encouraged me to ask out an officer of the law as he was ticketing illegally-parked cars
That's an odd euphemism.
"Officer of the law" is not what I'm suggesting is a euphemism, and pig would be an exceedingly odd one for what I'm suggesting is being euphemized.
I guess "pig" is really a cacaphonism.
An example of your post titles' being occasionally mispunctuated.
Aren't you going to tell us the rest of the story?
"Encouraged" is the euphemism, because what Megan in fact did was bellow out, "ASK HIM OUT!!" to Ben from the sidewalk.
Good times.
On the contrary: no sucks for me.
I don't understand. Is the part where your interests aren't being taken into account the part where he was a cop, the part where he was working, or the part where he was a man?
Or was he, in fact, ticketing *your* car at the time?
5 may not need an apostrophe, titles being inanimate objects an' all.
Titles' being inanimate objects would not affect their status in the sentence -- the word remains a noun and it should be in the genitive case.
I'm w/ clownaesthesiologist on this one: "interests" needs an apostrophe to mark possession.
In other news of inadequately-punctuated headlines, I see AP is reporting
"Skier Wins Wife Carrying Contest"
Oh--so he won his, while carrying a contest? He won, because his wife carried the contest? Wha?
No--what he won was a wife-carrying contest. I.e., a contest in which a skier skis a course, while carrying his wife. ("His" cause this winner was a guy, and I suspect most of the entrants this year were. One hopes it is open to female skiers carrying their wives, too--I mean, I'm a big proponent of same-sex carriage.)
"won his, while" s/b "won his wife, while"
Rats -- link should point here.
You could read the post title as involving a possessive construction. But you don't have to, surely?
This is a case of my dog being stupid. etc.
v.
This particular case of my dog's being stupid annoyed me.
Both are grammatically OK and only one (at least to my eye) involves a genitive construction.
Ditto with 'my best interests'.
[this was] a case of (my best interest)'s (not being taken into account)
[this was] a case of my (best interests)' (not being taking into account)
[this was] a case of (my best interest not being taken into account)
[this was] a case of (my best interests not being taken into account)
All look fine to me.
[I await grammar pwnage]
Here is the wife-carrying story, with picture -- somehow I was forgetting the time of year and thinking he did the carrying while on his skis, which would have been fun to watch; this is a pretty cool picture anyway.
Sadly, though he was promised "his wife's weight in beer and five times her weight in cash", the actual prize was his wife's weight (110 lbs.) in beer and a cash amount whose denomination in dollars is equal to 5 times her weight in pounds.
The internet tells me that there are roughly 181 pennies to the pound, so the skier might have made out just fine.
ttaM--
yeah, I agree they are all okay. In fact, I think the preference CA and I express for the genetive construction is pretty much a reactionary expression of Victorian peda-something (probably -ntry, maybe -gogy, probably not -philia, though I'm open to argument).
It's a Latinate thing, yo. And on the whole I think usage is trending away from the genitive + gerund construction towards the non-genitive + participle construction.
Still, I do mind the fact that the participial construction focuses the verb on the wrong object. "I hate Mexicans being discriminated against" says that I hate Mexicans (who are then modified in some way).
What I really meant was "I hate Mexicans' being discriminated against", i.e. I hate the being-discriminated-against, the fact of their suffering discrimination, that belongs to Mexicans.
So I think the possessive can still serve a clarifying function, but then against I'm a Victorian peda-whatsits.
Not to hijack the thread or anyhting, but I have an ethical dilemma, which could do with the attention of trained minds here. For reasons which may be obvious, it owuld be injudicious to post this on my own blog
Suppose you are aware of a disreputable story about person x, known you; you find a version of theis story -- entirely anonymised -- on a blog kept by person y, known to both you and x, but not, so far as you know, read by x. What do you do?
the possible courses of action seem to me
1) Do nothing. The story is true, but not attached to any kind of identifying information
2) Contact blogger y and suggest, or demand that they remove the story less some malicious person get hold of it and turn it to x's disadvantage. Add, to taste, a denunciation of their cruelty, heartlesness, voyeurism, etc.
3) ring up x at breakfast and say "Guess what y has written about you?" Then read them the story.
I would be particularly interested in defences of course (3)
http://scienceblogs.com/evolgen/2006/08/phylogeny_friday_25_august_200.php
whoops. God knows how that link got in at the end of the previous comment. Simply a slip of the pasting mouse. Ignore
22 -- that is roughly accurate if you are talking about a pound sterling (actually I think exchange rate right now is about 186¢/1£) but Megapenny says 1000¢ weigh 6.25 lbs., so 1 lb. would be 1000/6.25 or 160 pennies.
Re 15,
I was brung up different, but I cain't find linkproof.
I, too, favor the genitive + gerund construction, but I was taught that it only applied to people, and maybe animals.
24: I don't see any particular ethical obligations on your part -- it all depends on your desired outcome. If you want to start a fight between x and y, go for course 3 (justifications for this course would be (a) simple malice on your part, directed either toward x or y (b) a belief that x trusts y and that y's publication of the story was a betrayal of trust that x should know about). Otherwise, stick with 1. I would say that 2 is a bad idea -- you don't know what x wants, and you don't have the power to make y do anything.
Also, of course, you should link the story here if it's entertaining.
27: Were you taught never to use the apostrophe with inanimate nouns? I've run into that belief and find it completely mystifying, and I'm wondering where it comes from.
24: Is x a good friend, or just an acquaintance? If it were a good friend, I might lean toward something along the lines of 2, maybe just letting y know that the post can be and has been read by people who can identify the characters...and hope that y's conscience will do the rest. (You'd have to do it with a very light touch; more amused than annoyed.) If x isn't a good friend, then yeah, I'd do nothing.
re: 29
Czech sort of solves that 'problem' by having different animate and inanimate genders -- but only for certain masculine nouns. So there are four genders in Czech -- masculine animate, masculine inanimate, feminine, neuter.
masculine inanimate
I've dated guys like that.
masculine inanimate
I've dated guys like that.
Easily objectified, they can be whatever you want to believe them to be for a while.
27: Were you taught never to use the apostrophe with inanimate nouns?
No -- I was taught the inanimate exception only with regard to the genitive gerund thing.
Ogged: x is -- hypothetically -- the questioner's brother in law. Y is someone known slightly to the questioner, with whom went fishing once ages before.
25: nice attempt to cover up your "friend's" unhealthy interest in asexual reproduction. We're on to you.
34: Wow, that's a freakishly specific rule to have to remember. Cruel of an English teacher to inflict it on students.
[this was] a case of my (best interests)' (not being taking into account)
This would mean that my best interests were the subject of the not taking into account, when in fact, they are the object. The post is correctly punctuated; I thought SB was making a joke and saying it should have gone like this: "an example of my best interests, not being taken properly into account"—implying that, since I didn't ask out the cop, I wasn't taking my actual best interests (shoulda done the asking) into account.
38 is wrong. Way wrong. In the quoted sentence, "interests" is understood as the subject of "being taken" which is correct. The voice of the verb in that clause is passive.
By "the quoted sentence" I mean ttaM's, that 38 quotes.
Lizardbreath: story is indeed entertaining, but has been removed.
cool. So you mean like, the subject of a passive verb is like the object of the action of the verb put into the passive voice?
I am stunned.
Seems pretty obvious, but 38 is predicated upon its not being the case.
Yeah, right. Duh. Anyway, I'm still right.
I'm right. Clearly. Ner-ner ner-ner.
Let's talk about U.S. international relations, instead. That'll cheer you right up.
How do you feel about rose petal ice cream?
Check it, peeps:
My finishing the pie means no pie for you.
*Me finishing the pie means no pie for you.
If y'all are on board with "Me finishing the pie", then more power to you and your English n+1. But it doesn't sound fluent to me.
yeah, you see I keep double books on this stuff.
I hear that as a clear violation of Standard Prescriptive English, e.g. what I try to get the freshmen to write.
But I also hear that as completely standard English, i.e. wouldn't surprise me at all to hear it. No mystery about what it means, easy to imagine it coming up in context.
It falls into the category with "ain't", "who dat?", and all sorts of barbarities that are nevertheless very common.
So, I mean, it fails some test or another in my ear. But the test isn't one of fluency.
I'm now having horrible flashbacks to Rhys, my crazy Australian roommate in the Peace Corp, explaining for hours and hours on end that "Come and watch me play" was ungrammatical, and that the relevant thought could only be properly expressed as "Come and watch my playing".
(She also explained that all Americans had good teeth because of our Slavic heritage. When several shiny-toothed Americans piped up with "But I haven't got any Slavic ancestry", she dismissed that by saying that it didn't matter, the Slavic heritage was in the American gene pool.)
38 is the stupidest thing I've ever written. I blame job-related stress.
52 -- so did you end up watching her play, and coming?
53 -- it did seem a little uncharacteristically dopey.
Standpipe, why'djya hafta go and finish all the pie?
No pie, no wiggles.
"38 is the stupidest thing I've ever written. "
I congratulate you. You are either an extremely intelligent writer, or you haven't written much.
Cause in a stupid-contest, man, 38 would be left in the *dust*.
"it didn't matter, the Slavic heritage was in the American gene pool."
This, for instance, does far better in the stupid contest than 38 would ever do.
It's scary, really. What a wacked understanding of genetics. Must be cause she's Australian--all of those criminal genes in the Australian gene pool.
Me lucky charms! "Fluent" was the wrong word. And you're right in every other respect. This concludes another unfortunate episode of My Language Community Can Beat Up Your Language Community.
hey, well, don't be too hard on yourself.
But in fact, no pie for you. Now find those damned mittens!
58: I did always assume that she was descended from someone deported to Australia for criminal insanity. Not that she wasn't a very decent person in many regards, but peculiar as all get-out.
Mittens doesn't live here anymore.
My friend Steve at Language Hat could whip the whole lot of you, without even interrupting his chat about the Sorbian dual.
Hey, Samoan has a dual, as well as an inclusive and exclusive 'We'. Pronouns were great -- you could distinguish in a word between "You and me", "Me and this other guy, not the person I'm talking to", "At least three of us, including the person I'm talking to", and "Me and at least two other people, not including the person I'm talking to." Once you got the hang of it, it was sweet.
English used to have duals--"wit" for we two, "yit" for you two. No verb-forms, though, just pronouns. And no 3rd person dual, oddy enough, which is the opposite of Greek in which there were 3rd person duals but no 1st or 2nd.
52: It was my understanding that Americans don't, as a rule, have good teeth. They do generally spend a lot more on them than others (e.g., UK?). At least, cosmetically. Incorrect?
No, that's about it. But because of those priorities, we have prettier teeth than those from most other nations.
65 -- and isn't kine the dual form of cow?
Nah, that's got to be just a plural. Why would "Do not bind the mouths of the kine that tread the corn" refer to two and only two cows?
(As in "Come on Milhouse and Ralph, don't have kine."
we inherited the priorities, too, from people we're not related to. But they were in the American gene pool, too.
On the other hand: I thought there was a very well-entrenched racist stereotype about *other* peoples having pretty teeth?
Come to think of it, some of that comes from English travelers. You read Captain Cook's accounts of visiting Pacific Islanders where all of the inhabitants are fine-looking and comely, clean of limb and white of teeth. It sounds extraordinary until you realized that this is the view of a guy who has lived in a floating freak-show most of his adult life, surrounded by mutilated, malnourished victims of scurvy who haven't washed in six months. Their average height is 5 foot stunted inches; they have to share their dentures just to chew their ship's biscuit, and they take turns scratching each other's carbuncles and running sores. The ugliest guy in your high school would have been an Adonis next to the typical British sailor of that day.
But that's where we get our stereotypes from! And so it's part of our gene pool! (Man, I can't wait to tell George Allen what's lurking in his American gene pool).
refer to two and only two cows?
you're just not getting the yoke, are you?
Similarly, fun is three rocks.
75: These days, Nancy is forced to do menial tasks by a hottie in a topsy-turvy world where the laws of gravity do not apply.
(Here's a fun Nancy page by Scott McCloud.)
More three -rocks fun, in sort of a post-modern way.
In other news, I interpret this as a sign that the terrorists have already won.
Never before have I seen Sluggo without his hat.
Never before have I seen Sluggo without his hat.
Really? the widely-spaced very short spikes of the hatless Sluggo must have been a common occurence in the Bushmiller era; I've seen it dozens of times.
Never before have I seen Sluggo without his hat.
Then you're in for a treat. A somewhat creepy treat.
81 -- Hm. Bad memory I guess -- it's been a long time since I read Nancy, my memory of Sluggo is him always having the hat on.
MAE -- I'd appreciate it if you stop sending me over to that horrific quasi-crypto-Nancy thingie -- it is giving me palpitations.
I don't remember Nancy's mom, who seems to be related to Veronica.
You don't have to click on the links, Clownae. But out of consideration for your health, I will label any subsequent neo-Nancy links as NSFC. For example:
Nancy meets The Dukes of Hazzard (NSFC)
re: wit, yit, etc.
Scots, Scots English and some US dialects of English have the second person plural, 'youse' which is a bloody useful word.
Useful for when you want to use the 'impersonal' you, too.
Other American dialects have "y'all" in the same meaning.
And "all y'all", which is second-person-plural plus -- say, if you've been referring to part of a group as "y'all" and then want to say something about the group as a whole.
And the painful, possessive form: "all y'all's". [shudders]
It hurts me ears. Not sure exactly why. It's took me a long while to get used to "y'all" (singular), and then these folks went and pluralized it?! Plus, I'm a bastard.
No, U.Va. didn't have it (Library of Congress backup, my foot), and apparently I can't do ILL without actually going in to the library, which means a bike ride across town, and it has been raining. And I've been busy cultivating my excuse tree.
"Y'all" is amazingly flexible and multipurpose, acting in most any grammatical capacity than an enterprising Southerner can wedge it into. But being part of a "y'all" that is asked: "do y'all want to take y'all's chicken with y'all?" is head-explody to the extreme, especially if you're a less-than-two-weeks'-naturalized Texan.
So Ben. What did that girl from your class do this weekend?
You know, when you said you were going to ask me, I thought you meant, like, in private.
I cannot think why you thought that.
Did you ask her, like we practiced?
"All y'all's" is delightful.
Re. Samoan teeth, didn't that have something to do with Europe having started importing sugar about a hundred years before? I feel no defensiveness about American dental care; the prospect of having my own teeth until I die is quite appealling, thank you.
Did you ask her, like we practiced?
No. I asked her what she thought of the reading group we're in. We are of like minds.
Then I told her to lick my love pump, like we practiced, but she begged off.
After you agreed on the reading group, and disagreed about your love pump, what did you say next?
Am I going to have to give you assignments for every class you share with her?
Then we had reached the door of her department (what a difference a phoneme makes!) and I asked her if she would be attending a meeting of a workshop on wednesday and we discussed that for a bit, and I said I'd email her the information. Then we parted ways.
See, once you've asked a cop out, everything else is easy.
It's took me a long while to get used to "y'all" (singular), and then these folks went and pluralized it
After re-reading this, I'm conceding defeat and admitting it doesn't make any sense (plural? 'the fuck?). I agree to abide all y'all's "y'all's".
Would w-lfs-n do better as a cop out or as an out cop?
Oh -- to those who were concerned, this seems like a good time to bring up that i had some excellent rebound sex.
So why do you seem so diminished?
So your hot flirtatious female student dumped you and you immediately started going out with your hot flirtation male student? Or vice versa?
Completely random person I knew from undergrad whom I ran into at a party on Friday. We went on a date last night, etc. Very, very nice guy. Much the thing that was needed.
Odd, that lowercase "i." Let's pretend it didn't happen.
Can we address you as ms. cummings?
115: I guess, technically, uh, yes.
84: I believe that is Nancy's Aunt Fritzi. Nancy doesn't have a mom. Poor Nancy.
Is that the usual thing to say in this context? I can never remember.
Well, that depends on the crowd. You might say, "Details?" but I don't know AWB that well.
So now you're inoculated against your undergrads, right? Or do you need to join a hobbyists' club as well?
You can take kudos, but the rest of us want details.
Details: Smart, extremely nice guy who was in my voice class in college (mentioned here before) flirted with me heavily at a party. I was wary. Went on incredibly nice date, laughed, had a few beers, went home together, stayed up all night having what can only be described as the best first-date sex of all time. Breakfast out, much talk, enjoyment. Very positive and happy.
So we were commiserating with you, our hearts were bleeding for you, and then you solved the problem yourself within two weeks?
Hmph. The girl who cried wolf.
("We" in the sense of "they" of course; I was hoping for a new convert to the no-relationship policy.)
Before she met my father my, mother waited loyally for a fiance who was gone to the war for 5 years (including time in a prison camp). As soon as he was released he married someone else and wrote her an anti-"Dear-John" letter. She cried for three days.
When my sisters heard about it they were indignant. "You waited for five years and only cried for three days?" They thought it should have been at least a month.
Not looking back was one of my mother's strengths.
This is no time for rejoicing, Alameida. A teachable moment has been wasted, merely for the sake of transient hot throbbing gristle.
Not to say that the guy from the voice class was a transient, though we don't know for sure that he wasn't.
For once, I'm actually hoping it's not transient! I appreciate the difficulty of finding good things!
Gristle is transient by nature, no? Or perhaps cyclic.
Cyclic Gristle: Bad name for a band.
Transient w/r/t any particular biological female, sure.
My kudos as well. I hope he's awkward and un-self-aware, at least in some ways. Got some growing to do.
Oh, yes. Very, very awkward. It is charming.
Congrats, A White Bear! Has the newfound nookie served as a release valve w/r/t the class tension?
hot throbbing gristle
This phrase may put me off sex for a few days.
137: Step One in the 12 step program. With Step Twelve you become Gandhi.
136: Indeed, it has. New Guy is a middle-class midwesterner with a beard and second-hand clothing!
the best first-date sex of all time
It should be noted that AWB has never been on a date with me.
Glad to hear your best interests have been taken properly into account, AWB.
Whether fortunately or otherwise, AWB scored in gristle space before our powerful cyber-advice was able to have much effect.
Given that no one dares to "come out", I can never be sure how many no-relationship allies I have here. (Denials will only draw suspicion to the denier, of course. I do have a few covert agents.)
"Gristle is transient by nature, no?"
"Transient w/r/t any particular biological female, sure."
I wonder what the modifier "biological" is doing in there.
I think it's acknowledging that one could be a woman in a non biological sense, and thus be a woman who had permanent gristle. Until you did something about the unsightly gristle.
I thought gristle was mainly a property of like chicken, duck, various other edible fowl. And I guess pork too -- how does it get to be throbbing?
so non-biological women (?=transvestites? ?=wha?) have permanent gristle? (?permanent gristle=wha?)
man am I lost here. As a non-biological woman myself, I'm trying to figure out what's supposed to be my permanent gristle.
I'm happy to concede it's unsightly. I'd just like to figure out where it is.
Wait so is gristle something that people have? I have only ever thought of it as a component of food.
I wonder what the modifier "biological" is doing in there.
New for 2007--Real Doll Plus - now with Gristle™!
I'm happy to concede it's unsightly.
It's only unsightly if you didn't want it there in the first place.
I'd just like to figure out where it is.
Okay, look for the hot, throbbing bits.
(Roughly I thought it meant "components of fleshy food which are not muscle, fat, organs or cartilage" -- i.e. tendons and ligaments mostly. And yeah, obviously people have those too. Just not a connection I had made before, to think of those bits outside their food role.
Clownęsthesiologist has clearly not eaten enough people to speak knowledgeably on the subject. Maybe you should spend a little time lurking, cann00bal.