Ironik

Yes, he is. No, it doesn't make sense and is utterly ridiculous. But his official age is 29.

Don't shoot the messenger; I didn't make the rule.

From DC. I'm sure if you Google it you'll find it.

I don't think we should excuse songwriters from making errors any more than we should excuse anyone else. Actually, we should hold them to a higher standard, because those songs can potentially be around forever.

Paula Cole's song "I Don't Want to Wait" is one of the all-time worst offenders, when she sings, "Say a little prayer for I." Seriously. People mix up the use of "me" and "I" all the time, but you have to *really* be simple to do it like that. Rule of thumb to tell when to use "me" or "I" is to leave out the other person. If it sounds stupid without them in the sentence, then you're using the wrong word. "She and I live in our own little world," correct (Alabama). "Then the cop pulled over Bob and I," incorrect.

One of my favorite songs is "Small Town" by John Mellencamp, but I never fail to laugh when he sings, "I can not forget from where it is I come from."

Paul McCartney's James Bond tune, "Live and Let Die" is equally hilarious: "In this ever-changing world in which we live in." Seriously, Paul, take two minutes to rewrite.

Hoyt Axton (the dad from Gremlins) was also a songwriter who wrote some great songs. I appreciate his use of the subjunctive in "Joy to the World." "If I were the king of the world...." Awesome. When later there's a line that goes, "Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea," you know he's doing it just for fun, not out of ignorance. Compare that to the Mamas and Papas tune, "California Dreamin'" where they sing, "I'd be safe and warm / If I was in L.A." Ugh.

Speaking for myself, there's no grading going on. It's not like I correct people all the time. That would be a full time job!

I mean, you use "alot" all the time and I've never once said anything about it. Yes, it bugs me, because it's either "a lot" or "allot." Also, the English-as-a-second language thing is another reason I don't normally go around correcting people. You never know. Of course, if someone is being particularly annoying, a nice little spelling rip is always delightfully cathartic.

Nineteen HOURS? The last time I paid attention to the giveaways on FB, the US codes were gone in 19 SECONDS.

No, it's plain wrong. Just because it's fallen into common usage (damn you, Sondheim and your Into the Woods!) don't make it right no how, no suh. Being "more different than" is trailer trash speak, sorry.

It's like when people say "taunt" when they mean "taut." Now dictionaries are saying that "taunt" is a variation on "taut." Come on! (Which people often spell as "common" also incredibly, annoyingly incorrect, because it's frequently pronounced "c'mon".) I'm all for the language growing and changing because it *is* an evolving, living language, but some things ought to just be wrong and people should be corrected when they misspeak.

I made a post a month or so back on "dieing."

To wit:

I just wanted to share. QQ

I knew a secretary who would drop little Tootsie rolls in business letters. Just for a little fun. You know.

'02. The original is de rigeur viewing for any cineaste (and my college dissertation was to be on cinema genres, so I had to watch everything), but I don't particularly care for it. The remake corrected some of the flaws of pacing and brought Lem's story into a proper science fictional setting. (I think Lem, for all his talents, is a bit overrated. His titanic ego didn't help much.)

You probably already know this, but if you like Solaris, try Sunshine by Danny Boyle. Although the premise sounds silly, it's actually based on an actual -- if not terribly probable -- thing that could happen to the sun.

/em applause

He's juicing. Can a home run derby be far behind?

It is. Romero had a falling-out with his partner over royalties and who came up with what. The end result was that Romero was allowed to keep the trademark of "The Dead" while the other guy was allowed to use "The Living Dead." However, Romero didn't instigate the lawsuit, the makers of Dead Rising did so that the owners of "The Dead" trademark (and makers of Dawn of the Dead) wouldn't sue them.

I'm not defending the remake, I'm just saying remaking the original Dawn of the Dead isn't a bad idea. The most egregious problem for me is not that it's slow to build up (I actually *like* slow, which is why I own Solaris), but that the entire first part of the movie is people arguing about something that is completely theoretical and unseen to the audience. We have no stake in it and it's hard to understand what the issue is or why they're so vehement about it unless you come into the movie already knowing everything about zombies. Which in 1978 almost nobody did.

For many of us, this was our very first exposure to zombie movies. You have to remember that Night of the Living Dead wasn't shown on TV back then and things like videotapes (we called them videocassettes) were just starting to be talked about for consumers but wouldn't be affordable for most people for quite a number of years. (I bought my first VCR in 1985; it cost $690. I bought one 10 times better in 2005, it cost $39.) So when we saw this movie back in '78, the lengthy talking-head portion at the beginning was especially mystifying and dull because we had no idea what they were talking about. The actors do a decent job arguing back and forth and it's a fairly dynamic scene, but without anything to give the argument context, it's just two blowhards shouting at each other. The film is actually full of this sort of thing, but that's a good enough example of what I consider a pretty major fault. The rule is "show, don't tell," and the first, what?, 8 or 10 minutes of the movie are all talk and no action. Halloween came out that same year and it has just as much exposition, except it's handled much more dynamically. Dawn is just lifeless (no pun intended) by comparison. Whereas Halloween builds the suspense and tension and the mystery deepens, Dawn just lays all the cards out on the table right at the outset. Since the guy arguing *against* the "just shoot 'em in the head" guy turns out to be completely wrong (Which should have been obvious to anyone who'd seen what was going on outside), the argument really becomes pointless.

Up in front! Block my view! (aka, I'm with you.)

Now they're saying it's an ear trumpet, a low-tech hearing device.

I still vote it's the Tesla-phone #2. (He had the original, of course. She's just the wife of his backer. Twain had the third one.)

That brings up an excellent example of a decent reason for a remake. The original Night of the Living Dead can't be improved on. They captured lightning in a bottle and anything you'd do would simply be different rather than better. Dawn of the Dead, however, had a large number of faults but a cool idea at its core. That's exactly the kind of movie which should be remade.

I use those sorts of tricks all the time, in order to more fully express my point. For the same reason I often use words like "dagnabbit," to give it a folksy feel. There are any number of stylistic tricks we can employ to better communicate our intent. One can go from painstakingly erudite to jus' folks with the substitution of a single apostrophe for a letter.

The tremendous flexibility of the English language is one of its greatest strengths. That's why the guy who decided back at the end of the 19th century that English should -- for some utterly inexplicable reason -- follow the rules of Latin did so much damage to schoolchildren for more than a century. (There's that "over / more than" thing I was talking about earlier. Get out of my head, Sister Mary Alice!) One of the reasons why people hate learning English so much is because of the whole "learn the rule on Monday, learn the exceptions to the rule the rest of the week" thing that resulted from his unreasonably influential textbook. Notions such as, "Don't split the infinitive" are stupid because English is not a Latinate language. Different language, different rules. (The most famous split infinitive of all time is, of course, "To boldly go where no man has gone before." According to "proper" English, it should always be, "To go boldly." Poppycock.)

The flexibility of English has also been theorized to have been instrumental in winning WWII against the Japanese. Because Japanese is a more proscriptive language, and apparently was even more so back then, it put their thinking in a straitjacket. Excellent for following orders but terrible at improvisation. So in the fluidity of battle, English-speakers whose brains are wired differently from Japanese-speakers due to the cognitive changes languages enforces upon the brain, had the ability to switch tactics mid-stream much more readily.

As far as using words others don't understand, that's not my problem. My vocabulary is gigantic and I rarely make use of it. When I do, I expect the reader to make an effort to look up something they don't understand.

Years ago (like 25) I saw a commercial for one of those grab-bag albums from someplace like Ronco or K-tel and one of the songs listed was J. Geils "Must Of Got Lost." Arg.

The thing that bugs me ever so quite a little bit is using apostrophes when making a word plural. No apostrophe in plurals, people. Ever.

Lack of capitalization and punctuation kills me, too. It's really not that hard to hit the Shift key. Honestly. And throw a period in there every once in a while. I'd rather see an overuse of commas rather than nothing at all.

Oh yeah -- it's "different FROM" not "different THAN."

Dagnabbit, don't you force me to make a list, too!

The last three might be for new drugs we see on commercials during Jeopardy.

Pedants can be fun, too.

Besides, I already know all the real words.