YOU DON’T SAY:
IS THERE SUCH A THING AS…too much accountability? I’m all about the importance of having someone to keep you on task where fitness levels and personal goals are concerned. We are talking paramount importance. But my guess is at some point I would just get bitter and resentful about this thing. It would get complicated. There would be issues.
UP UP IN THE AIR: Helium is way more than a kiddie balloon kind of deal. It’s kind of fascinating. Also, not without its limits. There is also this.
THE PROBLEM WITH PENNYWISE ET AL: Coulrophobia. I wouldn’t say it’s something I suffer from, but damn if I don’t hate them something fierce.
(SHIVERS….)
BEST BLACKOUT EVER: It was ten years ago in August 2003. I was in Manhattan visiting a friend. She warned me about the funky electrical issues in her apartment; specifically, the passive aggressive air condition unit. I don’t do hot and humid well. So at some point I turned on the AC and started to feel human again. Then the power went out. As I sheepishly headed onto the street on my way to a little park I figured out that it wasn’t just my friend’s place. It was the city, most of the Eastern Seaboard and parts of Canada and the Midwest. That was far and away the best night I ever had in NYC. By the way, the biggest threat to our power grid isn’t what you might expect.
WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG? Every single one of them is biding its time. Or maybe they have a lottery system for who goes when?
NOT THAT YOU ASKED: I just finished this
CAN’T. STOP. WATCHING.
ESPNSIVE: On the off chance that you aren’t spending a lot of your TV viewing time watching sports, everybody else who is thanks you for subsidizing their viewing habits.
I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT IS GOING ON HERE: But I like it.
YAWN: Not impressed. Also, why exactly?
HOLIDAY SWEATERS 2013
They run a bit more than I’m comfortable paying for a sweater I would wear at one party, maybe, if I were drunk enough, once. Maybe.
THE MORE YOU KNOW: Thanks to some smarty pants scientists with ginormous brass balls, we know a lot more about Great White sharks. Naturally, some of it is frightening.
THE JEAN GENIE: David Bowie’s style evolution. Yes, it’s a slideshow. But it is totally worth it. Then there is this, which while NSFW, is altogether something else. Wow.
DESIGN FAIL OF THE DAY: Oops, sorry about that. No hard feelings?
INCOMING!
Need something else to read?
- Because manners are important. Because scoring points is never a bad idea. Because Chivalry.
- Please, already, come-the-hell on for goodness sake.
- In case you’re thinking about a fresh growth of fur for your face with Fall on the way, don’t forget this.
Tim Johnstone is Dappered’s music correspondent as well as our resident gatherer of all things interwebs related.
The ESPN thing kills me. Certainly understand the economics of why cable companies and entertainment companies want to maintain bundles, but really screws over the rest of us. Not to mention I find myself watching NBC Sports more often than not now (Hockey, Soccer). ESPN is only good for 52 runs of the same sportscenter every day.
I absolutely love the Common Phrases thing, but #4 is still wrong. “You’ve got” is still improper. I’m guilty of #8 though. I had no idea it was really “intents and purposes”. You learn something new everyday!
#4 is a bit of an oddball case, considering that the original version intentionally gets its grammar incorrect for humorous effect, and the “incorrect” version based on it is perfectly cromulent grammatically, but is nonsensical. Hard to call either one definitively “wrong” in comparison to the other.
#18 is so common at this point at least in spoken English that it could be considered a valid colloquialism. I rarely see it in written English unless it’s used deliberately to affect a conversational style.
Ditto #19, where I rarely see it used “seriously” as opposed to for effect.
Re #9: While “well” is appropriate as an adverb to modify/describe HOW he “did”, it’s a different sentence entirely to say “he did good” where “good” is a noun describing WHAT was done.
That’s not to say most people don’t butcher this unintentionally, but the correction is flat out wrong.
Interesting read about the phrases. While some are blatantly incorrect (e.g., 13, 15, 16), some are in the grey area showing the evolution of our language and how the phrases are being though of differently and hence evolving.
#2 – For emphasis “I could care less… and I will.”
#4 – “Just when it looks like the crap is going to stop… you’ve got another thing coming…”
#24 – You “home in” when you are moving to your target / focusing. You “hone in” when you have your target/focus, and are sharpening and refining it even further. One could argue that then one would just be homing in to another level of the target, but I would counter that I am using “hone” to give the image of a craftsman sharpening his blade to the finest cutting point — I’ve got the blade made, now I’m just making it better and better.
Perfectly cromulent indeed.
#10 – I guess you could still “extract” revenge..
I will fight to the death for my right to use irregardless. Irregardless of the fact that the dictionary tells me that, while it is a word, I really shouldn’t use it.
Hashtag middle class anarchists
Oy…those watches are the worst.
ESPN, and other sports (cough, football) bundles are the only thing keeping cable alive in my opinion. Online streaming services have replaced most normal viewing and if those football packages went away, I think a lot more people would be dropping cable and you’d see many cable/dish/etc companies consolidating/closing-their-doors. It’s going to happen, its just a matter of when…
Technically, #17 isn’t wrong. Or rather, it appears to have been used incorrectly for so long that it is now in the dictionary (and is thus, official).
We’ll be signing up for Aereo when it arrives here in Dallas in a few weeks. We’ll still have broadcast network national and local news so the only live stuff we’ll be missing will be cable sports. The only sport I really care about is college football, and that’s only for a couple of months out of the year. I don’t mind going to a bar to see my games.
If it all works out, we’ll be cancelling cable altogether.
hashtag – first world problems
Re:#19
When followed by the phrase “Sex on the First Date,” the more traditional “converse” lacks the rhetorical vim of its flashier, biggier relative “conversate”
#9. Superman does good, you’re doing well.
Seems to be a conflation of irrespective and regardless. Anyway, language is fluid (English more so that most) and grammarians are wont to prescribe rigidities to something so inherently plastic just to see what sticks. Irregardless might well be considered the pinnacle of cultured diction in a hundred years.
In that case, you are “honing,” but not “honing in,” which does not mean anything. “Hone” means, as you say, sharpening. You don’t “sharpen in” on something.
Yeah my sister in UT just signed up for Aereo, but it isn’t coming to CA yet. I’ve hardly hard any cable service, maybe 2 of the past 9 years? Hulu Plus and Netflix work great for me, and I’m rather indifferent to sports so its not an issue for me! Wife gets drama on those streaming services, daughter gets Disney, I buy movies. We save a lot of money.
That skyscrpaer deal: Wasn’t there a similar issue with a hotel in Vegas – shining down into the hotel pool at one particular spot, at one particular time of day? HAWT!