Language changes often surprise those who grew up without them. My grandmother (born 1890) once remarked to me about the increasing use of expressions like “not that bad” which to her sounded like an odd new way of saying “not as bad as all that.”
I always think of “goes” for “says” as including an imitative element, since you also can use it to introduce a gesture, facial expression, etc.
Responding to the “weeding the garden” Nickelback. I get this, the chore of weeding can be a Zen moment. To go a step further, I would do selective salvation weeding. Upon finding a “weed” that had subjectively redeeming value, I would promote it to Volunteer Garden Plant. This gave me many beautiful wildflowers and a couple of trees over the years. This worked because I am a nature geek and own a library of field guides (birds, trees, wildflowers). My favorite, most comprehensive field guide is “Weeds of the Northest”. Any plant can be a weed if it grows in the “wrong” place so this one book covers a lot of flora.
I say this as a regular entrant and a financial supporter of the Invitational: I need to voice my opposition to this week's new contest.
This marks the *third* time in the past six months that you've run a Donald Trump-bashing humor contest prompt.
By contrast, during the entire six *years* of his two-year campaign plus four-year presidency, you only held *one* such contest. (Week 1214: Write a humorous passage using only words that appear in Trump’s inaugural address.)
I'm not saying to ban all Donald-related humor, period. I mean, look at that haircut.
Indeed, the newest first place winner is a Donald-lampooning joke. That's your right, to award it first place if you so choose.
But the prompt *itself* had nothing to do with the man. It was still a contest that Donald's voters, of whom there were 74 million in 2020, could have entered.
I'll be blunt. And I say this with love, because I want the Invitational to survive, and I do my part to help make that happen — both creatively and financially.
But the Invitational right now is on borrowed time. The clock is ticking down towards zero. Almost nobody new gets ink anymore. There are virtually no "First Offenders" outside of the foals and grandfoals weeks.
That's not just because the contest lost its print edition and the Washington Post's institutional backing, with the readership that provided. It's also because you're regularly running contests which alienate an entire half the country... intentionally.
While we don't want to overdo a contest theme, whether it's Trump-bashing or anything else, I doubt the MAGA crowd would ever have been attracted to the Invite. Almost every week there are inking entries that poke fun at the Former Guy or other like-minded politicians. Indeed, my Fir Stink in 2018 was a scathing Trump-bashing parody of "A You're Adorable". Trump and his foibles have long been grist for this particular mill.
Having said that, I support any effort to attract new contestants. I used to get a lot of comments from friends who saw my name in the Post, so I need to share the Invite and its still-hilarious results more often on my Facebook page.
Probably a non-problem. Only subscribers can enter, and if someone unfamiliar with The Gene Pool received a gift subscription, he need not wait until two weeks from Thursday to feel alienated. He'll get that Tuesday and be unsubscribed by Wednesday. I'm curious to know if there is even a single pro-Trump subscriber. Personally, I love not having to concern myself with offending them. It's like a sidewalk that allows me to go forward without having to look down for fear of dog crap I have to sidestep.
I have always evaluated the success of the Invitational -- from the time I started it -- on the basis of how funny the contest results were. I think the humor in the last eight months has been as good or better than ever before. And Trump -- he is comedy gold. It's rich. We've never seen a hilariously ignorant, immature bloated con man take hold of as many gullible people. No Trump supporter is ever going to read or participate in The Invitational; we are not limiting our audience in that way at all.
"Exclusionary" in what way ? Not become a paid subscriber ? I suggest you would quickly realize --- as a true Trump acolyte --- that this highly personal, idiosyncratic (emphasis supplied) blog/contest isn't the most congenial place for you from the get-go. On the other hand, as a conservative in hiding, you very well might, in fact, take great pleasure in regularly bashing the man who destroyed your party. Trying to think of other possibilities. Perhaps, having somehow been lured into paying for an opportunity to lose by the irresistible Weingarten siren song --- you would angrily exclude yourself from taking part in any Trump-centric Invites ? Under your presumption, these particular Invites would have fewer participants, is that what concerns you ? Or maybe these shadowy Trumpers would get pissed off altogether and ask for a refund --- here replaced by the autographed circus peanut. And what of entries to non-Trump themed or related Invites which make him a target or a punchline ? Certainly they would put any rabid Trumper's knickers in a twist as well. So --- what exactly is your gripe ? Or your point ? By its very nature, The Gene Pool is self-excluding. You honestly believe a kinder, gentler Gene Weingarten and Pat Myers would improve the participation of, or more importantly, make paid subscriptions to TGP any more attractive to, whatever group you think is being consciously excluded ? Or, are you actually projecting ? Do you personally feel offended or excluded by these Invitationals ? If so, just say so. That would be easier to understand.
Look back up a few comments in this thread. There is a reply that says "Content Deleted". I just wondered if you did it or if the poster did. I wasn't even aware that we could delete our own comments.
As wildly popular as The Gene Pool and the Pat and Gene's Really Swell Invitational are in all but San Marino --- if you think about it (and Pat has suggested something along these lines...) --- statistically, the subset of those 74MM Trump voters (including apathetic, partisan, single-issue voters) who were even aware of Gene Weingarten and The Style Invitational had to be very small to begin with, and probably diminishingly so now that the contest and chat no longer appear under the WaPo imprimatur, and as such, both in print and online. So, starting with a limited population, then adding a fee to participate in the Invitational --- and the interest community declines in size still further. Whatever my personal sensibilities, I'm willing to accept, for the sake of argument, that there might be Trump supporting Invitees. But, in the event, there are many more willing to pay to poke fun at Trump(ism) and thus, for good reason, it is encouraged. The upshot is, using the Weingarten Totalization Function technique (WTF), I come up with exactly 1.27 possible pro-Trump Invitational participants. Thus, I suggest, if there is any reason for concern about participation, it has (IMO) far more to do with the kinds or categories of the Invites, rather than necessarily those which automatically lend themselves to political opinion or bias. It may be that the Invitational also consider ways to encourage "First Offenders," yet continue to attract the usual suspects, perhaps with two levels of competition. Something I joked about in the past but may, in fact, be "thinkable" as renewal time draws nearer.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with using present tense to refer to the past. It is a standard English style, especially in narration. Even before play by play announcers, it was not unusual: “so he says to me … and then I say … and then he goes and gets a sandwich,” etc.
Just one of the rich linguistic tools at our disposal.
I was commenting on the original comment. The conditional examples you gave seem like another phenomenon.
I would analyze them differently, perhaps as part of the loss of “contrary to fact” forms (eg, many examples of “may have” instead of “might have” that to me sound bizarre but are obviously an ongoing language change).
I've always thought I wasn't a fan, but one of my favorite novelists (Bruce Beckham) writes all his Inspector Skelgill books in the historical present, and it seems perfect. His style is very distinctive in other ways, too.
Sports announcers at golf would refuse to use adverbs and say "hit the ball careful ..." or "real quick" when I would say carefully or quickly. They slipped a few times then quickly corrected themselves. i suspect they had orders to sound like real people.
Water inside seems to be new and it can save money. Some even have a "pitcher" for cold water. This stuff is getting better. But expensive when they will not fix the units that fail so quickly.
It's not new. Our Amana French-door, bottom freezer fridge, that we've had for 17 years, has that. I didn't want any outside-the-door dispensers -- more things to go wrong.
And that's exactly why we selected an interior water dispenser for our fridge when we bought it 5 years ago. Absence of a door-mounted ice and water dispenser means one fewer [I prefer using "fewer" to "less"]thing to go wrong.
Although I'm not a fan of any baseball team in particular, it got my attention in 2019 for a 16 year-old to get a $5.1 million signing bonus. Then I was excited to see Dominguez would be in the Yankee system, as our local minor league team was then a rookie-level affiliate. Hoping he might play here, I tried to keep an eye on his whereabouts. He never came here, but I continued to watch for his major-league debut. A two-run homer on his first swing of the bat! I WILL stay tuned.
An interior water dispenser (with the ice maker in the freezer) has been a "thing" for some time now largely because (and especially with so-called stainless steel fridges) you don't get unsightly and difficult to remove water stains in front, pools of water on the floor and for overall appearance sake. A downside is having to open the fridge for a glass of water and letting cold air out each time. Just check to be sure you don't have a model that automatically orders products it contains or, you might find yourselves receiving regular shipments of aged out fud (and lard starters).
SNAP payments cover an average of $2.73 per meal per person. Provided that you can shop in a standard suburban supermarket, or, better, in a price-focused one like Aldi; that you have a decent knife and cooking appliances, and that you have some basic ingredients at home (e.g., cooking oil, sugar) and don't have to buy a package each time, you can make a lot of very good meals within those boundaries. For $5 a person it could be a full-course meal.
My secret, such as it is, is that almost every food tastes good to me, and I have an enormous appetite. I do eat a lot of vegetables but I don't turn away anything but candy corn and Peeps.
Part of it (probably not much) is all the walking I do every day; most of it is probably genetics; and also part of it is that I try to keep my vatfuls of food fairly low in calories. I can easily snarf up an entire 1.5-pound eggplant, but that's 150 calories, less than a small bowl of cereal and milk. If you don't use a lot of fat -- e.g., soften it in the microwave for a minute or two, then use just a teaspoon of oil (100+ calories a tablespoon) so it'll brown in the pan, followed by a splash of broth -- that's a big meal with very few calories. Toss in some fish or shrimp at the end for protein, if you need some with it.
That said, I do have ice cream just about 365 days a year, but I try to get the "frozen dairy dessert" flavors (e.g., Breyers coffee) that have less cream and compensate with vegetable gum to make a creamy "mouthfeel."
Moe Howard effortlessly achieves the look that Trump rehearsed so hard for, for his mug shot. Proves 1) that Moe is a better actor, and 2) he also has better hair.
Moe has the hair he wants. Trump wants the hair of his youth and looks crazy in his work to get there. It just looks like an exercise in geometry. I never trust a "comb over person." It is almost as bad as parting the hair in the middle, as General Grant remarked.
Language changes often surprise those who grew up without them. My grandmother (born 1890) once remarked to me about the increasing use of expressions like “not that bad” which to her sounded like an odd new way of saying “not as bad as all that.”
I always think of “goes” for “says” as including an imitative element, since you also can use it to introduce a gesture, facial expression, etc.
Responding to the “weeding the garden” Nickelback. I get this, the chore of weeding can be a Zen moment. To go a step further, I would do selective salvation weeding. Upon finding a “weed” that had subjectively redeeming value, I would promote it to Volunteer Garden Plant. This gave me many beautiful wildflowers and a couple of trees over the years. This worked because I am a nature geek and own a library of field guides (birds, trees, wildflowers). My favorite, most comprehensive field guide is “Weeds of the Northest”. Any plant can be a weed if it grows in the “wrong” place so this one book covers a lot of flora.
Likely this is the wrong spot, but ...
Spicy ‘One Chip Challenge’ chips removed from store shelves after 14-year-old’s death
By Joseph Wilkinson New York Daily News14 hrs ago
The company behind the “One Chip Challenge” is removing its extremely spicy products from store shelves following a teenager’s death.
Speaking of "a bad idea for an invitational contest"...
Aw man, the Monica Lewinsky joke was almost there but seems bowdlerized. Haha. "Almost there"
That's why it's funny!
Indeed. It was obviously deliberate. Very clever.
I say this as a regular entrant and a financial supporter of the Invitational: I need to voice my opposition to this week's new contest.
This marks the *third* time in the past six months that you've run a Donald Trump-bashing humor contest prompt.
By contrast, during the entire six *years* of his two-year campaign plus four-year presidency, you only held *one* such contest. (Week 1214: Write a humorous passage using only words that appear in Trump’s inaugural address.)
I'm not saying to ban all Donald-related humor, period. I mean, look at that haircut.
Indeed, the newest first place winner is a Donald-lampooning joke. That's your right, to award it first place if you so choose.
But the prompt *itself* had nothing to do with the man. It was still a contest that Donald's voters, of whom there were 74 million in 2020, could have entered.
I'll be blunt. And I say this with love, because I want the Invitational to survive, and I do my part to help make that happen — both creatively and financially.
But the Invitational right now is on borrowed time. The clock is ticking down towards zero. Almost nobody new gets ink anymore. There are virtually no "First Offenders" outside of the foals and grandfoals weeks.
That's not just because the contest lost its print edition and the Washington Post's institutional backing, with the readership that provided. It's also because you're regularly running contests which alienate an entire half the country... intentionally.
While we don't want to overdo a contest theme, whether it's Trump-bashing or anything else, I doubt the MAGA crowd would ever have been attracted to the Invite. Almost every week there are inking entries that poke fun at the Former Guy or other like-minded politicians. Indeed, my Fir Stink in 2018 was a scathing Trump-bashing parody of "A You're Adorable". Trump and his foibles have long been grist for this particular mill.
Having said that, I support any effort to attract new contestants. I used to get a lot of comments from friends who saw my name in the Post, so I need to share the Invite and its still-hilarious results more often on my Facebook page.
Probably a non-problem. Only subscribers can enter, and if someone unfamiliar with The Gene Pool received a gift subscription, he need not wait until two weeks from Thursday to feel alienated. He'll get that Tuesday and be unsubscribed by Wednesday. I'm curious to know if there is even a single pro-Trump subscriber. Personally, I love not having to concern myself with offending them. It's like a sidewalk that allows me to go forward without having to look down for fear of dog crap I have to sidestep.
I have always evaluated the success of the Invitational -- from the time I started it -- on the basis of how funny the contest results were. I think the humor in the last eight months has been as good or better than ever before. And Trump -- he is comedy gold. It's rich. We've never seen a hilariously ignorant, immature bloated con man take hold of as many gullible people. No Trump supporter is ever going to read or participate in The Invitational; we are not limiting our audience in that way at all.
"Exclusionary" in what way ? Not become a paid subscriber ? I suggest you would quickly realize --- as a true Trump acolyte --- that this highly personal, idiosyncratic (emphasis supplied) blog/contest isn't the most congenial place for you from the get-go. On the other hand, as a conservative in hiding, you very well might, in fact, take great pleasure in regularly bashing the man who destroyed your party. Trying to think of other possibilities. Perhaps, having somehow been lured into paying for an opportunity to lose by the irresistible Weingarten siren song --- you would angrily exclude yourself from taking part in any Trump-centric Invites ? Under your presumption, these particular Invites would have fewer participants, is that what concerns you ? Or maybe these shadowy Trumpers would get pissed off altogether and ask for a refund --- here replaced by the autographed circus peanut. And what of entries to non-Trump themed or related Invites which make him a target or a punchline ? Certainly they would put any rabid Trumper's knickers in a twist as well. So --- what exactly is your gripe ? Or your point ? By its very nature, The Gene Pool is self-excluding. You honestly believe a kinder, gentler Gene Weingarten and Pat Myers would improve the participation of, or more importantly, make paid subscriptions to TGP any more attractive to, whatever group you think is being consciously excluded ? Or, are you actually projecting ? Do you personally feel offended or excluded by these Invitationals ? If so, just say so. That would be easier to understand.
And you would be wrong.
Did you delete a comment in this thread?
I never delete any comments. I would if it were racist or some such,et. but that has not happened yet. Why?
Look back up a few comments in this thread. There is a reply that says "Content Deleted". I just wondered if you did it or if the poster did. I wasn't even aware that we could delete our own comments.
Lighten up, Francis.
As wildly popular as The Gene Pool and the Pat and Gene's Really Swell Invitational are in all but San Marino --- if you think about it (and Pat has suggested something along these lines...) --- statistically, the subset of those 74MM Trump voters (including apathetic, partisan, single-issue voters) who were even aware of Gene Weingarten and The Style Invitational had to be very small to begin with, and probably diminishingly so now that the contest and chat no longer appear under the WaPo imprimatur, and as such, both in print and online. So, starting with a limited population, then adding a fee to participate in the Invitational --- and the interest community declines in size still further. Whatever my personal sensibilities, I'm willing to accept, for the sake of argument, that there might be Trump supporting Invitees. But, in the event, there are many more willing to pay to poke fun at Trump(ism) and thus, for good reason, it is encouraged. The upshot is, using the Weingarten Totalization Function technique (WTF), I come up with exactly 1.27 possible pro-Trump Invitational participants. Thus, I suggest, if there is any reason for concern about participation, it has (IMO) far more to do with the kinds or categories of the Invites, rather than necessarily those which automatically lend themselves to political opinion or bias. It may be that the Invitational also consider ways to encourage "First Offenders," yet continue to attract the usual suspects, perhaps with two levels of competition. Something I joked about in the past but may, in fact, be "thinkable" as renewal time draws nearer.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with using present tense to refer to the past. It is a standard English style, especially in narration. Even before play by play announcers, it was not unusual: “so he says to me … and then I say … and then he goes and gets a sandwich,” etc.
Just one of the rich linguistic tools at our disposal.
I am so tired of "goes" to mean "said."
You are missing the conditional part. that's what makes it weird.
I was commenting on the original comment. The conditional examples you gave seem like another phenomenon.
I would analyze them differently, perhaps as part of the loss of “contrary to fact” forms (eg, many examples of “may have” instead of “might have” that to me sound bizarre but are obviously an ongoing language change).
"mayhaps?"
Certainly a well-used literary device. Especially favored, for example, by the practitioners of hard-boiled detecting like Chandler and Hammett.
Called "historical present."
Agreed!
I've always thought I wasn't a fan, but one of my favorite novelists (Bruce Beckham) writes all his Inspector Skelgill books in the historical present, and it seems perfect. His style is very distinctive in other ways, too.
Sports announcers at golf would refuse to use adverbs and say "hit the ball careful ..." or "real quick" when I would say carefully or quickly. They slipped a few times then quickly corrected themselves. i suspect they had orders to sound like real people.
Water inside seems to be new and it can save money. Some even have a "pitcher" for cold water. This stuff is getting better. But expensive when they will not fix the units that fail so quickly.
It's not new. Our Amana French-door, bottom freezer fridge, that we've had for 17 years, has that. I didn't want any outside-the-door dispensers -- more things to go wrong.
And that's exactly why we selected an interior water dispenser for our fridge when we bought it 5 years ago. Absence of a door-mounted ice and water dispenser means one fewer [I prefer using "fewer" to "less"]thing to go wrong.
Thanks for the link to the David Von Drehle piece. I, too, love shoveling snow. And my favorite time to grill is on a clear January evening.
A clear January evening is an excellent time to grill a steak....rare, of course.
My sosoumi....British narrators of audio books who pronounced "secret" as "secrete"....
Beautiful von Drehle piece featuring the correct usage of the word "impacted, " a tear-welling joy to read.
Although I'm not a fan of any baseball team in particular, it got my attention in 2019 for a 16 year-old to get a $5.1 million signing bonus. Then I was excited to see Dominguez would be in the Yankee system, as our local minor league team was then a rookie-level affiliate. Hoping he might play here, I tried to keep an eye on his whereabouts. He never came here, but I continued to watch for his major-league debut. A two-run homer on his first swing of the bat! I WILL stay tuned.
An interior water dispenser (with the ice maker in the freezer) has been a "thing" for some time now largely because (and especially with so-called stainless steel fridges) you don't get unsightly and difficult to remove water stains in front, pools of water on the floor and for overall appearance sake. A downside is having to open the fridge for a glass of water and letting cold air out each time. Just check to be sure you don't have a model that automatically orders products it contains or, you might find yourselves receiving regular shipments of aged out fud (and lard starters).
SNAP payments cover an average of $2.73 per meal per person. Provided that you can shop in a standard suburban supermarket, or, better, in a price-focused one like Aldi; that you have a decent knife and cooking appliances, and that you have some basic ingredients at home (e.g., cooking oil, sugar) and don't have to buy a package each time, you can make a lot of very good meals within those boundaries. For $5 a person it could be a full-course meal.
I will not reveal the sort of food that you are perfectly happy with in a restaurant. It will remain our secret.
Those who have interacted with Pat for any appreciable time know that she leans heavily vegetarian.
I suggest, based on a questionable source, that depending on the restaurant, Pat prefers:
* Simply licking the salad section of a menu
* A glass of warm water and a mint-flavored toothpick
* Paying a "baggage" fee (similar to a corkage fee) for her watercress sarnies brought from home
Now I’m dying to know this secret.
Me, too.
My secret, such as it is, is that almost every food tastes good to me, and I have an enormous appetite. I do eat a lot of vegetables but I don't turn away anything but candy corn and Peeps.
So how come you're so svelte? Oh wait...
You go on 30 mile hikes.
Well, alrighty then.
Part of it (probably not much) is all the walking I do every day; most of it is probably genetics; and also part of it is that I try to keep my vatfuls of food fairly low in calories. I can easily snarf up an entire 1.5-pound eggplant, but that's 150 calories, less than a small bowl of cereal and milk. If you don't use a lot of fat -- e.g., soften it in the microwave for a minute or two, then use just a teaspoon of oil (100+ calories a tablespoon) so it'll brown in the pan, followed by a splash of broth -- that's a big meal with very few calories. Toss in some fish or shrimp at the end for protein, if you need some with it.
That said, I do have ice cream just about 365 days a year, but I try to get the "frozen dairy dessert" flavors (e.g., Breyers coffee) that have less cream and compensate with vegetable gum to make a creamy "mouthfeel."
Moe Howard effortlessly achieves the look that Trump rehearsed so hard for, for his mug shot. Proves 1) that Moe is a better actor, and 2) he also has better hair.
Moe has the hair he wants. Trump wants the hair of his youth and looks crazy in his work to get there. It just looks like an exercise in geometry. I never trust a "comb over person." It is almost as bad as parting the hair in the middle, as General Grant remarked.