from the moderated comments
it’s about time some christian’s get a back bone and kick some leftwing butt!
were will you set in your after life smoking or none smoking.
Jesus is the only true God!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Somethingnyms (Cindy?)
Before the electric guitar, there was only the guitar, and it was acoustic. The “acoustic guitar” name is a retronym. What, if anything, is the term “electric guitar” known as in this situation?
If the acoustic guitar were to disappear forever, would we still call the electric guitar electric? Would those who have never known an acoustic guitar refer to the electric simply as a guitar? If my naming follows the pattern, the answer to both of the latter questions is “yes.” My father’s mother still calls me “David Adam” always, and Mom’s family refers to me as “Davito” even in the absence of the larger, non-Adam David.
singular y’all
Andrew on vacation sends this (not the quote, but a link to the article):
I am writing you because I encountered the perplexing singular y’all while watching trailers for Disney’s newest film, The Princess and the Frog. Now, not being a Southerner I can’t attest to my own usage of “y’all,” but my linguistic intuition is in accord with your Language Log posting “Out of the y’all zone”, namely that y’all is generally not used to address singular individuals, but plural and occasionally implied plurals. […] In the cited trailer, Tiana uses singular y’all three times. Addressing the frog with evident dismay, she says “So what now? I reckon y’all want a kiss.” at 0:32. And then again, at 2:14, when the frog is dismayed that she will not kiss him after her apparent offer, she retorts “I didn’t expect y’all to answer!” In the intervening time, she does refer to him (using apparently less careless or emotionally influenced wording) as standard second person singular “you.” Finally, “Y’all don’t look that much different… but how’d you get way up there?” 3:13. This last example is perhaps the most perplexing of all, as it contains both forms.
For Cindy
How to use an apostrophe.
Thanks, Quips!
cake’s gone rong
Someone who decorates cakes for a living should possess certain skills. Spelling is an important one. For example, success is not quite as sweet when the inscription reads, “Contralulation’s Ronan.” An eye for color helps, too. Piped dark brown swirls are never a good idea on a cake dotted with plastic farm animals. Finally, a few words about customer service: When someone requests that nothing be written on the cake, “NOTHING” should not be written on the cake.
Thank You, Lex A
From the comments. I’m in heaven.
apostrophically speaking
Originally the peak was called “Pike’s Peak”, but in 1891, the newly-formed US Board on Geographic Names recommended against the use of apostrophes in names, so officially the name of the peak does not include an apostrophe. In addition, in 1978 the Colorado state legislature passed a law mandating the use of “Pikes Peak” only. Even so, the old name is often seen.
Looking for a Pen that will Grade Papers
“This is the tragic story of a man who’s essay writes about his events.”
National Punctuation Day
It’s National Punctuation Day today.
To celebrate I’ll be curling up with a hot cup of tea and Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style. I’ll also be making bad jokes like, “Is that a colon in your pants, or…”.
the slammer (for kelsey)
The exclamation mark was introduced into English printing in the 15th century, and was called the “note of admiration” until the mid 17th century. In German orthography, the sign made its first appearance in the Luther Bible in 1797.
The mark was not featured on standard manual typewriters before the 1970s. Instead, one typed a full stop, backspaced, and then typed an apostrophe.
Dear Clusterflock
How do you respond to inconsistency? That is to say, does it bother you or do you welcome it?
dear clusterflock
RBI or RBIs?
Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha!
(via kottke)
Update: ! = dog’s cock.
Y’all seen this?
There are so many ways this is incredibly appalling, not least of which is the failure to understand basic grammar.
The mark of a wordsmith
This is the kind of shit (so to speak) students do at my school by way of homework:
[In Spain,] the mark of a wordsmith, of a cultured man or woman of letters, is the ability to generate, on the fly, original, long, and grammatically correct receptacles in which to void. Though non-native speakers can never hope to attain a true mastery of this particular cultural form, using my handy Java-powered insult generator can at least open their eyes to its endless possibilities.
Here are some particularly juicy examples, in the original and translated:
Me cago en un pasaporte. (I shit on a passport.)
Me cago en todo lo que mira a tu supervisor que aparece a tu padre que come el oceano a mi hermano que navega de tu Dios a esas uvas. (I shit on everything that watches your supervisor who appears before your father who eats the ocean of my brother who sails from your God to those grapes.)
Me cago en las jorobadas hormigas de mi abuela. (I shit on my grandmother’s hunchbacked ants.)
Me cago en los olvidados franceses. (I shit on the forgotten French.)
Never better said.
—Alex Kauffmann, “Many splendored receptacles of poop,” for the class Programming from A to Z, as taught by Adam Parrish
This kind of thing makes it worth getting out of bed for a class that starts at 9:30 a.m.
Cliches I particularly hate
“Getting all one’s ducks in a row”
“It’s got all the bells and whistles”
Chocolate gounache ganache Ganesh
Via chocolatedeities.com, naturally.
The Queens English
England’s second-largest city has decided to drop apostrophes from all its street signs, saying they’re confusing and old-fashioned.
My neologism
I’m pretty sure Deron knows this one, though the rest of you may not:
falk: verb intransitive: to fart while walking, especially when the motion of the buttocks breaks one long fart into a sequence of momentary staccato farts: usage: “I get so embarrassed at the mall with my stepfather. He falks like a Vespa with a tank of bad gas.”: forms of conjugation: falk, falked, falking; noun form: falker
Stoppeth, already
Turns out people don’t know their archaic grammer (the temerity!):
First there was Gail Collins in the New York Times: “I like thinking of next year’s senate as a kind of mythic quest movie,” she wrote, “in which a Democratic hero in need of a stimulus package or a Supreme Court confirmation is told: ‘Go forth and seeketh the Women of Maine.’ ”
The next day, the Sunday Globe’s main page one headline – on a story about the Bruins’ resurgence – was “The icemen returneth.”
My problem is not the archaism but the grammar: These constructions are as off-kilter as “They has a problem” or “We loves Christmas.” That verb ending on seeketh and returneth is not a poetic flourish, but a mark of the third person singular: He, she, or it returneth. Thou return’st, if thou must, but for everyone else it’s just return.
Who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma?
Punctuation Man, that’s who.
(I climbed to Dharamsala, too.)
Cindy, on the Lam?
When I read that “two self-styled vigilantes against typos” had been repairing public signs, I had to give Cindy a hard look. Especially in view of the fact that they had “used a marker to cover an erroneous apostrophe, put the apostrophe in its proper place with white-out and added a comma.”
See the whole story here.
;
From the ridiculously named article, Sex and the semicolon:
Ben McIntyre, writing in the Times of London a couple of months later, added to the collection of semicolon snubbers: Kurt Vonnegut called the marks “transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing.” Hemingway and Chandler and Stephen King, said McIntyre, “wouldn’t be seen dead in a ditch with a semi-colon (though Truman Capote might). Real men, goes the unwritten rule of American punctuation, don’t use semi-colons.”
The new “is the new”
The phrase blank is the new blank as in “chocolate is the new vanilla” or “ugly is the new pretty” has gotten a little tired lately. What is the new is the new?
Ideas: Candelabras oust chandeliers, Beanless burritos usurp the mantle of burritos with beans.
What are your suggestions?
Schoolboys and farting
I was perusing my favourite dictionary this morning while doing 300 crunches to make my abs look awesome, and came across this gem:
randle (răn’dəl) – n. a nonsensical poem recited by Irish schoolboys as an apology for farting at a friend.
What a cool freaking word! So I immediately postponed my crunches and consulted my OED to find out more… but nothing. Nothing more on the internet either—just amateur dictionaries that have the same definition word for word.
RATS! I want to know if the nonsense poem has specific words or any nonsensical uttering will do. Am I allowed to rip one into the face of my good pal and then recite Jabberwocky and everything will be hunky-dory again? Also, why would this randle placate the poor feller who has just been farted upon? It would have to be a pretty awesome poem to keep me from wailing on my assailant.