Author: David

Over-educated Curmudgeon, Bit-Bucket Tuner and Budding Brewmeister.
Posted on

Faulty Pleasure

I’ve needed intermittent breaks from the flood cleanup, and so I selected an Indie-published space opera series to read for that purpose, forsaking all other reading–light, inconsequential, fun.

But fun marred by faulty execution. Oh, the plots are typical light space opera and the characters stalwart heroes and evil villains, etc. All Flash Gordon/Doc Smith Lensman (without the superman/superwoman aspect) type plots, etc. IOW, just good light fun.

Except. The writer bragged on his editor. That’s an almost sure sign that both the writer and his editor are not formally literate, and have a disconnect between their verbal fluency and subliteracy, evidenced in writer errors of grammar, punctuation, word misusage, and more that survive the “editing” process to publication.

And that’s a shame, because the books are otherwise quite enjoyable, light fare, something the writer stated he was aiming for.

Oh, well. It’s still better than discarding soaked boxes of books, ripping up and discarding carpeting, bleaching walls and floors, and more. And. . . all the errors actually provide a distraction of their own. *heh*

OK, one example of so very FREAKING many:

“A bright blaze of color shown from a split in the corpse’s suit.”

Shone (although “shined” would be preferable) or showed? Which did the writer intend with his misuse of “shown”? One can guess, but unless the writer (or at least his editor) improves his written vocabulary, one can only guess.

#gagamaggot

Posted on

Which Is It?

Stuck on stupid, or “Dunning-Krugerite can’t get off a dime.”

“At the age of 12, Adam’s 40 year old mother left the family for her 20 year old ski instructor”

OK, was Adam’s mother 40 or 12 when she left the family?

File this under “Other reasons I am completely uninterested any the book from this writer,” along with “Stupid/Boring/Uninteresting Premise,” cretinous statements in the text (page 1–I got no further) like, “I held my gaze on the sun in amazement,” (and no, dram sequences don’t excuse such idiocies), and other such jejune, moronic, or even illiterate text.

Gee. One might think a _writer_ would at least try to put his best foot forward on the first page. Oh, wait. he probably did.

#gagamaggot

Posted on

I Should No Longer Be Surprised

Reading a book, or a newspaper or magazine article that’s not chock full of usage, grammar, and punctuation errors is commonplace, nowadays, so I know I should not be surprised, nevertheless (and I cannot count the number of times I have seen that rendered “never the less” in recent years) I am still amazed daily by the subliteracy of published writers, especially those who are published by established media outlets and traditional publishing houses. Of course, that sublterate screeds are actually published warts and all also says any editors who had responsibility for the text are also subliterate.

As are, quite often, their readers.

Posted on

How to Lie to Stupid People

How can one lie to stupid people, specifically people made stupid by their own choice of laziness resulting in ignorance and an inability to reason?

Here’s an example of one way, of many. Watched a video which I refuse to link) about erradicating humanity with nuclear war. It began with an estimation of deaths in a major metropolitan area of the US from a posited nuclear strike, as:

Note: “267,000 Casualties” (A “casualty” is injury or death, as properly used in this context.)

This morphed rather quickly (a couple of frames later) into

The dialog stated, along with this strong graphic, “Almost 300,000 deaths.”

*sigh*

Suckers most of the public) will buy that second graphic and never see the differences between “267,000 casualties” and “300,000 deaths.”

And, of course, all the slanted scaremongering that follows will also be convincing to the self-enstupiated.

Posted on

“Ass”-tlan Flag

I was going to just mock celebrants of “Cinco de mayo: but no. Here’s an “all due respect” version of a Mexican flag for those Aztlan folks who celebrate the fake Cinco de Mayo with burnings of American flags and waving of the Mexican flag while calling for “taking back” huge tracts of the US for their phony “Aztlan.”

YW.

Posted on

The “Great Flood of 2017”

. . . and it’s not over, yet.

Taking a break from The Great Flood of 2017. *heh*

Earlier today, the water in our back yard rose to about 1.5 feet [correction: that was when I got up Saturday morning. Later investigation of our west basement wall and a storage area under the house not directly connected to the basement rvealed the high water mark to be at least 3.5 feet above the level of the basement floor] on our basement walkout. Almost 3” of water in the basement, because weather-proofing on the door was not quite proof against the pressure. Packed sandbags against that door to slow the flow, and then I left to get more supplies.

Water has receeded a GREAT deal, now, but it’s still raining and more rain to come, so. . .

As soon as I finish here, I’ll be at that back door improving the waterproofing and stacking more sandbags, spreading pool shock on the 1.5” of water that did not make its way back out as the waters receeded (partly because I had sandbagged it so heavily, no doubt), and then, later, pumping as much of the rest out as possible, gathering everything that was irreparably damaged for disposal, then. . . stripping out all the carpet, deep cleaning everything that was even dampened, and finishing the floors out. . . in other than carpet.

But some of that will have to wait until the power is restored. *heh*

Oh, and as usual, when power is out for an extended time, we can expect the city to issue a water quality warning. That’s OK, since I have a bunch of 4-gallon containers of “wash water” for hygeine and a LOT more (in gallon and individual serving bottles) of potable water put back.

  • Pantry with plenty of food? Check.
  • Adequate emergency water and means to treat more (filters/purification methods)? Check.
  • Camp stove and fuel? Check.
  • Bugout bags? Check.

Etc.

We’re OK and will remain OK, it looks like, even though the water’s going to rise again tonight.

On the positive side, we’ve been meaning to get to the downstairs remodel, so this just moves that to the top of the list. Plus, while there are only two weeks left in my Wonder Woman’s school contract for this year (not counting Summer School), school will no doubt be called off for the district, at least for a few days, given the countywide flooding (and this is exactly the kind of situation where the governor has waived requirements for total days in the past).

N.B. We are NOT within the “100 Year Flood” flood plain (I have FEMA maps showing where the local flood plains are, and one specifically detailed for our property), so this flood exceeded those boundaries by quite a bit.

All these pictures were taken at least eight hours after peak waters. If you look carefully at the house on the right in the first video below (the house is south of us on an adjoining street), you can see the high water mark. Note also that at the time of these pics/videos, the waters had receded at our house to well back off our property and back well within the “100-year” flood plain as designated by the FEMA maps.

Posted on

Stupid Information for Dunning-Kruger-ites

Saw a silly article, “Science reveals why your shoelaces come untied.” Silly. Tie them correctly and they won’t come untied until you want them to.

But I’m sure the wide-spectrum incompetents who have inflicted Dunning-Kruger Syndrome on themselves (and who then inflict everyone else with their undeservedly confident incompetent behavior) would find the article comforting.

#gagamaggot

Posted on

There’s a Term for This

. . .but I can’t find it where I thought I filed it.

Needed a refill on coffee. Turned to pick up my coffee mug from the coaster on the end table (where it belongs *heh*), and. . . nope. Went hunting for where I had put it down.

Oh.

Went back. There it was. Four inches from where it belonged.

Posted on

Signs of Subliteracy

Here’s one. When folks either misuse a word entirely (“effect” for “affect” for but one of many examples) or spell words phonetically (or nearly), it’s a pretty good sign that their literacy skills are pretty thin.

For example, I saw “amuck” used by someone whose verbal vocabulary exceeds his literacy. The word he was groping for, of course, was “amok.” (It’s a fascinating word.) I’m willing to give folks credit for trying, but I’d really rather folks used words they actually KNOW (as a result of good literacy) than spout off with words they really don’t know at all.

Actually, I’d be more charitable had the fellow typed, “amuk,” since that’s an early 17th Century variant spelling. Both spellings derived, of course, from “amuco.”

Oh, and yes I do know that some contemporary folks are arguing for “amuck,” but that’s really just because they’re too lazy to learn how to spell and use words well.