Recent Comments

1. 3 days ago on Doonesbury

   sez: “Is he a leech? I thought the “Red Rascal” stories were successful sellers.”

   Could you clarify? I can’t seem to find the comment that your post appears to be a response to.

2. 3 days ago on Frazz

   sez: “But it’s worth noting that Bryan Garner, in his Modern English Usage, has an article of more than three columns on the subject of split infinitives. He notes that lexicographer H.W. Fowler, in his own Modern English Usage, divided English speakers into five classes: (1) those who neither know nor care what a split infinitive is; (2) those who don’t know but care a lot; (3) those who know and condemn it; (4) those who know and approve; and (5) those who know and distinguish. “It is this last class to which, if we have a good ear, we should aspire,” states Garner.”

   I’ll drink to that!

3. 3 days ago on Frazz

   sez: “@cknoblo But he can see there’s no stack, and he shouldn’t be telling the teacher what to do.”

   He’s not jumping to conclusions and assuming that the putative stack is in plain sight. Yes, yes, Ockham’s Razor is all well and good, but Caulfield is famed as a lateral thinker.

   Well, he’s famed to regular readers of the strip.

4. 7 days ago on Frazz

   sez: “This is the type of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put” is a quote attributed to Winston Churchill in response to criticism for ending a sentence with a preposition, though the attribution is questionable.”

   It’s not only the attribution that’s questionable. So is the so-called “rule,” which only ever existed because the developers of English grammar liked to pretend that they were ancient Romans, and their grammar had to match Classical Latin’s. Like the “rule” about splitting infinitives. It can’t be done in Latin, because their infinitives each consisted of a single word, whereas an English-language infinitive is TWO words (e.g., to be; to do; doobie doobie doo – maybe not that last one), so it’s easy to habitually split them (didja see what I did there?).

5. 8 days ago on That is Priceless

   Note to Mr. Melcher: Go to your room.

   And THINK about what you did.

6. 9 days ago on Lio

   Last time I looked, the lawn was generally OUTDOORS. I’m having a difficult time with the concept that a lawn can be important enough to break one’s back over.

7. 10 days ago on Lio

   Why not just let them stay where they fell and let natural phenomena deal with them?

8. 10 days ago on That is Priceless

   Who the hell is Jake Paul?

9. 10 days ago on Frazz

   sez: “Well, I couldn’t stand being told to read a book. And a very boring one at that. So I usually asked another student what the story was about, read two pages to see the style and then wrote something. On Sunday evening.”

   Whatever works for you, I guess. That IS the way I did my term paper on the John T. Scopes “Monkey Trial,” (for History, not English Composition) so I can’t criticize.

   ANYWAY, I think it’s kinda freaky that HoldenImeanCaulfield is able to take this approach to his reading assignments. From what I’ve read from his namesake’s output (which I didn’t do before the age of 60, btw), my impression is that that guy probably got kicked out of prep school because he THOUGHT he could get away with approaching his homework this way (good luck with that in 1955!).

10. 27 days ago on Tom the Dancing Bug

    sez: “So many people – including, apparently, Trump – have absolutely no idea how tariffs work. They think it’s those nasty Foreigners who will pay.”

    Then there’s the question of who pays the inevitable retaliatory tariffs the other countries would impose. Strange that THAT never gets brought up.