Random thoughts from my day

[active_apathy]

Or, rather, from a couple of hours wasted in front of the TV.

I would be far, far more amused by Corporate Idol (name borrowed from ryttu3k) if there were more fun songs used. Just a snippet like "- with a giraffe, if you stand on a stool. But the hedgehog -" would be more than enough to make an entire evening's entertainment.

Or, for that matter, singing a well-known tune but substituting lyrics from an unrelated book.

---

What somewhat irritates me is poor style in advertisement. Consider:
Joy. Grief. Fear. Pride. Wonder. Love. Surprised. Amused. Excitement. Passion. Entertainment.
(snipped from an irritating pay TV ad)

We get:
Noun, noun, noun. Nounitty-noun, noun. OMGWTFAdjectives. Noun, noun, noun.

It's not like the noun forms of the words in question are hard to find, or particularly long. In fact, you pass it on the way to 'surprised' without so much as a second glance or, in my case, a forlorn wave to a part of speech that'd make the ad far, far easier to ignore.

Even so, this irritates me less than the fashinable advertising concept of thorougly abusing English when it comes to ads involving teh childrens. No, really. Like the way that 'baby' has suddenly managed to become an uncountable noun. It comes with no determiners - it isn't a baby, the baby, your baby, their baby, one baby, no baby or every baby. Now, the way I see it, there's really only one way to turn 'baby' into an uncountable noun.



Worse still, months ago a supposedly edjukaytede group with what may well be a wondrous set of preventive measures for infant death had their entire message lost to me when they decided that something along the lines of 'sleep baby on its side' was somehow sensible. Welcome, dear readers, to the wonderful world of intransitive verbs. Intransitive verbs don't take objects, nor do they take kindly to that kind of nonsense. Better yet, 'sleep baby' on its own qualifies as a fun little imperative, and erodes the foundations of what little sense was there.

Some folk see dead people. I hear the screams of pain from these poor, abused words, and wish that there was some way to help them; to save them from people who should by all rights know better. This all reminds me of some time ago, while I was learning German. We were doing some rather boring little 'fill-in-the-words' thing in pairs, which almost turned into a little 'stab-partner-with-pen' thing. With a few left, I basically went through and scribbled them into place based on endings to assemble grammatically-correct sentences. My incredibly apt partner then said, "How do you know they go there?"

"Simple," I replied. "The endings fit to make proper sentences. It's just grammar."

"I don't care about grammar. I just want to learn the language," she said, in a mildly offended tone; seemingly upset that I would suggest that making yourself understandable is the most important consideration when learning a language.

---

In other news, my heater occasionally stops working. I think it may be having a problem with gas pressure, since everything else on it seems to work perfectly well and it only really cuts out at night. I'd be tempted to call it a silly heater, but L Ron Cruise would charge in to fill it with vitamins while protesting that he knows the entire history of electronics and that it's a quack science.

---

Lastly, I have a new icon. You might have seen it. This is here because:
a) I wanted a QC icon.
b) It's a rather versatile expression.
c) I quite enjoy Jeph's style of drawing.
d) I like the hat.

And that's about it for now. See? I told you they were random thoughts.

Comments

[silmaril.livejournal.com]

Well, well, well, say "Hi" to metaquotes again. I think you have a passing acquaintance, yes?

I would almost enjoy seeing L Ron Cruise taking on electronics. I would particularly enjoy meeting him with a soldering iron. *angelic smile*

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

You could say that. If there were LJ-passports, then every page would have a meta-meta-meta-metavisa stamped on it.

Oooh... *imagines*

[slammerkinbabe.livejournal.com]

Will you please, please, please be my new best friend?

(No, seriously, can I friend you?)

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

*considers* (See? Versatile icon!)

There is a Terrible Price™ - the price being that I'll probably friend you right back in about... let's call it twenty seconds ago. The Statler and Waldorf icon did it. :)

[secondsilk.livejournal.com]

Or, for that matter, singing a well-known tune but substituting lyrics from an unrelated book.

Fifteen hours!
My life has no meaning.

But yay for the consistent mate-taking habits of intransitive verbs. (It makes up for inconsistent use of grammatical rules, at least a little.)

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

Fifteen hours? *realises!* Oh! You just want to fantasise over Alan, don't you.

[jennisis.livejournal.com]

I feel your word-sympathy pains...

Would you mind if I friend you?

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

Not at all. Or, in other words, hello!

[tears-of-nienna.livejournal.com]

You quote Terry Pratchett.

Bad grammar pains you.

And you participated in (or was it "started"?) the Grand Star Wars Llama Substitution Game.

I think it is high time I friended you. :D

[tears-of-nienna.livejournal.com]

Plus your Mutant Enemy zombie icon kicks my Mutant Enemy zombie icon's blurry gray ass.

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

Only sometimes.*

It's like being stabbed in the eye with the pointy end of a greengrocer's apostrophe.

Um... started. I think ryttu3k is still a bit upset about her inbox.

Why not. Keep in mind, I may just friend you right back.

*Some days I go insane with footnotes, too.

[tropical-madnes.livejournal.com]

*sheds a tear of grammar joy*

I found my way here from metaquotes. You have just become one of my favorite people.

[leila82.livejournal.com]

I come from metaquotes, and I'm bearing gifts! Oh and I've friended you (hope you don't mind).

They don't teach proper grammar in school. In 12 years of pre-college education, the most grammar I learned was during high school French class. I remember when we had a lesson on direct and indirect objects. The French teacher had to give us a crash course on English grammar since no one knew what direct objects were.

I have a sneaking suspicion that I've messed up that last paragraph grammatically somehow.

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

I don't mind at all.

No, they don't teach proper any grammar in schools. Direct and indirect objects? Nothing, when faced with people who say "Uhhhh... what's a noun?". Word can put a wavy green underline there to tell you it's the passive voice (I think it can, anyway; I use OpenOffice), but I'd much prefer it if people knew what to do with that information.

I do not expect you will be impressed by my user icons.

[thesnark.livejournal.com]

However, as you continually amuse me via metaquotes, I have finally decided, "Hey, why read the Reader's Digest version when I can subscribe to the unabridged?"

Thus, consider yourself friended by me. I can't tell you whether you should consider that a compliment or a curse; that'll be up to you to decide.

Re: I do not expect you will be impressed by my user icons.

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

Most of the bits that get quoted are comments, so you may not get much out of it. Still, whee!

[miladygrey.livejournal.com]

I fear you must add me to the list of people who found you via metaquotes and are snow stalking friending you. Anyone who can critique the nouns used in stupid advertisements is clearly my ally in the fight for justice for the poor abused English language.

Would you happen to have read Eats Shoots and Leaves? I keep my copy next to my Bible, which has made many visitors nervous.

And since you know of Terry Pratchett, you must also know how important spelling is as well as grammar. Lest everything you touch turn to Glod.

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

I do indeed have Saint Lynne's most wondrous tome of punctuation, and I died from laughter while reading it.

And it made me all kinds of happy when I learned that the US version is exactly the same as the Rest-Of-The-World one.

[salzara-tirwen.livejournal.com]

Now, the way I see it, there's really only one way to turn 'baby' into an uncountable noun.

Force it through a sieve?

[salzara-tirwen.livejournal.com]

Nevermind, I posted that before your grinder picture loaded.

Great minds apparently think alike.

[ayn-rand-fan-13.livejournal.com]

Here from metaquotes
They don't teach proper grammar in schools, because nobody has any interest in it anymore. I learned about direct and indirect objects from my Latin teacher, seeing as my English teacher didn't think it was important. *mourns the direction the world is going in*
What is your position on people who use "good" as an adverb? Do you you want to inflict bodily harm on them, or explain in calmly so that they may pass on the good word of grammar.
May I friend you? You have an awesome livejournal.

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

metaquotes, eh? Lovely comm that. So open and friendly, and so incredibly full of stalkers.

Classicists make lovely grammar teachers, though. Especially the ones who are aware that split infinitives are perfectly valid English.

My position on adverb-good is that it's so widely used now that it's unfeasible to reeducate people. Everyone gets to make one mistake; if adverb-good people insist on their evil ways, then they'd best hope I never hear them talking at the theatre.

You may! After all, it's not like you couldn't just pop in and read it all by yourself, is it? Might as well be saving yourself the trip, if you ask me.

[eleganceflawed.livejournal.com]

*cheers*

It's nice to know I'm not the only one who notices these things.

And twitches over them.

For hours.

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

Oh, no. You're definitely not the only one. Not by any means.

Of course, you can turn it to your advantage. You could see a horrid grammatic indecency, twitch to a beat, and call it modern dance. :)

[palmer-kun.livejournal.com]

"I don't care about grammar. I just want to learn the language," she said, in a mildly offended tone

Excuse me while I writhe in agony upon reading that.

That being said... I honestly don't know proper grammar. Intellectually, that is. I can identify nouns and verbs and such basics, but I otherwise know nothing of actual proper grammar. Despite this, my grammar appears to be excellent nonetheless. I type/write the way I speak, and both my speech and writing are heavily influenced by what I read. I suppose I just picked up my grammar by osmosis, really.

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

The trickiest part of English grammar is the exceptions, really. We couldn't be civilised and just borrow things from one place - no, we had to nick Frisian and pump it full of Greek and Latin and French like some kind of cheap lexical silicon all in the name of 'enhancement'.

There's not much difference between knowing all about grammar in the nice, friendly and utterly opaque words that grammarians favour, and knowing grammar in a practical, almost instinctive way that makes you coherent and understandable.

You strike me as the kind of person who, when reading about grammar, would spend most of your time getting acquainted with the names for bits and pieces you already know perfectly well.

[deepfishy.livejournal.com]

Random comments for your random thoughts:

Noun, noun, noun. Nounitty-noun, noun. OMGWTFAdjectives. Noun, noun, noun.

Thank you for pointing out what was irritating me about that ad! I was too busy being annoyed by the way the image didn't always match the emotion.

I learned all my grammar-fu from Latin (and Strunk & White, bless 'em). In English class, they never even bothered to explain subordinate clauses - no wonder the comma is so abused :(.

(And "sleep baby on its side" is giving me flashbacks to advertisements for Dirty Dancing: "Nobody puts Baby in a corner!")

On a completely different subject, Spicks and Specks has officially won the brief battle between watching it or House. 'Musician or Serial Killer?' beats Hugh Laurie's Vimes-y appearance any day.

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

I've never paid much attention to the images, but the shift in parts of speech is so painful that people who like words and language (and parahraphs, dammit!) find the ad inexplicably skeevy.

Learning another language is the best way to learn your own grammar, if you're an English-speaking monolinguist. Even then, it'd be interesting to see if people would the sentence structure from the other language borrow. It never ceases to amaze me that folk in forn parts know English grammar better than most English speakers.

I have a VCR to watch House for me when at home, so I don't have to miss out on such classic games as Malvern Stars on 45.

[eighthcloud.livejournal.com]

I love your rants. And I love how your rants gain you, like, 30 new friends at a time. :)

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

And I wonder if this means my next entry's going to make the world explode.

But, yes. It is an interesting and rather inexplicable phenomenon. It may be because you made it possible to get them addicted to the prettiness.

[tajessa.livejournal.com]

Yep, it's yet another drive-by from metaquotes.

I'm assuming you won't mind if I friend you, as you haven't minded anyone else doing so, but if a gypsy cursed you and told you never to befriend anyone called "Tajessa" on pain of horrible death, or something, that's cool too.

I've actually been lurking around your journal for a little while; the continual quoting cracks me up, but, I must admit, the main things that pointed me to your journal in the first place were your awesome Firefly icons and your hatred of poor grammar. I am on a worldwide quest to gather all the grammar bitches into one huge association and beat the ignorant to death (or at least, force them into classes) with OEDs. I'm sure it would be possible; as far as I can tell, there are many more of us grammar Nazis than, liek, teh sparkleypoo MSNgurls!!1!! [/snark]

Um, anyway, hi. I ramble a lot. Nice to meetcha. The Spicks & Specks reference just cemented my love for you. You have a new intarweb stalker.

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

No, no gypsies that I can remember. I think that means it's ok, unless there's a bizarre inscription about it inside a pyramid somwhere.

A worldwide association of the militantly grammatical sounds useful. And hazardous, since we'd end up in a bitter fued over Oxford commas or suchlike.

And, um, hello! Pick any branch you like in the invisible tree outside my window. :)

[jetsam-porridge.livejournal.com]

Ha, you are SO an Australian; this I know not from your userinfo, but because I myself have been baffled by the grammar in that same Foxtel ad. I can't work out why they keep changing tenses all the time!

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

You must be baffled indeed! Nouns don't have tenses. :)

And yes, I am. You probably could've also gotten this out of my Spicks & Specks reference.