Hauser: You really think you can solve the problem? Come into Wolfram & Hart and make everything right? Turn night into glorious day? You pathetic little fairy. Angel: I'm not little.

'Just Rewards (2)'


Natter 45: Smooth as Billy Dee Williams.  

Off-topic discussion. Wanna talk about corsets, duct tape, or physics? This is the place. Detailed discussion of any current-season TV must be whitefonted.


Lee - Jul 18, 2006 5:54:49 am PDT #7183 of 10002
The feeling you get when your brain finally lets your heart get in its pants.

W's behavior at the G8 summit is really starting to worry me.

That is kind of freaky.

Did you see the Daily show segment on the pig?

I finally fell asleep, and then my alarm clock didn't go off, which was bad for shooting up the cat (but not bad enough to worry about), but good for me.


Allyson - Jul 18, 2006 6:11:10 am PDT #7184 of 10002
Wait, is this real-world child support, where the money goes to buy food for the kids, or MRA fantasyland child support where the women just buy Ferraris and cocaine? -Jessica

My story about Eureka is up at [link] if any are interested.


tommyrot - Jul 18, 2006 6:16:14 am PDT #7185 of 10002
Sir, it's not an offence to let your cat eat your bacon. Okay? And we don't arrest cats, I'm very sorry.

Did someone say that Bush was acting weird? [link]

A photo of Bush with the Japanese PM. Bush's fly is open. Worksafe (thank God!!!).

eta: The picture is worksafe. The rest of the page - perhaps NSM. (The link loads the entire blog, but the link has a # thingie that leaves your browser scrolled to the actually entry. You know what I mean. I think.)


lisah - Jul 18, 2006 6:18:09 am PDT #7186 of 10002
Punishingly Intricate

my alarm clock didn't go off, which was bad for shooting up the cat (but not bad enough to worry about)

I swear my diabetic cat now wakes me up to give him his shot. He is totally an insulin addict!

It was so hot in my supposedly air-conditioned office yesterday (85+) that I'm working at home in my unairconditioned but much cooler home today. Hooray for open doors and shady trees and ceiling fans.


tommyrot - Jul 18, 2006 6:19:45 am PDT #7187 of 10002
Sir, it's not an offence to let your cat eat your bacon. Okay? And we don't arrest cats, I'm very sorry.

My story about Eureka is up at [link] if any are interested.

Heh. Funny aricle.


Frankenbuddha - Jul 18, 2006 6:20:18 am PDT #7188 of 10002
"We are the Goon Squad and we're coming to town...Beep! Beep!" - David Bowie, "Fashion"

A photo of Bush with the Japanese PM. Bush's fly is open.

Heh, but as Jon Stewart has shown, in many of the photos of Bush & the Japanese PM it's Bush who comes off as more dignified, amazing as that may seem.


Jesse - Jul 18, 2006 6:20:20 am PDT #7189 of 10002
Sometimes I trip on how happy we could be.

My story about Eureka is up at [link] if any are interested.

I had to send it to my mom, because over the weekend, I was trying to tell her about Archimedes and the bathtub!

At least when Bush is next to Koizumi, he seems like the respectable one.


Lee - Jul 18, 2006 6:21:00 am PDT #7190 of 10002
The feeling you get when your brain finally lets your heart get in its pants.

I swear my diabetic cat now wakes me up to give him his shot. He is totally an insulin addict!

Mine sleeps in the other room, but boy, did I get bitched out when I came out.


lisah - Jul 18, 2006 6:29:24 am PDT #7191 of 10002
Punishingly Intricate

Mine sleeps in the other room, but boy, did I get bitched out when I came out

Mine also tries to wake the dog up to give him his shot. He's either not very bright or too smart (because he knows if the dog wakes up I'll get up to walk him as dog is elderly and I can't just ignore him if he thinks it's time to go out). They are all tyrants.

ION Diane Rehm drives me nuts but am too lazy to get up to turn off radio right now.


tommyrot - Jul 18, 2006 6:33:10 am PDT #7192 of 10002
Sir, it's not an offence to let your cat eat your bacon. Okay? And we don't arrest cats, I'm very sorry.

Revenge of the Language Nerds

Beleaguered linguists find witty champions in Far From the Madding Gerund.

David Foster Wallace once invented an organization called the "Militant Grammarians of Massachusetts" whose members boycott stores with signs reading "10 items or less." It was a joke (from the novel Infinite Jest), but it's not too far-fetched. Eats, Shoots & Leaves, a book that took as its primary subject the misuse of various punctuation marks, became an international best seller a few years ago, and on bookstore shelves today it has plenty of company: Between You and I: A Little Book of Bad English; The Grouchy Grammarian; The Dictionary of Disagreeable English; Lapsing Into a Comma, and so forth.

These books tend to be written by prescriptivists—people who would dictate how language should be used. Descriptivists—those who would describe how language is actually used—have rarely had such eloquent (or prolific) spokesmen. As a result, they're often ridiculed. Wallace, who himself is a somewhat militant grammarian, has argued that descriptivism is hopeless as a scientific endeavor: Using what people actually say and write to determine appropriate English usage is, he says, like writing an ethics textbook based on what people actually do. But descriptive linguists have finally found persuasive champions in Mark Liberman and Geoffrey Pullum, who have collected a series of essays from their blog Language Log into a new book, Far From the Madding Gerund.