A little context: The following piece was written to be performed in the March 26, 2011 edition of The Paper Machete, a weekly showcase for Chicago journalists, comedians, and other writers, hosted by Christopher Piatt. The Paper Machete has posted the audio of the performance as a podcast. You can listen to it here: The […]
Entries Tagged as 'Language'
Not Zero: The Fukushima Litotes
April 1st, 2011 · 2 Comments · Blogs, Chicago, Climate Change, Culture, Energy, Environment, Essays, Fringe, Journalism, Language, Media, News, Nuclear Power, Performance, Politics, Science, Writing
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A Note on the Text of the 10-Second Interview
December 13th, 2007 · 6 Comments · Blogs, Culture, Internet, Journal, Language, Restaurants
Grendel from Earthgoat, always an attentive and keen-eyed reader, has written to gently chide me for conforming to a certain lowbrow usage in my 10-Second Interview post. The question in question would be this one: Pepsi or Coke? Iced peppermint green tea. Since that post and its comments are a fair way down the page […]
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Roundup: Pink Elephant Edition
September 10th, 2007 · 3 Comments · Activism, Books, Climate Change, Comics, Culture, Energy, Film, Foreign Policy, Health, History, HIV/AIDS, Human Rights, Internet, Journalism, Language, LGBT, Media, Music, Nature, News, Peace, Performance, Politics, Racism, Roundup, Science, Tech, Theater
General Petraeus says that “victory” in Iraq will require 9-10 more years. I’m trying to imagine how ten more years of bloody occupation can possibly work out to a victory. More on that subject here. A bill has been introduced in Venezuela to restrict baby names to a list of 100 approved choices. “The bill’s […]
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Great Moments in Misplaced Modifiers
July 13th, 2007 · 3 Comments · Culture, Grammar, Internet, Language
Spotted just now in an online customer review for a handheld vacuum: We have a 2 year old daughter who loves to throw food and her five cousins who ride in the car. … those poor cousins, being thrown around the inside of a car by a freakishly strong two-year-old! I hope the grownups at […]
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“Do Not Go To Work on an Egg”
June 20th, 2007 · Comments Off on “Do Not Go To Work on an Egg” · Advertising, Business, Comedy, Culture, Food, Health, Language, News, TV, Vegetarian & Vegan, Video
A British advertising watchdog has slapped down the British Egg Information Service’s attempt to bring back the famous “Go To Work on an Egg” ads from the 50s, on the grounds that they don’t promote a properly balanced breakfast. Something like the dawning American realization that the egg is indeed edible, but maybe not so […]
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Roundup: Green Blood and Near Beer Edition
June 11th, 2007 · 1 Comment · Comedy, Comics, Culture, Hate Crimes, Heroes, Human Rights, Internet, Journalism, Language, LGBT, Media, Music, News, Politics, Roundup, Tech, TV
POLITICS: Department of things that should be perfectly obvious to everyone: Colin Powell says we should close Guantanamo. “Essentially, we have shaken the belief the world had in America’s justice system by keeping a place like Guantanamo open and creating things like the military commission. We don’t need it and it is causing us far […]
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Roundup: Magnum Opus Edition
June 4th, 2007 · Comments Off on Roundup: Magnum Opus Edition · Apple, Books, Comics, Culture, Food, Heroes, iTunes, Language, LGBT, Lit, Media, Music, Nature, New Wave, News, Tech, TV, Vegetarian & Vegan
COMICS: For once I’m starting out with the comics section, in honor of the fact that Salon has added Opus by the mighty Berkeley Breathed (Bloom County, Outland) to their repertoire. Oh, happy day. Here’s the first installment. Along with my favorites This Modern World by Tom Tomorrow and Tom the Dancing Bug by Ruben […]
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A Book That Will Live in Grinfamy
May 25th, 2007 · 1 Comment · Books, Comedy, Culture, History, Journalism, Language, News
This is a laugh-out-loud good time. Janet Maslin at the New York Times reviews the new book about Pearl Harbor (titled simply Pearl Harbor) by Newt Gingrich and his co-author, William R. Forstchen. The title of her review? “An Assault on Hawaii. On Grammar Too.” OK, I could have stopped right there, and that would […]
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Eight Tiny Buffalo Dancing on the Head of a Linguistic Pin
April 7th, 2007 · 3 Comments · Culture, Language
Thanks to a branching garden path of Internet posts, I have just discovered the wonderful sentence “Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo” (which is really truly a grammatically correct sentence, although certainly not a graceful one) and spent about fifteen minutes learning how to decipher it. My head hurt for a minute or […]
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News: Wear Sunscreen
March 16th, 2007 · Comments Off on News: Wear Sunscreen · Apple, Books, Climate Change, Culture, Internet, iTunes, Language, LGBT, Media, Music, News, Politics, Science, Tech, TV
Worldwide, the winter of 2006-2007 has been the warmest since record keeping began in 1880, according to a new government report. A variety of desperate schemes to save the planet from global warming are being considered by NASA and other organizations — including a man-made volcano that spews sulfur into the atmosphere; a “sun shade” […]
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