In the Headlights

I Know When I'm Beaten

I recently picked up a book called Grammar Snobs are Great Big Meanies: A Guide to Language for Fun and Spite, by June Casagrande.  Jeez, I hope she doesn't read this.  I'd hate to have my post corrected.

I just started reading this book, and already feel like an idiot.  The good thing is that Ms. Casagrande starts early citing gaffes by grammar snobs, including herself, and goes on to discuss the fact that many experts and respected rule books have rules that disagree with one another by about 180 degrees. 

Having said that, I admit to being a bit of a language/spelling/grammar snob, so it hurts to be brought down a peg, as I have been.  Because there doesn't seem to be any argument about one rule that I break on a regular basis.  That is the rule of always putting the comma inside the quotation marks. 

I'm not random in my application of this rule, but if the part inside the quotes doesn't stand alone, I usually put the comma on the outside.  Ms. Casagrande says the comma always goes on the inside.  In fact, in American English, the period and comma always go inside the quotation marks, semicolons always go outside the quotes, and placement of the others depends on context. (You figure it out.)

Easing my pain is the fact that she sees commas inside quotation marks regularly on Jeopardy.  I guess I could be in worse company.

Wanting more confirmation, I turned to The New Well-Tempered Sentence: A Punctuation Handbook for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed, by Karen Elizabeth Gordon.  She says "?, !, and ~ go inside quotation marks when they belong to the quotation, otherwise they're on the outside looking in."  In her chapter on commas, she says "When a comma is called for at the end of material within quotation marks, parentheses or brackets, it goes inside the quotation marks, but outside the parentheses or brackets."  Got that?

Finally, sobbing in desperation, I turned to the Harbrace College Handbook (note, my edition was printed in 1951--no, I didn't buy it new--, so the link is not to this edition) by John C. Hodges, and was once again put in my place:  "The period and the comma always within the quotation marks...The colon and the semicolon always outside the quotation marks...The dash, the question mark , and the exclamation point within the quotation marks when they apply to the quoted matter only;  outside when they refer to the whole sentence."

I know when I'm beaten.  Here's what I say:

Smiles and Metaphors

This is technically supposed to be "similes and metaphors", but they made me grin.

Like so many ""real" writings by students submitted by teachers, many are probably spurious.  But entertaining nonetheless.

1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides
gently compressed by a Thigh Master.

2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like
underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.

3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy
who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those
boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at
high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without  one
of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. Coli, and he was
room-temperature Canadian beef.

5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes
just before it throws up.

6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

7. He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.

8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because
of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a
formerly surcharge-free ATM machine.

9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a
bowling ball wouldn't.

10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled
with vegetable soup.

11. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie,
surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and Jeopardy
comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.

12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.

13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you
fry them in hot grease.

14. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the
grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having  left
Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19
p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.

15. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that
resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth.

16. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had
also never met.

17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was the
East River.

18. Even in his last years, Granddad had a mind like a steel trap, only
one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.

19. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.

20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil,
this plan just might work.

21. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating
for a while.

22. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck,  either, but
a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or
something.

23. The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg
behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.

24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with
power tools.

25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as
if she were a garbage truck backing up.

*     *     *     *

Thanks to L.C. for these.

[Dog from Les Nouvelles du Sport]

[Trains from Railroad Pix]

[Lame duck from MLMUG]

Gift Guide for Men

I can think of few things more difficult to come up with than a good gift for a man.   Vice versa as well, I'm sure.

Rich Ray brings us this solution in his Web Watch column. 

Their welcome says "Uncrate is a web magazine for guys who love stuff.  Our team finds the best gadgets, clothes, cars (uh oh), and more so you can blow your rent money easier.

They're not kidding.  While they feature stuff like this Confederate B91 Wraith bike for $55,000,

they also have a Mr. P. wine stopper for $12, Fuzzy Logic shampoo for $22, and a wide array of stuff in between.

Worth checking out.  And they have a link to Uncrate for Women, too at Outblush.

They're Getting My Goat

Another example of animals being expected to act like people.  This goat will cut short his military career if he doesn't shape up.  From  Reuters and Yahoo News. The image is from the article.

Mascot Demoted for Acting the Goat on Parade

The six-year-old mascot for a British army battalion has been demoted in disgrace for acting the goat during a parade in full view of dignitaries.

Billy Goat has been a mascot of the First Battalion, the Royal Welsh regiment, since he was six months old and had the official rank of lance-corporal before his frisky antics during a parade marking Queen Elizabeth's official birthday earlier this month.

The army said he had been demoted to fusilier (private) as a result of his behavior.

"The goat major had a hard time keeping him in line, he was bouncing around all over the place," military spokesman Captain Crispian Coates told Reuters Saturday.

Doubly embarrassing was Billy's refusal to obey commands in front of diplomats and army top brass, Coates said.

"This is his first overseas tour. He has certainly not made a good start for himself."

A Window into Medicine

I recently had occasion to visit Rochester Minnesota, home of the Mayo Clinic.

No, no, really, I'm fine.  No cause for alarm.  I was there on business.

I was lucky enough to have someone who'd been there a long time give me a tour.

One outstanding sight was this stained glass window in the home of William James Mayo, one of the Mayo brothers.  The window was completed and installed in March, 1943.

Each vertical panel illustrates on of Mayo Clinic's three shields:  Education, Practice and Research.  Temporally, the earliest are on the bottom (500 B.C. to 1500 A.D.), followed by 1500-1800, 1800-1900, and 1900 and later, reading lowest to highest, so that the topmost lights reflect the most modern era.

A full description of each panel of the window can be found here.

Back to New Zealand

Not back, exactly, but more photos from L.C. and Stryder's adventures visiting the Kiwis.

 

Peter Pereira: Three Poems

Burning the Nests/Butterfly Bush/Perfect Pitch

Burning the Nests

Atop an orchard ladder my father
stands half-hidden by the black cherry's
tangled branches, holding a gasoline-soaked
rag wrapped on the end of a broomstick.
He flicks open his silver lighter, tells us
to stand back as the torch ignites
and he thrusts the burning thing up
where the white nets of caterpillars
tent the upper branch tips. A terrible
crackling like singed hair
fills the early April evening
as we squeal, and the smoldering
bits of caterpillars fall to the ground.
Weeks later we will eat the spicy
meat of the cherries, not even thinking
of this carnage. Or if we do, only
as the kind of work that fathers
will do, for their children.

Butterfly Bush

I used to love the buddleia,
its long purple trumpets in summer
buzzing with hummingbirds and butterflies,

until someone told me it was common,
invasive, a weed —

its withered flower cones
spilling armies of seedlings
to colonize the neighborhood.

Then I was embarrassed to have loved it.

I began to see its offspring sprouting
everywhere, hated how they rooted
between loose bricks, flourished
from cracks in the sidewalk.

So I cut mine back to nothing,
buried the broken stump —

only to find it returned
the next spring, multiplied.

And though I hated it
then, a part of me wanted it
to live. So I resolved to remove

the spent flowers, trim the branches.
Each autumn its size diminished,
and each spring an open

relaxed shape returning.
Its abundance held in check.

And now I love the buddleia
again as before,
but by second nature —
as one who returns to the garden
after the fall.

Perfect Pitch

—"F . . . the oven is an F"
Samantha Foggle, age 3

Oh, to hear the world with such clarity.
Such surety. To know the note
of your breakfast chat is B flat minor.
That the '57 Chevy stalled outside the
garage is a D. To recognize the Apricot
kitchen paint for what it is: F-sharp.
To understand the way you feel for him is G,
definitely a G. And as you watch him
descend the scale of the front steps to his car
for work, the house quiets to an A.
The arpeggio of last night's Every
Good Boy Deserves Favor
still ringing in your ears.

*     *     *     *

Such lovely poems.

Peter Pereira practices Family Medicine in Seattle, as well as being a prolific poet and founder of Floating Bridge Press.  In addition, he has a blog, The Virtual World.

[via three candles journal]

[Nest from Allan Bovee Photography]

[Buddleia photo from The Garden Club of Cyprus]

The Historian

I just finished reading Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian.  It took me a long time, but really, through no fault of its own.  Shawn Lea gave it to me at the end of October when we met in Tampa.  I took it home and it sat on my shelf for a long time as I worked on a blogging routine. (No.  I don't have one yet.  I'm working on it.) Then, I went through my manic Sudoku phase, and generally went on with my life.

Once I started it, I resolved not to read it at night, figuring it might keep me awake. And I usually read two or three books at a time, so I can pick up whatever strikes my fancy at the time.  Some take a while to gain momentum.  So it was.

The book is about any number of historians.  The protagonists, their friends, loves and acquaintances all seem to be taken from that pool.  Even the villain is a historian.  If not professionally, then a historian wannabe.

The villain in this case is Vlad Tepes, aka Vlad the Impaler, better known as Dracula.  We all know he transcended his death and remained to cause death and destruction among the living.  The book spans about three generations, with action taking place from the middle 1900's to present day, but much of what we learn is through what our historians can glean from manuscripts, libraries, old-fashioned sleuthing and plain bad luck.

Kostova's descriptions of Vlad correspond with known portraits of Vlad Tepes.  Which is pretty cool.  He wears pointy hats, and robes and boots right out of his picture.

As our heroes learn more and more about the monster, he and his minions become more and more evident in their lives.  There are a few awful scenes, but none that made my pupils dilate or made me break out in a sweat; except for the part where one of the protagonists had to give a talk in front of a large crowd. That's okay with me. 

It was plenty mysterious, creepy and fact-filled; and a lot of the fun had to do with the sleuthing through manuscripts and old, dusty libraries (Amazing how many creepy librarians and spooky libraries there are in this book...I may never see them in quite the same way again.).

*     *     *     *     *

This post sets a record for the number of links it made to my own posts. wOOt!

In Which We Recognize a Stupid Idea when We See It

New Zealand's Wellington Zoo is renting out big cats for private parties. For $2500, you can have two cheetahs, Charlie and Delta come to your party with their trainers, and your guests can pet them (Delta and Charlie, that is).

(See where I'm going with this?)

Cheetahs have been domesticated as far back as Ancient Egypt. 

Thus far, the events have been, well, uneventful.

Some feel the animals are enjoying the interaction.

All it will take is some idiot to make one mad, one incident.  And it will probably be the cheetah who'll pay for it.

Read the rest of the story here.

[Via fark.com]

Roan

By the time this post comes up, we should be halfway there.

That is, my friend Sandy and I should be.  Half way to Roan Mountain State Park, on the Appalachian Trail.  For a week with no television, no computer, no cell phones, no pagers.  No computer. I have preposted two blog entries a day until I get back.  So if any late-breaking news occurs, you sure won't be reading about it here.  (At this point, I'm sure you have figured out that this too is preposted.)

So what will we do there?  Well, there'll be trails to hike, maybe some swimming, ping-pong (I used to be quite good), fires to build in the evening (yeah, it's that cool--highs in the 70's and 80's, lows in the 50's), good food, single malt, wine. The rhododendrons will be in bloom. You get my drift. Heaven. Plus maybe a side trip or two.  Lots of blog fodder for when I get back.

Let's see, where was I?  Oh yeah, so we're going to test my car and my GPS unit on a 560 mile or so each-way journey. Haven't been on a road trip in ages.  Copying CD's for the trip.  Another old friend is going to road trip in another direction and join us for a couple to a few days. Can't hardly wait.

A friend of Sandy's hiked the Appalachian Trail years ago and told her Roan is the nicest part.  Thanks for doing the legwork (no pun intended), Monica.  She told me that when I was reading A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson. And that all planted the seed that led to this trip.

[Photo from the Roan website.  Looks like I got it from "The Sound of Music", doesn't it?]