My own grammar is hopeless. In fact, that’s surely wrong. I’m supposed to say, I’m hopeless about my grammar? Right? Or something else entirely. I notice that my prepositions are wrong, that I end sentences with them, and I don’t really know what a “trope” is, and the more I think about this, or around this, the more I think this through, the worse it all gets. Minute points like “last week” versus “this past week” or “forebears” for “ancestors,” or the proper meaning of the word “appreciate,” are kind of lost on me, and probably on most readers. (Grammar, according to The Devil’s Dictionary: “A system of pitfalls thoughtfully prepared for the feet for the self-made man, along the path by which he advances to distinction.” Dictionary: “A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic. This dictionary, however, is a most useful work.”)
Former Miss Argentina Dies From Cosmetic Buttocks Surgery →
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I promise, this is not from The Onion.
There have been so many lies and distortions pointed out in Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue since it was released last week that her memoir has already become something of a gag line. But perhaps the most embarrassing gaffe so far is her mis-attributed quote to UCLA basketball legend John Wooden. As the epigram to Chapter Three, “Drill, Baby, Drill,” Palin assigns the following remarks to the Hall of Fame hoops coach: “Our land is everything to us… I will tell you one of the things we remember on our land. We remember our grandfathers paid for it—with their lives.” Only the quote wasn’t by John Wooden. It was written by a Native American activist named John Wooden Legs in an essay entitled “Back on the War Ponies,” which appeared in a left-wing anthology, We Are the People: Voices from the Other Side of American History, edited by Nathaniel May, Clint Willis, and James W. Loewen.
— http://www.huffingtonpost.com/geoffrey-dunn/palins-latest-emrogueem-g_b_373453.html (via aplacetostorepoems)
Cormac McCarthy’s “faux-arty machismo”? Say what? « Natalia Antonova →
ugh, that salon review. taking umbrage at uncounted and uncalendered, as if it’s some redundant or cumbersome phrase? it’s so not! it’s sealing the civilization-as-we-know-it-is-over-and-what-can-be-done-about-man? deal in a strategic, beautiful way.
