Tag Archives: update

Return Of The Grammar Fool

5 Jan

January 5, 2018

Longtime readers of this blog may recall that when this blog began, I was an English teacher. Since then I moved on, first to the Company I Am not allowed to name and now to a position as a freelance investigator. What do these jobs have in common? They were all silly enough to pay me.

(EDITOR’S NOTE: The phrase “longtime readers of this blog” may now be an anachronism. The longest-time reader, Mr. Al Bickley, has been a proud subscriber since day one, when this blog first appeared on MySpace. However, he has been in a medically induced coma since 2012 and while technically still a subscriber, he is definitely no longer a reader. The second-longest tenured reader is my Aunt Edwina, whose constant requests to be unsubscribed from my blog have been cheerfully ignored for years, since I know them to be nothing more than playful jests. Though that does not explain why she doesn’t invite me for Thanksgiving anymore.)

But sometimes, the old English-teaching days still haunt me. If you have the stomach for it, go back and check out the many blogs where I complain about bad grammar. (Here’s one making fun of Michael Bloomberg.)  HA HA HA, boy was that annoying. What was I thinking?

I’ll tell you what I was thinking. Read this, which is an actual status I posted on Facebook today.

Let someone else deal with OBJ.

Get it? It works on two levels. It’s funny because A- it’s a bad snowstorm and B- the Giants stink. I’ll take my West Coast Wildcat offense somewhere else, thank you very much.

But here’s where the grammar stuff kicks in. It’s that word “today.” That pesky “today.” There were three ways to write that post.
1- The snow is so bad that I’m skipping my interview today for Giants head coach.
2- The snow is so bad that I’m skipping my interview for Giants head coach today.
3- The snow is so bad today that I’m skipping my interview for Giants head coach.

Speaking now as a former paid English expert, the word “today,” in this context, acts as some sort of adjective modifier thingy, emphasizing that the interview was today (option 1), rather than emphasizing that the position was to be the Giants head coach today (option 2), which would be inaccurate. (But as I read this back, I think option 3, emphasizing that the snow was so bad today, was the way to go. Oh well.) 

See? It makes sense. I realize that most of you don’t care (so why are you still reading? This is the internet, go find some wrestling rumors or tweet or something) but hey, I actually put thought into that stupid status update.

The moral of the story? It is a snowy day, I’m stuck indoors, and this is what happens.

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The Saturday Comics: The Phantom Gets Good!

29 Dec

December 29, 2017

Let’s end the year by checking back in on one of the classics. It is the Phantom, a comic character from the Golden Age created by Lee Falk. He’s “The Ghost Who Walks,” but basically just a guy in a suit who fights crime. He’s the latest in a family line of crime-fighters to use that name. When we last checked in back in 2011, there was literally nothing going on. For an entire week nothing happened. And I mean that exactly as it sounds. Let’s go back and see, then we’ll check in with the strip today and see what’s up.

UPDATED from April 16, 2011DAY ONE:

OK, I get it. I came in at the end of an adventure. It looks like a happy ending. It is actually a good thing I came in now so I can enjoy the start of a whole new story tomorrow. Looking forward to it.

DAY TWO:

Well, that’s nice. Sort of the same thing as yesterday though. And it seems a bit of a waste, story-wise, to do it in one big splash but I guess it gets the emotion across. OK, let’s see where this goes tomorrow.

DAY THREE:

What the? What’s the point of this? Is the next arc about haircuts? If this were a play I could almost hear the stage manager hissing “vamp!” while the star desperately searches for her line. This is ridiculous, the big splash yesterday should have ended the arc. I’m getting a bit tired of this, hopefully things will move ahead tomorrow.

DAY FOUR:

Um, Ok. More wasting time. Maybe they haven’t hammered out the next script yet and just tossed this in? I can’t figure out a purpose to this strip, unless it is to reinforce their dedication to fighting evil? This isn’t much of a superhero strip, it is more like a bad show on the religious station with Kirk Cameron. I’m not hopeful for tomorrow.

DAY FIVE:

Ahh, now we’re getting somewhere.

DAY SIX:Huh? Where’s The Phantom? And isn’t that the guy who was supposed to be in jail? Who are these people? I sat through almost a week for this? That strip could have been told in three panels. And re-read the second panel. “Colonel Weeks met the unknown commander.” “Worubu doubts it.” There is a verb tense problem there, and I’m usually not that picky outside of a grammar blog but that is really annoying to read. I really hope The Phantom picks up but I’m losing hope.

DAY SEVEN:

UGH! Back to that? It’s like the Sunday strip exists in a different timeline, and maybe it might. Many strips do a separate storyline on Sundays because some papers only run the Sunday strips. So I can follow the annoying story on Sunday, or follow the slow and boring story during the week, or maybe wait and see if indeed that Sunday strip is part of the same story as the weekly though it doesn’t seem to be.

DAY EIGHT:

To Hell with The Phantom. Popeye never fails. I got more out of that strip than an entire week of The Phantom. And why not? It looks like they are running a classic Sagendorf strip.

That Phantom run may have been the worst week of a comic strip that I have ever read, and that’s coming from someone who read comics written and drawn by Rob Liefeld so you know I’ve read some bad comics. The artist of this strip, Paul Ryan, was the artist on one of my favorite runs of the Fantastic Four so this hurts all the more.

DECEMBER 2017 UPDATE!

Here are the current strips from Monday December 25 to Thursday, December 28: 

Whoa, what happened? First, you might notice a change in the art. Comic book veteran Mike Manley (another favorite artist, and cool name- “Manley”-) has taken over from Paul Ryan, who died in 2016. The strip looks great. I have to give credit to the colorist too. The explosion on day two really pops. But most notably,  the writing is top notch. It zips along! There’s action! I want to know what happens next. And look at the bad guy. Despite not knowing what the plot of the story is, I feel I know all I need to know about him at this point. As a new reader I’m already drawn into the action and fairly knowledgeable about the characters. Did they change the writer, you may be wondering? Nope, it is still Tony DePaul. So maybe the 2011 run was an aberration? Or maybe he simply improved. Either way, this week’s strip is a winner. I deliberately left out the Friday strip. And that’s today (as of the date of this posts publication) so go over to comicskingdom.com and see where this story is headed. I know I will!  

 

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