I had dijon mustard on my sandwich for lunch, and it was delicious. I also felt a strange urge to read Chomsky afterwards.
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[…] May 28, 2009 · No Comments Watch out. Bleeding heart liberalism, and it’s worst known affliction, gayness, is spreading. Fast: […]
snetzky
what are you some kind of commie, pinko, elitist, unamerican?
snetzky
Although I have to admit, all I could think of at first was the joke about the Buddhist going to the hot dog vendor and saying “Make me one with everything.”
Just Some Fuckhead
I hadda #9 from Jimmy Johns, no mayo add pep.
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
I hope you sat down until that urge went away.
But before jumping in with both feet, try this first. Not as much fun as the play, which I saw yoinks ago in Toronto, but very approachable and funny.
Cat Lady
Strange urge. Heh. He said strange urge. Heh. Heh. Heh.
/beavis
N M
Is that patchouli I smell on you JC?
Billy K
God, I hope you had iceberg lettuce on that sandwich and not Arugula.
Bill E Pilgrim
It’s pronounced “DIHjuhn” by the way, none o this fancy pantsy European insisting that we say it their way stuff.
Yeah, gimme some of that dihjun mustard, oh and a plate of that there spag-hetti, too.
schrodinger's cat
So when are you making the cilantro ice-cream? and don’t forget to make catnip sorbet for the mighty Tunch, while you are at it.
Common Sense
I’d ask about your choice of bread, but it may get you deported so I’ll let you plead the fifth.
schrodinger's cat
That sounds like a very iffy combination, not unlike the cilantro ice-cream.
Politically Lost
I was at the local brewpub yesterday for lunch and the islamufascist waitress brought a selection of four mustards to our table. There was spicy deli, dijon, honey, and horseradish. Not only did she bring those disgustingly elitist but oh so delicious spreads to our table, the pub actually supplied a four hole carrying vessel to make it easier for her to do so. As an after thought she left a bottle of French’s just in case we needed to make the “right” choice.
To top it off, the brand name for all of these elitist condiments was “BEAVER” brand mustard. With a picture of a cute little beaver in a hardhat.
Yes, anything named Beaver with a picture of a beaver in a hardhat is the goo of the devil.
R-Jud
This damn site, it’s so insidiously influential: I’ve noticed more Talking Heads songs creeping into my playlists over the past week. And now I want a nice kosher hotdog with dijon mustard (and that’s not a euphemism… for once).
Summer finally turned up here on the island. And our MP is resigning from Parliament due to the expenses scandal, huzzah.
gbear
I just had honey-dijon dressing on my salad at Wendy’s but I made it a less commie lunch by also having a cheapie chicken sandwich and pop, but then I made it double commie by getting to Wendy’s on a scooter.
Incertus
Great review of Ana Menendez’s new book up at The Rumpus, and I’m not saying that just because my g/f Amy wrote it and interviewed the author. More fun to read than Chomsky at the very least.
schrodinger's cat
I too had a communist lunch which I packed myself, grilled chicken with oregano and rosemary, roasted red peppers and onions and some rice pilaf.
BTW the mustard I like is the grainy kind, is that elitist?
r€nato
I had a salad with arugula for lunch and now I feel a strange urge to nationalize the auto industry, give terrorists therapy and a hug, and make gay marriage mandatory.
Dave
I feel for you, John. I once put some Chinese mustard on a ham sandwich and read Mao’s Little Red Book for a week straight.
dm
I’m probably dating myself, but I liked Chomsky’s Reflections on Language or Rules and representations. Sound patterns of English was also interesting because of its obsession with finding rules that were economical yet complete in expressing the phonology of the English language. Watch out on the last one, though — it will probably give you a craving for balsamic vinegar and arugula.
Bill Belichick
This is exactly the sort of limp wristed metro male stuff I was referring to in the Annie post. If we can’t get a bull dyke as a contributor then can we at least get a red blooded, virile man’s man on board? I was thinking someone in the mold of Lindsey Graham or Jefferson Bearegard Sessions III. You know, someone who the instant their mouth opens you know it’s going to be booming. Someone who shows good codpiece in a flight suit.
Bill E Pilgrim
@schrodinger’s cat:
I think if you pronounce it any way you want you get to eat in any combination also.
Actually asking for mustard for your main dish and then a side of spaghetti would be perfectly normal in Italy. Of course, if you pronounced it that way they’d just blink.
gbear
That’s all well and good until yourself says to you “It’s not you, it’s me”. You really know it’s over when that happens.
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
You asked.
Bill E Pilgrim
@dm:
Don’t do it. It only seems less complicated that way, but in the end you run into the same compatability problems as always. Believe me, I’ve tried.
Bill E Pilgrim
Sheesh. Gotta be quick around here.
Carnacki
Tell the truth, John. You went to Tudor’s Biscuit World.
mmm. Tudors.
r€nato
@Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse:
christ that’s a bad music video. Frickin’ ruined an otherwise pretty cool song for me.
eemom
This piece by Chomsky on torture appeared in Salon a few weeks ago:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/05/19/chomsky/index.html
Abstract: Why the fuck should anybody be surprised?
Carnacki
@Billy K:
They were selling argula pots at Lowe’s next to the tomatos. F’ing elitists, Lowes.
John Cole
I think Chomsky is interesting even when I disagree with him. Watch this clip:
You ask me, he knows what is going on. Guys like him, William F. Buckley, Gore Vidal, etc., are just fun to listen to regardless what you agree with because they have big ideas and strong opinions.
TenguPhule
This must be hell when you try to split the dinner check.
Punchy
You just chose that mustard cuz it has your damn name in it.
DanSmoot'sGhost
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Did you see my request on another thread? I don’t have an email address for you that works.
Have your people contact my people.
phantomist
Next we will find out you have a recipe for croutons.
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
Noam Chomsky
Stephen1947
I just had breakfast – banana and peanut butter (crunchy) on toast w 2 cupsa green tea. I’m editor of a scraggly little n’hood newspaper that publishes once a month, and last night was send to printer night. Home at 1am, in bed soon after 3am (can’t come home at any hour and go straight to bed unless I’ve been awake longer than 24 hrs – and not always then).
We’re in 2nd day of gray drizzle, imported from W. Virginia from what I hear – but I have a day to chill in, so I don’t really care. Now that I’ve made my morning abeisances to the laptop – mahjong, freecell, sudoku, Wikipedia home page, NYT, DKos, Benen, and Ballon Juice – it’s time to put the laptop down and figure out how I’m gonna enjoy the day best.
Crazy Kale Lady
I would like to announce that I installed Leopard this morning (Thanks Tim F) and only ONE BAD THING happened. All my mail stuff went away. I mean, it was all there, but empty, non-responsive, listless and lifeless. Fortunately my stomach was empty so nothing came up when I started shaking and heaving.
I paged to the back of the little manual and very uncharacteristically started reading directions whereupon I saw I had 3 months of phone support from Almighty Apple God. It was good. I’m gonna have to stop shaking before I can hook up the whatever thing that black box I ordered is and learn to back up my two years’ worth of nonsense with Time Machine. Of course, knowing me, I’ll lose everything between now and the time I complete that Herculean accomplishment.
I was so shook up that I forgot to put my Dijon on my turkey/cheese/pickle (bread-free) roll ups, but I used smoked Gouda, so I’m probably still OK.
The Grand Panjandrum
Whoa. A thrill just went up my leg.
Morbo
I like to have dijon mustard along with habanero jack cheese on my sandwiches. Riffing off DougJ’s post, MY SANDWICH IS AN ELITIST AND A WETBACK!
Bill E Pilgrim
@John Cole:
I’d be fascinated to know what part of that you disagree with?
I actually sort of can’t imagine, but it’s a sincere question, can you elaborate?
Bostondreams
O/T (can you be O/T in an open thread?):
The state of Florida released the results of the standardized state exam today, in this state known as the FCAT.
After looking at the scores, faculty members at the high school where I teach are contemplating about which ledge to use when they throw us off. All year, we had meetings, evaulated data, drilled, drilled, drilled, redirected instruction, bought new software, tested the students to death, and felt we were making tremendous progress…and our scores dropped 10%. We have teachers in tears.
Our new superintendent is eager to make some examples. The bloodletting will not be pretty.
Joe Beese
CNN
The Telegraph
So which is it? Liar or sociopath?
DanSmoot'sGhost
@John Cole:
Chomsky is wicked smart. It’s enjoyable listening to him no matter what he is talking about.
Ash Can
For my lunch (OK, it was more like breakfast; I was too hungry to wait for lunch) I had a couple of grilled bratwursts leftover from our Memorial Day cookout. They were the authentic, made-by-the-local-German-butchershop kind, and I had them with grainy brown mustard and a little horseradish — you know, the kind of condiments found in any old German or Dutch farmhouse or village house going way back. If any of these “elitist mustard” wailers are of German or Dutch extraction, they’d be happy to know that their ancestors would summarily kick their asses out into the road, run over them with a tractor, and have the pieces carted off with the rest of the offal.
DanF
I just ordered a veggie sandwich from a local deli. It came on white sandwich bread – not a roll – regular lettuce, mayo, and (I wish I was kidding) bacon. Bacon on a vegetarian sandwich. Oddly, I feel the need to cut taxes and suppress votes.
TenguPhule
Big Ideas for Torture and strong opinions about indentured servitude.
Still doesn’t make them fun to listen to.
DanSmoot'sGhost
@Joe Beese:
Which is it?
A president, who isn’t fool enough to go around talking smack about disturbing photographs of American behavior, in a violently unstable world.
In short, somebody a helluva lot smarter than your post.
Paul_D
I had a baked potato for lunch and suddenly I’m craving vodka. No, wait, that’s an everyday occurance..
Stephen1947
Forgot to mention that I was in line for coffee in the Stata Center at MIT a coupla weeks ago – that’s the big pile of bricks, glass and metal that looks like someone was trying to recreat a crumpled up ball of paper on a massive scale – and saw a notice for an upcoming Chomsky lecture on one of those changeable digital bulletin boards we have all over campus. Turned around and there was the man himself 3 people back in line. His office is in that building – in one of the more hard to find corners…
Krista
Mmm…a hot dog sounds really good right now. My lunch was sad: a peanut butter sandwich on that skinny little Weight Watchers bread, a handful of almonds, a cup of lowfat yogurt, some baby carrots, and a glass of milk.
This gestational diabetes thing really sucks ass. For my first meal after giving birth, I want half a loaf of warm, homemade, freshly baked white bread, with real butter.
Ninerdave
Some good news…we know that wine is good for you. Turns out so is beer (craft beer that is).
Aaron Baker
I’ve long been convinced that Dijon mustard is the best mustard ever. If you peruse Republican talking points long enough, it won’t surprise you that a love of flavor is less than fully American; only small-town ignoramuses of white protestant extraction make the “really really American” cut, and just consider what a culinary wasteland they’ve created.
John Cole
@Bill E Pilgrim: In that clip, nothing. Just crappy writing on my part. I meant I like him even when I disagree with him, and then just brought a short clip of him being an astute observer. His description of Obama as a blank slate is really quite accurate, and it explains why those who love Obama love him so much and those who hate him, hate him so deeply. If you look at it from the sense that a lot of what people are reacting to are not realistic appraisals of the man, but their hopes (or, conversely with Republicans, their fears), it really makes a lot of sense. It is the only rational explanation for Republican reactions to Obama.
This from the article eemom linked is pretty astute:
I remember a pretty bright guy making a very similar point just the other day.
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
@r€nato: Sorry. Here’s something a little nicer.
ET
While I think this is a funny comment, I wouldn’t be surprised that there weren’t some wingnuts on the right who wouldn’t understand (since they apparently get context) or would actually take it seriously.
TenguPhule
The quality of trolls here has gone down.
So yeah, just what we were expecting.
Calouste
@Politically Lost:
Brewpub? With those fancy commie-pinko-liberal small batches of beer with all natural hops and grains and malt?
Real ‘Merikuns drink beer made from genetically modified rice in oiltanker sized batches, just like the founding fathers did.
AhabTRuler
@Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse: Why does Larry Blackmon dance like he has to go to the bathroom real, real bad
And isn’t Levar Burton a little short to be a stormtrooper?
Just Some Fuckhead
@DanSmoot’sGhost: I answered you in the other thread.
Brachiator
@Bostondreams:
Drill. Instruction. Software. Testing.
Maybe if everybody had done some actual, you know, teaching.
El Cid
@John Cole: If you haven’t ever listened to the 1988 debate of Chomsky handing Richard Perle his ass, beating Perle up so bad he begins insisting people should pay attention not to what U.S. officials actually did but Perle’s view of what they were intending to do, you should do so.
JM
Not permitted. Must prep for state test!
J.
So by the partaking of the dijon mustard, are we to conclude that you are expressing your solidarity with Comrade Judge Sotomayor, Comrade Cole?
Also, have you guys seen “An Engineer’s Guide to Cat Yodeling (with Cat Polka)” yet? If not, have at it! (Btw, I am going to attempt to get Flora and Felix to yodel this weekend. Am looking forward to wrapping socks with duct tape and applying on their paws.)
Bill E Pilgrim
@John Cole:
Got it, actually after I wrote that I realized that you might not have been referring to that particular clip but my edit time had run out.
When I first discovered Chomsky’s political writing (which was second to knowing his linguistics work, at least somewhat) I had the feeling of finally reading someone who actually knew what was going on and would describe it with no BS.
I always think of him as the model for what isn’t published, i.e. the “liberal” Washington Post gives a forum to Kristol and Kagan, two of the absolute leaders of the extreme right Neoconservative movement, to Gerson, the ultra-right GWB White House chief speech writer, and to Charles Krauthammer.
To even get a start on “balance” to all that I’ve always said they would have to publish Chomsky or the equivilant, and do so four times a week or whatever like they do with these extremists on the right.
Of course, don’t hold your breath.
I’m absolutely certain that the paper thinks that Kinsley and Robinson are the far-left radical equivilant of the extreme right wingers they publish in droves.
Krissed Off
Well then. I had rosemary ham on a baguette with whole grain Dijon mustard. Do I win anything?
Bostondreams
@Brachiator:
My friend, that was not our choice. It was ordered by the district and the state. All teaching must be data-driven and continously gathered through at least bi-monthly testing. Our English teachers were expected to the use expensive software that they have been given to try and drill reading skills into students. We modified and modified and adapted and adapted according to the plan that was developed by the county, all to bring up test scores.
Next year, we will be meeting twice a week, if not more, to review data and plan instruction. We will be observed by the district and state to ensure that we are instructing according to what they expect. We have already lost our planning periods, so will be teaching six or 7 periods a day rather than the normal 5 with a planning period. Of course we will be losing funding.
And yet, I still love to teach Social Studies. This, too, shall pass, as some of my people say.
gbear
@Bostondreams:
Can you enjoy teaching social studies in a place that’s not Florida?
Dennis-SGMM
U.S. students, having been assiduously prepared to pass standardized tests, were shocked to find that students from other countries were merely educated.
“That American students couldn’t think their way out of a wet paper bag is not an indictment of standardized testing,” said one educator. “In fact, it prepares them to be content with a life of selling each other fast food and wiping the asses of the elderly.”
eemom
yes, Chomsky is great to listen to, on numerous levels. I confess, I find a certain charm in that sort of ancient, world-weary, “nothing new under the sun” attitude he projects.
There are tons of videos both old and recent that one can find by googling….. a while back, the husband and I watched his Vietnam-era debate with Buckley, and then his comments on Buckley’s death last year. Basically what he said was, “Yeah, I went on his show. He asked me one time, and then he never asked me again. He was considered a great intellect by some. Not by me.” Priceless.
Montysano
Since discovering him recently, I can’t get Nick Drake out of my head.
There are two documentaries about Drake: “A Skin Too Few” and “A Stranger Among Us”. Both are watchable online. Both are fascinating, as Drake’s life reads like something written by a Hollywood scriptwriter.
srv
You people are such hillbillies. Real elitists use Dijon MAYO.
Bostondreams
@gbear:
As my name suggests, I’m not a Florida native. I would LOVE to go back to New England and teach in the birthplace of America (the spirit of Massachusetts is the spirit of America!) and where people talk properly and don’t fly a traitors flag, but She Who Must Be Obeyed makes a whole lot more money than I do and loves Florida.
I’m working on the PhD right now; just passed my oral and written exams and I’m polishing up the dissertation proposal. I hope that getting that degree might contribute to my ability to have input into family location options, though I’m told the money isn’t much better overall. :/
srv
@Krissed Off: You people are such hillbillies. Real elitists eat Dijon MAYO.
Johnny B. Guud
What I find interesting, almost scary even, is that the higher on the nut-scale you go, the more fevered reaction you get.
For example, if you look at Hot Air’s blog, the crazier posts have the most trackbacks. Saw one today on the whole “Obama is targeting dealerships that donated to the GOP” meme. It had 20 trackbacks.
Then you look at a more reasonable post about missle-defense or whatever topic more in the mainstream, and you get a handful of t-bs.
But, Obama puts dijon mustard on a burger??!?!? Scandal!
AhabTRuler
@Montysano: Steeplejack and I were discussing this recently. Just a magnificent artist. IIRC, there is a biopic in the works somewhere.
jake 4 that 1
Ooo, we used to dream of lunch when I were a lad…
Since this is an OT, Rush Limbaugh is still a big fat idiot (via RumpRoast [via NMMNB]):
Bwahaha – Oops, I mean. Um. Man, I’m a Dijon gobbling swarthy Islahomosoc i a list liberal and Rush’s comment really pissed me off. If any other GOPers say something like that I’ll be even more pissed off!1
Also.
R-Jud
@Krista:
No fun at all, K– glad you are coming into the home stretch.
Funnily enough, your lunch sounds like my current, trying-to-get-rid-of-the-last-15-lbs diet. So in addition to protecting yourself and the baby from the GD, you should have a leg up on post-pregnancy weight loss. Once your sproglet arrives, do what the marathoners do, and eat whatever you want for the first two weeks after b-day.
@ Montysano: “Since discovering him recently, I can’t get Nick Drake out of my head.”
Thanks for the links to the documentaries– “Northern Sky” was our wedding song.
Montysano (All Hail Marx & Lennon)
@AhabTRuler:
Which simultaneously fills me with excitement and dread.
In “A Stranger Among Us”, they play some of his mother’s home-recorded music, which has surfaced since her death. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree. (Here, about 7:00 mark)
Roger Moore
@Ash Can:
Something tells me that their German or Dutch ancestors would have something more useful to do with the rest of the offal than cart it off. They’d be a lot more likely to turn it into sausage than anything else. Mmm. Liverwurst.
GregB
I had a nitwit rightwinger friend say: “Unless you are a Muslim in America, you are screwed.”
Yep. The Muslims in the U.S. are the elite, pampered and protected privileged class.
I mean it just defies any sense of reason, logic and judgement.
-G
Incertus
@Bostondreams: I really wish the state would crawl out of your asses and let you do some real teaching, because I get to teach them after you’re done with them, and it’s no picnic. There’s no way I should be explaining the 6 ways to use a comma to college freshpeople, but I spend a significant amount of almost every semester doing just that.
schrodinger's cat
Trying to teach them physics is no fun either, especially when they need to use the calculator for the simplest of calculations.
The Cat Who Would Be Tunch
@GregB:
They get fried chicken at Gitmo. That doesn’t count?
Montysano (All Hail Marx & Lennon)
@Incertus:
Meanwhile, here in Alabama, we’re laying off teachers so that we can go shopping for teachers in the Philippines. Obviously, the story is more complicated than that, but at a knee-jerk level it pisses me off.
In other Alabama news, Huntsville has been named as Kiplinger’s #1 city. I think I speak for most Huntsvillians when I say “Please don’t do that”. I’m perfectly happy for the rest of the country to:
– dismiss us as hillbillies with green teeth, and;
– stay the fuck away.
Punchy
Ruh roh. The damage this does to Worthlessberger’s concentration will be immeasurable.
Also, I can totally see a by-then-full-on-hippie John Clean Cole (middle name change official by August) showing up, reeking of pechtrulli oil and body odor, in dreads, Jesus sandals, and 1990 Public Enemy T-shirt, screaming at The Man while outrunning the tear gas and looking for stray Steelers tickets amongst the passersby.
Davis X. Machina
.
You can make educational data say anything you want, and can collect any data you need, and none of the testing will produce anything reliable, valid, and capable of replication.
The notion that education is a science, with empirical testing of observationally bound hypotheses, beyond basics like ‘nine-month-olds aren’t ready to read’, must be one of the more pernicious survivals from the first half of the twentieth century….
AhabTRuler
So, shortly after I became property of the Princessa Momo, I followed Mr. Cole’s lead in getting a Furminator (it works!) and a HEPA filter. A couple of weeks ago, I checked the pre-filter, and although the little light had not come on, I thought it was time to replace it. Didn’t have the coin at the time, but over the weekend I was able to order the new filter. Yesterday, as I was in the bedroom cleaning one of the many fish tanks, I saw a UPS truck drive off, so I checked the front door, and, lo, the filter had arrived.
So what, you say. Well, as I went over to the filter unit, I noticed that while I was in the bedroom, at almost the exact moment the replacement was delivered, the little light had gone on! It was a weird, synchronicitous experience.
Oh, and the phone call was coming FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE! ! ! 1 ! 1 1 ! !
Punchy
@Incertus: Seconded. When I’m grading college seniors’ papers with “he went their”, “no one excepts my style”, and the myriad “thx”, “thru”, “nite”, and the like, I want to just pound their 8th grade English instructor.
Signed,
The guy who did not miss a single spelling word the entire year on a 10 word weekly quiz in 6th grade
Dork Vader
dijon mustard on a sandwich would make me think more of Chomp-sky, personally
Laura W
@Dennis-SGMM:
You know why that is don’t you?
We don’t have any damn maps in this nation!
Incertus
@Punchy: I feel you, but I don’t even want to blame the instructors. It’s the fucked up system that focuses on standardized tests and crowds 30 students into a classroom that’s the problem. You want to see a better education system, start by reducing class sizes to 12-15 students, max. Malcolm Gladwell cited a study that showed you can turn a teacher who ranks below the 50th percentile into one who ranks above 85% simply by reducing class sizes. He completely missed the point of that study, of course, because he argued we need to find more of those good teachers instead of making it easier for the overworked ones to succeed, but then again, he’s Malcolm Gladwell, and if he can’t come up with a quirky name for a phenomenon, then there’s no point in thinking about it.
AhabTRuler
Oh, come on guys, the world has been going to hell in a handbasket forever.
The Cat Who Would Be Tunch
@Incertus:
Well, since I’m the eternal optimist, I take it you’ve moved past “then/than” and “you’re/your” since we last spoke on this topic?
To be frank, I think what’s really helpful in getting people to really understand grammar/punctuation rules and write properly is to have them learn a second language.
Krista
True. I do console myself with that particular fact. But it doesn’t make it any easier when we stop at the market for produce and the tantalizing smell of freshly baked sweet rolls is wafting through the air.
It IS rather sad, isn’t it? I recall only having a very short segment on grammar every year while in school. Most of our time was spent on writing papers on things like the underlying meanings of the conch shell and Piggy’s glasses. The best education on grammar that I received was when I took Public Relations at our local community college. We were given a copy of the Canadian Press Style Guide, and marked mercilessly on grammatical and spelling errors. I only learned the difference between “its” and “it’s” at the age of 24, which is rather depressing, really.
JGabriel
schrodinger’s cat:
Yes. The only truly American mustard is a smooth yellow paste named, ironically enough, French’s.
.
MikeJ
Latin is excellent for this since even nouns are fussier than in other languages. And romanes eunt domus is funnier after a semester or two.
JK
@El Cid:
Daniel Ellsberg vs. William Kristol
http://www.c-spanarchives.org/library/index.php?main_page=product_video_info&products_id=175746-2
Wile E. Quixote
@jake 4 that 1
Bob Black, anarchist misanthrope, wrote an essay called Feminism as Fascism where he summed up perfectly one of the central tenets of fascist ideology. You may or may not agree with the rest of Black’s thesis, but this paragraph describes the Republican Party to a ‘T’.
Republicans are real Americans, they couldn’t have lost the election to a black guy with a semitic name who may or may not be an American citizen and is probably a crypto-muslim. No, such a thing wouldn’t have been possible if they hadn’t been stabbed in the back by the liberal media and ACORN. Lather, rinse, repeat, regurgitate.
We need to remember though that just because the Republicans are a bunch of buffoons doesn’t mean that they aren’t dangerous. Anyone who has read Rick Perlstein’s books, Before The Storm, and Nixonland* (If you haven’t WHY THE HELL NOT?! GET TO IT SLACKER! BUT FIRST DROP AND GIVE ME TWENTY!) knows that counting the Republicans as out of the game because they’re out of touch is a sucker move.
*I’d link through to Amazon here so that if someone decided to buy them John would get some money because God knows with the way the staff is expanding around here, the excessively generous compensation packages that Cole hands out, John’s addictions to fu-fu foods such as Dijon mustard and Cilantro ice-cream and of course Tunch’s inexorable appetite that he could use it but for some reason you’re only allowed one hyperlink per post and I blew mine with the Bob Black reference.
AhabTRuler
Furthermore, at my recent graduation, the valedictorian (or whatever term we used to describe that position) may have been able to write well (she won enough goddamn prizes), but she quoted Thomas Fucking Friedman in her speech. Frankly, I’ll take someone who can’t spell or distinguish homophones over that any day.
Wile E. Quixote
@Incertus
I use the comma as a way of avoiding having to use a period and starting a new sentence, which can just completely derail my train of thought just as it’s getting up to speed. That’s legit, right?
JK
George W. Bush used Dijon mustard in his deviled eggs
h/t http://themoderatevoice.com/31555/grey-poupon-dijon-mustard-gate-bulletin-george-bush-used-dijon-mustard-too
AhabTRuler
@Wile E. Quixote: Actually, that would be the semi-colon your looking for. Don’t believe me? Just pick up any academic text written before, say, 1960.
Specifically, I am thinking of R.N. Carew-Hunt’s The Theory and Practice of Communism (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1952), but I am positive there are other examples.
JK
@Wile E. Quixote:
Great to see a reference to Bob Black. Here’s another Black essay worth reading.
The Abolition of Work
http://deoxy.org/endwork.htm
El Cid
@JK: Thank you. I don’t even remember hearing about this.
Col. Klink
Nothing goes with dijon like Foucault.
Maybe Camus. Maybe.
I’ll ask Obama.
Dennis-SGMM
One of the UC’s for which my dear wife worked expends much of its resources on remedial classes for incoming freshman. The necessity of teaching these kids the math and English skills needed to give them a fighting chance to get anything from from college required so many lecturers and so many classrooms that the university had to create (And fund) remedial programs at the local Junior College in order to free up classrooms for upper division courses. To save money, the lecturers in these courses aren’t paid at the same rates that they would be at the UC. They are also short-circuited from following the lecturer>tenure track>professorship path that was the norm in the UC’s for decades.
Is our children learning?
The Cat Who Would Be Tunch
@Krista:
At least you did learn the difference, however late in your life.
I remember being terrified of sending out any type of written communication with mistakes when I first started out in the professional world. I would triple check simple two or three line emails just to make sure I didn’t make a silly mistake. And then after a couple of months, I realized that I looked like a damned linguistics professor compared to the majority of people (and I’m not exactly an authority on writing either). I can understand mistakes or being in a hurry. But it’s really taxing to comprehend a multi-page email when it’s a grammatical minefield.
Ironically, what drew me to the comments on this site is the fact that, aside from being funny, most of them are actually written well and observe punctuation, grammar, and syntax. Call me a pedant but dammit, when I read something, I would like for it to read well.
Dennis-SGMM
@Col. Klink:
Marcel Proust, ya’ stinkin’ Phillistine.
AhabTRuler
I agree fully, but the rest of the world don’t give a flying shit if it costs real money. Really, everyone’s faith in education is touching, but most Americans would slit your throat (ungrammatically) if it got them another week of vacation time or another 5 grand in salary.
And what about poor Mr. Ricci, for whom there is no understandable difference between ‘there’ and ‘their’?
Wile E. Quixote
@The Cat Who Would Be Tunch
My understanding of the English language was greatly improved after I took German in high school and college. A voracious reader I knew how to correctly form sentences in English (except for what some of my teachers felt was a lamentable tendency to write run-on sentences and abuse the parenthetical phrase) but I didn’t understand why you formed sentences in a certain way. As an example I understood the use of the subjunctive in English (I credit my early exposure to showtunes, specifically Fiddler on the Roof and “If I Were a Rich Man”) but if you had told me to write a sentence in the subjunctive I would have stared at you blankly.
It wasn’t until I studied German and had to learn all of those fucking conjugations for the subjunctive that I knew what the subjunctive was. This was also due to the fact that my German teachers in high school were both excellent (I took German grudgingly in high school and college, grumbling all the while that it was a waste of time because I would never use it. Then years later I ended up working for Amazon.com and ended up working in Germany during the set up of Amazon.de, the German subsidiary. Needless to say when I returned I apologized, profusely, and auf Deutsch to Frau Heald for having been such a terrible student in high school.) and my English teacher in junior high school, Mr. Peters, was a DFH who was too busy smoking dope and playing hide the sausage with the hot arts and crafts teacher to actually have us crack open our copies of Warriners and actually, you know, teach us some English*.
OK, enough OT thread fun. Off to the gym and then I have to take my leg into the shop.
*This would have been a run-on sentence if I hadn’t broken it up by cunningly inserting a parenthetical phrase. Maybe I did learn something from Mr. Peters.
Wile E. Quixote
@AhabTRuler
Tragically, my semi-colon was removed, and I have been reduced to punctuating into a plastic bag.
AhabTRuler
Sir, the day is yours. I tip my hat, you magnificent bastard!
JK
@Col. Klink:
What about Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Ellul, Gilles Deleuze, and Paul Virilio?
Dennis-SGMM
@The Cat Who Would Be Tunch:
The Chicago Manual of Style is online. There are no excuses.
Forty-one years ago, one of my instructors insisted that all of the rules in the world couldn’t make people write good, clear prose. His course revolved largely around the work of Jorge Luis Borges so I’m thinking that he may have had something.
Punchy
Ahhh…..the guide tou all thiungs couloured Canaduian, eh?
DanSmoot'sGhost
@Just Some Fuckhead:
I don’t remember what thread it was. Can you give me the executive overview? Or send me an email?
Or a link? Or possibly a shot of Jack Daniels, neat?
Dennis-SGMM
@Wile E. Quixote:
Oh you bastard. My Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 is now a boat anchor. I had to plug in the laptop to post this.
DanSmoot'sGhost
@DanSmoot’sGhost:
Okay, got it. Thanks.
MikeJ
heh.
Ok, I’m easily amused.
Bostondreams
@Incertus:
Funny you should mention class size. One reason we lose planning periods next year is because they are cutting positions, and so will have to both expand class sizes and increase course loads. Three years ago, we had 6 total Social Studies teachers, teaching 5 periods a day. Next year, we will have total Social Studies teachers. Because, you know, we aren’t tested in this state.
I teach as a grad assistant in the College of Education at UF; the morale among these future teachers is horribly low. And honestly, I have no idea how to encourage them.
Bostondreams
Ha, and a typo in my comment. That should read ‘three total’.
Col. Klink
Fine. Fine. You damn cultural elites – have your Prousts and your Baudrillards; but until you’ve downed an entire bottle of Burgundy* gazing at Matisse’s ‘Harmony in Red’ at the Hermitage you haven’t lived a day!
OK so that Burgundy might have actually been an exceedingly cheap-o bottle of Russian vodka costing about 2 rubles, but what you gonna do about it Nancy boy?
Montysano (All Hail Marx & Lennon)
@Punchy:
Also.
And: I hope that if there is a Hell (doubtful), there’s a special place for Hannity. Just minutes ago, a caller was within a dozen words of clarifying Sotomayor’s New Haven decision. Sean, pussy that he is, went into a panicky Hyper Mute mode and made sure that none of his listeners were to be troubled with the nuanced truth. Asshole.
AhabTRuler
@Col. Klink: What if one has, say, smoked a shitload1 of weed before going to the Van Gogh Museum?
1 shitload (SL) = 5 mols [back]
Incertus
@Bostondreams: And this in a state which passed a law years ago limiting class sizes which has never been enforced. And it’s just as bad at the university level. I just got my first raise in three years, and it was a one percent raise and a one-time bonus. This passes for a raise in one of the more expensive places to live in the US, and we’re already among the lower paid state faculties. Our class caps went up for the coming year as well. Ugh.
Gina
The testing issue is interesting to me. I homeschool my two elementary-age kids and here in NY we have mandatory standardized testing (which you must report to the district) starting in 4th grade. Before that, you just do a year-end written assessment. Testing can alternate years, and start in 5th grade, which is what I chose to do. I’ve tested for my own information back in 3rd grade, using the CAT-5. I did find it helpful as a tool to drive home certain points to my son about which areas he needed to work more on.
It’s definitely NOT the magic bullet that some districts make it out to be – and I can see where getting caught up in chasing scores could really be a downer for all concerned. Talk about sucking all the fun out of learning.
I just have 2 kids to teach, I can’t imagine dealing with dozens and trying to keep them all from falling through the cracks and still having to follow edicts from above regulating the minutiae of daily lessons. I really value the freedom we have to try new things, unconventional approaches, and to customize the experience to best suit individual quirks.
Next week, we’ll be trying out the CAT-E for English Language and Math skills, should be “fun”, as my son is already bitching and moaning about it.
Col. Klink
@AhabTRuler
To that fine Sir I would be compelled to say that perchance you and I once had a very similar day in Amsterdam. (Did you notice how the sunflowers moved? How the f*ck did he do that?)
FYI- Normally I’m not really a fan of the headsets, but at the Van Gogh museum they were pretty good.
Ash Can
@Wile E. Quixote:
Damn, I love this site.
Bulworth
It puts the Dijon mustard on Its sandwich and then It gets the Chomsky.
R-Jud
I went to a Catholic elementary school where the textbooks and teaching methods dated from the late 60s (I started school in 1986). When it came to grammar and composition, this was a good thing, as the nuns required us to diagram sentences, memorize the functions of the various parts of speech, and practice proofreading, all from the age of six. I remember being shocked at the state of classmates’ writing skills when I finally went to public school.
More recently, while I was working in executive recruitment, our office’s temp secretary division would periodically round up the worst of the worst CVs in terms of grammar and txt spk and pass them around the office. Their offenders were mainly 18-year-old school leavers, but we always had a few to add from our own stack who were MBAs. Ugh.
daryljfontaine
Blowing the minds of geeks everywhere
Seriously, I was taken in until I started recognizing some of the altered scenes. This thing went crazy viral, too; over 80k new hits since last night.
To be fair, it ain’t no Chomsky.
D
devopsych
Nom Chompsky?
Krista
True. I also find that when those who comment on the site write well, there also tends to be less of that gratuitous, ugly meanness that you often find on other blogs. I don’t think John would put up with that kind of foolishness anyway, but in the years I’ve been reading this blog, I’ve seen very few examples of the types of individuals one would find on the YouTube comments, as an example.
Your instructor had an excellent point. There are major leaps between writing, writing correctly and writing WELL. I think that in order to develop that “ear” (or “eye”, as the case may be) for prose, you really just need to read a lot. I was a voracious reader as a kid, and would often use words in my school assignments for which I knew the meaning, but that I hadn’t the foggiest idea how to pronounce. I think that really makes an enormous difference between someone who learns the mechanics of a proper sentence, and someone who can write with clarity, imagery and persuasiveness.
JK
@John Cole:
I second your sentiments regarding Chomsky and Vidal. Two names I’d add to that list are
Alexander Cockburn
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cK7_RwxMUQ
and
Lewis Lapham
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aA1YcxyQp8
Jen R
@Krista: I had fries after my daughter was born. Blessed, blessed fries, which I hadn’t been able to eat for three months.
AhabTRuler
QFT.
Punchy
@R-Jud: Sumpin about those Cathy schoolz….We aint gotten no nuns, no, but mah Old Wrinkly English teacher would whoop our ass (figeratively) for missing grammar and spelling.
Dont have a theory on why the Catholic skoolz put out such gud spellars. Maybe Jesus won a spelling bee in his day and now the Pope’s monitoring spelling grades for the next Christ. Maybe b/c a misspelling of deck, shot, fock, bastird, or cantbag leads to very naughty werds we aint supposed to utter. Not sho.
DanSmoot'sGhost
MAKE THIS STOP
Thanks to Rome for bringing this to my attention.
demkat620
@daryljfontaine: You see this?
katiemc
@gbear: hahahahahah! ok laugh out loud and spit out the Guldens
Montysano
@Krista:
And write a lot. In my work, I produce a lot of correspondence with contractors. It has to contain, as you said, “clarity, imagery and persuasiveness”, and also: brevity.
Here’s a shoutout to Esther Demaree, recently departed, who taught high school English, Latin, and unofficially, manners. She was worse than a drill sergeant, but she tawt me reel gud.
robertdsc
No doubt.
I can barely stand to read text messages from friends in their shorthand language. Drives me up a wall. I know two college graduates who can’t be bothered to write in plain English for their communications. It’s painful to read.
Still, pidgin English has its uses. For our host, can we haz moar TunchCam, plz? Thx.
[quiet chuckle]
Stooleo
So much for the conspiracy theory about the Bushies wanting to bring about the apocalypse.
Anne Laurie
We don’t want those kids to learn stuff, you fool! We want them to output the correct answers in response to standardized stimuli! Kids who actually know stuff — even worse, kids who have acquired the skills to learn more stuff on their own, unsupervised — are sadly liable to question their elders’ (betters’) choices in grammar, lifestyle, and theology! Which is annoying!
Does anyone else here remember diagramming sentences? That’s the drill that gave me a good foundation for grammar and punctuation (and thank goddess for it, since I was from the back end of the baby-boom generation & in a classroom of 50-plus kids, no teacher had the time to diagnose my dyslexia — it took 3 years just to realize I couldn’t see the chalkboard). Sentence diagrams are puzzles, and kids (especially bright kids) love puzzles. When I started reading ‘serious’ books in middle school, I would diagram particularly complicated sentences from Oliver Twist or Northanger Abbey just for fun. I don’t know why using diagrams seems to have fallen out of favor… or am I just not aware of the latest teaching materials?
Cat Lady
@The Cat Who Would Be Tunch:
That’s ‘cuz we’re all wicked smaht.
AkaDad
@Krissed Off:
Yes. Like all Liberals, you win my contempt for your elitosity.
Little Dreamer
@Stooleo:
That’s funny, I hadn’t realized the temple in Jerusalem had already been rebuilt. The timing is ALL WRONG!
If the thousand years of peace without Satan creating chaos had been present, as noted above, 1. the temple would have been rebuilt, and 2. we would have had peace and idyllic life for the most part of the last 1,000 years. We wouldn’t have had inquisitions, holocausts, religious wars, political assassinations, etc.
What an idiot that former president is.
JK
Quotes on Writing from William Zinsser, Author of On Writing Well
“Clutter is the disease of American writing.”
“We are a society strangling in unnecessary words.”
“Fighting clutter is like fighting weeds–the writer is always slightly behind.”
“Every writing project must be reduced before you start to write.”
“Every successful piece of nonfiction should leave the reader with one provocative thought that he or she didn’t have before. Not two thoughts, or five–just one.”
“Surprisingly often a difficult problem in a sentence can be solved by simply getting rid of it.”
“Rewriting is the essence of writing well: it’s where the game is won or lost.”
h/t http://www.annezelenka.com/2007/06/10-quotes-on-writing-from-william-zinsser-author-of-on-writing-well
AhabTRuler
@Little Dreamer:
Well, Karl Rove did say that he knew dumb people who made it through Ivy League schools.
canuckistani
@The Cat Who Would Be Tunch:
When one person starts to set a high standard, everyone else brings the A game so they don’t end up looking like morans. Next thing you know, it’s dijon arugula and gay marriage all the time.
Oh. And BOB.
Quicksand
@AhabTRuler:
About the same age many kids read Atlas Shrugged and think it’s profound. I’ll admit to as much myself. Don’t worry: like acne, it usually clears up on its own.
But the there/their/they’re thing, that’s a chronic condition.
Dennis-SGMM
@Cat Lady:
This despite being the first hit returned on a Google search for “skull fucking a kitten”.
asiangrrlMN
@gbear: I was at Wendy today, today, with my brother. I had a spicy chicken sandwich which was not spicy and my fries with straight-up yellow mustard, yo! Not by choice, mind you, but because that’s all they gave me. Plus a chocolate frosty (free!) and a diet coke. Does that make me a commie, too?
Blue Raven
@Anne Laurie:
Tenth grade, ca. 1983. One of my stranger memory takeaways, though. Had to do it on the blackboard once, and another student thought she’d get me into trouble if she erased a direct object or two from my diagrams. The teacher was right there and watched her get up, erase my work, and sit down to the snickering of her nearest seatmates. Said teacher then noted I had done it right before the interference had occurred. To this day, I don’t know what that girl was thinking. Yes, I was the appointed scapegoat, but messing with my work with authority in full view… she must vote Republican these days.
Blue Raven
@JK:
I was assigned this as my main textbook for English 101, a composition class. Adored the book. Probably ought to re-read it, as I think I’m slipping from its standards.
The Cat Who Would Be Tunch
@AhabTRuler:
Please tell me she ended her speech with “Suck. On. This.” And promptly follow up with a YouTube video of said speech.
@canuckistani:
Oh, how I wish that were true. Try that tactic on some viral site and let me know how well that works out. Sure, you’ll have the occasional commenter that responds in kind. But usually, it just gets swept away by a pile of minimally thought out three-letter exclamations.
steve s
The latest thing I see semi-literates doing is putting a comma after a random noun. For example:
The noted mentally retarded t.v. host Glenn Beck, yelled about sandwiches today.
Dennis-SGMM
@Anne Laurie:
I sure do. I remember standing at the blackboard and drawing those diagonal lines until sentence structure was written onto my bones. I also remember learning phonetics, including all of the senseless exceptions. Then the rat bastards encouraged me to learn a second language (Which I did.) because doing so would lead me to better understand my mother tongue. All I received in return was a lifetime of appreciation for the well-written word – with the exception of Goethe’s Die Leiden des jungen Werther because the second language I chose back then was Deutsch and my instructor was an unrepentant educator. In our fourth year of studies, at a very uptight Southern California high school in 1966, she one day locked the door of the classroom and proceeded to teach us the rich array of idiomatischen Ausdrücken (Idiomatic expressions) that native speakers applied to sex, drugs, rock and roll, and being cut off on the autobahn.
Some teachers teach, others impart knowledge as a way of dealing with the world. God love the latter.
Tonal Crow
I had just searched Google for something (not “dijon mustard”), and clicked a link to it, when I noticed that my browser loaded a Google page, *then* the page that I wanted. Here’s my exposé.
CalD
I have a confession to make: Sometimes I make my own mustard.
It’s just that I really love strong mustard and the hottest stuff you can find in a jar is still just a little too tame for my tastes. Now I do use water to mix it, not Dijon vinegar (or any other kind), but only because that makes the mustard hotter. It’s counter-intuitive but I think what happens when you use water instead of vinegar is actually a catalytic conversion.
DZ
@CalD:
If you want really spicy mustard in a jar, then find Russian or Polish mustard. You won’t ever need to blow your nose again for two years.
freelancer
@CalD:
Bravo on the spiciness, sir. But do you make Dijon flavored ice cream?
gbear
@JK:
You know, three of those quotes would suffice.
gbear
@asiangrrlMN: I think you’re a commie unless you buy something with beef or bacon. I used to get free frosties all the time but the Wendy’s I go to stopped giving out the coupons. Damn.
Gotta go. Taking the 14 year old cat to the vet. Her checkups come every 6 months now because her kidneys are going to hell. Double damn.
DZ
Also, I quit teaching after two years of realizing that college freshmen hadn’t the remotest clue of what happened even yesterday. They could read, but they had never ventured beyond what they had been told. They almost exploded upon discovering that, during the Inquisition, maybe 3,000 people were killed – they were sure it was hundreds of thousands. Yet, they had never heard of the Albagensians – the RC exterminated 200,000 of them.
Now, I’m an affluent, liberal elitist who eats Pommery mustard or Zatarains’s Creole mustard. Bad.
Steeplejack
@Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse: Win.
Steeplejack
@AhabTRuler:
This should be a Nick Drake song video, but it isn’t. But it gives me that Nick Drake vibe.
Steeplejack
@Krista:
I remember the epiphanal moment I had as a kid when I finally realized that misled (pronounced in my mind “MY-sl’d”) was not the past tense of some mysterious verb misle (“MY-sl”) but was the past tense of mislead. Funny thing is that I always had the meaning right. And I remember having a vague feeling of suspicion because I never seemed to see the verb in the present tense, only in that “MY-sl’d” past tense.
Steeplejack
@Anne Laurie:
I do. Fifth or sixth grade (Rantoul, IL, ’60s). I am very grateful for the discipline, but sometimes I catch myself thinking, Damn, were we really diagramming complex sentences with gnarly dependent clauses in fifth grade?
Brachiator
@Bostondreams:
I sympathize. A woman I commute with is a second grade teacher, and I think, an excellent one. She complains about the pointless state-mandated testing that she must inflict on her students. Some of the stuff that is tested for seems to my mind to be absolutely worthless, but the administrators and to some of the senior teachers. Sometimes she has to resort to guerrilla tactics, bypassing the official curriculum, to do actual teaching, which her students love.
Here is one way that I measure teacher effectiveness. My friend the teacher once offered the students a treat after they have done particularly well on a project. The treat that they selected was just to have lunch with her.
You got to fight the power.
Linkmeister
@Steeplejack
Amen to “misled.” I don’t know how or why I insisted it was “myzled,” but it took several years and probably an embarrassing correction from somebody for me to learn it correctly.
Steeplejack
@Linkmeister:
Thanks. Retroactively, I feel like slightly less of a tool now.