Yes that title is on purpose, I wont apologize because some "grammer nazis" and there stupid rules about righting and stuff.
The internet is rife with fugitives from the law of language. Sentences like my masterpiece above shoot forth from the return keys of "wiki experts" and other "netizens" who claim superior knowledge over others and remain clueless on spelling and syntax. Well meaning crusaders crucify over misuse of "their, there and they're" or "your and you're" but those are understandable transgressions. Homonyms by nature are confusing, but they give English a fun and ironic feel. In contrast, my most hated faux-pas is loose/lose. How many otherwise intelligent, well thought out tirades and essays have lost all credibility with one word?
For example if I wrote:
"Trying to reason with people who do not accept logical arguments, but instead rely on "common sense" is a loosing battle"
At first I appear to be making a reasonable argument (for once) about dealing with a majority that does not care or know about logic. Then that "loosing" pops in at the end and says: "Hey! just so you know, this guy is a fucking idiot!" It might seem a little harsh, especially to those who have committed this sin before, but when I see a misplaced "loose" that is the first thing I think.
The issue with loose/lose is that unlike "their/there/they're" they don't sound the same. So you can hear "their" in your head and mistakenly put "there" instead, but "lose" sounds like "bruise" or "muse", whereas "loose" sounds like "spruce" or "juice".
"Tim, what about people who speak English as a second language?"
I will grant a non-English speaker a full pardon any day for any of these crimes, English is a silly language, and very hard to learn. Unfortunately, I have met several non native English speakers who use these words improperly and countless "native" speakers who don't. Here is an example:
There was a man, lets call him "Jim," Jim liked to think he was an intellectual. He would argue with everyone about pretty much everything, and it was cute because he was almost always wrong. Whenever these arguments took place online, he would write "lose" as "loose." This may just be a symptom of why Jim was always wrong, but if he had used "lose" correctly more people wouldn't know that he was in fact an idiot (at least not right away.)His friends tried to correct him, and every time he thought they were trying to trick him and make him look stupid by convincing him to spell the word "loose" wrong. There are many Jim's in the world. It mystifies me why they still use "loose" instead of "lose" when they can google "loose vs lose" and know the truth.
From the thousands of stories like this, a disturbing trend arises. Any time someone has their grammar or spelling corrected on the internet (or elsewhere) they cry "grammar Nazi!" and try to discredit the correcter as an uptight "school-marm." People should be glad that people still care enough to correct their English, it means they still have hope for that person. Be worried when no one corrects your bad grammar anymore, because your friends have stopped caring about you, and are all laughing at you instead.
Friday, February 17, 2012
Sunday, January 15, 2012
Where is your God now?
I not going to try and mislead you, or use a clever hook to get your attention, this post is about Tim Tebow.
There has been a strange fascination with him for the past year, love him or hate him there was no escaping “Tebow” this NFL season. Tebow mania leaked from sports radio to cable news and newspapers. Christians love Tim Tebow. To them he is a refreshing, wholesome break from self absorbed, irresponsible, dog fighting, and “alleged rapist” football players with whom we normally suffer.
Of course, this is a completely false viewpoint, Tebow is just as bad as every other athlete we love to hate. I know that people who support him will point to his off field conduct and spirituality, saying he's no Ben Roethlisberger or Michael Vick, or even O.J. Simpson."
I am not saying that Tim Tebow will kill anyone, or even “allegedly rape” anyone, but the point remains that every stupid or evil thing a famous (or non famous) person does is motivated by a core weakness to a “deadly sin.” Aside from being a terrific plot device in the movie “Seven” the seven deadly sins are a great way to categorize what major vice people are susceptible to. Ben Roethlisberger: Lust, O.J. Simpson: Wrath, and Tim Tebow: Vanity. I am not going to try and make Tim Tebow's sideline prayer sesssions, anti abortion ads, and general “look at me!” Christian attitude out to be as bad as killing someone, but from his own religions standpoint it is stemming from the same place.
A popular argument defending Tebow is that “he doesn't ask for all this attention. But I would disagree. Based on his actions he wants every single person in the world to know just how damn Christian he is. Lets first look at his preferred praying “stance” what has now become known as “Tebowing.” Kneeling with one hand on his face and his helmet in his clenched fist on the grass. He made a conscious decision to start doing this, like he wanted every one to know he was DEFINITELY praying, and not just concentrating really hard or something.
I don't think its difficult to accept that Tebow wants everyone to know he's praying, every time he's praying.
"So what's the big deal there's no law against praying! At least not until Obama gets his way! right?"
Wrong again easily persuaded hypothetical reader. Let's try and think of a group of people from the Bible who were rebuked by Jesus for praying loudly on street corners “where everyone can see them?”
Pharisees. That's right, Tim Tebow is a pharisee. In Matthew 6:6 it says:
"But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.”
But there's Tim Tebow, up on the jumbo-tron prayin' away, like he's got something to prove. I take issue with Mr. Tebow in the same way I take issue with everyone who gets in front of a mall church and prays for twelve minutes to show off. That's not praying it's showing off.
“But Tebow is praying silently!”
Yes, but the important part of the passage above is “inner room” otherwise known as a place where no one can see you, I wouldn't be surprised if Tebow got his hands on a mic and led the whole stadium in prayer before each Broncos possesion. Tim Tebow is praying publicly to get attention for being really Christian, for himself, not for God, again it comes back to vanity.
Let's pretend Tim Tebow is instead completely private about his praying and humble in his faith. He would be known as a great college QB who wasn't ready for the pros but found a way to win when his team needed him to, and maybe he'd talk about God a little and inspire someone. But instead he is either God's servant sent to earth to win the superbowl for Jesus, or a vain idiot who prays all the time on TV for attention. See the difference? Fellow Christian football player, Kurt Warner, publicly told Tebow:
“Put down the boldness in regards to the words, and keep living the way you’re living. Let your teammates do the talking for you. Let them cheer on your testimony.”
I would have no problem with Mr. Tebow if he behaved this way, but it's the publicity of his faith that irks me. I have no issue with Tebow praying, but the way he's doing it screams: “pride.”
So where is your God now? Evidently not on the gridiron.
tl;dr Tim Tebow is vain and proud in the way he prays, which defeats his religious persona.
PS: If you like Tebow because (a. you are a Broncos fan, (b. are a Florida fan or (c. find it amusing that a QB with bad throwing form can run the ball a bunch and somehow win games, then I have no problem with that.
There has been a strange fascination with him for the past year, love him or hate him there was no escaping “Tebow” this NFL season. Tebow mania leaked from sports radio to cable news and newspapers. Christians love Tim Tebow. To them he is a refreshing, wholesome break from self absorbed, irresponsible, dog fighting, and “alleged rapist” football players with whom we normally suffer.
Of course, this is a completely false viewpoint, Tebow is just as bad as every other athlete we love to hate. I know that people who support him will point to his off field conduct and spirituality, saying he's no Ben Roethlisberger or Michael Vick, or even O.J. Simpson."
I am not saying that Tim Tebow will kill anyone, or even “allegedly rape” anyone, but the point remains that every stupid or evil thing a famous (or non famous) person does is motivated by a core weakness to a “deadly sin.” Aside from being a terrific plot device in the movie “Seven” the seven deadly sins are a great way to categorize what major vice people are susceptible to. Ben Roethlisberger: Lust, O.J. Simpson: Wrath, and Tim Tebow: Vanity. I am not going to try and make Tim Tebow's sideline prayer sesssions, anti abortion ads, and general “look at me!” Christian attitude out to be as bad as killing someone, but from his own religions standpoint it is stemming from the same place.
A popular argument defending Tebow is that “he doesn't ask for all this attention. But I would disagree. Based on his actions he wants every single person in the world to know just how damn Christian he is. Lets first look at his preferred praying “stance” what has now become known as “Tebowing.” Kneeling with one hand on his face and his helmet in his clenched fist on the grass. He made a conscious decision to start doing this, like he wanted every one to know he was DEFINITELY praying, and not just concentrating really hard or something.
I don't think its difficult to accept that Tebow wants everyone to know he's praying, every time he's praying.
"So what's the big deal there's no law against praying! At least not until Obama gets his way! right?"
Wrong again easily persuaded hypothetical reader. Let's try and think of a group of people from the Bible who were rebuked by Jesus for praying loudly on street corners “where everyone can see them?”
Pharisees. That's right, Tim Tebow is a pharisee. In Matthew 6:6 it says:
"But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.”
But there's Tim Tebow, up on the jumbo-tron prayin' away, like he's got something to prove. I take issue with Mr. Tebow in the same way I take issue with everyone who gets in front of a mall church and prays for twelve minutes to show off. That's not praying it's showing off.
“But Tebow is praying silently!”
Yes, but the important part of the passage above is “inner room” otherwise known as a place where no one can see you, I wouldn't be surprised if Tebow got his hands on a mic and led the whole stadium in prayer before each Broncos possesion. Tim Tebow is praying publicly to get attention for being really Christian, for himself, not for God, again it comes back to vanity.
Let's pretend Tim Tebow is instead completely private about his praying and humble in his faith. He would be known as a great college QB who wasn't ready for the pros but found a way to win when his team needed him to, and maybe he'd talk about God a little and inspire someone. But instead he is either God's servant sent to earth to win the superbowl for Jesus, or a vain idiot who prays all the time on TV for attention. See the difference? Fellow Christian football player, Kurt Warner, publicly told Tebow:
“Put down the boldness in regards to the words, and keep living the way you’re living. Let your teammates do the talking for you. Let them cheer on your testimony.”
I would have no problem with Mr. Tebow if he behaved this way, but it's the publicity of his faith that irks me. I have no issue with Tebow praying, but the way he's doing it screams: “pride.”
So where is your God now? Evidently not on the gridiron.
tl;dr Tim Tebow is vain and proud in the way he prays, which defeats his religious persona.
PS: If you like Tebow because (a. you are a Broncos fan, (b. are a Florida fan or (c. find it amusing that a QB with bad throwing form can run the ball a bunch and somehow win games, then I have no problem with that.
Friday, December 16, 2011
Watching our government in action is truly a remarkable sight. Yesterday, congress convened to hear vote on and hear amendments on the “Stop Online Piracy Act” otherwise known by it's catchy name SOPA. A name that no doubt conjures images of slightly overweight Greek Americans, shouting at a flaming piece of cheese. Thoughts like this are strangely apt for our congress.
During yesterdays cheese shouting, the idiots met in a big ornate room to argue whether or not big immortal people, who are made up of normal sized mortals should have carte blanche to shut down a website.
A quick crash course for you “non-nerds” out there. A website is like a scrap book page, electronically put on to a thinking machine. You can “click” in things on the page, and they take you to other pages. These “sites” go on the “internet,” which is easily described as: a big net.
Some of you may say:” big whoop” or, “what's the problem? Why do we need this?” Well as far I can tell this is a bill to stop people from infringing on copyrights. Apparently there is a big problem where people get things off of websites without paying for them. Some of the very intelligent primates who support this bill, say that pirating things online is like going into a store, and stealing it, an act that is apparently illegal as well. Well those people are wrong, it is not like stealing from a store IT IS EXACTLY like stealing from a store. I have read somewhere that when a giant immortal American puts a movie on the big net, (the immortal in this example is the MPAA, which stands for "Morkreth the Punisher, Archduke of Agrathia") they only put something like a million downloads up for that film. And they have to keep copying the movie off DVD's or tapes or whatever to get more downloads. So if you download without paying for it you are LITERALLY stealing it in the most ancient sense of the idea, and action of stealing.
Understandably "Morkreth, he who makes pictures come to life" is upset that this nonsense is happening, and congress is rightly taking swift, brutal, and unapologetic action. Unfortunately this bill in it's current state, can do some collateral damage to people and companies that have done nothing wrong. The most awesome part of the bill says that if you make a website where people can make dumb videos of their friends getting hurt, and someone uses copyrighted material in their dumb video, then the all of the “supremely powerful immortal giant persons made of people” can vaporize your whole site. That includes the stuff that was just dumb, and had nothing to do with their immaculate supreme copyrighted product, now on sale for $19.95
That brings me back to congress, many trained mammals can see that this might give a bit too much power to the super persons, who are exempt from criminal prosecution, and completely lacking morals. So a small band of congress people, tried to explain that this could prevent anyone from making any creative sites that host user generated content, because as soon as anything under copyright is used, even if it is changed enough to merit artistic expression, will be photon torpedoed into oblivion. This leaves us only with sites made by the all powerful overlords, may their reign last the lifetime of a thousand suns.
The bigger group of congress people were proud of the proton charged, laser sighted, missile launching, chainsawing, mega cannon of a bill that they had drafted. After all they had written it using a higher ratio of complete sentences and there was barely a subject verb disagreement to be found. But then these other congress people had to try and ruin everything, they couldn't just say no to the bill, because there were too few of them, so they tried to change it.
“You want to take off the chainsaw?! That's the best damn part!”
“Well maybe if we introduced a version of the bill that doesn't shoot missiles at small entrepreneurial upstarts trying something fresh and creative.”
“If you take out the missiles... then... then that would defeat the whole purpose of the bill!”
“Well can we at least agree that the bill should not give anyone, all the powers of the werewolf, with, and I quote: none of the weaknesses, specifically silver?”
And so it went on, one group demanding that their perfect internet death machine remain uncorrupted and terrifying, while another pleaded that they remove parts of the bill that do the most damage. Finally after almost a full day of arguing, both sides agreed that they know almost nothing about the internet, and postponed the discussion to bring in experts. Yes, it took them over twelve hours to think of experts, but then again, they aren't experts on experts, so you can't really blame them.
During yesterdays cheese shouting, the idiots met in a big ornate room to argue whether or not big immortal people, who are made up of normal sized mortals should have carte blanche to shut down a website.
A quick crash course for you “non-nerds” out there. A website is like a scrap book page, electronically put on to a thinking machine. You can “click” in things on the page, and they take you to other pages. These “sites” go on the “internet,” which is easily described as: a big net.
Some of you may say:” big whoop” or, “what's the problem? Why do we need this?” Well as far I can tell this is a bill to stop people from infringing on copyrights. Apparently there is a big problem where people get things off of websites without paying for them. Some of the very intelligent primates who support this bill, say that pirating things online is like going into a store, and stealing it, an act that is apparently illegal as well. Well those people are wrong, it is not like stealing from a store IT IS EXACTLY like stealing from a store. I have read somewhere that when a giant immortal American puts a movie on the big net, (the immortal in this example is the MPAA, which stands for "Morkreth the Punisher, Archduke of Agrathia") they only put something like a million downloads up for that film. And they have to keep copying the movie off DVD's or tapes or whatever to get more downloads. So if you download without paying for it you are LITERALLY stealing it in the most ancient sense of the idea, and action of stealing.
Understandably "Morkreth, he who makes pictures come to life" is upset that this nonsense is happening, and congress is rightly taking swift, brutal, and unapologetic action. Unfortunately this bill in it's current state, can do some collateral damage to people and companies that have done nothing wrong. The most awesome part of the bill says that if you make a website where people can make dumb videos of their friends getting hurt, and someone uses copyrighted material in their dumb video, then the all of the “supremely powerful immortal giant persons made of people” can vaporize your whole site. That includes the stuff that was just dumb, and had nothing to do with their immaculate supreme copyrighted product, now on sale for $19.95
That brings me back to congress, many trained mammals can see that this might give a bit too much power to the super persons, who are exempt from criminal prosecution, and completely lacking morals. So a small band of congress people, tried to explain that this could prevent anyone from making any creative sites that host user generated content, because as soon as anything under copyright is used, even if it is changed enough to merit artistic expression, will be photon torpedoed into oblivion. This leaves us only with sites made by the all powerful overlords, may their reign last the lifetime of a thousand suns.
The bigger group of congress people were proud of the proton charged, laser sighted, missile launching, chainsawing, mega cannon of a bill that they had drafted. After all they had written it using a higher ratio of complete sentences and there was barely a subject verb disagreement to be found. But then these other congress people had to try and ruin everything, they couldn't just say no to the bill, because there were too few of them, so they tried to change it.
“You want to take off the chainsaw?! That's the best damn part!”
“Well maybe if we introduced a version of the bill that doesn't shoot missiles at small entrepreneurial upstarts trying something fresh and creative.”
“If you take out the missiles... then... then that would defeat the whole purpose of the bill!”
“Well can we at least agree that the bill should not give anyone, all the powers of the werewolf, with, and I quote: none of the weaknesses, specifically silver?”
And so it went on, one group demanding that their perfect internet death machine remain uncorrupted and terrifying, while another pleaded that they remove parts of the bill that do the most damage. Finally after almost a full day of arguing, both sides agreed that they know almost nothing about the internet, and postponed the discussion to bring in experts. Yes, it took them over twelve hours to think of experts, but then again, they aren't experts on experts, so you can't really blame them.
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