Who's the Boss? ~~ A "Grammar Nazi" & "David'Z RantZ" Post

No, not this "Boss."

Why the hell do people say "You're not the boss of me?"

Boss of me? Like the English language isn't already awkward enough?

Do people say "That's the car of me," or "This is the wife of me," etc.? No. No. They say "That's my car" or "This is my wife."

When I'm appointed Emperor of Earth, people will need to get my permission before they're allowed to do stupid shit like this!

Thanks for your time... or should that be "Thanks for the time of you?"

A Body of Work? ~~ A "Grammar Nazi" Post!

I know, I know, I'm always complaining about spelling and grammar errors that I find, and this time's no exception. They wrote "body's" when they meant "bodies." But cut me some slack this time. I am deservedly outraged, because this mistake was in the 2008 edition of the Writer's Market!

Thanks for your time.

A "Short Shorts," "Grammar Nazi," AND "David'Z RantZ" Post!!!

No "Comical Wednesday" post this week. Nope, just some stuff I stole from my own Facebook page.

1. Have you noticed this? There are far too many people online nowadays who use the word "women" when they mean "woman." It's annoying. Just sayin'.

2. And I'm really getting sick of people online meaning to write "sweet" but writing "sweat!" There is quite a difference. (And yes, I know the Eagles sang about "sweet summer sweat" in "Hotel California," but hey...)

Thanks for your time.

Ohhh, NOW I Get It! (A "Short Shorts"/"Grammar Nazi" Post)

1. A couple of weeks or so ago, the USA's President Trump came in for some teasing on Twitter after posting a Tweet using the term “Boarder Wall” to refer to his proposed border wall on the US/Mexican... uhhh... border. You know, the one that he says will stop illegal immigration... because everybody knows that almost all illegal immigrants in the USA are Mexicans, right? And this wall will completely secure our boarder... errr, border.

He made this mistake twice.

Or was it a mistake? Y'see, despite all the Tweets ridiculing his alleged misspelling, and despite this very entertaining article, I'm going to give the prez the benefit of the doubt and say he meant just that. Boarder.

Here's my theory. Perhaps the biggest (loudest?) of Trump's promises during his campaign for president was that he was going to have a wall built and that Mexico would pay for it.

So here's what I think he's going to do. ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement), or the INS (United States Immigration and Naturalization Service), or... whoever... is going to round up all of the illegal immigrants (and as stated above, almost every damned one of 'em is a Mexican) and force them all to work (for free) on constructing his wall. So, in effect, Mexico will be paying for it.

Those illegal Mexican immigrants will be allowed to stay in the United States only as long as it takes them to build Trump's wall, after which they'll be deported to Mexico. (And since the wall will indeed be completed by then, we know they'll never be able to come back.) While they're living here, we'll house them for free, but we'll still consider them "boarders."

Therefore, the wall will be – say it with me – a “boarder wall.”

(And by the way, when I say “all of the illegal immigrants” I mean every able-bodied adult among them, male and female. Not their children, of course.

Which is a good thing, cuz they probably can't even find those poor kids at this point.)

1a. By the way, the second article I linked to above – "Your President Is a Dullard Who Confuses Homophones" – contains this great quote that I wish I had written myself: There’s nothing like seeing a great meme on Facebook or Twitter and being unwilling to share it because the person put “there” when they meant “their” or “your” when they meant “you’re” or “hear” when they meant “here” or some such nonsense. It is a frustrating daily occurrence on the internet, and even the “president” of the United States is not immune from it.

Oh, and I didn't call the article “great” just because it included a sentence I might have said.

1b. When I tried, once again, to find the article I just quoted from, I threw the terms "Donald Trump," "Boarder Wall," and "confused homophones" into the search box... and I learned that a disturbingly large amount of articles online use the word "homophone" to talk about people who don't like gays. Really? Seriously? I would have thought that anyone even familiar with the word "homophone" would be above making that sort of mistake. I guess not.

2. So, President Trump is talking about bringing the troops back from Syria, and maybe Afghanistan, and Lord knows where else by the time this article posts. And I know the real reason why. He's going to station every damned one of 'em in a huge circle around the White House, so when the FBI or whoever finally come to "get him," he'll be protected.

3. Tens of thousands of federal inmates will be released, according to this source and many others. And President Trump is evidently all for it.

Isn't this the guy who was so worried about all those Mexican criminals? Oh, wait. These are going to be "low-level" inmates, the type of criminal in minimum security prisons, or so-called "country club" prisons.

You know... the kinds of prisons guys like Donald Trump end up in.

4. Recently, NBC was accused of dispensing "Fake News" because they printed an article about the president which evidently was true when they printed it, but was rendered untrue by President Trump's actions only a few hours later. The situation is analyzed here.

I'm so sick of people -- especially DJT -- talking about "Fake News." The Prez seems to throw that term at anyone who doesn't think he's as wonderful as... well.. as he thinks he is.

In my tribute post to Bill Dana on June 21, 2017, I wrote:

At my flea market stand, one of the items I have for sale is the album pictured below, José Jimenez in Orbit (Bill Dana on Earth). Just last Sunday, my display of this LP prompted not one, but two conversations about Bill Dana. One was with a gentleman who assumed that Mr. Dana was dead, but I promptly corrected him, informing him that the comedian, now ninety-two, was still alive. And as far as I knew, I was right; the news outlets had yet to report that Bill Dana had died on Thursday, the 15th.

Was I lying? No, of course not.

To me, there's a big difference between lying and making a mistake. Even the news media shouldn't always be expected to get their stories straight. People make mistakes, even when they have the best of intentions.

And intent is what's at the heart of situations like these. If you ask a three-year-old "What's two and two?" and he says "Nine," is he lying? No. And if you ask him "What's six divided by three?" and he replies "Thursday?", again, is he lying?

I never received a test after it had been graded by a teacher where the teacher had written "Three wrong, David. You LIED THREE TIMES!"

That's not how it works.

The President, on the other hand? Lies constantly. Several times every day. Several times every day. There are websites devoted to counting all of his deliberate falsehoods. Their lists are staggering. And they only list the ones they know about.

It's like the old joke, "How do you know when a lawyer is lying?" "His lips are moving." The same could be said about Donald Trump.

5. I'm far from the only person to see a resemblance between Stephen Miller and Josef Goebbels. (Do a Google search, and you'll see.)

But they don't really resemble each other all that much.

It's not their looks I'm comparing, though. It's their general attitude, especially where immigrants are concerned, and where the power of the president is concerned as well. You'd never guess that Miller is descended from Jewish immigrants, would you? Well, read this article... written by his own uncle.

6. Okay, now you know why I so rarely do political posts.

7. And I promise I'll try to get better about following your posts, and soon!

8. And... Happy New Year!

Thanks for your time.

P.S. ~~ COMING SOON! (Watch for it!) A Re-Posting of One of the Best (and Longest) Stories I Ever Posted on This Blog!

Playing with Words (A "Grammar Nazi/Short Shorts" Post)

Some random points, in no apparent order!

• Years ago, I would wonder why Bono, the lead singer of U2, pronounced his name "bonno" instead of "boe-noe," like Sonny Bono. Then I found out that his real name is Paul Hewson, and that "Bono" is short for Bono Vox, a Latin phrase which means "good voice." And as I recalled from high school, the Latin pronunciation of "bono" is "bonno."
• I'd never heard of record producer and music executive Marion "Suge" Knight until his arrest for murder in 2015. Actually, "heard" isn't quite the right word. I read about his arrest online, and when I saw the name "Suge" Knight, I thought "Sooj?" What the hell kinda name is "Sooj?" Well, as it turns out, "Suge" is short for "Sugar Bear," so obviously it isn't pronounced the way I pronounced it in my mind as I read it... But I'd like to have a few words with the guy who decided on the spelling of "Suge."
• Every so often, someone will write a short version of a word and make up the spelling of the abbreviation. (I did an entire post on the abbreviations for "microphone" here.) Sometimes these shortened words work for me, sometimes not. I've seen people abbreviate "favorite" as both "fave" and "fav." "Fave" makes sense. It would rhyme with words like "stave" and "knave." I've also seen "fav," which strikes me as wrong. I see "fav" and think, That rhymes with "have" and "salve." Another word is "vacation," sometimes abbreviated in print as "vacay" (which makes perfect sense to me) and sometimes "vaca" (which does not make sense to me). I'd pronounce that second one as "vacca," which rhymes with the way that most people think people from Massachusetts pronounce words like "hacker" and "tracker." Actually, Vacca was the name of a 6th-century grammarian, which seems very appropriate in this case.
• This isn't really grammar-related, but if you sneeze and someone says "God bless you" or "Bless you," you probably say "Thank you" to him or her. Do you thank people who say "gesundheit" (as I do) instead? People rarely say "Thank you" to me when I say "gesundheit." Why? I'm wishing them health. So, if anyone ever says "gesundheit" to you after you sneeze, thank the sucker. Or I'll hunt you down and smack you.
• I'm seeing more and more people writing "awe" lately, when (for example) something is really cute and they mean to write "aw" (or "aww")! As my friend Betsy recently said, that works "only if you really are in awe!"
• Sometimes I'm writing dialogue (or just my blog, which I kinda write like I'm actually speaking to you), and I want to stress a word, so I'll drag it out a bit. For instance, when you read "realllly," you probably read it just the way I want you to read it! I've seen people do this in different ways, ways which -- once again! -- I just might find fault with. If you stress "big" by writing "biiiig," it works... But sometimes, people think that just repeating the last letter of any word will have that effect. When I see a word like "loveeee," I don't read it the way the writer intended. (If I were to stretch out a word like "love," I'd probably write "luvvvv" or something similar.) To me, "loveeee" would be pronounced like "lovey," and as most of us know, "Lovey" was Mrs. Thurston Howell III on Gilligan's Island.
• Finally, speaking of abbreviations, I've seen people try to stress expressions from texting or the internet, like "LOL" ("laugh out loud," or "laughing out loud," as you know). I've actually seen things like "lololol" which would technically translate to "laughing out loud out loud out loud." ("OKAY, I GET IT. YOU WERE LAUGHING OUT LOUD!!!") Another one I saw recently was when Kendra Wilkinson tweeted "lmaoooo," which would mean "laugh my ass off off off off!" That makes a lot of sense, right? Oh, well, other than "btw" and "IIRC," I generally stay away from those kinds of abbreviation anyway.

Hey, no big finish here. Just some random points, as I told you at the beginning of the post!

Thanks for your time.

Hey, Remember My "Short Shorts" and "David'Z RantZ?" So Do I!

It would have been so easy to do a Google image search and find photos of women wearing short

shorts -- I mean, try not to -- but hey, I hate being predictable, and most of my readers are women, so...

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1.  Quite a Production...

Have you noticed that movies have gotten longer and longer during the past few years? Most of 'em used to be somewhere around ninety minutes, or ranging up to about two hours, right? But lately? Two-and-a-half hours, three hours, four hours...! You probably think that's because the plots are getting more and more complicated, or otherwise crowded, but no!

I figured it out. The extra time is being taken up by all those freakin' production companies being credited before the start of films today!

"Such-and-Such Studios, in association with These Guys, and Those Guys, and Dem Guys, and... Oh, who gives a f***?!? Can we please show the movie now?!? We've been looking at production company logos for half a freakin' hour!"

So... That's the real reason. No, it is! Trust me.

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2. Put THAT in Your Pipe and Smoke It!

Speaking of movies, I'm old enough to remember when the MPAA-supplied film ratings told what the rating was, butnot why it was G, PG (which had previously been GP, and had been M before that), R, or X. (Fifty years ago, there were no such ratings as PG-13 and NC-17, by the way.)

Now, of course a film's rating is almost always accompanied by the reason or reasons the film received said rating. And I think that's usually a good idea. There are some parents who think it's bad to show a woman topless, but perfectly okay to show somebody's head getting blown off (in which case the character would truly be "topless," but I digress). Some parents feel the opposite way. Sex is okay, but violence? Not so much.

Modern films' ratings also warn prospective viewers if a movie contains one or more rape scenes. This has been the case since people in general stopped thinking of rape scenes as being nothing more than a form of sex scene, and started thinking of rape as being an act of violence. And in the case of filmed rape depictions, I have a friend who is a survivor of being raped on two separate occasions, and she reacts very strongly and adversely to such scenes.

I must admit that I always smile whenever I'm warned that a film "contains language." Oh, does it? So, what, are you telling me that it's not a silent film?!?

But when it comes to warnings, I think it's a tad overdone when they warn you that the movie you're about to see has one or more scenes of people smoking cigarettes.

Well, gee, this movie is set during World War II, at a time when anyone who wanted to be "hep" or "cool" or "sophisticated" smoked. Men... women... children... dogs... 

I've heard of several instances where films and other media have rewritten history in order to remove any depiction of smoking where it belongs or otherwise occurred. (And if you really want a longer discussion of this subject, go to the blog of writer Ken Levine, and read this post, as well as the comments!)

But my biggest objection to the warning that a film contains scenes of people smoking is that anyone, of any age, can be doing nothing more than walking down a street in their hometown and actually see people smoking. Chances are, during a casual walk, you won't get to see someone's head being blown off (thankfully) or see a topless woman (unfortunately).

Actually, it almost always bothers me when the filmmakers impose modern-day sensibilities on any period piece. It's perfectly fine with me if characters in a movie that's set in 1876 talk about "redskins" who can't handle their "fire water." I do not want to see that same film refer to Native Americans with a substance abuse problem.

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3. Return of the Grammar Nazi!

No, no, no! This illustration alone does not make this a "Comical Wednesday" post!

Just a brief rant about words I'm seeing used interchangeably lately:

"Past" and "passed"

"Who's" and "whose"

"Paid" and "payed"

And last, but far from least: One adult female is a "woman," while two or more adult females, collectively, are "women." I am so f***ing sick of seeing one adult female described as a "women!" I mean, WTF, people!!!

And if you don't know the difference between the two words in any of the above examples, before you use them, LOOK THEM UP!!!

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4. "Lovin It?" Not so much...

I went to the McDonald's drive-through today, and as I sat at the second window watching everybody else's order get lined up, waiting for those cars behind me, the person who'd handed me my iced coffee asked me to pull forward and wait for them to bring out the food portion of my order. Three or four minutes later, a pleasant young lady came out with... the wrong order. It took yet another three or four minutes for them to bring out the right order.

Since then, I've been wracking my brain trying to remember the official name of the little cards McDonald's used to give out to dissatisfied customers. I searched online for a few minutes to establish that they still give them out, but I couldn't locate the technical name, so I gave up.

Little, petty things like that realllly get to me! (As you regular readers have probably noticed by now.)

I actually worked for McDonald's (very briefly) as an assistant manager almost forty years ago. I was paid $200 a week, which was fairly good money, except for the fact that it was a salaried position, and if you looked at the hours I actually worked in the average week, I was probably making something well below that era's minimum wage.

Anyway, back then the management kept a bunch of those cards available. Each of us on the management team carried a few in his wallet at all times. Just in case.

As I said, I don't remember the official name for those cards.

We called them the "We F***ed Up Cards."

Uhhh... I hope you didn't read all that waiting for some hilarious finish. I was just venting.

That's what this whole post is about today, pretty much.

Hence the "David'Z RantZ" designation.

*  *  *  *  *

5. Just Another Definition.

And finally... Don't forget, folks, a "cynic" is where you dump the dirty dishes.

Thanks for your time.

The Name Game (or, "There Oughtta Be a Law...") ~~ Reprinted from the "David'Z RantZ" Blog, 3/12/2009

(Here's a reprint from several years back, which I'm posting again because I've been too busy lately writing "Comical Wednesday" articles to do much of anything else!

Please keep in mind that this post was originally written in 2009, and I haven't edited anything, so there may be a topical reference or two that might not be too clear. If I had edited it, I could have spent hours just adding new names!)

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Politicians.

Don't particularly like 'em. Don't particularly trust 'em.

Not in this country. Not in any country.

I mean, what the hell, a great percentage of them start out as lawyers, right? And what does that tell you?

However, having said that, I must add that while I ordinarily resent the intervention of the government (and by "the" government, I mean the government in this country and the government in everybody else's countries) in a great many instances, there is one law that needs to be passed as soon as possible, in virtually every country on the planet:

Celebrities Should No Longer Be Allowed to Name Their Own Children.

(And by "celebrities" I pretty much mean actors/actresses and musicians, and other so-called creative types.)

No, really. Look at the freakin' evidence. Just when we thought the worst "crime" Ashlee Simpson would ever be guilty of would be lyp-synching on Saturday Night Live or being an Owen Wilson lookalike, she names her baby "Bronx Mowgli Wentz."

Chris Rock says that a dad's number one duty is to keep his daughter "off the [stripper] pole." ("I mean they don’t grade fathers, but if your daughter is a stripper you f***ed up.”) No. Your primary job as a father -- and as a mother as well -- is to avoid purposely doing anything which will make your child's life rougher than it's gonna be anyway!

It pretty much started in the psychedelic sixties, and wasn't confined so much to famous people. I'm sure that, due to a bunch of over-eager nurses who were taking notes as hippie mothers-to-be were being wheeled into the delivery room, there are more than a few birth certificates proclaiming the arrival of "Ohwowiamsostonedman Johnson," or something similar.

And there are more than enough people out there who want their children to have unique names, although quite often, they achieve that uniqueness by taking a relatively normal name and changing a letter or two.

School Administrator: We'll be more than happy to enroll your daughter, Mrs. Smith. [staring at paperwork on desk] Umm... Three "Z's" and a "Q?" How do you pronounce that?

Mrs. Smith: "Ann."

But I digress.

The following is a list of names I cribbed from somewhere on the 'net. The original list was longer than what follows. I only used the names which 1) I think are kinda stupid or 2) names I have a comment or two about, after the list. Here goes:

Apple: Chris Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow

Audio Science: Shannyn Sossamon

Aurelius Cy: Elle Macpherson and Arpad Busson

Blue Angel: U2's The Edge and Aislinn O'Sullivan

Bluebell Madonna: Geri Halliwell

Fifi Trixibell: Bob Geldof and Paula Yates (also parents to Peaches and Pixie)

Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily: Paula Yates and Michael Hutchence

Hopper: Sean Penn and Robin Wright

Jazz Domino: Joe Strummer

Jermajesty: Jermaine Jackson and Alejandra Genevieve Oaziaza (previously married to Jermaine's brother Randy)

Kal-El Coppola: Nicholas Cage (Kal-El is Superman’s original birth name)

Memphis Eve: Bono

Moon Unit: Frank Zappa, also father to Dweezil and Diva Muffin

Moxie CrimeFighter: Penn Jillette (also father to Zolten)

Pilot Inspektor: Jason Lee and Beth Riesgraf

Sage Moonblood: Sylvester Stallone and Sasha Czack (also parents to Seargeoh)

Satchel: Spike Lee and Tonya Lewis Lee

And my snide little notes?

"Apple" is usually the one people think of first when this subject comes up. However, looking at some of the others on the list... Apple doesn't sound so bad.

"Blue Angel" and "Memphis Eve" are the children of musicians who gave themselves weird names, too -- or did you think U2's guitarist is holding onto a birth certificate that actually says "The Edge?" -- so what the hell did you expect? Besides, in their own ways, I think both names are kinda pretty.

I have nothing against "unique" names. What I object to are the ones that are the equivalent of pinning a "Kick Me!" sign on the kids' backs as you send them off to school.

Where was I? Oh, yeah. "Jermajesty?" What the hell were they smoking? Cute play on words, but as an actual name? How about "Jerdadscareerisoverkid?"

"Moon Unit." Hello? Frank Zappa's kid? Again, what the hell did you expect? The man lived in his own universe, fer cryin' out loud. (And that's a compliment!) Slap "Zappa" onto the end of any outlandish name you want, and I, for one, will buy it. (" 'Anally-Probed-By-Aliens Zappa?' That works. Cool.")

"Satchel." Spike Lee named his daughter after the baseball pitcher Leroy "Satchel" Paige. Woody Allen named one of his kids "Satchel" as well... but his child was a boy. Maybe it's an unusual name, but when it's done as a tribute to someone who already had the name himself (even if it was a nickname), can you really fault it?

I skipped one in the alphabetical run-down in order to save the "best" for last: "Moxie CrimeFighter," Penn Jillette's daughter.

I really hope Penn Jillette and his "baby mama" -- I don't know if she's his wife, girlfriend, or what -- aren't the type of parents who use a child's full name when they admonish him or her in public.

One of the reasons I cherish my own mother is that she never did that to me. She stuck to the first name. If she'd screamed "David! Michael! Lynch!" every time I acted up when we were out somewhere, I know I'd hold a grudge, and probably a permanent spot on some therapist's couch.

And I'm one of the ones who likes his middle name.

Besides, what would you think if you heard some pony-tailed, beefy silo of a man screaming "Moxie CrimeFighter Jillette!" at the top of his lungs?

"Hello, 911? There's some lunatic in Walmart yelling about soft drinks, superheroes, and razor blades! I think you'd better send the police and/or an ambulance!"

Why do I feel so strongly that in twenty years or so, we're going to be hearing about a frightening number of oddly-named adults being arrested for physically abusing their parents?

Thanks for your time.

*  *  *  *  *

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!!! And this part is BRAND NEW!

This past Friday, April 13th, was the ninetieth birthday of none other than author Herman Raucher, novelist and screenwriter, most notably the author of one of my all-time favorite novels (as well as a major influence on my own writing style), Summer of  '42.

Happy Birthday, Herman Raucher!

And again, thanks for your time.

*SIGH* ~~ Heavily Edited and Reprinted from 7/4/2011

No, I don't!!!

Well! I haven't done a "Grammar Nazi" post since last September. However, I've decided to recycle another old post that deserves the "Grammar Nazi" label. Perhaps you find that "Sad!" as a certain "Baby-in-Chief" of ours would say.

This trend has been going on on Facebook for quite a while now. I know you're all familiar with it. Remember back in the day back in the good old days, when you wanted to make someone your friend? You would "befriend" him or her. But for quite some time, thanks to freakin' Facebook, the verb has been bastardized simplified to "friend." Additionally, if you later wish to reverse that decision, you "unfriend" them, whereas in the old days, you would... ummm... "run them over with your car." (Or is that just me? Heh.)

So, what's next? Instead of feeding my cat, Orson, do I now have to "food" him?

To screw up an old cliché, "The more things change, the more they stay deranged," eh?

A brief but characteristic digression here, before I sign off: Back in 2000, when tattoo parlors finally became legal in the state of Massachusetts after a thirty-eight-year ban, a local business named its four in-residence artistes on a sign featuring their nicknames: Bill, Spike, House (a really tall, overweight guy), and Chip. I sent a facetious email to one of my forty-seven friends named Jennifer, asking "Are those names, or nouns?" She replied "Both! They're also verbs!" Heh. I love my friends...

Thanks for your time.

So to Speak

Today's post is a "simulcast" of sorts, due to be posted on my blog and on Janie Junebug Righting and Editing, the blog of "Janie Junebug." That's all you need to know, I guess.

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People who've read stories that I've written have often complimented me on the way I write the dialog -- or "dialogue," if you prefer -- between my characters. Janie asked me several months ago if I would be interested in writing a guest post for her blog. Typically, I procrastinated, but finally, here it is.

In the guise of presenting this as a cohesive article, I'm just going to give you a bulleted list of random thoughts on the subject of dialog, in no real order.

• The most important thing is to make your dialog sound real, "real" being defined as true to how the individual character would speak.
• This may sound painfully obvious, but one of the most important parts of writing good dialog is to listen to people, and the way that they talk. Since I'm a nosy little cuss anyway, this has never been a problem for me. I've "overheard" a lot of conversations in my time.
• Keep in mind that people rarely speak correctly. Even educated people will not necessarily talk the way that they write. (This is a case of first learning the rules, and then knowing which rules to break, and why. Don't be afraid to use improper grammar in your dialog, but don't overdo it.) Even a Grammar Nazi like myself, who cringes at the way some folks speak, will often say "can I" when I should really say "may I," or "I don't feel good" when we all know I should say that "I don't feel well" instead. How often do you hear someone say "I will" instead of "I shall," "who" instead of "whom," and "I could care less" when the correct term is "I couldn't care less?" Quite a bit, right?
• Having said that, if your character is a college professor or someone similar, he or she might very well speak using proper grammar. Let me repeat that you should always use dialog that's appropriate to its speaker. When I had a writing partner, we shared a blog on which, among other posts, we had an ongoing serial featuring characters which were idealized versions of ourselves. I usually had to re-write the dialog he'd written for the character based on myself, because his dialog just didn't sound like me. To list just two examples: Once, he posted a supposed email I'd written, in which I used the popular abbreviations "LOL" and "ROFL." Well, I never use either of those (although I do occasionally use "IIRC," and "btw" for "by the way"). And in another post, his original version of my dialog had me using the expression "goddamn," which I absolutely never say. But I digress...
• Even people with an extensive vocabulary don't always utilize said vocabulary when they speak. Personally, I've found that using so-called "big words" in a conversation can often derail the conversation itself if and when the other person or persons speaking to each other didn't understand some word that I used. I once used the term "disparage" when talking to someone who interrupted me to ask what the word meant. I began using the word "motivation" rather than "impetus" for the same reason. I used to get a lot of funny looks when I used the word "impetus." Maybe they thought I was saying "impotent." Anyway, there's also the fact that using certain words might make people think that you're trying to impress them, and they'll resent it. I once heard Jon Stewart use the word "vituperative" not once, but twice, during a single week of broadcasts on The Daily Show. Although it would have been easy enough for someone to discern the meaning of the word from its context in these two examples, I don't think I'd dare use "vituperative" on an everyday basis.
• Real people use contractions. Constantly. Of course, if the character whose dialog you're writing is an uptight, stuffy, pain-in-the-ass kinda guy (or woman), an absence of contractions in his or her speech may be just the thing you're looking for to convey the character's stodginess to your readers.
• Have you ever prepared for a confrontation by planning in detail what you're going to say to your employer, boyfriend/girlfriend, or someone else the next time you see him or her? It almost never worked, right? That's because you may have written a "script" for yourself, but you can't do it for the other person, too. In effect, that means that they're ad-libbing to your script, and they'll interrupt you, or change the subject slightly, or misunderstand something you said and question you about it. Anything might happen, and recognizing that may help you to write an interesting and realistic exchange among your characters.
• Remember that in real life, nobody likes to feel that they're listening to a speech, so one person will often interrupt another, even if the interrupter in question only says things like "uh-huh," "right," "I see," etc.
• People don't always finish their sentences. Sometimes they can't put their complete thought into words, and their voices just trail off.
• No matter how many times you've read that proper grammar dictates that you should never end a sentence with a preposition (a rule which really isn't a rule anymore), people do it all the flamin' time when they converse. In fact, I just did it purposely in my previous bullet point.
• People split infinitives frequently, even though you're not supposed to ever do it. Heh.
• Somewhere along the line, most people got it into their heads that the word "me" should almost always be avoided. That's why you hear things like "The police came to question her and I," when "her and me" is correct. On a related note, I've often heard people begin a sentence with "Her and I," as in "Her and I went to the store." Is that an incorrect usage? Of course it is. The correct expression would be "She and I." Do people make that mistake all the time in conversation? Sure they do.
• With the exceptions of characters who primarily used contemporary slang -- like "Say, what kinda hooey are you tryin' to hand me?" -- actors and actresses in movies of the 1930s and 1940s were often given lines that one would never use in a real conversation. To list only one example, in Now, Voyager, Bette Davis said "Oh, Jerry, don't let's ask for the moon. We have the stars." That's a great, memorable quote, but who the hell would actually say something like that in the real world? Try to avoid things like that.
• I'm going to wrap this up by telling you one of my little tricks, and it applies not only to my dialog, but to a lesser extent, my narration. I use italics to stress certain words. Using italics pretty much forces your reader to read the sentence in the way that you want it read. And the placement of that stressed word is often very important. For example? "Hey, that's my wife!" means something akin to "Hey, I know that woman over there! Boy, do I ever!" And then there's "Hey, that's my wife!" which probably means something to the effect of "Don't kiss her. Go home and kiss your own wife." And "Hey, that's my wife!" no doubt means something like "I'm not married to any of those other women. I'm married to that one." My former writing partner had a tendency to stress words at random, and that frequently made for some awkward reading. Try that sentence this way: "My former writing partner apparently stressed random words, and that frequently made for some awkward reading." Just doesn't sound right, does it? I sure had my job cut out for me when I worked with him!

I'm sure there are several other points that I should have mentioned and didn't, but I think this'll do for one post!

Thanks for your time.

Who [Reads] Short Shorts?

1. Equal Time for Mel Gibson?

Mel Gibson has been insulted by a lot of people over the last few years, myself included. And hey, has it really been over ten years since Mel's initial racist ramblings made the news? (Yep, it has been!)

I was reading an article about Liam Neeson the other day, and I learned that although the main role in Schindler's List was eventually played by Neeson, other actors who'd been interested in playing the part were Warren Beatty, Kevin Costner, and... Mel Gibson.

Mel-freakin'-Gibson? This is the dude who said “Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world,” innit?

Well, Mr. G blames his drinking problem for the words that came out of his mouth. And he did offer an apology to the Jewish people at the time, and roughly a year ago, in an interview with Variety, Mel said "Surely if I was really what they say I was, some kind of hater, there’d be evidence of actions somewhere. There never has been.”

In addition, there's this article, from earlier this year, which says that Gibson has been donating money to Holocaust survivors via  the Survivor Mitzvah Project.

So, what do you think? Has he paid his penance, as it were, or should we still consider him a bigoted s**thead whose Hollywood projects should be shunned?

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2. Seen on a Sign Outside of a Laundromat

"If a man says he'll fix something, he will. There's no need to remind him about it every six months."

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3. Every. Single. Time.

Remember what I said about Twitter not long ago? Well, the following is from a recent article on the Fox News site about Stephen King's little "war" with Donald Trump:

"Donald Trump blocked me on Twitter. I am hereby blocking him from seeing "It" or "Mr. Mercedes." No clowns for you, Donald. Go float yourself," King wrote.

 Follow

Stephen King 

✔@StephenKing

Donald Trump blocked me on Twitter. I am hereby blocking him from seeing IT or MR. MERCEDES. No clowns for you, Donald. Go float yourself.

9:55 PM - Aug 24, 2017

•  10,57110,571 Replies
 
•  154,159154,159 Retweets
 
•  483,358483,358 likes

Twitter Ads info and privacy

The film about children facing an evil clown opens in September.

See? I toldja! They repeat the tweet in its entirety, right after quoting it!

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4. Trump's North Korea Quote?

Speaking of Trump...

Recently, newspapers in America and all over the world were reporting that President Donald Trump had released a message after North Korea fired a ballistic missile over Japan, saying "The world has received North Korea’s latest message loud and clear: this regime has signaled its contempt for its neighbors, for all members of the United Nations, and for minimum standards of acceptable international behavior." This was the statement released by the White House, which went on to say that "Threatening and destabilizing actions only increase the North Korean regime’s isolation in the region and among all nations of the world. All options are on the table."

Yeah, well, somebody at the White House wrote and released that message, that's for sure, but that is not the way President Trump speaks. Trump's statements are usually full of redundancies, and devoid of anything suggesting that the man has an extensive vocabulary. And whatever he is in favor of is usually "wonderful" or "terrific."

For example, not long ago, Trump said this about Kim Jong-un: “I respect the fact that I believe he is starting to respect us. I respect that fact very much.”

Trump to Ben Carson about the name "Harvey": "Sounds like such an innocent name, Ben, right? But it's not innocent. It's not innocent."

And talking about the clean-up during and after Harvey, he said “We won’t say congratulations. We don’t wanna congratulate. We’ll congratulate each other when it’s all finished, but you have been terrific.”

*sigh*

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5. So, What Are They Saying?

I was in a department store a couple of weeks ago and saw a man wearing a shirt that looked a lot like this:

There's a lot of talk here in the USA lately, debating the issue of whether or not depictions of the Confederate flag or items related to the Confederacy are only supported by racists. I must admit that my sentiments are kind of torn. I absolutely despise racism in all its forms, but on the other hand, I really, really want to believe in the sincerity of those proud Southerners who claim that the rebel flag stands for "heritage, not hatred."

And yet... and yet...

I see someone walking around wearing a shirt like that, or displaying the Confederate flag, and I have to wonder if he or she is a bigot...

Especially when shirts like the one shown above are being worn by someone in my home state of Massachusetts, as the one I saw the other day was.

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6.  A New Direction?

A few months ago I said that I was debating ending this blog. Well, I've finally been getting lots of ideas for it, so it definitely won't be discontinued anytime soon.

Having said that, I may be slightly changing my blog's focus. It seems that most -- but certainly not all -- of my current crop of readers are close to my own age (I'll turn sixty-one next November, believe it or not!), plus or minus a handful of years. So in recognition of that fact, I'll probably be gearing more posts toward people in their fifties and sixties. Different things I grew up with and the like. You'll see. It's just a minor transition, the kind of thing I've seen happen to other blogs. (For example, my friend Betsy's blog, My Five Men, used to contain quite a few acrostic poems for her weekly entries to the gone-but-not-forgotten "Theme Thursday" posts. Now it's eight or nine years later, and she showcases a lot of her own photos, reflecting the fact that she's become quite a good photographer.)

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7. A Grammar Nazi Tid-Bit

By the way, folks, the word is "intact," not "in tact." One word, got it? Unfortunately, I know of a blog written by a successful pro sitcom writer who does that. He also refers to the '50s as the 50's. Maybe it doesn't matter as much if your audience is hearing your words and not reading them?

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Thanks for your time!

A Whole Bunch of "Short Shorts"

1. Jay Thomas, 1948-2017, R.I.P.

Jay Thomas, Emmy-winning actor and radio personality, has died at the age of sixty-nine from cancer. I wasn't familiar with much of Jay Thomas' work. I'd seen him play Eddie LeBec on Cheers, but that was about it. Oh, and one other thing. I was on YouTube a long time ago and came across Jay telling a wonderful anecdote to David Letterman about the time Jay met Clayton Moore, better known to the world at large as The Lone Ranger. What I did not know, having not watched Letterman regularly since his NBC days, was that Dave had Jay on his show every year at Christmastime to tell that same story. Being a big fan of TLR and Mr. Moore in particular, I absolutely love it... so here it is! This is the 2009 retelling.

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2. LARRY STORCH IS ALIVE AND WELL!

At least, as of today. Probably best-known as Corporal Randolph Agarn in the 1965-1967 TV show F Troop, he's ninety-four and by all reports, is going strong. Just sayin'. I was watching him the other night, guest-starring on one of the late 1970s C.P.O. Sharkey episodes -- that's Don Rickles' most successful TV show -- that I have on DVD.

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3. Is My Star Rising? No?

Hey, guess what! I was recently the subject of a post on someone else's blog, and I'm not even dead yet! The blog in question is none other than Pat Hatt's It's Rhyme Time, where Pat (pictured above, that handsome devil) rhymes, and rhymes, and rhymes... all the time! Here is the link to the article itself. Thanks for the recognition, Pat!

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4. More Frequent Grammar Goofs!

Three errors I've been seeing a lot of lately are people writing "and" when they mean "an," "you" when they mean "your," and "the" when they mean "they." These aren't really grammatical errors, they're typos, I guess... but why on earth are they so damned common lately?

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5. As Long As We're Showcasing YouTube Videos Related to Dead People...

Here's a video related to the late Jerry Lewis. Not of or by Jerry Lewis, but inspired by Jerry Lewis.

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6. Doobie, Doobie, Doo...

The other day I overheard two guys talking about smoking a "doob. In case you are one of the remaining dozen people on the planet who doesn't know what that means, a "doob" (or "doobie") is a marijuana cigarette, or "joint." (The term is where the name for the Doobie Brothers originated, of course.). I really hate those terms! For that matter, I also hate it when people call their loved ones "boo" or "boo boo," and when people refer to someone's derrière as a "booty." Why? Well, not because any of them are improper grammar. Nope, I hate those terms just because they sound stupid and as you all know, I like to kvetch anyway.

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7. Just Curious

Whenever I read an article talking about someone's tweet (or tweets) on Twitter, the article relates the entire text of the tweet, and then reprints the tweet as well. Why? Isn't that rather redundant? Maybe it's to "prove" that the "tweeter" actually "said" that? If so, why tell us about it in the text of the flamin' article, too?

What would this world do without me to point out this shit?

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8. Another Reason I Didn't Marry My Second Fiancée (Number Two in What Will Probably Be a Long, Ongoing Series...)

(For the first reason, click here.)

Ever get a Christmas card or birthday card from someone who has all the different family members sign the card, and then adds the "signature" of their pets as well? Or maybe you do that when you send cards? Well, I myself don't do it, when I send cards at all, but I think it's a cute and harmless practice.

But... Would you do that when sending a sympathy card?!? That's a rather insensitive way of trivializing someone's deep loss, don'tcha think?

Well. Guess why that's discussed in a Short Short entitled "Another Reason I Didn't Marry My Second Fiancée!"

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Thanks for your time.