"Whaaaassssuuuuuuup?!"

Remember that phrase? Still trying desperately to forget it? Good luck.

It's one of the most pervasive pieces of pop language in recent memory.

What you might not know, however, is that before it was an advertisement for beer, it was a short film by a young black copywriter in Chicago. The film catalogued the soon-to-be ubiquitous phrase's popularity among filmmaker/copywriter Charles Stone III and his friends for 16 years; Budweiser saw the potential for an advertising hit, bought it, and the rest is pop history.

An excerpt from an interview with the author of Talking The Talk, a new book on pop language, where it comes from, and how it affects our lives.

Fascinating perspective--truly eye-opening; a book worth borrowing from the library.

Don't get me wrong. I might buy it in a different economy where money isn’t so scarce for laborers like me, while so abundant for financiers and intellectual property owners who earn while sitting idle. But, this is not that economy.

This article made it clear to me that even our language - which is supposed to be public property (used to facilitate meaningful exchange of ideas and needs) - is being appropriated by greedy entities, and exploited for its ability to make us believe, if only long enough for us to choose their product over someone else’s, that they are one of us.

They're not.

“[Pop is] often used, regardless of age, race, ethnic background, occupation, region of the country. Pop . . . is EVERYWHERE, [used] to be understood by everybody . . . It connects us to the millions of other people that are saying it” (emphasis added)

Pop, as described, sounds like another medium of exchange that we know and covet -- MONEY-- a currency we all trust and use to exchange our wealth. But, like pop language, money too has been bought up [MONOPOLIZED] by greedy individuals eager to profit from popular use of it.

The monopoly of both pop language and money make a few individuals the prime benefactors of human civilization.

In the case of pop language, marketers exploit our natural desire and need to communicate and express ourselves by attaching commercial value to our words:

“[Pop] connects people . . . [w]e feel more important, and we are in fact more persuasive when we use it."

But, each time we use the words, we further their private interests:

"movie trailer producers . . . were so thankful when [it was used] in the movie, because they knew they could produce their whole ad on [it]”

Similarly, bankers exploit our need for money as a standard with which to exchange the only wealth we have (our labor). Because the money supply is central, by privatizing it and attaching interest to its circulation, we have no choice but to further their interests every time we exchange it among ourselves.

Please, take the author’s advice:

“The more we talk this way and think this way. . . the more we are stuck inside that box.”

Similarly, the more we accept the corrupt dollar as our standard currency for trade, the more we're stuck inside their wage-slave system.

So, “stop racing . . . listen . . . and become more aware.”

Take time to understand why the monopoly of money and knowledge is both diabolical and unjust.

Visit some of the money links in the side bar and together, we can move outside the pyramid economy that is foisted upon us by those on top.