Offensive Post! (The Post Formerly Known as "Grammar According to Allie")

Grammar is a subject that is very dear to me.  However, I don't agree with some of the commonly accepted ways to use it.

Wait!  Don't stop reading!

This is not some snobby diatribe stressing the importance of proper grammar.

It is about making grammar better - my way.

1. "Very Unique"

Uttering the phrase "very unique" is like punching grammar in the face.  The reasoning goes that "unique" means "different from anything else in the world" so to say that something is "very unique" is completely unnecessary.

No it's not.

Every person in the world is unique.  Every snowflake is unique.  Property owners want you to think that their sh*tty 60's apartment with the "decorative" stairs to nowhere is unique.  But to say that individuals like Marilyn Manson or the late Michael Jackson are unique is an egregious understatement.  Yes, we are all different - but they are really, really different.  They are to "different" what Pluto used to be to the Solar System before it was so unceremoniously demoted (why do I feel the need to include Pluto in all of my grammar posts?)  - they are on the very outer edge of the spectrum.   They have a much greater distance between themselves and normal (which is still unique, just more normally so.)  Our language should allow for a descriptor to reflect that increased distance.

2. "..............................."

The number of dots in an ellipsis should reflect the length of the pause.

Writing would be so much more descriptive - so much more malleable and honest.

Example #1:

Jenny chewed her lip and fiddled with the pages of her Algebra textbook as she tried to find the right words.  Finally, she said "Mr. Smith... I'm.......... Pregnant."


"Uh................................................................................................................" said Mr. Smith.  

I know that it is not right to make light of student-teacher sex scandals, but it is my blog and I do what I want.  And for your information, Mr. Smith turned out to be a great father and he married Jenny the moment she turned 18.

Example #2:

"Knock Knock..."


"Who's There?"


"Jerry the Mute..."


"Jerry the Mute who?"


"........................................."

I also know that it is not right to make up Knock Knock jokes that poke fun at serious disabilities, but if you are offended now, you might want to reconsider reading further.  Also, you may want to pause and reflect on the sheer genius behind that joke since it is not every day that I come up with something that awesome.

Example #3

Upon noticing the packet of prescription Valtrex on the nightstand, Jenny asked "Mr. Johnson, what is Valtrex for..................?" 


"... it is Valium for large dinosaurs, my Dear..." 


Being an English teacher, Mr. Johnson knew not to pause as long as Jenny.    

(Don't worry - Jenny is legal in this story.)

3.  Daylight Saving Time, Down Syndrome and Dived

Over the years, people have added unnecessary S's to Daylight Saving time and Down Syndrome.  The first one is simple:  we are saving daylight.  It makes sense.

The second one doesn't compute quite as neatly.

Apparently Dr. Down didn't want to be like Dr. Alzheimer, Dr. Hodgkin, Dr. Asburger,  or Dr. Huntington.  He wanted to be more unique, so he simply named the disease he discovered after himself.  No apostrophe or S needed.

Some words are so commonly misused that they should be adopted as standard simply so that the smart people aren't the ones sounding like illiterate dummies.

For example, did you know that "dove" is not a verb?  Despite the fact that everyone and their dog uses it in such a manner, it is still considered correct to use the word "dived."

"I dived off the proverbial cliff when I decided to write this offensive post." 

But "dived" sounds retarded (so does "Down Syndrome" but I think I could get in some sort of trouble for saying that or something.......)

We should adopt "dove" so that I don't look like an idiot for trying to be grammatically correct.

4.  Favre

How this series of letters came to be pronounced "farv" I will never know.

Faver?  Sure.

Fav-ray?  Why not?

 Favery?  I guess it works.

But "farv??" What kind of dyslexic French a**hole came up with that one?*

While we are on the subject, I think I should address French as a whole.  French is supposedly the most romantic language there is - if you consider completely unnecessary and phonetically nonsensical extra letters romantic.   -eaux is supposed to make and "o" sound.  Really?   Are you so full of yourselves that you thought "Forget zee O.  We need four letters because our language eez four time better!"

I personally think that France would be world dominant if they didn't have all those superfluous letters slowing them down.

While we are on the subject of being on the subject of talking about foreign words, I thought I might mention something to my American friends.

If you are trying to pronounce a foreign word in an otherwise English sentence, please don't pronounce the word with a heavy accent.  It makes you sound pretentious and douche-y .

*I am in no way insulting Brett Favre himself.  If I were to do that, it would  decrease my chances of ever bearing his grizzled, womb-warrior children, and I definitely wouldn't want to do that.  

5.  Less/Fewer

I am going to back Strunk and White 100 percent on this one.

If there is one mistake that I cannot stand, it is the confusion of "less" with "fewer."

You commonly see this error in grocery stores: "Express Checkout - 10 Items or Less." 

Also in Porta-Potties: "This Unit is Designed to Accommodate the Needs of 10 People or Less During a Normal Work Week."  

Less is supposed to refer to an amount that cannot be counted - like air or sand.  Fewer refers to a number of things that are countable, such as oxygen molecules or grains of sand.

A few more examples:

- Jenny is less of a tramp because she slept with fewer teachers than Veronica.


- I made that Knock Knock joke less offensive by including fewer references to disabled people.  


- Mr. Johnson now uses less Valtrex because he has fewer Herpes sores.  


- Other languages are less awesome than French because they use fewer unnecessary letters. 


- "Less" should be used less often than "fewer" because there are fewer instances where "less" is appropriate.   Nonetheless, "less" is used more.  

I hope that your lives have been enriched by my mighty opinion.

I am sorry if I have offended you, but you should try to be less offendable.

A Brief Romantic History

Mr. Kitty

My first love was Mr. Kitty.

Mr. Kitty was a rattle with a plush cat's head on it.  He had no body.  Just a head.  Mr. Kitty may have greatly misinformed my infantile brain about the proper anatomy of living creatures.  Maybe Mr. Kitty is at the root of why I've never been a body girl.  I like faces.

Richard

My second love was Richard.  Richard was the middle-aged man that lived next door with his aging mother.  I followed Richard around like a puppy.   I would just show up in his house, unannounced, and watch him from the hallway until he noticed me and took me home.   One time I stole his cat and kept it in my closet for two days before my parents found it.  I don't know why I did it.  It seemed like a good idea...

Note: I often wonder about how my experience with Mr. Kitty might have influenced my subconscious to want to steal Richard's cat.

Ryan (and french kissing)

Shortly after Richard and just before my 4th birthday, I experienced my first kiss.  Ryan was a full year older than me.  He was the son of my dad's best friend.  Our families went camping at Lake Tahoe together one spring.  Ryan and I were in the middle of playing "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" (I always had to be stupid April because I was a girl - Ryan got to be all the turtles simultaneously) when Ryan suddenly stopped fighting Splinter and said "Do you want to french kiss?"

I didn't know what that was or how it could potentially affect my immediate future, so I said "Okay."

Ryan moved in slowly, hand gently cradling the small of my back, craning his neck to the side and...

...began chewing on my lower lip with ferocity.

It hurt.

I pushed Ryan to the ground, began crying and ran to my mom.

When she asked what happened, I told her that I french kissed Ryan and it hurt.

My poor mother.

Nicholas

After Ryan, I went through a long dry spell before I met Nicholas.  I don't know if I loved Nicholas, but Nicholas was the first guy to ever see my hoohoo.  Not like that...

Nicholas told me that he and his friends played a fun game called "sword fights"where you pee into the toilet at the same time and cross streams.  He asked me if I wanted to sword-fight.  I said "sure."

That day left us both confused.

We went into the bathroom together.  I sat down on the toilet.  He said "no, no, no - we aren't going number two!"

I failed to understand the distinction.

He grabbed me under my armpits and hoisted me off the toilet, moving me aside so that he could show me how to do it right.

I watched Nicholas pee.

I tried to pee like Nicholas.

I made a mess.

Nicholas reprimanded me for "missing the dartboard" (probably a term his mother used).

I cried and ran to my mom, who had to explain the difference between boys and girls and why I wasn't a failure for not being able to pee like Nicholas.

Boyfriend (and others)

After Nicholas, I grew up, dated some dudes and eventually met Boyfriend.

The End.

(I'll post the unabridged version [the one that includes age 6 through Boyfriend] if you guys really want me to, but it's kind of long [not "tramp" long, but "encompassing many years" long) and I didn't want to launch into a soliloquy about my past without warning you or testing the waters to see if that is something you'd be interested in.)

BALD PICTURE!

As promised, I have scrounged through all of my old boxes and found for you a picture of myself with no hair

It is at the bottom of the "My Tweenhood Was a Haze of Baldness and Shame" post with a short description.  Please notice the way that I am holding my hands.  It makes the picture that much more ridiculous.

It isn't the clearest picture in the world, since I don't have a scanner and had to take a picture of a picture, (Boyfriend has much steadier hands than I do and he just took a pretty clear one)

It is the only one I have (I was somewhat elusive around cameras during that time of my life... )

Anyway, enjoy!

Guess What I Did All Night?

Boyfriend and I...

... spent the entire night cleaning up fiberglass dust from our house.

The guy who installed our insulation blew it into all of our cold air re-uptake ducts and left us to figure out how to deal with the mess.

We borrowed an industrial-sized vacuum from our neighbors and started sucking all of the insulation out of our ducts, but we didn't stop when the vacuum got too full and it started blowing all of the insulation that was once packed safely inside of it all over our house.

It was like snow, only itchy and carcinogenic.

I thought I would at least make the best of it and give you guys a good laugh...

I don't own goggles of any sort, so I had to rig up some fiberglass-dust-proof eyewear on my own.  I am wearing clear glasses and a superhero mask from a halloween costume:

Then I had to find a way to keep the stuff out of my lungs...

That getup turned out to be not quite enough to prevent the itchy lungs, so I went a little more extreme:

And when even this bizarre facewear failed to protect me from inhaling noxious particles, I had to pull out all the stops:

I would like to take this opportunity to explain why I am wearing a skirt instead of full protective clothing.  You see, the ambient temperature was roughly eleventy-million degrees, so the skin on my legs had to be sacrificed so that the rest of my body could survive while wearing three face masks, a scarf and several shirts.

The ridiculousness of it all is overwhelming.

Allie Gets Drunk

Note: I swear on my mother that this is a factual account (except that Brian isn't actually retarded.  I think.)  


As an 18-year-old, I had not yet fully grasped the concept of mortality or how my actions could increase or decrease my likelihood of experiencing it.

When I was invited to go boat-camping with four guys and a 32-pack of Natural Ice, I was all for it.   You might think you have some idea of how this story ends based on that last sentence, but trust me, you don't.  If it was possible to have any premonition of what was about to happen to me, even my stupid 18-year-old brain would have opted out.

But no one ever expects to end up sleeping on a pee-stained mattress in some meth-addict's yard.

Maybe I should go back a little and explain.

It was my friend Geoff's boat.   Geoff, Joey, Brian and Willie had decided to drive it out to a tiny, secluded island (red X on map) that was surrounded by jagged rocky cliffs.  A place where no cops could find us and reprimand us for our underage drinking.

We loaded all of our stuff onto the boat and set out toward our 900-square-foot section of paradise.

It took about 45 minutes to drive the boat out there.   We set up camp on the rocky beach and cracked into our overly abundant alcohol supply.  I had only been drunk once before and I did not yet know how to pace myself.

Just as the sun was starting to set, we got a phone call from a friend back on the mainland (how we had cell service on our island, I will never know, but I do know that there is no cell service in the middle of the lake).

The friend wanted to come to our island.  She wanted to be picked up.

I was so drunk, that I agreed to be a passenger on a boat driven by an even more drunk friend.  Again, you may think you have some idea of where this is going, but I assure you that you do not.

We drove safely all the way back to the marina, where our friend was waiting.  She decided that she didn't want to come camping after all.  We were too drunk to be mad.

We turned the boat around and set off across the water to our unmarked, unlit camping site.   In the dark.   That would have been a good enough adventure on its own, but we ended up mired in another problem entirely.

Halfway across the lake (approximate location of yellow X on the map), our boat ran out of gas.  Now, this particular lake, as you may have surmised from the part where I said it took us 45 minutes to get to our island, is very, very large (see attached map).  So large that all we could see around us were tiny specks of light on the distant shore.

Brian was passed out, so he didn't care.

We sat in silence for a few minutes, each contemplating our respective fates as best we could under the influence of way too much beer.

"Well,"  Geoff finally ventured.

"I have an oar."

An oar.

One.

We took turns (well, everyone except for Brian) sitting on the bow and rowing.  We rowed for hours.

Lakes are really cold at night and I was wearing only a swimsuit, so I had to wrap myself in life jackets to keep warm.  At least I was safe (from drowning, at least.)

At approximately 3:00 AM we reached land (blue X on map).  The land we reached was the bank of a highway near a bridge.

I was told to stay in the boat and protect Brian.  The other boys would go try to find gas somewhere.

An hour later (by my calculations, which could be totally skewed by lapses in consciousness) the boys returned with two mangy-looking men.

I remember actually being able to taste the terror in the back of my mouth.  Maybe it was just bile - I don't know.  Whatever it was, it tasted terrible and it didn't make me any less nervous about the tattooed strangers that were quietly assessing my swimsuit/lifejacket-clad body like curators at a museum.

It was later explained to me that the boys did not realize they had left their wallets on the island until they had walked all the way to a gas station and pumped gas into their gas can.  They had been drunkenly haggling with the attendant, when two upstanding young drug addicts appeared out of nowhere and gave them an offer they couldn't refuse:  a free place to sleep (as opposed to staying on the boat?).

We left the boat tied to a pointy rock and followed the two men up the embankment and along the highway (we couldn't have gone far because I am sure someone had to carry Brian).  We eventually ended up at their "house" which was basically an old barn that smelled like drain cleaner and failure.

The leader of the two men pointed to a dilapidated pup tent that was half buried in garbage and unruly weeds.  Apparently we were supposed to sleep there.

All five of us climbed into the one-man tent and tried to sleep on the urine-soaked children's mattress that had been provided for us.

I don't know if I actually slept or just passed out, but around 5:30 in the morning, we were shaken awake by the gnarliest of the two men.

He said "Give me thirty-five dollars."

"Wha...?" was the collective response from the urine-tent.

"I said, give me thirty-five dollars.  For rent."

It became clear that the man expected us to pay for our stay in his excrement-coated tent.  Drug addicts are remarkably resourceful at coming up with extra income!

Thinking quickly, or perhaps just telling the truth, Joey said "We don't have our wallets right now... we'll pay you in the morning."

This seemed to satisfy the man.  He stumbled away.

An hour passed.

Brian started to regain consciousness.  We filled him in on why he was in a foul-smelling tent in some meth-head's backyard.  He told us that he had his wallet on the boat - it was hidden so no one would steal it.  We were simultaneously furious and very pleased with Brian.

We ventured a peek outside the tent.  One of the men was lying face-down in the grass.  We couldn't see the other man.

Geoff snuck out to go find Brian's wallet, fill up the gas can and retrieve the boat.

He came back a little while later in the boat.   He killed the engine and drifted quietly to shore.  He motioned for us to climb aboard.  We stumbled (as quietly as we could) into the boat.   Geoff started the engine, which woke up the man in the yard.  He looked at us groggily.  We tried to back out of the dock quickly, before the man could wrap his drug-weathered brain around the fact that he was not going to get his thirty-five dollars.

The man staggered to his feet like a wounded mammoth and began to bellow something like "F*ckers!  You have my money!" (It was hard to tell because he was slurring his speech).

We got the boat going just soon enough.

We drove to the nearest marina and filled up the rest of the tank.

We drove the boat back to our island in the broad daylight.

(You may think that the adventure is over.  But it's not.)

When we got there, Joey, Willie, Geoff and I wanted to go to sleep.  Brian had other plans.

He felt bad for passing out and not being able to tell us where his wallet was, so he became hell-bent on cooking us breakfast.

Now would be a good time for me to tell you a little bit more about Brian.  The name "Brian" is an anagram of the word "brain" which is ironic because Brian has always teetered between "self-aware-but-slow" and fully retarded.  Not literally, but almost.  He just lacks even an iota of common sense.  He is the kind of person that gets A's in school but turns around and tries to cook baked beans on a portable barbecue grill, not pausing to consider the incongruity between the size of baked beens and the size of the spaces between grill slats.

And he did just that.  After trying to open the beans by smashing them against a rock (and looking surprised when 3/4 of them splattered all over the place), Brian proceeded to pour the beans on the grill.

When that did not produce the results he had envisioned in his head, he switched his focus to cooking "bean-smoked" hotdogs.  Twenty of them.

I don't know why he thought we needed twenty hotdogs.  I don't even know why we brought twenty hotdogs with us, but that is not the point.

The point is that we decided to leave Brian alone and go to sleep in the tent while he figured out how to cook us something.

Ten minutes later we awoke to Brian yelling "Guys?  Hey... Guys!  You guys!  Guys... um... guys?!!" in an increasingly panicked tone.

We poked our heads out of the tent.

THE ISLAND WAS ON FIRE.

Brian had decided to grill our twenty hotdogs in the shade of one of the three pine saplings on the island.    We think he may have poured lighter fluid directly onto them, but we can't be sure.  At any rate, he did not consider that fire plus low-hanging branches equals burning.

Not_ only_ that.

He was trying to put the fire out with the left-over beer.

By the time we realized what was happening, we could do nothing but stand there and watch the foliage on our precious island burn to the ground.

And that is the story of how I got stranded in a boat, slept behind a meth-lab and played a part in burning down an island all in one night.

                                                                        

Worst. Day. EVER. (Almost)

Dear Readers;

You seem to enjoy the tales of my many stupidity/enthusiasm-driven mistakes. For this reason, I have decided to unveil my second-most unfortunate story of all time (first-most unfortunate story to follow shortly - if I decide you are ready for it... )  Every word of this story is completely true-to-life (or at least my best recollection of it). I have not embellished a single detail (aside from adding exact times to events that were just a blur of stress and anger. Oh, and the part about the bagel. It may have been a croissant.)



I feel thoroughly confident that I have already experienced the rock-bottom of my life.

Any one of the events that transpired on that fateful day would have been pretty innocuous as an isolated incident. But put them all together in a string of odds-defying bad luck, and you will find yourself in the midst of a crisis that not even Jon Krakauer would be able to comprehend completely.

It all started with a guitar.

Just before my Junior year of college, I saw a guitar in a pawn shop and suddenly decided that I wanted to be a musician - a decision I undecided about 3 weeks later, but not before enrolling in an "introduction to guitar" course. The course seemed like the perfect way to launch my rock star career. I was positively batty over the idea - until I actually tried to learn to play the guitar.

If you have ever been forced to sit for an hour-and-a-half in a room full of 35 people plucking away on 35 out-of-tune guitars, you may understand why I reconsidered my musical aspirations.

Once I undecided my decision, it was already too late to drop the course without first filling out a "drop slip" which is a little yellow form, to be signed by your instructor and the dean of your department, detailing your reasons for dropping the class (ADHD, poor impulse control, lack of musical aptitude, chronically bleeding ears).

Being the responsible person that I am, I stopped attending class for a few weeks, then waited until the last possible moment to try and turn in my drop form.

To tell you the truth, I forgot that I even needed to turn anything in until approximately 2:00 PM on that blemish of a day. Boyfriend called to remind me that I had to turn in my drop slip by 4:30 PM or I would fail the course ("Personal Calendar" is just one of Boyfriend's many and diverse functions.)

Anyway, I was on campus, eating a bagel, when I got the call. I simultaneously choked down the rest of the bagel and sprinted to the bus stop so that I could get home and start rifling through the drawer where I shove all my "important documents."

The stupid bagel cost me valuable seconds. I got to the bus stop just in time to see the bus driving away.

I heaved a sigh and began the 1.5-mile trek home.

I arrived at my apartment, sweaty and disheveled, just a touch after 2:30 PM. I began frantically looking for that little yellow slip - the antidote to certain academic failure.

I did not find it.

I reasoned that maybe the slip was at Boyfriend's apartment, since I also had an "important documents" pile there.  However, boyfriend was at track practice already and he had his keys with him (I didn't have a set of keys to Boyfriend's apartment. He never got around to making an extra one for me and I didn't want to be that girlfriend and badger him about it).  I managed to call him just before he headed out for his run (my only stroke of luck that day) and he agreed to run the keys by my apartment.

I met boyfriend in front of my apartment at exactly 2:48 PM.  He handed me his keys and went merrily on his way.

I was starting to feel the pressure of the impending 4:30 deadline, so I rushed to my car.  I unlocked my door, bumped my head on the doorframe as I was getting in, turned the keys in the ignition and...

Nothing.

It was not the first time that week that I had left my headlights on. It was actually a pretty regular occurrence.

I blame it on my mom.

You see, my mom also drove a Honda. Hondas are equipped with a neat little beeping sound which is supposed to warn you when your door is opened and your keys are left in the ignition or your lights are left on. Growing up, I heard the sound whenever my mom opened her car door. The sound was meaningless to a child who did not yet understand the minutiae of operating a motor vehicle, so my brain learned to ignore it. I eventually became completely desensitized to it. Now, I have to rely completely on my own awareness to remember to turn off my lights, and my awareness really is not that reliable.

Sadly, no amount of blaming my mother would bring my car back to life.

I stood in the street flagging down motorists for nearly 20 minutes before some V-neck-wearing Bulgarian giant with dreadlocks and a bad case of B.O. was kind enough to stop and help me push-start my vehicle.

It was 3:16 PM when I finally started the drive to Boyfriend's apartment. This particular drive was nearly impossible to complete in a timely manner since my city's traffic management is run by - well, I doubt that it is run by anything because no human could possibly be that fallible.

I should have walked. The one-mile stretch between my apartment and Boyfriend's apartment took me nearly 15 minutes to navigate by car.

If I had walked, I may have avoided the ensuing drama entirely.

I was in a hurry when I pulled up to Boyfriend's place. I left my car running and dashed up the three flights of stairs to his door.

I was engulfed by panic when I could not find my form.

After tearing through the entire apartment, I finally decided to check my car...

...my still-running car...

...the one with all the doors locked...

...the one with the little yellow drop form sitting in plain sight on the passenger seat.


F*CK!!!! (but also yay?)


How did I not see it before???

I had a Hide-A-Key. It was in a little magnetic case. Stuck to the refrigerator. At my apartment. Who puts their Hide-A-Key on their refrigerator? Apparently I do.

I ran as fast as I could (barefoot, because I just happened to be wearing heels that day - I never wear heels, but for some ungodly reason felt it was a good idea to wear them on that particular f*cking day) back to my apartment.

When I got there, it was 3:57 PM. I sprinted up my stairs to find... yet another locked door that I did not presently have the key to. I kept my apartment keys on the same keychain as my car keys - like most respectable people - and I did not think things through to the point of realizing I would need my car keys to get my house keys to get my Hide-A-Key to get my car keys.

I slumped to the ground outside my door, face smashed into the disgusting carpet. The janitor, who was probably wondering if dead-body-cleanup fell under his jurisdiction, stepped over my limp form -- the janitor!!

I sprang to life (probably prompting the janitor to wonder if zombie-crisis-mitigation fell under his jurisdiction) and begged the janitor to use his skeleton key to let me into my apartment.

"You live here?" He asked.

"Uh-huh," I responded.

And just like that, I was granted access to my apartment. I didn't know whether to feel happy or scared for my future safety, but at least I was one step closer to turning in my godforsaken drop form.

It was 4:06 PM. I snatched my Hide-A-Key from the fridge and ran back to Boyfriend's place to retrieve my car and the precious form contained within.

I got there at 4:11 and unlocked my car. I got in, bumped my head again and sped off toward campus, which was two traffic-filled miles away.

I parked in front of the Registrar's office (not bothering to buy a .75 parking stub which ended up garnering me a $15 ticket) and sprinted up the stairs.

It was 4:34 PM. The Registrar's station was closed for the day and it was final: my grade-point average was going to be annihilated by a 3-credit music course.

As I was turning around to go find a bathroom to cry in, a tiny pink note taped to the Registrar's desk caught my eye. It had that day's date written neatly in the upper left-hand corner. It read:

Drop slips due tomorrow by 4:30!!!!

Abbott Street Culture Clash

This is a one-page jam comic I did with my friend Gabriel Frizzera a couple years ago. I just found it while cleaning, and figured I'd put it up.