I wanna love You better whatever it takes . . . » grammar police

Dear West Michigan:

laterain — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 10:28:55 +0000

YOU ARE SAYING IT WRONG!!! IT’S VAAAAAYYYYYY-GUE not VAAHHHHHHH-GUE!!!!!!!!!!

and while we’re on the topic: it’s BAYYYYYYYYYY-GEL, not BAAHHHHHHHHH-GEL!!!!!

Repeat after me:

Bagel rhymes with finagle rhymes with “get it right if you’re ab(g)le”

Vague rhymes with plague rhymes with serenad(g)e.

Sure, I don’t know how to spell out the pronunciations in proper “dictionary” format, and I obviously can’t find appropriate rhyming words, but you know what?! IT DOESN’T MATTER. YOU ARE SAYING IT WRONG!

Sunday blogging against racism #8–I heart code-switching

laterain — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 05:42:02 +0000

I have been interested in this topic ever since I read Dillard’s Black English while I was in college. I’m glad to see it’s being taken seriously these days . . .

Size acceptance vs. Fat Activism

laterain — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 02:07:25 +0000

so I was wandering the internet, and came across this blogger’s set of questions, which I thought were worth answering here . . . (WAS worth answering here?! grammar police, are you out there?)

anyway, here’s her list:

So tell me:
1. What is your definition of a Fat Activist?
2. What qualities give a Fat Activist the capital letters in that title?
3. How is a Fat Activist different from a Fat-Acceptance Supporter?

And my answers . . .

1) I would define it as being someone who is willing to (and does) speak out against false information and stereotypes about fatness and fat people . . . I used to refer to myself as a “size acceptance activist”, which seems to fit in better with the whole concept of HAES.

2) I’m not going to quibble about capital letters, but I think it’s about being true to it and consistently acting/speaking out about what you believe. But I also wonder if this is a case of self-identification, and I’m not sure that any of us gets to decide who is and isn’t a Fat Activist with a capital “FA” . . .

3) “Activist” versus “Supporter” to me is about doing/speaking out versus merely saying, “sure, I believe in that”. In some ways, there’s not really a cost to being a supporter in the same way that there is a cost to being an “activist”. For example, I’m passionate about fighting racism, and I would say that there are probably a lot of people who would say they “support” fighting racism, but the cost to these people is nothing like the cost of people who are really in the trenches, working to fight against racism. If you’ll permit me the analogy, I feel like it’s the same thing with being a size acceptance activist. You take the risk. You speak out when it’s not popular.

Anything else, and you’re just a supporter . . .

search terms: part of what I love about WordPress!

laterain — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 02:33:19 +0000

I should really look at these and post my favorites more often. WordPress, as part of my blog statistics, allows me to see which search terms people have used to get to my blog. Here are a few favorites of the past week:

“get a car towed in nyc”
(this, or some variation of this, is a common search term here. I’m glad I can be of service!)

“alyssa alanis” (hey now! that set of names is already taken!)

“duggars insane” (THAT’S RIGHT!) and many other variations.

“kalamazoo racist” (yes, sometimes)

“underarms photos” (yeah, well . . . )

and my ABSOLUTE FAVORITE for the week:

“pronounce acrost”

YES, THAT’S CORRECT!!! THERE IS NO “T” IN “ACROSS”!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Stop me before I blog again!

laterain — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 18:57:34 +0000

So I don’t know how I find these things . . . and it’s always super-embarrassing on Monday to go back to work and to have to answer the question, “What did you do this weekend?” with, “I donated plasma, and I blogged” . . . but I have a lot of catching up to do (reading-wise AND writing-wise) and hey, it’s a hobby, right?

With that said, I don’t know HOW I stumbled across this, but I found one website that deals with grammar, which led me to several more, which led me to start doing searches online for even more. And the thing is, if these people can start a blog on the overuse of the word “literally”, or the rampant misuse of apostrophes, or the refusal to let the letters “I” and “L” grow up to be upper-case letters, or even (this one’s for Rach) the misuse and abuse of quotation marks, then why can’t I start a blog on a similar topic?

(Obviously, I’m not going to start one on run-on sentences!)

My two prime contenders for a topic would have to be the “loose/lose” thing (which seems to be popular–I found it here, here, and here, among other places) or the Michigan classic, pronouncing the word “across” with a “T” in it. (as in–I kid you not–”acrost”–pronounced like “acrostic”. I DON’T KNOW WHY THEY DO THIS! BUT I HEAR IT ON THE RADIO AND EVERYTHING!)

Can I handle a second blog? Can the world handle me with a second blog?

Those aren’t the questions I’m asking, really. The ones I’m really asking are, “has someone else already done it?” and “if a second blog is inevitable, then should I save it for something that I’m more consistently passionate about, as opposed to grammar, where I follow the rules I like, and ignore the ones I don’t like?”

Stay tuned . . .