» Of The Fish Balls
I said: Watch out! They're kinda plasmic!
She said: They're really hot.
» Of The Sitcom
I said: It's just totally pedestrian. At best.
She said: It's really bad.
I thought: I use big words.
Oct 062010
Aug 162010
I have a love-hate relationship with chewing gum.
One of the guys at work always has these strange brands of gum, with highbrow flavours. He particularly favours minty orange, which I'll grant you is surprising at first, but delicious. And every now and then I steal some off him because, well, for example, lunch needs to be fought back against.
And every single time — every. single. time. — I arrive at the point where the delicious flavour has all but faded, and then past that point to where even the random interrmittent bursts of flavour are a thing of the past.
This is the point where you realise you are, indeed, chewing … GUM.
And you can't even get all righteously indignant and/or disappointed over it. Because it's in the name.
These chewing gum manufacturers and their nefarious honesty. It's diabolical.
Jan 312010
During the recent edits on Shadow Bound, I tripped over my outdated grammatical education. Namely: did you all know that the plural of roof is ROOFS?
(North Americans please to be looking away, since you have always known this, because for you this has always been true, and thus my perplexity may in turn perplex you.)
Okay, back to those of us who were taught that the plural is rooves, such as (apparently) Kiwis or Australian children pre-1980's,1 I have one thing to say about this new development: DO NOT WANT.
Australians pluralise elf and hoof to elves and hooves respectively — why have we decided to make roof an exception to this rule? WHY? It's not as if English needs yet another rule that only applies sporadically, is it?2
Sigh. Too bad I wasn't consulted in the vote.
- for the record, my grammatical education was decidedly NOT pre-1980's. Which means one of two things: I owe the majority of my grammatical er, excellence, to my mother, or I went to a school that was a little slow on the uptake. [↩]
- No, I have nothing of actual merit to say on this issue. What did you expect? I'm a writer. I'm allowed to posture dramatically over grammar, aren't I? [↩]
i can't not notice this stuff
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Nov 282009
Here's a malapropism that made me chortle all day yesterday:
"…in other words, the [object] is [a thing], as succinct from [that other thing]"1
Succinct? SUCCINCT?
OH, MR ATTORNEY. YOU MEAN DISTINCT.
Now, I'll grant you, there's a passing aural resemblance on account of that -inct suffix business, but I don't care to admit that as a valid excuse for gettin' it wrong. Not when we can safely assume that the author of the sentence in question passed not only primary and secondary education levels but also some (usually respected) form of tertiary education. Surely, somewhere along the way, he learnt the difference between a word that means clearly distinguishable and another that means concise?2
- Boring technical terms have been changed to lovely, bland, non-identifying labels for the sake of, you know, keeping my job. [↩]
- And after writing the above, it occurs to me that the attorney, after all that schooling, probably has dreadful handwriting or is Far Too Busy and Important to waste time writing and typing his own letters, so he probably has them transcribed via dictation and a legal secretary. But you know what? I'm not cutting that secretary any slack either. Secretary at least passed high school, secretary should know better. And the attorney should proof-read his correspondence. [↩]
Oct 202009
Today at work I pointed out a tagline that was aiming for — and singularly failing to use — the plural possessive. Worse, I did it with frustrated hand gestures and even (oh dear lord) finished up with a wordless cry.
You know what this means, don't you? That's right: I've cemented my reputation.
In TV-land, girls cement their reputation by doing dreadfully uninhibited things at office christmas parties. Me? I point out apostrophe atrocities.
Oh yeah. I live on the edge.
Sep 152009
Did you know that Latin has a supine verb form?1
I can only postulate that it is a verb form devoted solely to a) lying down and b) the various ways of accomplishing or maintaining (or imposing) such a position.
(This sounds most excellent to me.)
Alternatively, perhaps it is the verb form used to imply that the poor Roman in question, exhausted by the process of trying to conjugate his verbs and decide which particular form fits the current situation, has been rendered cerebrally unfit for further conversation and just needs a little nap now, please to be returning later when he may be recovered and capable of actually concluding the sentence that clearly just broke him.
(This, also, sounds most excellent to me. Conversations plagued by mid-sentence fainting fits! Rooms full of people who have keeled over mid-conversation while their brain re-boots!)
This post brought to you by sleep deprivation and fluctuating blood sugar levels.
- It can be accusative, or ablative, apparently. [↩]
Sep 112009
Every morning, on the way to work, I pass the "Grate Cafe".1
Their sign promises Grate Food, Grate Coffee, Grate Catering, and I CAN'T STAND THEM FOR THAT SIGN. I don't care whether it's deliberate2 or a genuine mistake.
Grate coffee? Unless it's made from grated coffee beans, I don't think so. For that matter, I'm pretty sure grating isn't the right way to treat coffee beans, so even if it is made from grated coffee beans…I don't think so. And if we're following that theme, then grate food and grate catering…don't appeal so much either. I just keep imagining vast, inedible, stomach-clogging mounds of carrot shavings…
On the topic of things that routinely bemuse me, every two months Telstra send me a bill, oh-so-helpfully detailing the zero activity on my account (which is not surprising, given the account has been closed for some time now) and pointing out that I'm $7.58 in credit but not to worry, we'll put that against any future activity. Makes a nice change from the bill telling me I'm $0.98 in credit against the mobile phone account I closed well over two years ago now.
And a nice change from the bills that do need to be paid, for that matter. Which, if you'll excuse me, is what's next on the to-do list. The glamour!
- Just next door to the Exotic Pots, Exotic Staff garden store (if that's what it is). Clearly, it's a semantically interesting pocket of the suburb. [↩]
- A recent news article postulated that a lot of grammatical errors in signs were in fact a genius marketing ploy, in that it catches people's attention and drives them into the store. Presumably to complain about the grammatical error initially, but I suppose getting people through the door is the first hurdle. Selling them something after that is probably easier. I would link to the article, but my google-fu is not strong this morning. [↩]
Sep 092009
Did you know that Acts are so impossible to untangle that there is an entire Act dedicated solely to their interpretation?
It's called, funnily enough, the Acts Interpretation Act, and is basically a list of rules about how to decipher the concrete meaning hiding beneath the impenetrable mound of clauses, annotations, and circular references that constitute an Act.
The only problem being that the Acts Interpretation Act is written in the same style as any other Act — and its wording is therefore just as convoluted and impenetrable and superficially-vague-yet-in-reality-frustratingly-and-persnicketarily-p recise.
Every time I am forced into consulting the thing, I wind up wandering lost in the morass that is the legal bayou, mud up to my unmentionables and alligators circling in my wake as I cry "Wait, what? BUT WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?"
This post brought to you by a morning spent trying to figure out if July 10 was officially "within" 3 months of April 10, or not.1
And now, to balance out all that legalese, have a squiz at one cat's rather unusual preferred method of drinking (via cuteoverload):
- Wanna know? It is. Because for the purposes of allowed time frames, the date on which the inciting action was taken is excluded from the reckoning (that, by the way, is not the official wording of the Acts Interpretation Act — it's my summary of what it's attempting to say), and thus the 3 months started on April 11 and last until close of business July 10. [↩]
Jun 212009
There is nothing I love more than a typo on a menu (unless perhaps it's a malapropism), and today I have an absolute corker of a typo to share with you, one of those instances where the error results in a phrase so sublime… well, to be honest, I start laughing and lose the capacity to speak in sentences:
because when we offer spite as a beverage, we do not shirk - oh no! you will have some lemon, nay, some salted lemon along with that spite!
May 172009
one:
At work on Friday, during fraud and ethics awareness training, I discovered an amusing editing artefact in the Code of Conduct. Apparently, all employees "must treat everyone with respect and with harassment."
Now that, my friends, is one hell of a code of conduct. Licence for polite savagery: issued. I don't care what the manager says about mistakes, I have written evidence.
two:
Sitting on the tram on Thursday, I was listening to the conversation of two nearby school girls, who want to be writers.
Bless 'em.
They were full of enthusiasm and verve, laughing and chatting about how their ambition is received by others. Friends are excited, and want to read their work; parents and teachers, on the other hand, are always asking what sort of real job they're going to have. What outdated attitudes! Maybe in their parents' day, writers needed a dayjob and then pursued their dreams at night, but that's not the way the world works any more. They won't need to bother with any of that.
I nearly choked trying to hold back gales of laughter.
Poor children. The world will set them straight plenty soon enough.