May 04, 2008
They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
Headline: "Big Brown wins. Filly finishes second and is euthanized."
Wow, the Democrats are really getting serious.
Oh. That was about the Kentucky Derby.
It would really liven up the primaries, though, wouldn't it?
May 03, 2008
Made You Look
Today I saw this sentence in a headline link to a crime story: "One day, she was unresponsive to her boyfriend’s text messages, which was then followed by a grueling discovery." She was found in the middle of her apartment living room, so the discovery was more gruesome than grueling. I shouldn't be so critical of language errors made by people trained and paid to use words correctly. After all, people who are trained and paid to use meat slicers often have fewer than ten fingers. People trained and paid to run a war occassionally declare victory prematurely and even get into wars based on lies erroneous intelligence.
See, not all "errors" are unintentional, including language errors. Most of us have seen or heard criticism of the redundant "free gift" offer made in various promotions. My friends, Mr. Barnes and Mr. Noble emailed me today to offer me a free gift if I get one of their credit cards. (We're very close friends; they email me every week about what they are up to at work. I email them back about what I'm doing that week also.) There is a high level of "freeness" associated with the word "gift" (see def. #2). The alert level of freeness in gift is, in fact, at red. Everyone knows that, including Messers. Barnes and Noble. They also know that if they offer me a "gift", I will subconciously know it's a euphemism for "not a gift". So companies tack on the word "free' because it still has the Pavlovian power to make us salivate, or at least read their offers ("Made you look, made you look, made you buy an on-sale book!"). I believe, though, that that word "free" is losing its effect. Soon they will have to offer a complimentary free gift, then a gratuitous complimentary free gift.
Words and sentence structure impart messages to us. "Free gift! We'll give you a travel mug when you sign up for B&N credit card!" says "Look! Pretty! Shiny! Travel mug! Can hold COFFEE. Don't look at the nasty, evil credit card; look at the shiny object! You want it." Why don't they change the ad to say, "We'll give you a pretty, smooth, plastic card if you take one of these old travel mugs off our hands." Make it seem like a status symbol, the way American Express does. People PAY to have an AMEX card. No free gifts for them. People with AMEX cards can buy their own gifts.
(By the way, I know "freeness" is not a word. I sometimes intentionally misuse language. You should assume that any language, grammar or spelling errors you see in this blog are intentional.)
April 28, 2008
Who Said
UPDATE: MSNBC has fixed the error I refer to in this entry) "It didn’t take long for Miley Cyrus fans (and their parents) to become outraged." I don't blame them; it is was shocking. (The article did say) "according to a magazine source, 'Cyrus felt that she was in imminently good hands.'" It is terrible when people are irresponsible and let you down. I can't believe that everyone involved just let this happen. They saw the phrase "Cyrus felt that she was in imminently good hands." and just let it slide. She felt she was in hands that were in immediate danger of being good? (as opposed to being in eminently good hands). (This entire post is was in imminent danger of someone editing the online story before you link(ed) to it, making a moo point of my comments.)
I don't know if the (imminent/eminent) error was made by the quoted Vanity Fair source or by the Scoop reporter who wrote down what she thought she heard. It doesn't matter; Miley Cyrus has been irreperably damaged.
And we can't blame Miley for her part in this. Sure, she did say “I never intended for any of this to happen and I apologize to my fans who I care so deeply about.” when she clearly should have said "whom I care so deeply about." It's not Miley's fault; she is caught up in a world where grammar doesn't matter and language abuse is commonplace. And, of course, she's not to blame for failing to realize she was posing for sexy pictures. These days nothing is real until it appears in video or until it shows up in pictures in Vanity Fair or on myspacefacebookpage.
