I picture accounting firms to be like Leo Bloom's workplace in The Producers (the musical, not the film) -- rows of green-eye-shaded clones toiling like slaves.
The funniest line in that whole show is when the one black accountant stands and sings, Show Boat-like:
Oh, I debits all de mornin', and I credits all de eb'nin', until dem ledgers be right...
Petty squabbling aside, I would like to note a point of shame, and a point of pride. As to shame, 14 is expressed super badly. As to pride, 14 is expressed super badly in just the right way to prompt a discussion of perlocutionary force.
You know Larry Wall, former linguist, named his language not as a contraction of "Practical Extraction and Reporting Language" as is commonly reported, but rather after the beginning of "perlocution".
And I invoke J.J. Thomson's theory of word-giving: Ogged gave me his word that he said "Nooooo!!", and so he must indemnify me for any losses I suffer by relying on him. So he owes you for the peeled grape and obesiance.
In 14, my use of "redeemed" implies a prior fall from grace. Now unless calling someone "busted" causes them to be busted, I still possesed AOT(hat)W whatever grace was allotted me.
Also, it seems weird to me that one's redemption could be conditioned on the status of a third party's completed act. So even if "redeemed" were the right word, I used it in an entirely funky way.
no no, eb, SB was suddenly switching to Spanish. That comment was really "I took a compliment well, 11." Why SB was addressing SB's claim to have taken the well of compliments to Emerson's comment about accounting will forever remain a mystery.
It might be sexy sexist in the same way that saying that African-Americans are often more athletic than whites is considered racist, I guess. That is, attributing (perhaps wrongly) something I think of as good to a group traditionally identified as a targeted minority. But seriously, of the men and women you know, which grouping is more uncomfortable with compliments? And orders to smile?
You have a complicated relationship to your earnestness. Somewhere I might have posted what is said to have been Golda Meir's comment to Henry Kissinger: "stop being so modest, you're not that great."
If I recall correctly, Golda Meir won the "ugliest world leader" contest on Seinfeld. I think it sometimes went unnoticed how mean that show/characters on it could be.
No, I doubt that's the reason. Nor do I see arguing the merits of one of the greatest shows in history against someone with a mind too fine to appreciate as being very productive.
I don't see the claim which you make in your comment above, Weiner (the one pertaining to the distance between "see" and "as" in washerdreyer's comment, numbered 58 in this thread, that is) as being particularly plausible.
Is this a good place to note that Fametracker--a reliable guide to all that is good and yummy--uses "demur" the way I like, but makes me look dumb by preceding it with "discretely"?
There's a typo in 74, but I think it's sales of office copiers that are digital; or parenthetically, ((digital (office copier)) sales). Seems OK to me.
Not copiers for digital, ie paperless, offices? You might say: why would a paperless office need a copier? But is it not precisely the case that paperless office is one most likely to lack a copier?
Sorry, meant "'digital' and 'sales'". So the "digital" that connects to "sales" brings with it, so to speak, the "office copier" that connects to it. Got it.
Maybe you don't. I just wanted to be extra-extra clear. I bet lots of people would have known what I meant without the clarificatory remark! Lots, I say!
Actually I think it's like what's connected to "sales" is not "digital" but the node (on the second level) that is the ancestor of all of "digital" "office" and "copier." In fact the top-level node has two daughter nodes--one the node at which "sales" is, one which in turn has two daughter nodes, etc. etc. Every word or branch point gets a node, I think.
81: Yeah, that's what I intended by "brings with it," but your explanation is better because it doesn't privilege "digital." Ok, maybe now I've got it.
you have a secretary in your kitchen? you're secretly Bill Gates, aren't you?
Posted by mike d | Link to this comment | 08- 5-05 9:04 AM
I have a secretary in my pocket, I'm secretly Hugh Hefner.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08- 5-05 9:06 AM
I thought you were just happy to see me.
Posted by mike d | Link to this comment | 08- 5-05 9:12 AM
That was pretty mean of your coworker. It's a good thing you have this blog, where that sort of thing doesn't happen.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 08- 5-05 9:13 AM
Sometimes baa outwits me.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08- 5-05 9:15 AM
Did your kitchen secretary yell "PWNED!!"?
Mine sometimes does.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 08- 5-05 9:24 AM
If you didn't let him win occasionally, he wouldn't keep coming back.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 08- 5-05 9:24 AM
Hey, that thing happened again. Where the sidebar says SB beat me, but clearly I beat SB.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 08- 5-05 9:25 AM
SB is posting from 14 seconds in the future...
Posted by mike d | Link to this comment | 08- 5-05 9:29 AM
Actually I cat-sit for the sidebar when it's out of town.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 08- 5-05 9:31 AM
If Ogged had gone into accounting he'd have a less malicious secretary. Accountant firms are entirely humorless.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 08- 5-05 9:44 AM
I picture accounting firms to be like Leo Bloom's workplace in The Producers (the musical, not the film) -- rows of green-eye-shaded clones toiling like slaves.
The funniest line in that whole show is when the one black accountant stands and sings, Show Boat-like:
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 08- 5-05 10:02 AM
Wait, you actually said "Nooooo!!"? Somebody or other is busted.....
It's Standpipe! Sorry.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08- 5-05 12:54 PM
What if he were invoking the movie cliché? Then I would not be busted. I would be redeemed!
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 08- 5-05 1:14 PM
Well maybe Frodo himself was invoking the movie cliché. Didja think of that? Huh? Huh?
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08- 5-05 1:18 PM
Yes I did, and I rejected it as stupnid. That's "stupid" with an "n", which signifies moreness of stupid.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 08- 5-05 1:24 PM
What Joe said.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08- 5-05 1:34 PM
Petty squabbling aside, I would like to note a point of shame, and a point of pride. As to shame, 14 is expressed super badly. As to pride, 14 is expressed super badly in just the right way to prompt a discussion of perlocutionary force.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 08- 5-05 1:42 PM
Then why has it not so prompted?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 08- 5-05 1:49 PM
You know Larry Wall, former linguist, named his language not as a contraction of "Practical Extraction and Reporting Language" as is commonly reported, but rather after the beginning of "perlocution".
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 08- 5-05 1:51 PM
Then why has it not so prompted?
Beats me, St. Anselm.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 08- 5-05 1:54 PM
Wait, you actually said "Nooooo!!"?
Um, well, actually...I said "No no no!" but took a little poetic license with the telling...
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08- 5-05 1:55 PM
Someone owes me a peeled grape and an obeisance to be named later.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 08- 5-05 1:57 PM
Yes, and "ill" in rap means "illocutionary."
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 08- 5-05 1:57 PM
What's wrong with 14?
And I invoke J.J. Thomson's theory of word-giving: Ogged gave me his word that he said "Nooooo!!", and so he must indemnify me for any losses I suffer by relying on him. So he owes you for the peeled grape and obesiance.
(However, SB, you do rock.)
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08- 5-05 2:13 PM
In 14, my use of "redeemed" implies a prior fall from grace. Now unless calling someone "busted" causes them to be busted, I still possesed AOT(hat)W whatever grace was allotted me.
Also, it seems weird to me that one's redemption could be conditioned on the status of a third party's completed act. So even if "redeemed" were the right word, I used it in an entirely funky way.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 08- 5-05 2:41 PM
Oooh, subtle. I guess you wanted "vindicated."
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08- 5-05 2:51 PM
Which rules out the possibility of its being the right word!
I so do not rock. I barely pebble. I pretty much just silt.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 08- 5-05 2:51 PM
"Vindicated", yeah.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 08- 5-05 2:53 PM
Never compliment SB. It causes some kind of meltdown.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08- 5-05 2:54 PM
I took a compliment well, once.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 08- 5-05 2:55 PM
From that well springs a fount of compliments, all of which you have taken, few of which you have taken well.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 08- 5-05 3:15 PM
no no, eb, SB was suddenly switching to Spanish. That comment was really "I took a compliment well, 11." Why SB was addressing SB's claim to have taken the well of compliments to Emerson's comment about accounting will forever remain a mystery.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08- 5-05 3:20 PM
Down Mexico way, we'd call 33 "El Sucko Grande."
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 08- 5-05 3:27 PM
ooseido!
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 08- 5-05 3:34 PM
There is exactly one google hit for "ooseido", and it apparently has to do with a band called "Las Ketchup". That is vigorously awesome.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 08- 5-05 3:47 PM
Never compliment SB. It causes some kind of meltdown.
SB Identity Index says: SB is female.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08- 5-05 3:58 PM
Timbot is sexist, SB is so not female.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08- 5-05 4:00 PM
It might be
sexysexist in the same way that saying that African-Americans are often more athletic than whites is considered racist, I guess. That is, attributing (perhaps wrongly) something I think of as good to a group traditionally identified as a targeted minority. But seriously, of the men and women you know, which grouping is more uncomfortable with compliments? And orders to smile?Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08- 5-05 4:05 PM
I'm not sure I know anyone who takes compliments well.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08- 5-05 4:18 PM
Are not displays of elaborate self-criticism, far from being tokens of sincere modesty, instead the most egregious forms of attention seeking?
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 08- 5-05 4:31 PM
Blah.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 08- 5-05 4:40 PM
You have a complicated relationship to your earnestness. Somewhere I might have posted what is said to have been Golda Meir's comment to Henry Kissinger: "stop being so modest, you're not that great."
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08- 5-05 4:41 PM
I now think SB's a woman and ogged's a girl.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08- 5-05 5:01 PM
Now there are two females in your life.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08- 5-05 5:03 PM
Hermaphrodite.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08- 5-05 5:08 PM
Sorry, two and a half.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08- 5-05 5:09 PM
Also, it seems weird to me that one's redemption could be conditioned on the status of a third party's completed act.
That's because you forget that redemption is first and foremost a financial act.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 08- 5-05 5:40 PM
Ben, your jewishness is showing.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 08- 5-05 7:25 PM
ogged's hobby.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 08- 5-05 7:31 PM
I'm sure it's clever, but I can never tell what rappers are saying.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08- 5-05 7:36 PM
So maybe Ben is the accountant wannabe I've been looking for, and not Ogged, Billy Joel, or Neil Diamond.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 08- 5-05 7:53 PM
Ben is not the accountant you're looking for.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08- 5-05 7:56 PM
The plot thickens.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 08- 5-05 8:17 PM
"stop being so modest, you're not that great."
That's funny! Also sound advice.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 08- 6-05 8:56 AM
If I recall correctly, Golda Meir won the "ugliest world leader" contest on Seinfeld. I think it sometimes went unnoticed how mean that show/characters on it could be.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 08- 6-05 10:16 AM
Probably because it sucked.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 08- 6-05 10:39 AM
No, I doubt that's the reason. Nor do I see arguing the merits of one of the greatest shows in history against someone with a mind too fine to appreciate as being very productive.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 08- 6-05 10:48 AM
a mind too fine to appreciate
More accounting jokes?
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08- 6-05 9:24 PM
There's no accounting for taste.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 08- 6-05 9:49 PM
You may have set a record for distance from "see" to "as," btw.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08- 6-05 9:53 PM
It's difficult to argue about the merits of a show that had none.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 08- 6-05 9:57 PM
I don't see the claim which you make in your comment above, Weiner (the one pertaining to the distance between "see" and "as" in washerdreyer's comment, numbered 58 in this thread, that is) as being particularly plausible.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 08- 6-05 10:20 PM
You're assuming I'm counting distance in words rather than nodes.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08- 6-05 10:24 PM
I still find it implausible.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 08- 6-05 10:27 PM
I just assumed that Matt had knowledge of how long it took w/d to type the sentence.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08- 6-05 10:28 PM
Actually, the goal was to trick Ben into counting the nodes himself. Lord knows I didn't.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08- 6-05 10:30 PM
Ben, only the prudence that befits the proprietor of an online journal of news and criticism such as this one keeps me from yet declaring you pwned!
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08- 6-05 10:32 PM
I don't know what "nodes" means in this context.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 08- 6-05 10:34 PM
Actually, neither do I. What the hell, Weiner? (I was thinking of it like "claims," but you would have just said "claims.")
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08- 6-05 10:36 PM
Nodes in syntactic trees--see exercise 2.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08- 6-05 10:45 PM
Is this a good place to note that Fametracker--a reliable guide to all that is good and yummy--uses "demur" the way I like, but makes me look dumb by preceding it with "discretely"?
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08- 6-05 10:48 PM
Ah, that's what I thought.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 08- 6-05 10:48 PM
re 71: shouldn't "copier" and "sales" and not "digital" and "digital" be connected in exercise 2?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08- 6-05 10:49 PM
There's a typo in 74, but I think it's sales of office copiers that are digital; or parenthetically, ((digital (office copier)) sales). Seems OK to me.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08- 6-05 10:51 PM
Not copiers for digital, ie paperless, offices? You might say: why would a paperless office need a copier? But is it not precisely the case that paperless office is one most likely to lack a copier?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 08- 6-05 10:53 PM
Sorry, meant "'digital' and 'sales'". So the "digital" that connects to "sales" brings with it, so to speak, the "office copier" that connects to it. Got it.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08- 6-05 10:54 PM
76: but we don't say "digital office," which is why you need that "ie."
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08- 6-05 10:56 PM
Maybe you don't. I just wanted to be extra-extra clear. I bet lots of people would have known what I meant without the clarificatory remark! Lots, I say!
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 08- 6-05 10:58 PM
Few, if any, I retort.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08- 6-05 10:59 PM
Actually I think it's like what's connected to "sales" is not "digital" but the node (on the second level) that is the ancestor of all of "digital" "office" and "copier." In fact the top-level node has two daughter nodes--one the node at which "sales" is, one which in turn has two daughter nodes, etc. etc. Every word or branch point gets a node, I think.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08- 6-05 10:59 PM
Wishing doesn't make it so, ogged.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 08- 6-05 11:00 PM
81: Yeah, that's what I intended by "brings with it," but your explanation is better because it doesn't privilege "digital." Ok, maybe now I've got it.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08- 6-05 11:03 PM