To protests that the language police are only protecting the accuracy, precision and clarity of our tongue, Lynch lifts a skeptical eyebrow. Many of the most roundly deplored “debasements” of English are nevertheless perfectly comprehensible: I didn’t confuse you by writing “Ain’t it the truth?” in my opening paragraph, did I? The only truly unbreakable rules of grammar and usage are the ones that, when broken, result in a genuine failure to communicate. The rest is a form of covert class warfare, and today’s usage reproofs constitute a status-protecting thump on the head delivered by the upper middle class to uppity members of the lower middle.
Awesome. I’m glad there’s a book meant for popular reading that makes this point. Grammar rules are like rules of etiquette. They should just function as a way make things clear, but they’re mostly just a way to mark class differences and make rich people feel superior.
That said, using quotes on signs used for emphasis drive me nuts. Choose bold, people. Choose bold.
My bike got stolen tonight. This would be the same bike whose back tire got stolen about a month ago. I parked it outside of 19th Street Bart in Oakland this afternoon at around 4:45. When I got back at around 10, it was gone. There’s no evidence that I even left my bike there except that the plastic bag I was using to cover my bike seat in the rain was on the ground.
When I parked my bike, there were three other bikes parked at the same spot. There were also bikes parked across the street. When I got back, every single one of them was gone. I don’t know if that means anything, but it was sort of weird.
I have no idea what I’m going to do for transportation now. I don’t have the money to buy a nice folding bike. I could replace the bike with some used beater, but I don’t really want to have that one get stolen a month from now, you know? Plus I don’t want to spend what little money I have on some crappy bike that I don’t even like.
You know, I used to vaguely wonder what the conservative equivalent of threatening to move to Canada was. Did they all promise to buy 300 guys and live in a shack in Montana or something?
There will be a reception after at the Student Union. Everyone is asked to bring food to share. Everyone loves a potluck.
Flowers can be delivered to the Mills Chapel between 8am and 10am the day of the service.
T’s sister Norah wanted me to make sure to emphasize that this is intended to be a celebration of Timanna’s life. Bring your best Timanna stories.
We’re trying to get together photos of T and a play list of music that she loved. If you have photos of T that you really like or have a song that always makes you think of her, you can send them to me and I’ll pass it along.
Also, people are getting together at The White Horse tomorrow night for drinks and music in honor of Timanna.
It’s crazy when I think about it. With the exception of a few people here and there, all of my very closest friends are people that I met between August and October of 1996. My friendships with these people have waxed and waned. We’ve shared apartments, helped each other move, cried on shoulders. We’ve fought and made up. I grew up with these friends and they’ve made me the person I am now.
Timanna was one of these people. She was one of the most amazing, insightful and funny people I’ve ever know. She died last night, surrounded by friends and family. She’ll be missed deeply. I was lucky to have known her.
Ok. So here’s the clip of Palin being unable to talk about Supreme Court cases. It wasn’t so much that she wasn’t able to name one, she just couldn’t talk about any one with enough knowledge to say she disagreed with it.
But she *does* manage to babble about local control. Which…is she talking about Brown here? For real. When do conservatives like to talk about local control? School boards teach creationism, abortion (they don’t actually favor local control in that case as the late pregnancy abortion ban that Congress passed shows), and segregation. They do not favor local control when it comes to gay marriage or some medical pot, to bring up some current issues where you’d think States Rights would come into play. States Rights = Brown. Legislation from the bench = Roe. Yes?
I know I’m, like, assuming that she had some kind of point. And that when she talks it means something. But still. Is there some *other* decided-on-a-local-level issue that she could be talking about that I’m not thinking of? I guess she could be talking about Lawrence v. Texas, but somehow I doubt she’s even aware that sodomy laws aren’t allowed anymore.
(The bar has been set so low for this woman that I’m just happy that this was the question she couldn’t answer and not “quick! name a Supreme Court case!”)
Yesterday I noticed that there’s this spot in my mouth that hurts a lot. How much it hurts sort of comes and goes. I was worried abut it in the morning, but then stopped thinking about it until last night after I’d come home from class and had something to eat. Then it suddenly started to hurt much more. This morning I woke up with it hurting less but generally being more tender. Like, moving my mouth around in some expressions makes it hurt.
Last time it felt like there was something stuck under my tooth. The thing they removed was putting a lot of pressure on my tooth and before I saw a dentist I really just had this crazy urge to try to pull the cap off or something to make it hurt less. It doesn’t hurt like that this time. It feels closer to the surface. I can touch my face in the spot where it hurts in my mouth; it is a little like touching a bruise or something.
Anyway, I’m worried about this. I’m reluctant to go see someone because I don’t have a regular dentist and I don’t think that my “insurance” through my school covers dental. I’ll probably try to stick it out over the weekend and see about going to see someone on Monday. Does anyone have a dentist recommendation for me? I’m pretty sure there’s one near my apartment, but it would be nice to go somewhere that is more of a known quantity.
