From today's actual news: "London 2012: Missiles may be placed at residential flats." I guess it got me kind of pissed off.
Sometimes a topic comes together, even late at night. And while I may be wrong or may be right, a nagging fear grows in my underground bunker across the planet.
When I first learned the rumored existence of a British boy who has fathered a child at age 13, I let out an audible "WTF?" and grew dizzy, eventually bashing my head into the wall and blacking out. Upon awakening I thought to myself, did I wasted my teen years away watching television and movies? Did I miss out on having to wake up for midnight feedings in grade eight? Were all those wasted trips to the arcade developing my hand/eye coordination nothing but hokum and being a victim of the powerful Space Invaders lobby?
When the proud new teen papa looked up from his Harry Potter books enough to be interviewed and was "asked what he would do to support the child financially, Alfie replie[d] in a small, high-pitched voice: "What's financially?""
And after reading that I became at once thankful for the video arcades of my youth, and awestruck at "Alfie's father, Dennis - who reportedly has nine children [and] allowed [him] to sleep over at the girl's house."
I suppose we can just be thankful the 15 year old mother wasn't taking fertility drugs or there may have been need to start up six new Jerry Springer-like shows to deal with the white trash backlash.
UPDATE: 13 year old boy scammed into believing the child was his by parents scamming media deals.
On how blogs are the graffiti of the web, England's butchering of English, and the real reasons for a whole bunch of other things.
Now I know, as an English teacher myself, that one of things a student hates most is studying grammar. For years I have had to contend with students who opine, "Oh, what difference does it make?" In defense of my chosen subject and profession, I maintained that, like any discipline, there were certainly times when one could toy with conventions for a purpose, however, in order to do so, one must know existence and application of the conventions.
Apparently, in the home of the English language, all of my efforts would be immediately overturned by the Birmingham City Council who recently decided to abandon possessive apostrophes on city signs as "it would cost too much to change signs referring to areas such as Kings Norton, Druids Heath and St Pauls Square."
A further justification was offered as the Council "said the decision had been taken in an effort to end decades of debate over the lack of punctuation on some signs."
With the world economy in collapse, it's good to see Birmingham saving the cost of person with a bucket of paint and a stencil going around the city. And after all "Councillor Martin Mullaney said the authority had consulted with the Plain English Society and Plain Language Commission before taking its decision."
Perhaps in the most absurd aspect of the story, the Council's use of the PES and PLC's authority was to countermand "John Richards, the founder and chairman of the Apostrophe Protection Society."
With these powerful lobby groups in mind, I'm (or Im as the case may be) tempted to start up a few grammar oversight efforts myself. I invite people to weigh in on one of the following:
- The Colon Preservation Society
- Misses Dash
- Parents for Parentheses
- Kids Need Braces
- Total Ellipse of the Heart
- To Air Quote is Human