuding over global warming. Or better yet, we the people validate a carbon tax and we pay the politicians to breathe.

Dark notions for dark times, and even darker considering the condensing lip service such ideas have garnered as of recent. I can’t seem to remember when I’ve reconciled with another man’s gut over matters of domestic terrorism, or my next meal for that matter. It is precarious to believe and dangerous to accept there has been no wrong doing - no what-have-you’s or what-will-you’s in decisions made and laws overridden. Maybe it’s time for all of us to give up the game and admit there is some credence yet to ousting the god damned bastards running our rights over with steam rollers while smoking Cuban stogies. I’m unsure of when this actually happened. I just woke up to it all. Perhaps it was sometime after Nixon and Spiro Agnew, but our sense of principle was lost between the sheets of Sega Genesis, MTV, Nirvana, and most likely things that had been brooding well prior to any of these manifestations of wretched complacency. This was a country that was undoubtedly founded on principles worth fighting for. This was something our founding fathers knew, their sons, and their sons, and the sons of men of America until sometime around the early 80’s, when Steve Martin and Martin Short were puking in back alleys and beating up old ladies for change out in Old New York.

Yes we have become the lazy fat - greedy beyond words and constantly craving that which we don’t need. Our gluttony has infected our leaders. They may be in Satan’s company but it takes two to tango, and we are not far from the mouth of cave. Rousseau once said “The engagements which bind us to the social body are obligatory only because they are mutual.” This, it seems to me, is something that we have all forgotten and in the process of we have thrown our own liberties away. We are the general will because we are indivisible, but this too was long forgotten in the sugar high from Pixie Stix and Pop Rocks that we can’t all fess up to our own misgivings. This is something, that if we don’t admit to being part of the problem, we will always feed the problem. Also, fuck the 80’s. Everyone had too much fun back then.

What*ev"er (?), pron.

Anything soever which; the thing or things of any kind; being this or that; of one nature or another; one thing or another; anything that may be; all that; the whole that; all particulars that; -- used both substantively and adjectively.

Whatever fortune stays from his word. Shak.

Whatever Earth, all-bearing mother, yields. Milton.

Whatever be its intrinsic value. J. H. Newman.

Whatever often follows a noun, being used elliptically. "There being no room for any physical discovery whatever" [sc. it may be].

Whately.

 

© Webster 1913.

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