Category: I do these sorts of things so you don’t have to

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Once Is Happenstance; Twice Is Coincidence; Three Times?

(Enemy action. But of course, efforts to destroy useful distinctions in English are myriad. . . )

Just curious. Anyone know why some folks apparently want to destroy a perfectly good adjective AND a perfectly useful and clear adverb/noun combo by using the adjectives, “backseat” and “backyard” in place of the clearer and more useful “back seat” and “back yard”? (Note: anyone literate and fluent in English both knows the difference and pronounces the adjectives and adjective/noun phrases differently.)

Of course, these are but two of many examples of the attempted extirpation of useful distinctions by subliterate morons (all too often) writing for the Hivemind, their supposedly literate editors and publishers, and those weak minds under the Hivemind’s influence.

Is this sort of thing yet another example of “enemy action” against literacy and simple good sense?

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Well, I Had Been Enjoying the Book

Not sayin’ the title, but really?

. . . there’s enough (plural noun)s on the. . .

Linguistically innumerate. *gagamaggot* And,

“Ah.” He smiled, and even drunk as he was it was the kind of knowing, sarcastic smile that set my teeth on edge. “Jealousy.”

OK, I’ve not necessarily given enough context for the second, but people who use “jealousy” when they mean “envy” really set my teeth on edge. There’s a clear and useful distinction between the two that poorly-read folks seem all to have missed, and now subliterates are forcing their destruction of a useful distinction out of English. I just hate that.

So, as much as I’ve enjoyed the rest of the book to this point, if this sort of thing continues, I may end up putting this one down just because of the annoyance factor.

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Now, see, if he could count on a literate audience. . .

. . .the author of this awkward line,

“. . .the lovely scars he had from the one leg being severely fractured to the point of bone poking through the skin after. . .”

. . .could have saved a whole lotta words with “compound fracture“. But because he can no longer count on his readership being much more literate than the typical eighth-grader nowadays, he had to go all around the barn to use something like ten words (no, I’ve not actually counted) to say what a literate* person could vividly grasp in two.

No, I am not using “literate” in its least form here. I use it in the sense of,

“1 a : educated, cultured. . . 2 a : versed in literature. . . 2c : having knowledge or competence. . . “

And NONE of those apply to someone who cannot read “compound fracture” and either understand the term at once OR have both the intellectual curiosity and competence to either winkle the meaning on their own from context (not necessarily easy to do in this case) or LOOK IT UP! (N.B. When I was a kid, we had a monstrously huge two-volume dictionary–which I still have–that spent most of its time near or under the head of my bed, because I not only looked up EVERY word or term I did not immediately understand from context or simply learned new words and terms from reading the thing for pleasure. And I still do not consider myself as literate as either of my grandfathers were.)

More and more folks today have vocabularies limited by what they HEAR via the Hivemind, and more and more folks today do not even understand the words they hear from that propaganda machine. And so otherwise moderately literate authors HAVE to dumb down their text. (The one who cobbled up the abortion I cited above does still have ALL his characters use “there’s” with plural objects. *sigh* It’s. . . “interesting”–in a gagamaggot kind of way–to hear characters with multiple doctorates in the sciences who are linguistically innumerate. *profound sigh*)

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Oh, Freakin’ Heavens *sigh*

And to think I actually used to subscribe to the e-rag this column title appeared in:

The malware wars: How you can fight it

“It” above refers to what? “Wars”. Hello! “It” is singular; “wars” is plural.

OK, so the article does actually contain a few useful tips. . . for folks who’ve not been paying any attention for the past 10 years or so, like,

Tip: You can preview shortened URLs to see their true destination. For example, with bitly addresses, simply paste them into your browser, add a + after the URL (for example, //bitly.com/13LRaF4+ [Solera Networks page]), and press Enter. Adding the plus sign takes you to the bitly site first, where you’ll see a stats page for the destination site.

For tinyurl addresses, add “preview” before the address. For example, enter //preview.tinyurl.com/{xxxxx}, and the uncloaked address will appear at the tinyurl site.

For snipurl addresses, add “peek” before the shortened address. For example, //peek.snipurl.com/26kl5qy takes you to the Snipurl site and displays the full URL:

https://windowssecrets.com/top-story/surviving-your-first-hour-with-office-2013/

Of course one should always preview shortened URLs for safety’s sake. What? Doesn’t everyone know that already?

But, *meh* even though the article’s semi-useful, someone should have corrected the headline’s egregious grammar error.

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A Blurb Only a Mother Could Love. . .

. . .probably written by the author of the book. Here’s how the blurb starts out (read it with a faux “Texas” redneck accent in your mind’s ear, wouldja?):

No matter how hard she tries to escape her Texas roots–and her mother–Jolene Jackson finds herself dragged back to Kickapoo to deal with both. . .

Oh, please. Please, someone, stop me before I “buy” the thing (for $0.00) and read it. “Jolene Jackson” is NOT going to “escape her. . . roots” until she changes her name, publishes “Jolene Jackson’s” obituary and moves above a garage in Buffalo (where Really Leary, Timothy Leary’s brother *cough*–according to George Carlin–taught that our souls go when we die).

*sigh* Too late. Now, I just have to know what “turkey ranch road rage” is. It’s now become essential to my continued sanity, urm, something-or-other–I’d say “Je ne sais quoi” but that just doesn’t go down well with a dose of protest rallies, naked lizard girls in cages, iced tea and a chicken basket.

I do these sorts of things so you don’t have to. Thank me. Thank me very much.

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Semi-Sorta “Geeky-Lite” Fun

So, nothing on TV appeals to my Wonder Woman, but there’s a show I’m sort of, halfway, kinda interested in, just to kill time letting dinner settle a bit before some inside chores (yeh, still electrical stuff). Well, sure I could watch it elsewhere, but here we are, side-by-side. She’s watching something streaming from Hulu on her notebook, ear buds in. I’m here on my lil funbook. Networked, WMC-connected TV across the room. (No, I don’t have some wireless headphones to connect to it.) But. . . remote connection to the WMC box, complete with computer audio. Set TV to be tuned by computer. Watching TV with TV muted, listening on ear buds plugged into my lil funbook.

Yeh, yeh, I could watch it on my lil finbook’s screen, too, but it actually displays a bit better on the TV.

It’s a kludge, but if it’s stupid and it works, it’s not stupid.

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I Blame the Hivemind

For at least a couple of decades now, anyone who has watched the Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind so-called “news” shows has been programmed to eliminate the ability to discern clear distinctions as to many things, but the most egregious–and most consistent–destruction of reason has been the twisting of time. How many times have you heard *cough* “news” *cough* readers refer to events that occurred some time in the past as happening contemporaneously with the reader’s babbling?

Past tense for past events, idiots. But no, in *cough* “news” *cough* readerland present tense is fairly consistently used to refer to past events. And so an essential anchor of reason is eroded daily and common folk attempting to be writers begin to write such drivel as,

The sun rose rose over San Antonia [sic] de Bexar as a Blood [sic] red omen of what the day will [sic] bring to the men of the Alamo.

Good Sharkey, Colonel god! Past tense, properly used, mixed with future tense speaking of a (long) past event! Oh, why not. *sigh* If the past is present, then surely the past is future as well. Time means nothing.

OTOH, any literate person who’s not been lobotomized by watching *cough* “news” *cough* shows would have written,

“The sun rose rose over San Antonio de Bexar as a blood red omen of what the day would bring to the men of the Alamo.”

It’s still a bit overwrought for me, but at least the conditional is dealt with properly. It’s not just aspiring web “journalists” committing such gagamaggot faux pas with English, no. Such superbly dumbass writing abounds in traditionally published works, from newspapers to books from traditional publishing houses (which at one time employed literate proof readers and editors) and in the speech of *cough* “news” *cough* readers inhabiting the Hivemind, the political and entertainment classes and even Academia Nut Fruitcake Bakeries.

Is it any wonder these dumbasses who consider themselves an elite that’s fit to rule the hoi polloi are making a mess of everything they touch? They cannot consistently deal with speaking clearly and rationally on simple subjects.

And the sheeple eat it all up with a spork (because they cannot be trusted with a real fork).

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The Age of Being Stupid

One of the stupidest commercials ever.

http://www.ispot.tv/media/001/006/426/7kNk_360.webm

You may have seen it. VIagra commercial. Guy’s driving a pickup and towing a horse trailer down a country dirt road. Now, as anyone (with more than two working synapses in their cerebral cortex) who’s lived in areas with those kinds of roads knows, one only drives into mud as wide as the guy got stuck in if there is absolutely nowhere else to go. Why? I proffer the dumba$$ who stupidly stuck himself in that mud. Anyone with more active brain cells than the average head of cabbage who’s ever driven such a road knows to drive the high spots in such conditions, and the guy had options before he stuck himself to at least get a drive wheel on some better ground.

Moreover, he had driven in to load the horses at least once, so he had no excuse for not planning ahead to not get stuck. Unless, of course, his excuse is too many dead brain cells.

So, he knew enough to offload a couple of horses and rig a tow. Big whoopee. If he hadn’t been a nearly brain dead idiot, he’d not have gotten stuck to begin with.

And Viagra themes this commercial, “the age of knowing how to make things happen”. *feh* *Nu-uh* Looks more like they were making an ad for some sort of Alzheimer’s meds or an assisted living facility to me.