Wonkette
How are you celebrating Jeff Goldblum and Bill Pullman’s victory over the aliens? Wonkette recommends indulging in such earthly freedoms as “third parties,” hallucinogens, and atypical products of M.F.A. programs! Ralph Nader will be around to answer your questions, and Reif Larsen will be around, to tactfully evade your advances. There’s also more, so much more.
Monday, June 29
So, can we count on you to behave yourselves? If so, there might be a reading from This Is Your Country on Drugs: The Secret History of Getting High in America at Busboys & Poets this evening. 6:30 PM. [Busboys & Poets]
Tuesday, June 30
Right Place, Right Time is Richard Brookhiser’s touching story about how he and William F. Buckley were such good friends that Buckley fired him from the National Review. In the movie version they will be played by a Pixar-animated beagle and Haley Joel Osmet, respectively. 7PM. [Politics & Prose]
Ralph Nader and his campaign manager will be taking your questions about Tyranny, which you may know by its Christian name, “two party voting system.” [Busboys & Poets]
Wednesday, July 1
This week there’s transcendentalist fan fiction at Politics & Prose! 7PM. [Politics & Prose]
Thursday, July 2
The Thing Around Your Neck a new book of short stories by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, whose name is getting copied and pasted all over town in positive reviews of this thing. 7 PM. [Politics & Prose]
Sunday, July 5
Pretty young thing Reif Larsen has a pretty new book about whimsical maps and more aspecific whimsy. It is one of those books written by an M.F.A. student that sold for a million dollars, so everyone bring positive mental attitudes! 3 PM. [Politics & Prose]
The comma goes inside the quotation mark, Ms. Juli. I know, because I am an atypical product of an M.F.A. program.
Screw that! I’m lookin’ forward to Clive James’ latest.
Jukesgrrl: If you refer to
‘“third parties”, ‘
I believe that is correct but anachronistic. quotes are often used in place of typeface changes (say italics) and to doggedly insist on a convention of the 18th century is akin to rejecting split infinitives; also. Even worse is to abhor ending a sentence with a preposition (because it is incorrect in Latin).
see? we can all dote on these cherished things.
I ain’t reading nothing.
I’ll be on a 3 day bender and shooting off fireworks all weekend.
USA USA
Stay in Washington? Better to heed the advice of our better, HST:“Every now and then when your life gets complicated and the weasels start closing in, the only cure is to load up on heinous chemicals and then drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas … with the music at top volume and at least a pint of ether.”
qwerty42: I’m with Jukesgrrl on this one — it’s definitely still in style, too. And that’s coming from someone who ends his sentences with prepositions whenever he wants to.
Whatever. Bill Ayers wrote all of them.
You know, I was pretty pissed when Nader called Misseour Balack Obama an Uncle Tom for corporations.
Now?
Thank you Ralph Nader.
SayItWithWookies: I keep the quotes inside the punctuation unless there is an incredibly good reason not to. So I pretty much don’t. The quote is tied to the phrase, the punctuation to the sentence and overlapping them is an unsound idea that seems to have developed for no clear reason whatsoever (unless, as in my example, the punctuation is part of the quote: ” ‘“third parties”, ‘ ” ) — and for this I had to use extra quotes.
qwerty42: I’m not saying it makes sense — the convention on parentheses, for instance, is the other way around — just that it’s still done that way. I’ve gotten used to it over the years, and now anything else looks jarring.
scotterl: We were somewhere near Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold
I first saw “HST” and thought you were talking about Truman vacationing in Key West. geeze.
Jukesgrrl: Then you do not speak or write English. Are you an American sub-species?
SayItWithWookies: ok, a truce then; I find the inclusion of the sentence punctuation inside a quote to be distracting and not a proper part of the quote, but know that is the rule. Which I feel free to disregard. However, I suspect it was felt the sentence (or thought) flowed more freely and was better described by following the ordinary rules for punctuation wrt quotes. parentheses, otoh, really break the structure.
rocktonsammy: Fuck yeah America!
Dangling participles and prepositions are merely nuisances; they do not alter the meanings of sentences. What alters the meaning of sentences is the use of the word “like”, when one means “such as” or “for example”. (nevermind the period outside the quotes. or inside the parentheses.)
Case in point, from the wikipedia article about Sanford’s Lt. Gov, the Mexican Andre: “Bauer was a self-employed businessman in the retail sector, selling sports merchandise to national franchise stores like Wal-Mart.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_Bauer)
Like Walmart? Does that mean *not* Walmart, but something that is *like* Walmart? What is like Walmart?? I think the writer meant “such as Walmart” or “for example, Walmart”. That changes the meaning of the sentence.
This is a widespread abuse of language, particularly among journalists — one that far surpasses the harmless and ubiquitous “of” or “to” at the end of a sentence.
This thread is what I imagine Strunk & White reading as porn.
jasper f. krone: the use of “like” for “as” has been going on for some time, much to the horror of English teachers. I do not see it stopping. I hope we are able to preserve the word “too” and not have it replaced with “to”, but of course, with texting, twitter, etc it might end up as “2″.
Well I’m a bit late to see your post so I didn’t read anything.
I’m excused!