GramMers 2

Hi.

I have another rant about grammar. Well, it's more about using the right words. I realize that people say things without really knowing what it means all the time. Let me list some every day cases of that:

-When repeating the Pledge of Allegiance
-When singing the lyrics of "Afternoon delight" by the Starland Vocal Band
-When we say anything right after we wake up
-When repeating a psychologist
-When repeating a broker
-When repeating a doctor

In all these cases, we don't really know what we're saying. C'mon. Admit it. You've got no idea what you were talking about when you woke up this morning.

Chimp Grammar > George Bush Grammar

And in most of these cases, we don't understand what we're saying because we're repeating someone else. And unfortunately, most of the time, the people we are repeating were totally wrong in the first place. Like when the Board of Directors at Netflix said "Hey! Let's offer everyone the same service, but for 60% more". Or like when the Board of Directors at Netflix said "That was a bad idea. My bad. How about we apologize but make it worse by announcing a confusing business model? That'll make the problem okay". Or like when the The other board members said "Let's listen to this guy again". Or like when the Director of The Boy in Striped Pajamas said "Guys! How about all the German Characters in this film have British accents for no reason".

I could obviously go on for paragraphs and paragraphs about how stupid all those things were and how I would obviously be a better Hollywood or Business Executive than any of these comedians, but I digress...

...The reason I decided to write about grammar again is that I hear people use these two simple phrases in completely the wrong way all the time. If people listened, or happened to be reading the words, they'd get exactly the opposite of the intended message. Here's an example or two:

"Mr. CEO of Netflix, after our new business model was announced, our stock all but dropped" .

Being that you, the one reading this, may be an average person, you may not have found anything wrong with that statement. Well, let me tell you, Netflix stock did not do well after that announcement. So go ahead and replace the phrase "All but" with "Anything but", or "Anything other than".

"Mr. CEO of Netflix, after our new business model was announced, our stock did anything other than drop".

You see? When you say "all but", what you're really saying is "This did NOT happen". All but = The stock did not drop. But I repeatedly hear the phrase used exactly in the opposite way. Such as:

(There are 180 MPH winds outside)
"This is Alisha Kelly with 11 o'clock news. It's all but windy outside".

When did people start doing this? I hear it all the time. In fact, I never hear anyone use the phrase the correct way anymore. And again, I hear this on a National, Public, Radio ( I won't mention the name of the station because I may want to be invited to be a host someday) broadcast. People there are supposedly very smart.

Another one that get's me is "I could care less". What you mean to say is "I could NOT care less". As if you're saying, "I could not possibly have less concern for this matter". But I hear people say things like this instead:

-Bob is a jerk. I never want to speak to him again. I can't' believe he murdered my 3 day old daughter. I could care less about the fact that he was jealous about the attention she was getting, so jealous that he brutally murdered my 3 day old daughter".

-So wait... Your 3 day old baby was murdered by Bob, and you think it's important to let me know that you COULD have less concern about his reasons for doings so right now? So on a scale of 1-10 (1 Being the least amount of caring and 10 the highest) you're trying to specify that you could be ranging anywhere from 2-10 on that scale? That's highly nonspecific. You're literally telling me that you could be a 10, and that you very much care about his feelings right now.

-Yeah, I'm a 10. Thus, I could care less. I could be a 9, or 8, or even a 7 for that matter. I'm all but angry with him right now.

-Wow. I'm so confused right now.

Did any of you understand that? I'm having a very hard time articulating exactly what I mean, and exactly why I care. The truth is. I could care less about people repeating these phrases that they don't understand. I'm all but happy to allow people to be themselves.

Confused now?

Written by individual contributor
Lane Fries (a.k.a. Dr. Freeze(

Why does the world hate me?

"Dear world,
Why do you hate me so much?
Regards
-Me"

That was a short but very sincere letter I actually wrote to the world last week. I still have not received a response from The World, and now I'm getting pretty ticked.

At least it could respond and explain why the things that happen to me are happening.

Here's what I mean:

I really like to be on time to things. Like a lot. But my problem is, I'm extremely disorganized and more importantly, I'm addicted to sleeping in. I lie to myself every night and say

"Tomorrow is the day. Tomorrow is the day when you'll actually wake up when you promised you would and get something done in the morning."

And every morning I lie to myself and say

"If you just sleep for ten more minutes you'll be ready to get up".

Why not just get up when the alarm goes off? Are those last ten minutes really going to help me make it through the day? Am I really going to die if I don't get at least 10 more minutes? No. But somehow I convince myself of this every single morning. Sound familiar? Good. Because if it didn't, you'd be what normal people call "a morning person". I'll rant about them another time.

What I really want to talk about is how, even though I sleep too much, I still would like to get to work on time. But EVERY SINGLE DAY traffic decides to try to kill me or at least make me even more late. Let me explain...

...At the end of my driveway. I have a gate. On the other side of that gate there's usually nothing. But in the morning when I dash to my car, and click the button to open the gate I check traffic levels as it's opening, I count how many cars go by "One car. Two cars. A guy running". It seems peaceful. But then when I reach the end of the driveway an unstoppable, unending, indefatigable wave of cars driven by automatons deployed by "The World" or possibly the US Government, or possibly the entire race of people shorter than me, immediately reaches the road at the end of my driveway. I can't get out. I'm trapped! Every single day I ask myself "What would have happened if I had walked out the door 15 seconds earlier?" I can't help but think that no matter what I would have done, traffic would have met me at the end of my Driveway to Hell.

If you ask a "logical" person why this happens everyday, they'd lie and say "Well it just seems like it happens everyday because you remember things more when they frustrate you". They just say that because the world doesn't hate them.

Written by individual contributor 
Lane Fries (a.k.a. Dr. Freeze)

GrAmmerS

Saturday February 25th, 2012

 Grammar. We use it everyday. Well, some of us do. More educated people tend to use proper grammar more frequently. Everyone should know that. If you understand and believe that smarter people use proper grammar, wouldn't you also want to use proper grammar? You should. It would make you sound, and/or look smarter. I love it when people think I'm smart. I love it because it means I've fooled them and that is a lot of fun.

 Also, I like things to be done the right way. It feels good. If you don't believe me,  you should try (disclaimer: you should NOT try this). Go drive down the interstate... ...the wrong way. Trust me, that will not feel good. Or, if you can't drive because your license was revoked for driving down the interstate the wrong way, try something else the wrong way. How about sneezing? Have you ever had snot come into your nose at 150 MPH. Proof that things should be done the right way.

 Back to grammar. If you're smart you probably noticed that I said "More educated people tend to use proper grammar more frequently". Did you? Yes? Wow, you're smart. If you're really smart you probably realized that the word "tend" was placed in this sentence deliberately. Did you? Yes? You are on a roll. The reason I said "tend" instead of "always" is because of a certain nationally syndicated educational radio station and some other snotty people I've heard lately. I won't mention any names for reasons I myself don't really understand. Their grievance can be summed up by their improper use of the indefinite article "a". How can you mess up a one letter word? It's the first letter you learn! It's the first letter in the alphabet for Pete's sake. It's tiny and insignificant. Let me explain...

...One sunny morning I was driving to work. I was listening to a nationally syndicated educational broadcast when I heard something out of order.... "Blah blah blah blah an historic event blah blah blah an hotel blah blah".

Now, depending on where you're from, there may not seem to be anything wrong with this. Besides the fact that you should never say "blah blah blah" on a national broadcast, but that's besides the point. The point is, the place that the radio host is from and the place that I am from are one and the same, and we both pronounce the H sound in the word "historic" and the word "hotel". In kindergarten I learned that the indefinite article 'a' is used when the following word begins with a consonant sound and the word 'an' is used when the following word begins with a vowel sound. Apparently, this radio personality, and possibly every other personality on this radio station, missed that day in kindergarten or just flunked kindergarten enough times that they decided to drop out.

If you are from certain parts of Europe, you may not pronounce the H sound at the beginning of any word. In that case, it's cool with me if you say "an hotel".

So, I realize this is a minor grievance but I'm just confused as to where all these educated people got the idea that this is proper grammar. Also, when did it become acceptable to pronounce the word "Nuclear" like this; n ook-yuh-ler. Clearly that's not correct. I don't see how it's even possible to get that pronunciation from a word spelled this way. In this country, I have heard our current President pronounce this word incorrectly more than once, and I am convinced that the previous President is so confident in the pronunciation of this word that he would have corrected me if I said it the correct way.

 If I had any readers, I'm sure I'd be subject to an onslaught of grammatical corrections from people who are just as eager to criticize others as I am.
But fortunately, I have no readers so I'm oblivious to all of my mistakes. So I guess I should be happy that I'm not more popular.

Written by individual contributor

Lane Fries (a.k.a. Dr. Freeze)

Do We Really Have To?

 Here we are again.

 So, the last time I posted (which was also the first time I posted! I think that's a paradox), I said that I would get to introductions later. So, this is me getting to introductions...

This Is Seriously Insane

"Why does everything have to be so complicated?"

Good morning (well for me it's morning) everyone,

So, I'll get to introductions later. I'm just going to start by saying this...


Creating a blog on blogger is both simple and nearly impossible at the same time. 


A few months ago I read that the number of blogs doubles every six months. I believe that after this last experience. Here's what happened: