Boys Will Be Boys

Douglas Todd has a lengthy piece in the Vancouver Sun arguing that sentimentality is not as great as we think it is. (?)

After leading with a banal list of things people can be sentimental about ("Mom and apple pie. Cats and dogs.") and reminding us that some Nazis were capable of getting moist and maudlin at the drop of a swastika-adorned hat, he gives us another example from pop culture:

The acclaimed HBO series, The Sopranos, frequently captures the sentimentality of Mafia members. It portrays Tony Soprano and his cruel cronies weeping about their mothers, sniffling at old movies, idealizing their children, lamenting the loss of tradition and being fiercely protective of their wives (on whom they systematically cheat with their "goombahs," ie. mistresses).

That "i.e" is missing a period and, as Grammar Girl has helpfully determined, five out of six style guides recommend a comma following its deployment. But never mind that for now. More importantly, "goombah," as any mob-follower worth his pomade knows, refers to male friends--paisans--and, more loosely, to mobsters in general. The feminine version, used to describe the "kept women" they keep, is "goomah."

Too Late

Peter Hitchens (Hitchens the Lesser) has taken to his blog to respond to well-wishers, and once again demonstrates that he is not the graceful prose stylist his sibling was:

First may I once again thank the many people who visited this site to express condolences on the death of my late brother, Christopher.

But of course, late, in this context, means dead; it seems oddly redundant to speak of a dead person dying. As Christopher Hitchens never tired of pointing out, you get only one life. And that includes only one death.

There's a First Time for Everything

After reading today's withering editorial in The Province, I was delighted to find that the tabloid "paper of record" in our fair town is now on the record as being adamantly opposed to...virginity.

I'm not kidding. In a piece chiding a local group of insufferably smug chaste young women bloggers, the editorialist really lets them have it (as it were).

While no one should judge them for their personal--what previously would have been private--choices, their advocacy of virginity until marriage is a dangerous, out-dated, anti-sex philosophy that most people have rejected.
The last thing that anyone needs, particularly young people, is anything that promotes shame or guilt about sexual desire. 

Having worked himself (it's got to be a guy, don't you think?) into a lather (as it were), the essayist continues:

The idea that only sex within marriage is healthy is absurd.

As we've seen before, the word only can change the meaning of a sentence depending on where it's placed. As it stands here, the sentence could be taken to mean that what is absurd is the idea of sex being the only thing in a marriage that is healthy. But if you moved only to come after sex (as it were) it would still be open to ambiguity. It could sound like we're talking about a "sex-only" marriage, and that truly would be absurd. The only solution is to recast the sentence to something like...eh, you know what? Fuck it. (As it were.)

The Atlantic Announces its Own Passing

Time for more dangling modifier unintentional humor. Today, the (formerly) venerable Atlantic slips on an old syntactical banana peel with this Table of Contents blooper in their online edition:

Letters from Stalin’s Daughter: 
Before dying Monday at 85, The Atlantic reviewed her 1967 memoir, "wrung from an agonized conscience"

But of course as regrettably moribund as the (formerly) venerable Atlantic may have been (and is), it did not die last Monday. If it had, we would not be reading this amusingly amateurish subheading.

It's Just a Faze You're Going Through

A languid, guilty-pleasure scroll through this week's offerings on PostSecret delivers the usual funny/disturbing/annoying revelations, including this "look how I shocking I am" submission:

Well, I am shocked all right. Shocked that the confessor doesn't know the difference between phased and fazed. And shocked at the price. Does this mean I owe my cat 200 bucks?

Point of Order

We took the kiddies to city hall on Saturday to watch the local election returns come in, because nothing says family fun like sitting in a funereal council chamber silently watching numbers change on a screen.

On the way we in, we saw this propaganda poster full of demographically-correct smiley faces, hectoring us to do our civic duty:

  You know what else matters, creator of run-on headline? Punctuation.

Peekaboo! I See You!

Take a look at this picture from The Province:

Now note the caption:

Gang task force undercover police are in evidence Thursday in and around the court complex in Vancouver where several trials involving gang members are in progress.

I don't mean to tell the Donnie Brascos on the VPD how to infiltrate a gang, but I would suggest that if you want to conceal where your true affiliation lies, you should probably lose the "POLICE GANG TASK FORCE" attire, so that you are not so plainly "in evidence." Either that, or perhaps undercover is just not the word to use here.

Make No Mistake...

I have here in the writing cockpit a broadsheet-sized book called The Copywriter's Bible, which, like any real bible, is full of outdated anecdotes and questionable advice. I like to refer to it sometimes to remind myself that there was a time when a magazine ad could be this maggoty with verbiage:

This particular novella-length ad, entitled " A FEW ENCOURAGING WORDS FOR THE TOTALLY INCOMPETENT" contains this apercu outlining the oratorical deficiencies of a past U.S. president:

THE WORST SPEECH-WRITER

William Gamaliel Harding wrote his own speeches while President of the USA in the 1920's.  

When Harding died, e.e. cummings said, "the only man, woman, or child who wrote a simple, declarative sentence with seven grammatical errors, is dead." 

Here is a rewarding sample of the man's style. "I would like the government to do all it can to mitigate, then, in understanding, in mutuality of interest, in concern for the common good, our tasks will be solved."

I don't know--it sounds like George W. on a good day, if you ask me.

Anyway, as it turns out, Malcolm Gladwell wrote about this president in his book, Blink, where he used the hapless Harding, whom everyone agreed "looked presidential," as an example of what happens when we choose appearance of ability over, well, ability. He called it "The Warren Harding Error." He did not call it "The William Harding Error." That would have been an error. Not "totally incompetent" perhaps, but definitely an error.

Where's the Last Place You Had It?

A sad story in today's Province opens with:

The body of an 85-year-old Invermere man who was reported missing Tuesday was found near a dirt road in the Jumbo Creek area a day later. 

As I say, a sad story. But not as odd as the headline would have you believe:

Missing Body Found

It wasn't a body that was missing--it was a man. A minor quibble, perhaps, but Body of Missing Man Found would have made the point more clearly, and without the misleading macabre overtones.

A Sneek Peek at Tomorrow's Lunch Feature

Back to school time--which means back to figuring out what to put in the kid's lunch each day. You can toss a package of processed-cheese-and-crackers into the Dora the Explorer lunch bag only so many times before you hear from Child Protective Services, so I was glad to see this suggested recipe for a simple blueberry banana bread in the morning rag. The mixture is in the oven right now.

But before I try to clean the baking powder out of the toaster and stovetop elements (thanks, Kim, for keeping the open box on the top shelf of the cupboard where I have to jump for it) let's take a look at that ad at the bottom of the page. "A full line-up of concerts, dance, theatre, family, movies..." One of those things is not like the others. "Family events" would probably be more accurate. And "we give you a peak..."? Give me a brake.

And You Thought Your Job was Tedious

I've always felt sorry for Jimmy Buffet. Sure, he gets to spend most of his life wearing Hawaiian shirts, strumming his six-string for half-drunk tourists, and generally being the exemplar of the middle-aged laid back surfer dude. But you just know that in every single gig he performs, he's not getting off the stage until he sings that song. How sick he must be of it. How does he even pretend to want to do it again?

Then I read about this guy in an AP wire story today:

NEW YORK — Saturday night's performance of "The Phantom of the Opera" on Broadway will be perhaps most memorable for someone who's seen the show a lot.

It will be the last one for actor George Lee Andrews, who will have wrapped up his 9,382nd show over 23 years. The show helped him capture the Guinness World Records title for the most performances in the same Broadway show.

Producers revealed this week that 68-year-old Andrews would not be continuing in the role of Monsieur Andre. Aaron Galligan-Stierle, who is Andrew's son-in-law, will take over the part beginning Sept. 5.

I don't know--I saw "The Phantom of the Opera" once, and that seemed plenty for me. This guy must be seeing flying chandeliers in his sleep.

The error here comes in the final sentence, and it raises an issue that always gives me the heebie-jeebies: how to possessive-ize a name ending in S. I know it should be simple, but this is one of those situations where (metaphorically speaking, anyway) I just mumble into my hand and avoid eye contact and hope nobody presses the point.

Strunk and White have a clear opinion on this--in fact, it is the first rule in the "little book": "Form the possessive singular of the noun by adding 's." It's "Charles's friend" and Burns's poems" they say with characteristic assuredness. (And yet, somewhat curiously, they make exceptions for "ancient possessive names ending in -es and -is," and for Jesus. So it would be "Jesus' iPod," for Christ's sake. That guy gets all the special breaks.)

But it's not really that simple. If you believe this source (and come on, it's on the Internet--why wouldn't you?) it's "Arkansas's former governor" but "Alexander Dumas' first novel." It's "the Smiths' car" but "the Joneses' home." But is it "the boss' memo" or "the boss's memo"? (Or what about "the bosses's memo"?) At this point, let's admit it, we just want to leave it for the intern and go get something to eat.

In any case, in the example above, the iron-man actor's surname is Andrews--which means that most people would form the possessive thusly: Andrews'. Some counter-culture goth types might argue for Andrews's, even at the risk of sounding like Homer Simpson referring to his neighbors as "the Flanderseseses." But no civilized person in possession of their possessive faculties could possibly justify rendering it Andrew's.

Who You Calling Toddler?

Here's an alarming story from The Province, attributed to that prodigious contributor, Staff Reporter:

A baby was pepper-sprayed  Tuesday morning in a dispute between two dog owners. The mother and the six-month-old baby were walking with their pit bull in the 9400-block 132A Street in Surrey just after 9 am. when a man with a doberman pulled out a canister and sprayed the pit bull. The toddler was hit with some of the spray.

According to RCMP, the man says his dog was being attacked. 

 My problem here is not with the "he barked, she barked" nature of the crime, but rather with the inconsistent identification of the child in question. "Six-month-old baby" makes perfect sense. But you have to be old enough to toddle (i.e.: stumble about in an amusingly drunken manner) to be considered a toddler, so that second designation is just wrong.

And while we're on the topic--who among us hasn't at least fantasized at some point about giving an obstreperous toddler a blast in the puss with bear spray? Be honest, now.

I See Dead People Seeing Things

I was just going from the fridge to the patio-cum-office (if you're going to spend the weekend working, you may as well throw some sunshine and Margaritas into the mix), and as I passed the TV, I caught a snippet of newscast. Something about a fundraising bike ride up a North Shore mountainside, called The Cyprus Challenge. The ride is in honor of Jack Poole, who, according to the perky newscaster,

"...was integral in bringing the Olympics to Vancouver. Poole died in 2009, just months before he saw his dream become a reality."

I don't mean to be a Debbie Downer, but as I understand it, one's powers of observation are among the first things to go after one dies.

Points of Pride

It's Pride Weekend in Vancouver, which means tomorrow I can take the kids to the West End to see spangled parade floats full of hairy gay men in assless chaps flagellating each other with foot-long purple dildos.

The Vancouver Sun is getting into the spirit of things with their weekend edition. There's a column explaining why hairy men in assless chaps flagellating each other with dildos came to be a Pride Parade staple (it has to do with irony and self-parody), and a number of other related stories, including an interesting history of the storied Davie Street neighborhood and how it's becoming less gay-centric. Ron Dutton, who is described as an archivist for the B.C. gay and lesbian communities is quoted as saying that nowadays...

There are gay Buddhists and gay volleyball and gay knitting. There's a gay antique car club...So now you can be a part of your community with ever darkening the door of a bar or an overt gay business.

The way I see it, the visitor in this idiom is blocking the light at an open threshold, so I always thought the expression should be "darkening the doorway." Darkening a door just doesn't make sense in that context. And it's interesting to note that although there are plenty of sources that list the "darkening the door" idiom (going back to Ben Franklin),and offer a definition, none that I found provided an explanation for the metaphor. There are, of course, a number of citations for "darkening the doorway" as well, including this from a test of English idioms:

"Get out of here, Jed! First you show up drunk, then you hit on my wife and then you insult my son. Get out of here and don't come back! Never darken my doorway again!" An irate Matt told him.
Correct answer: (c) doorway

So I suppose we can deduce that either version has a respectable claim, but I'm sticking with my "doorway" preference. We can also deduce that Jed is an asshole.

But back to the Weekend Extra section of the Sun. A few pages on, there is another story, this one about how, many years ago, the owner of Joe's Cafe on Commercial Drive asked a lesbian couple to stop kissing, and how a rival (lesbian-friendly) cafe opened nearby in response. The story begins with this puzzling sentence:

A decade ago, Pat Hogan opened up Josephine's Cappuccino Bar and Wimmin's Crafts just off Commercial Drive as a place for lesbians to grab a cappuccino and, if they wanted, each other's hands or lips.

I'm certainly no expert on the amorous techniques of the urban lesbian, but this idea of them reaching out and gripping each other's lips strikes me as unlikely behavior, even for the really butch ones who ride the motorcycles topless in the parade.

You Don't Say

What Your Favorite Author Says About You

...blares the inane Huffpo headline. Gosh, I didn't realize Paris even knew I existed, let alone that she was talking about me!

You Look Familiar...

 Woman Who Looks Like Casey Anthony, Sammy Blackwell, Attacked By Driver In Oklahoma

A woman outraged over the Casey Anthony verdict was arrested in Oklahoma for allegedly attacking a convenience store clerk who resembles the Florida mom acquitted of murdering her daughter. 

After leaving work in Chouteau on Friday, Sammay Blackwell said a customer who had told her that "you look like Casey Anthony" followed her for several miles and then crashed her car into Blackwell's, causing her to flip several times...

Sure it sounds insane, but I must confess that there is a clerk in my local liquor store who bears an uncanny resemblance to insufferable Euro-twit Piers Morgan, and I consequently find myself suppressing the urge to slap his smug puss as he bags my moderately-priced Shiraz. So I can relate.

The nit I'm picking with this AOL-HuffPo story (we'll just overlook the "Sammy/Sammay" inconsistency) is an oldie, and it comes in the final sentence:

In an ironic twist, Blackwell has a daughter named Caylee too, Channel 9 said.

Its claim to the contrary notwithstanding, that sentence suffers from an irony deficiency. As some tedious scolds never get tired of pointing out, irony and coincidence are not the same thing. The fact that the Casey Anthony doppelganger has a daughter named Caylee is a coincidence--and an astonishing one at that. It may even be a good enough reason to attempt to kill her. But it is not ironic.


On to the the fresh-from-the-mailbox Maclean's for another example of usage and abusage from the collection of greatest hits. In a capsule review of the Swedish thriller novel, The Hypnotist, comes this scene-setter:

Shortly before Christmas, almost an entire family is slaughtered in a Stockholm suburb, two parents and a two-year-old girl literally sliced to ribbons.

Charming. But, as some tedious scolds never get tired of pointing out, literally means literally, not "I-really-want-to-emphasize-or-hyperbolize-this."  It's unlikely the murderer actually filleted the family into sushi with such painstaking precision, especially since the following sentence tells us that another family member, a son, "though cut by as many knife wounds as the others, is still alive." Or perhaps Swedish surgeons are impressively adept at reconstituting ribbons into whole people. 

Unintentionally Funny Headline of the Day...

From HuffPo:

Sarah Palin's Documentary Opens...to a Nearly Empty Audience

It's the auditorium that's nearly empty, not the audience. On the other hand, if they're spending 15 bucks each to see this...

Dead Man Marching

Today in The Province, columnist Jon Ferry writes about a friend and colleague, Claude Adams, who was sacked from his job as a writer for the CBC evening newscast after an unfortunate error made in the heat of wordsmithing battle:

Under intense deadline pressure, he was tasked to write an intro to a story about a police dog reportedly locked in a sweltering SUV while its RCMP handler went fishing. Adams assumed the dog was dead, which is what anchor Tony Parsons faithfully read on the air.  

The problem was the dog, a 10-month-old German Shepard, survived. Which was good for the dog and even for Parsons, who calmly delivered an on-air correction. But it was bad for Adams...the next day he was called into executive producer Wayne Williams' office and given his marching orders.

But "marching orders" are directives a superior gives when dispensing an assignment. I think Ferry means that the hapless Adams received his "walking papers," which, although it sounds better (who wouldn't prefer a blithesome amble with some papers to a forced march?) is in fact the more disagreeable of the two.

Wile E. Cougar

The bears are back--and this time they've brought the cougars with them. Each day seems to bring another news account of a lively unexpected encounter between man and homicidal woodland beast. There have been two bear maulings in recent days (one fatal) and a sign on my local running trail advising of a cougar sighting in the area had me nervously scanning the perimeter for crouching cats.  

The Province tells us of a teen girl on Vancouver Island who forestalled a cougar assault with the time-tested trick of "making herself taller" and ringing her bike bell. That's a trick I'd like to learn. The spontaneous heightening, I mean. I already know how to ring a bike bell.

The piece goes on to inventory other encounters, ending with:

And in the Squamish area, in mid-June, a cougar possibly trying to pounce on a rider preparing for the annual Test of Metal mountain bike race missed and landed on his real wheel.

The cougars have wheels now? Given their already significant predatory advantage, that hardly seems sporting.

The Right Stuff?

What do you do when you've finished building a new Boeing 747-8?

You take it out for a sandwich run.

AOL travel blogger Kate Auletta has posted a story about a Seattle test crew that made a 2500-mile flight to Pittsburgh last week to sample some legendary Primanti Brothers sandwiches. She says flight test director Paul Shank told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review that the sandwiches were a hit with the crew. But they're not stopping there. Apparently, the aircraft needs a little more "testing":

In the future, Shank told the paper, he and his crew will take the plane to try out some pasties in Michigan's Upper Peninsula and lobster rolls in Maine.

I'm going to go ahead and assume that should read pastries. Pasties are...well, if you're not familiar with the term you can click here for an eyeful.