The bane of filler words. I had a girl in a creative writing class, very smart but used "like" for every other word. Didn't sound like a ditz in the slightest but it was still really freakin' annoying. One day the professor got to fed up with it that while she was talking he got up and wrote the word "like" on the board in huge letters. It's amazing how often you say it when you're made aware of it even if you think you don't say it that often. Barack Obama is a notorious filler word user. He sounds like a jug band at times. I remember hearing a report on the news saying that the main reason people use filler words is because they're afraid of silence. People feel that by having something there instead of nothing it sounds better. Yeah, because, um, like, you know, this is, like, uh, so much, um, better, you know?
