Archief voor Maart, 2008
Ik woonde Rode „historische“ spel Sox het van Los Angeles ontduiker-Boston in Los Angeles HerdenkingsColiseum vorge nacht bij, u meer kunt lezen waarover op mijn blog Le Food News, en het meest gedenkwaardige deel van de avond was de belachelijke prijzen die voor middelmatige voedsel en drank worden aangerekend. Slechter, betaalden de mensen eigenlijk de prijzen!
Één gang rond de plaats, en u kan Coliseum vertellen wordt gelopen door een overheidsentiteit. Ik kon niet me tegen het nemen van deze foto verzetten om te bewijzen wat ik over spreek.
Zeker, zou om het even welke ondernemende privé eigenaar uit geld eigenlijk om te maken en een prettige ervaring te verstrekken voor zijn of haar patroons minstens proberen om het juiste Engels (en misschien de vertalingen van het Spaans en Mandarin eveneens) te gebruiken, maar hier hebben wij boven elke entryway Coliseum de waarschuwing „niet“ overbevolkt - maar vergaten zij uniform hypen.
In mijn berooide/semi-teruggetrokken staat, heb ik heel wat tijd voor kanaal surfend, en bij 4 p.m. het uur, het in dienst nemen TV toont over het algemeen is De factor van O' Reilly.
Vandaag, één van e-mail O' gelezen Reilly (waarom niet de verleden tijd is rood?) beschuldigd hem van het zijn ruzieachtig.
Nu, is er een groot woord, hoewel het over het algemeen op proces-gelukkige advocaten eerder dan op conservatieve bespreking-show gastheren die betwisten afschuinen van toepassing is en op de politieke linkerzijde ligt.
Nog, waardeer ik mensen die het weten hoe te om het Engelstalige en zijn rijke reservoir van woorden te gebruiken, en deze e-mailschrijver gebruikte absoluut een groot woord.
Joe Francis, Meisjes Gegaan Wild de ondernemer (nu tijdelijk uit gevangenis), gloating dat hij zowel nude als zelfde-geslachtsgeslacht videos* van beruchte escorte en Eliot spitzer-Slayer Ashley Alexandra Dupre heeft.
Ondertussen, gaat de Oranje Provincie, Californië, Raad van Supervisors zelf wild door alles openbare dit OC en OC anders te noemen die, zoals John Wayne OC Luchthaven (die M. razend maakte. De kinderen van Wayne).
Now, the group has conjured up some more interesting OC namings for government agencies, such as OC Infrastructure. What?
Okay, OC Infrastructure used to be The Resources and Development Management Department.
Wait, it gets more confusing. OC Infrastructure is broken down into two agencies, OC Public Works and OC Community.
It gets better. OC Infrastructure is composed of OC Planning, OC Road & Flood and OC Facilities. OC Community consists of OC Public Libraries, OC Parks, OC Community Services and OC Animal Care.
You see?
* Anyway, Ms. Dupre’s lawyer just this morning said the Girls Gone Wild segments featuring his client were filmed when she was 17. The videos have been withdrawn from circulation. Sorry, Joe.
It’s rare to be watching TV and hear someone correct another for his or her English usage, and it’s even rarer that I would turn on an L.A. Clippers telecast–except in sheer boredom–but that’s exactly what I did this past night.
Now, Ralph Lawler is the Clippers’ main play-by-play caller, and he has a sidekick whose name I can’t remember, but this sidekick said something to the effect that "the pass between he and so-and-so" was errant, or some such. Lawler, in his inimitable style, shot back: "Or between him and so-and-so." Sidekick was forced to respond, "That too."
Duly corrected.
Anyway, it’s nice to see a sports jock-caster know his English and correct someone on air.
Bottom line, the rule is this: When using a preposition, it must be followed by something in the objective case, which would be him and not he in this case since sidekick was using a pronoun instead of a noun. A noun, that is, someone’s name, wouldn’t change between accusative and nominative, but a pronoun would.
Back to the grammar books, sidekick, and hats off to you, Ralph Lawler!
Thanks to The Numbers Guy, Carl Bialik, whose column appears every other Friday in the Wall Street Journal, I’ve been reminded of those infamous readability scales that judge the grade-level of your writing.
Since the Flesch-Kindcaid readability formula has been built into Microsoft Word’s Tools function, one can easily check one’s "readability level" while using this ubiquitous word processor. The formula, much like all the others, counts the number of words in a sentence and then the number of syllables in each word. Shorter sentences and shorter words, syllable-wise, are easier to read.
However, as Bialik points out, short words such as adz, auk and lea are virtually unknown to most English readers, but they would score high on readability.
In other words, these formulas contain fundamental flaws that some researchers are working to fix.
One last example. Here is a nonsense passage that scores high in readability (the infamous concept that everything should be readable and understandable by a fifth grader):
"Acuity of eagles whistle truck kidney. Head for the treacle sump catch and but. What figgle faddle scratch dog and whistle?"
Get the idea? If not, read more here.
I think we all have a good idea of what the phrase "through thick and thin" means for us today, but almost none of us has any idea of its derivation.
I subscribe to a service called "A Phrase A Week" that examines these matters, and this week that phrase came up.
However, what I found most interesting was this earliest recorded use of the phrase by Geoffrey Chaucer in Olde English, to wit:
And whan the hors was laus, he gynneth gon
Toward the fen, ther wilde mares renne,
And forth with "wehee," thurgh thikke and thurgh thenne.
Okay, if you haven’t deciphered it, please turn the page for the translation into modern English.
Full Story »
Listening to the Dan Patrick Show this morning on radio, I heard one of his guests quote the phrase cock strong to mean a person with strength of purpose. The guess deliberately disabused the notion that the cock being referred to was part of the human anatomy. Instead, as Patrick chimed it, it referred to the rooster, and it was "farm talk."
However, I couldn’t find the phrase in the dictionary, but Urban Dictionary had this to say:
A guy with a wandering/lazy eye. His eye is weighed down due to the size of his johnson.
Man: "That dude has got a messed-up eye."
Girl: "No, he’s just cock strong, trust me!"
I could see the phrase’s being defined either way. If anyone has any information on its usage or derivation, please leave a comment.
As I sat in a Miami Beach coffee shop this morning on a silly and basically meaningless trip to Florida for baseball’s annual spring training, I picked up a copy of the Miami Herald and read over bacon and eggs how a mother had spent 38 years at her comatose daughter’s side caring for her with love, faith and selflessness.
Mortality overtook the mother just this past week in her home, still with her daughter, of cardiac failure at 80. Kaye Obara leaves behind her daughter, Edwarda, for whom relatives have vowed to step in and care for.
Mrs. Obara undertook the vigil, constantly cleaning, feeding and moving her daughter so she wouldn’t develop bed sores, from the time nearly four decades when a gravely ill Edwarda was rushed to the hospital.
Frightened, Edwarda asked her, "Promise you won’t leave me, will you, Mommy?" Those were the last words she ever uttered before slipping into her coma.
I almost cried reading the story, and it flashed over me how shallow and selfish my own existence is.
The irony of my reading the story upon my arrival in Florida on what I’ve always termed "a pilgrimage" was not lost on my aching soul.
Read the full story of love and devotion.
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