Where I've been

Not having my gall bladder out, that's where. I get that done tomorrow. Until then I just spend time dreading the idea of being cut open, albeit with very small holes. But taking off my clothes and being knocked unconscious...I'm drunk when that happens. But I can't be drunk for surgery.

I was drunk this weekend though, which is usually a good thing, but this time not so much. I shouldn't go to parties where I only know two people because, even though I meet some interesting people this way, I also meet some douchie people who kind of ruin my day, and I can't seem to get drunk enough to make that go away.

Douchie people aside, I've also been carrying buckets of water from the basement to dump outside. Something is going on with the drain spout out back and a pipe connected to it which hilariously empties out into the basement. I'm no expert, but I think letting runoff from the gutters drain into the basement is a little, shall we say, foolish. But only if it rains, like it's been doing the past three days. Otherwise I'm sure it's a great idea.

In the meantime, I will carry buckets of water until someone cuts me open.

I sobered up for this?

Driver's Guide to South Philly

Stop signs. That stop sign is for the other person. Just cruise right on through the intersection. You have important places to go.

Parking. Fuck it. Just leave it anywhere. If someone wants to get by badly enough, they'll start honking. Then I'll think about it.

Honking. It's appropriate to begin honking if the jerkoff in front of you hasn't moved a nanosecond after the light turns green. C'mon, I got someplace to go.

Turn signals. Used as a courtesy to explain an action that has just recently been executed.

Left-hand turns. These should always be done from the right-hand lane.

Making a left turn where no left turn is allowed. What the fuck are you looking at?

"No right turn on red" signs. Sure, whatever.

The expressway. (1) Yeah, I'm in the left-hand lane. What's your hurry? (2) It's raining lightly so I'd better not go more than 25 mph, especially in the left-hand lane. (3) If I drive really close to the car in front of me, he will sense my displeasure and he might drive faster. (4) Look, cars are stopped on the other side of the median. I should drive very slowly past it even though there's absolutely nothing to see.

Lane markers. Wha?

Speed limits. Wha?

Bicycles. Why are they even in the street?

Pedestrians. MOVE! What the fuck?

Begging and raising

Snoskred thought it might be a good idea to write about writing occasionally, and I think so too. I plan to do so in the next few days. This, however, is more about language than writing.

A good thing about English is that it is very fluid and mutable. (This is a good thing for native English speakers, of course, but not for someone who is learning the language. Language learners like their rules fixed and solid. How anyone learns English is beyond me because there is an exception for almost every rule.) As a living language, spoken English especially is given to variations and modifications. Written English still goes pretty much by a fixed set of rules and it's obvious when the rules aren't being observed. But spoken English has interesting and sometimes beautiful variations, and very often the way we speak affects the way we write, and many times the two converge which results in new accepted rules. (There is a long-standing debate over whether language rules are prescriptive or descriptive. I'm on the fence. They're a little of both.)

One phrase that has been getting a lot of play recently is "And that begs the question...." I hear pundits and other douchey types use it most often. Of course, if they knew what it means they wouldn't use it.

Of course, if they didn't use it they would be less douchey.

Here is a good example from a recent Washington Post column by William Arkin:

The White House now correctly says that Pakistan must police its own territory, and those who call for unilateral U.S. action while also protesting the Iraq war are being hypocritical. But that begs the question: Why are we no longer providing Pakistan with intelligence today?

UGH! Stop the madness! I want to say that the only question it begs is where this guy learned to write, but that would be wrong too. Begging the question is circular reasoning like this:

That was the worst movie ever.
Why do you say that?
Because it sucked.

Another good example is the classic parental response "because I said so." Now when someone uses that on you, you can accuse them of begging the question. And that will really shut down any discussion you're having and result in you being hailed as a logical hero who defeats opponents with sheer brilliance. Or maybe not.

Regardless, "that begs the question" sounds really good and intelligent, and people are dying to use it. It gets slipped into conversation and articles all the time now.

Here is what the genius at the Washington post meant to write:

The White House blah blah blah. But that raises the question: Why are we no longer providing Pakistan with intelligence today?

See? Wasn't that easy? It raises the question, it doesn't beg it. Stop with the begging. It's undignified and wrong and, perhaps more importantly, it's just grammatically incorrect. And no one wants that now, do they? No. Who can respect someone who misuses our precious language? No one, that's who.

Now let's sit down with our unabridged dictionaries tonight and flip through randomly learning new words and then using them in sentences. Because that's some fun right there.

The city that bites you back

Cindy Sheehan was in town yesterday to make an anti-war speech and then spent over an hour outside Independence Hall arguing with numbnuts who called her a publicity whore and suggested she is going to hell. Classy. It never ceases to amaze me that there are people who call themselves "pro-war" yet they are here and not over there fighting the war they so love. Instead they harass a woman whose son was killed and who refuses to shut up about it. Considering the amount of abuse heaped on her, it's hard to believe anyone thinks she's a publicity whore.

I know I'm supposed to recognize that everyone there was exercising their right to free speech, but really, how good do these people feel after shouting down someone like this? There's free speech and then there's just being a real dick. Just what the founding fathers had in mind, I'm sure.