Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Not the Best Week...

I know. This is supposed to be a "word" blog. It's no wonder I didn't get rated by the Lexiophiles Blog, here. Of course, Language Log is #13 and Languagehat is #14. Wordcrafter zmj's Blog got a 180 rating out of 250 (he deserves higher, of course). Mine? Zip. Nada. Too much chat...not enough intellectualism. So on to my rant:

Last week was a killer. Wordcraft went ballistic with 2 of our regulars out of there, at least for now. Then I tried to smooth ruffled feathers (with help from my husband), and that really messed things up. People are mad. I finally sent out a note to many of our members asking them to please post a bit more, and they've been wonderful about that. Perhaps we'll be back to normal sometime soon. I hope those 2 recalcitrant posters will start posting again!

The Cubs are sinking, it's hot and humid, and I have too much work and too little time. Plus my dad spent the weekend with us and lorded the losing Cubs over me.

Further, where is the worst place to make a grammatical error...and to be caught? On realbeer.com, of course. Good heavens. Their members aren't exactly Lynne Truss's model students! I thought it sounded wrong, but I wrote that my sisters said that Guinness tastes differently in Ireland. Of course, it's different. Steve caught me on it, calling me Ms. Wordcraft. Geez.

The only people who have had a worst week than I have are the Republicans. By the way, for all those Republican columnists who have complained about the media attention on Obama and not McCain, the tide has changed. So how's that working for you?

P.S. I am a nurse. I do realize that my week wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been. I was just being overly dramatic (it is "overly," right?).

2 comments:

Bob Hale said...

Interesting.
So tell me, how exactly does this "Steve" know what your sisters said? For all I know your reporting may be entirely accurate.

Actually it is quite interesting because "taste" is a bit of an oddity as a verb.

My slave tastes everything before I eat it.
My food tastes funny. These look superficially similar but the former would usually be followed by an adverb, the latter by an adjective. But why? In the first instance the verb is being used actively. It is an action being performed by my slave. In the second it is a "state" verb being used in the way that we would use seem/appear/sound.

"Smell" can function in similar way.

My cousin, who always puts a finger against one nostril when sniffing at something, smells funnily.
She may well also smell funny, but that's another story. :)

Kalleh said...

Good point, Bob. Steve loves to tease me about errors like that because he knows that I post on Wordcraft. He expects perfection from me. While Steve is an excellent writer, I can tell you that not many on that realbeer.com site are!