![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
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.
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.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-08-02 11:49 pm (UTC)That gives me warm fuzzies.
Not that I've ever read it, or intend to. I don't write enough to care that much, and my normal writing is already pretty damn good as it is. Though I will admit that it is definately not perfect. I have a few mistakes and habits I cocnsistenly make, but they're a minor issue in the grand scheme.
no subject
Date: 2005-08-03 06:01 am (UTC)An example letter from the book:
And version two, punctuated differently:
no subject
Date: 2005-08-03 12:45 pm (UTC)