centre of the universe - the dreaming

"Myself" is a bit like a dildo.


WHOA, CENOBYTE!!! THAT'S TOTALLY TMI!!!


No, seriously. Stay with me here. I'm'a get back to that.

As I pointed out to Viper Pilot in one of the comments down there, formal English (Smarty Pants, we'll save the 'but that's how people talk' discussion for later, because you know my opinion on doing things a) simply because everyone else is doing them, and b) incorrectly) teaches us that saying "my friend and I" is incorrect.

Your grade two teacher probably told you that it is more proper to say "My friend and I" because it's a) more polite to list your friend first, and b) proper English. Well, Mrs. Gonadcrusher was, as our friend would say, mistooken. ((*\ /*)) (those are not boobs. Those are the Sarcasm Hand and the Humour Hand being deployed simultaneously)

Here's the deal.
Pronouns have what are called cases*. Special states of being dependent on what they are doing in a sentence. Kind of like freedom, incarceration, and parole, except nothing at all like that.

Whoa. Let's back up a bit, shall we? You remember what pronouns are, right? Okay, good. But just in case you're just SAYING you remember what a pronoun is so that I won't mock you, I'll just remind you: a pronoun is a word or phrase which replaces a noun or noun phrase (noun: person, place, or thing, for ease of reference).

Now. Pronouns have cases. I'm not going to list all the cases here, because you'll go crosseyed and stop reading, if you haven't already. But seriously; if you learn this stuff, you'll be, like, the smartest person on your block! Maybe even in your whole NEIGHBOURHOOD!

There is the nominative or subjective case. It is the **subject** of a sentence (the thing what the sentence is really about...not the same as the **topic** of the sentence, btw).
There is the objective case, which is the **object** of a setence (the thing what stuff is being done to).
There is the reflexive case, which is much easier to demonstrate than it is to explain (so that's what I'll do).

There are three cases for the first person pronoun (the one you use when you're referring to yourself).
"I" is subjective
"Me" is objective
"Myself" is reflexive

Observe:
I love the smell of napalm in the morning. -> "I" is the subject of the sentence; that which is taking the action, in this case. (incidentally, 'love' is the predicate, or verb; 'the smell of napalm' is the object; and 'in the morning' is a prepositional phrase).

Charlie is shooting at me. -> "Me" is the object of the sentence; that which is being acted upon, affected...the *what* of the sentence.

I shot myself in the foot. -> "Myself" is reflexive. That is to say, it is a pronoun which refers to an antecedant, or pronoun/noun/subject appearing earlier in the sentence.

The following is not now, never has been, and never shall be correct:
"Please respond to myself at your earliest convenience."
"Vincent or myself can help you select a palette"
"This was broken by myself"
"Myself loves cake."

(arguably, 'by myself' is a prepositional phrase which ostensibly means 'on my own' or 'alone'; that is not the way in which it is intended to be used in this example.)

Why is this not correct, cenobyte!? you ask. And you would be correct in asking this. Because PEOPLE ARE WRONG. They are attempting to use the reflexive case as the objective case (most often) or the subjective case (less frequently). They THINK that what they're saying makes them sound smart, but the opposite is true. Someone uses the reflexive first person pronoun incorrectly, and I think: "that person is a dink. Clearly, they think they're impressing me. They are wrong." There's a reason it sounds wonky.

Would you like to take a stab at what would be the *correct* and less mentally-developmentally-delayed way of saying the above sentences?
 
Back to the first sentence of this post. "Myself", as a reflexive, only operates as an aid to the original subject. I guess it doesn't HAVE to be a dildo. It could be a midget. Or possibly some kind of poorly-paid foreign exchange student who constantly pays attention only to you simply because you've convinced him/her that it's the way things are done in Canada...I just like making the comparison to a dildo because if you think of "modifying" as "pleasuring", reflexives, single handedly (heh), pleasure the first thing they come across (heh). Yes, I got through a good portion of my linguistics morphology classes by likening 'modifying' to 'pleasuring'.

--
*Other parts of speech have cases or tenses too; right now, we're only dealing with pronouns.

Labels: darkness, education, grammar, just wrong

Because TUO brought it up:

Lay or Lie?
Lay means "to place something down." It is something you do to something else. It is a transitive verb.

Incorrect: Lie the book on the table. Correct: Lay the book on the table.
(It is being done to something else.)

Lie means "to recline" or "be placed." It does not act on anything or anyone else. It is an intransitive verb.

Incorrect: Lay down on the couch. Correct: Lie down on the couch.
(It is not being done to anything else.)

The reason lay and lie are confusing is their past tenses.
The past tense of lay is laid.
The past tense of lie is lay.

Incorrect: I lay it down here yesterday. Correct: I laid it down here yesterday.
(It is being done to something else.)
Incorrect: Last night I laid awake in bed.
Correct: Last night I lay awake in bed.
(It is not being done to anything else.)

The past participle of lie is lain. The past participle of lay is like the past tense, laid.

Examples: I could have lain in bed all day. They have laid an average of 500 feet of sewer line a day.

Layed is a misspelling and does not exist. Use laid.

From the English Plus website, which is a *really good* place to find information about spelling, grammar, usage, and even punctuation. I get their newsletter regularly. Because I am a nerd. Grammar nerd at your service!

Labels: grammar

Karl Marx is the author of a very famous quote. More the the point, many people know a small portion of the quote. The part you'll remember is: "Religion is the opium of the people". Some folks use this as an argument against organised religion, when what Marx was trying to say with that teeny tiny passage from a much, much larger idea has more to do with economic and political stresses. Marx was no great lover of religion, but had Marx really wanted to come down on religion, he was more than capable of doing so with something much stronger than this gentle comparison.

'Gentle'?

Yes. Opium has a distinct purpose. When someone who is in pain has been administered opium in any of its derivatives, their pain is eased. This is the simile Marx evoked. Certainly, he also went on to say many things about religion being, like opium, a somewhat topical solution. Administering opium to a patient in pain doesn't cure the underlying condition; it merely treats discomfort in the short-term. So too does religion, he argues, soothe those living with economic and political discomfort, but it does not solve the underlying economic and political issues which brought the people to that point.

There's no denying that Marx had very strong opinions on religion and atheism, but I don't think this one portion of a quotation is "proof" that he was an atheist, nor do I think this particular quote ought to be used by atheists, ever, to bolster or support their position. 

Um. Okay, I didn't mean to make a post about Marx. Because extending the simile, someone claimed that if Marx were alive today, he would say that television is the opiate of the masses. I think that's giving rather a lot of credit to the boob tube, particularly since every culture in the world has a form of religion or religious/spiritual worship, but not every culture in the world has television. I mean, okay, taken in the context in which it was meant, it's pithy; I'll give you that.

Marx, however, thought "bigger" than that. Television is an easy target, and I don't think he would have cast his net in such shallow water. My guess is that Marx would have said that *marketing* or spin is the opium of the masses, were he alive today. Consumerism is the opium of the people now. Buy, buy, buy, and you will be happy. You will forget your problems if you get the new dust mop, the latest car, or the new paint for your kitchen. You can SPEND YOUR WAY OUT OF DEBT.

I wish Marx WERE still alive. He would have some fairly strong words for current administration, I think.

ANYWAY. None of that is the reason I'm posting today. Of course, now I can't *remember* why I'm posting today...OH YEAH.

SPEAKING OF BEING A DRUGGED-OUT JUNKIE (we were talking about opium, right? M'kay. Just making sure you're still with me here), please review the following:
You can download this fine poster from http://iampaddy.com/spell/. I encourage you to do so.

This handy guide will lead you to be a more efficient communicator. A stronger speller. A better person. Chicks dig proper spelling. DUDES dig proper spelling. Seriously, if you want to get laid, start using words properly. In particular, I want to shout rather loudly about the "your/you're" conundrum. And what a conundrum it is!

It seems a good 60% of people who claim they can read and write actually can't!

Look. I want you to refresh yourself on contraptions. I mean, contractions. You know, when a little word like "are" has the leading 'a' slashed with a spelling machete. That little machete hangs above where the 'a' USED to be, showing the place where a machete tore out an 'a'. That's so that you know that when you come back to survey the damage, you remember there's actually a poor letter missing.

So: 'You are' is walking down a lovely street on a spring evening, and all of a sudden, the nefarious contraction stabber LEAPS OUT OF A SHRUBBERY and wields his or her heavy machete, cutting the 'a' out in its prime. **WE ALL MOURN THE 'A'**. 'You are' has now become 'You're' (see that machete hanging there, as if nothing happened!), and it's trying to get on with its life, without its beloved 'a'. It's sad, really. But that's the way it happens.

BEHOLD THE CONTRACTION. Learn it, love it, remember it.

One that isn't on this list but ought to be is "Loose/Lose".

Two 'o's went walking. They were in love; they were moony-eyed over one another. They held hands on the wharf. But a gust of wind came up off the water and knocked one 'o' off its feet. Being as their hands were wet, their grip was LOOSE and one of the 'o's slid, shloop, into the deep. Had poor 'o' been wearing gloves, its hand would not have come LOOSE.

LOOSE is an adjective. It tells you about the state of something (the doorknob is LOOSE).

LOSE is a verb. It does things. It DECLINES - Lose, lost, losing, etc.. It is the verb tense of "loss".

They don't even rhyme. LOOSE...you see how many 'o's there are there? See them staring at you? Ooooooo. Loooooooooos. Loooooooooooooooos!

Here's the reason they don't rhyme: In English (keep in mind that in English, there are rules that break other rules), when you have a vowel in the middle of a word, and an 'e' on the end of the word, the 'e' at the end of the word modifies the sound of the vowel in the middle. Remember the Electric Company's "Silent E" song?





Terminal 'e' turns "fat" into "fate", you see. It turns "Loss" into "Lose".

In the case of 'loose', the terminal 'e' makes the 'oo' in the middle there say 'oo' rather than 'uh'. Check it out:
Book - /b/uh/k/
Goose - /g/ oo /s/

Loss - /l/ ah /s/
Lose - /l/ oo /z/

(in advanced terms, the vowel sounds are also influenced by the presence of a specific kind of consonant after the double vowel, but let's not get into that right now).

So. If you have experienced a LOSS (poor 'o', drowning out in the briny deep), use "lose". If you have experienced WIGGLINESS, use 'loose'.

And let's just leave Karl Marx out of the equation for now.

Labels: Bad Mojo, grammar, rants, spelling