Spell Check, Folks. It’s Not New.

I had a vendor who wants to create on-line courses for me misspell “occasionally” as “occassionally.”  Listen, if you can’t be bothered to use spell check, I can’t be bothered to pay for your services.

Sarah Palin’s Resignation Tragedy

Judging by the comments from my last post, only a third of my readers will stop reading an article if the writer employs bad grammar or punctuation.  The other two-thirds might judge the writer or criticize him or her, but will continue to read. 

Following that, I just have to wonder what you all think of this piece of writing.   The link is to Sarah Palin’s speech announcing that she’s resigning as Governor of Alaska.  I’ve been meaning to write about it for days, but the flu has kept me from it.  I must thank my dear friend Brendan for pointing out what a tragedy of the English language it is.  (If you enjoyed the SNL Tina Fey skits from the election, please go read the speech in its entirety.  I don’t think any comedy was intended, but it sure is easy to find in it.)

 Sarah Palin gave this speech as governor.  She has a college degree, a staff who could have written for this her, and what I can only assume is access to several proofreaders.  Yet we end up with many sections like this:

“Alaska’s mission – to contribute to America. We’re strategic in the world as the air crossroads of the world, as a gatekeeper of the continent. Bold visionaries knew this – Alaska would be part of America’s great destiny.
Our destiny to be reached by responsibly developing our natural resources. This land, blessed with clean air, water, wildlife, minerals, and oil and gas. It’s energy! God gave us energy.”

Yes, God gave us energy.  And man gave us grammatical rules and tools.  But Gov. Palin gave us sentence fragments, run-on sentences, and superfluous punctuation marks.  Right here, in the following two sentences, she shows a blazing disregard for verbs:  ”Our destiny to be reached by responsibly developing our natural resources. This land, blessed with clean air, water, wildlife, minerals, and oil and gas.”

I won’t go into how ridiculous I think her argument is that staying in office her full term would be just “politics as usual.”  I promise.  It’s killing me, of course, but I don’t want to distract from the blatantly bad writing that is her resignation speech.  It’s just bad writing, people.  I started to get out my red pen and my Google Docs to share some fun with you, but I didn’t have the strength.  Where would I even start?  Would it just be editing to correct for punctuation errors?  That would take a while.  Then there would be the lack of subjects and predicates in any logical relation to each other.  Or would I try to get into style? I couldn’t get into style, of course.  I am too far away from her politics and mindset to try to give her style tips.

I realize, of course, that this is the transcript of a speech, and some politicians take artistic license with speeches.  But what artistic value is served in the next sentence? “So much success in this first term – and with this success I am proud to take credit… for hiring the right people!”  Why the dash?  Why the ellipses?   And even if it is a speech transcript, it’s posted on the State of Alaska’s website.  Doesn’t that deserve proofreading?

I don’t have a lot of points I’m trying to make here.  I’m just trying to say that our elected officials should pay attention to the elementary grammar rules we were all taught in grade school.  Is that asking so much?

Insult to Injury: Defined

When I was laid off, my company said they would ship the contents of my desk to me.  The boxes just arrived today.

A picture frame, hand-made candy dish and light bulb (random object, I realize, but there’s an uninteresting explanation) had all broken in the box, leaving everything else covered in tiny shards of glass.  And as I was unpacking the box, I cut  my hand and bled on some of my personal effects.

Injury to insult, actually.

Freedom of Speech Does Not Mean Freedom From Judgement

Hello, interweb. I’m climbing up on my soapbox for a much-needed rant.

There are few things I care about less right now than whether Miss California gets to keep her crown.  I have a job to find, an apartment to clean, and menopause to go through.  But Carrie Prejean pissed me off enough today that I need to speak out.

No, I’m not bothered about her views on gay marriage; she’s entitled to them.  I’m also not annoyed or offended by her semi-nude pictures.  (I’m more surprised when these women don’t take off their clothes every chance they get.  They are drop-dead gorgeous.) 

What has pissed me off today is Miss Prejean’s statement during her press conference with Donald Trump.  (By the way, the only thing I might care about less than all of this is anything that Trump does.)  She suggests that her right to freedom of speech has been threatened.

4:22 into the video:  “On April 19, on that stage, I exercised my freedom of speech and I was punished for doing so.  This should NOT happen in America.  It undermines the constitutional rights for which my grandfather fought for. ” [sic]

Nope, sorry.  This is exactly what happens in America, and it in no way threatens the constitutional right to freedom of speech.  The constitution protects her right to speak out against gay marriage.  But it also protects the right of Perez Hilton and any other critics to speak out against Prejean.  It does not protect her right to be liked for what she says.  There is no such right.   She has the right to speak her opinion; you have the right to judge her for what she says.  That’s the beauty (or folly, if you want) of our Bill of Rights.  That’s what Grandpa fought for. 

Prejean can be as pissed off as she wants at the “media storm” against which she rails.  But she should not be pissed off that someone exercised their right to speak out against her. 

(Steps off soapbox.)

Off-Topic: The New Facebook

Allow me to divert from my normal grammatical, political, and other ramblings for a moment.  Many of my friends, acquaintances, co-workers, friends of friends, and former schoolmates are PISSED off about the new Facebook design.  They are telling me (and everyone else on FB) about it in their status messages, on their walls, and in the new polls being created to SHOUT to the world about how GOD-AWFUL the new design is.  They are going about it all wrong.

I Get the Desire for Efficiency, But…

…when you write “tonite,” you only save yourself one letter.  And you look like a dumbass.

Playing the Race Card

There have been times during this campaign that the McCain camp has accused Obama of “playing the race card.”

I would like to think that complaints about this image wouldn’t be one of those times:

Welcome to the United States, Nin

My dear friend Nin just emigrated to the Bay Area, just one year after she married a U.S. citizen.  (Wondering why it took so long?  See here. )

Now that she is a legal resident, I thought it would be helpful to fill her in on some of what we’ve been up to:

Official, Literally, etc.

Heard today on NPR:  (NPR!  Of all places!)  “Well, summer may be officially over…”  No, it’s not!  The official end of summer is the autumnal equinox, Sept. 21 in the Northern Hemisphere.  Labor Day, which I celebrated yesterday by flying for work, is the unofficial end of summer. 

This mistake annoys me.  A lot. 

Another one, while we’re on it, is literally.  The strictest definition of literally is “actually, without exaggeration.”  So when you say “I’m literally drowning in work,”  unless you are in the Coast Guard, no, you’re not.   You’re actually just annoying me.

Is it really so hard?  Up next, why I’m the way I am.  Or, an introduction to Mr. Gossett.

What Did The Moon Do With the Money?

The CEO of the company I work for said today that our Brazil division “recently sponsored the lunar eclipse.” 

This has to be a first for the moon, selling out like that to a corporation.  I understand that lunar upkeep is costly, but is this really the depths to which the moon-owners need to stoop?