verbosity

77 and Hail

77 degrees Fahrenheit and pea-sized+ hail. Melts within seconds of hitting the warm pavement. I had to move fast to record this chunk; you can see it already dying as its life blood seeps wetly into the neighboring concrete. Oh hail piece, how shortly we knew each other.

Conference Quoting

Can you tell I'm on a conference call not requiring much attention from me? Three posts in one day? Must be terribly obvious.

I know I learned the proper quoting, italicizing, bolding, and underlining rules for the various titles (movie, book, short story, article, etc.) in high school, but I've since forgotten them. And ya know what? I don't care. They're fucking stupid rules. All you ever need is a visual way to distinguish the full name from the surrounding text, so pick one of the four methods. Or invent your own, such as ***Asterisks*** or @#%&Swearing&%#@.

I also don't like the rules where some punctuation is inserted inside a quoted phrase, even if that punctuation isn't part of the quote itself. "It's a stupid rule," Mary exclaimed. I routinely and purposefully break that rule, especially concerning moving a sentence-ending period inside the final quote. If you've worked in computers, especially programming for any length of time, you've needed to communicate something so precisely that using proper grammar would have created confusion:

The wireless passphrase is "Jump0ff@cliFF." Except, don't type that period.

Imagine the confusion when you really do need them to type an ending period as part of some literal string. Most people omit it because of their grammar education. Because of a bad rule, confusion ensues.

I feel liberated when I purposefully break grammar rules for good reason. Similar to learning all the "rules" of playing Jazz music, then finding out that the next step in your skill progression is breaking those rules. I believe I'm improving the English language with my modifications, making it clearer and more precise. I don't think I'm quite ready for Mark Twain's (or it might be a work by M. J. Shields) A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling yet though.

If there are any grammar "errors" in this piece besides the ones I described, they're intentional as well. Scout's honor.

An Interview with Pluto

Pluto Tells All

John Scalzi's (the author of the Pluto bit) blog "Whatever" is generally gud reedin's. It's a little light right now since he's on a book tour. I'm rather fond of his bit about coffee and caffeine:

I'll note that coffee's not alone in this; there are lots of drinks that taste like ass, but which people drink anyway, usually to get to whatever drug is suspended in the liquid. Coffee tastes like ass, but people drink it for the caffeine. Beer tastes like ass but people drink it for the alcohol. All those energy drinks taste like ass coated in cough syrup, but people drink them for, what? Taurine? You people are all high.

Two Month's Salary

I refer you to an article that articulates why diamonds are not Irish far better than I can. It's linked by the first article, but this Salon piece has some good history well worth reading.

When I heard an announcement for the movie Blood Diamond, I was immediately excited that someone was taking a Super Size Me style stance and documenting, in a format the average Joe will actually digest as opposed to "news", the truth about diamonds. Imagine my disappointment when I heard it has little to do with conflict diamonds, and is instead a fictional drama starring DiCrapio. My and my hopes for something to counter the damage done by Marilyn Monroe singing "Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend" in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes...

Ladies, if you're hoping to receive a diamond from me, you had better be prepared to "settle" for an actual precious stone instead ;)