Spring Cleaning

There's an accumulation of stuff cluttering the inside of my head so I decided to do a little spring cleaning. I believe any of these topics could be worthy of their own blog posts - and some may yet end up with that distinction - but right now they're only distracting me.

• If you're going to text - send or receive - and you're walking in a crowd, please, get out of the way of the rest of us. You're clearly not paying attention to the world around you, so step aside. Slide up against a wall, or maybe stand next to a tree or homeless person...something the rest of us are prepared to walk around anyway. Stay out of doorways. Simple courtesy. Just get the fuck out of the way. I believe it should be socially acceptable for you to hit someone if they are texting while walking in front of you, oblivious to the rest of the world, and then stop dead in their tracks. I'm not saying ball up the fist and crack them in the face, but anything on the order of an open-handed, Three Stooges slap across the back of the head should be considered reasonable. You can even use your best Moe Howard voice and add a little "Get outta the way, ya numbskull." Same thing if you're in a line and the line is moving but you're not because the person in front of you is updating their facebook status to "Holding up the rest of humanity." If the gap exceeds three people...a middle finger flick to the back of the earlobe should be justified as a little something to bring them back to the here and now.

• Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen set off a mother of a controversy by stating that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's wife, Ann, never worked a day in her life. This brought out all sorts of media backlash in support of motherhood being the most difficult job in the world. I will concede that the process of giving birth is difficult. But raising kids? I don't know about that. I considered myself to be about 50% or more into raising my two kids. I did probably everything their mother did almost equally as much, and as well, if not better - diapers, bathing, entertaining, feeding. Okay, except breast feeding, although given the male anatomy it would have technically been more difficult for me than for her. So while raising kids is not an easy task, calling it a job is pandering. Making it a woman's job is sexist pandering. I'm sure if being a mother was a job I'd have heard about it if only because I'm a man taking work away from a woman. (Didn't happen.) So it ain't a job. If, however, motherhood was to become a class of employment, then we need hiring standards before anyone has kids to make sure the workforce is qualified for the job. Nothing too challenging. An application, a few personal references and a piss test.

• I hate people who prevent me from going down the aisle in the grocery store because they park their shopping cart in the center of it. If you do that and you're not within range to move it, I may be tempted to put something in your cart. And not something good, like candy. It'll be a box of embarrassment, like condoms. Have fun at the checkout counter.

• If you are standing at an uncontrolled intersection that has crosswalks and you're not going to cross, step back from the curb. If you are going to cross, make some eye contact. I don't know what happened to looking both ways before crossing a street, but I'm getting fed up with people thinking they can step out into moving traffic as if those white lines of paint on the ground are high enough to stop a car from rolling through. I realize the law says I have to stop for you when you're in the crosswalk, but you still have to exercise due caution getting into it. It's not wise to assume that once your foot leaves the curb mine will leave the gas pedal.

• White Hispanic. Yeah, like that changes everything.

• Weather forecasts are bullshit, especially the "percent chance of rain" predictions. You know what the difference between a 40% chance of rain and a 60% chance of rain is? Neither do weather people. A 40% chance of rain means that if the same weather conditions exist in a location similar to yours, it'll rain 4 out of 10 times. That also means 6 out of 10 it won't. If there is a chance of rain, the chance is 100%! Either there's a chance, or there's no chance. There is no in-between. So stop putting Vegas odds on my weather. There should only be three rain forecasts: ain't gonna rain, looks like it could rain, and it's raining. You want to know how to plan your day around rain if you aren't sure? Drive by a car wash, or call a roofer. If they aren't working, carry an umbrella.

• Here's something relatively sexist. I was thinking about old job titles - mailman, policeman, repairman, etc. - and how they've changed to become gender neutral - letter carrier, police officer, repair person. I was trying to think of any titles still in existence that end with "-man." I couldn't. Then the irony dawned on me that there are two male-gendered titles feminists hadn't been able to change: "woman" and "female." (*Blogger's note: If you come up with a male-gendered occupation or title, send it to me so I can research why an attorney hasn't made a buck changing it.)

Words, Part 4: Disciplined Writing

Blogger's note: "Words" is an ongoing feature in which I take a look at special qualities and misrepresentations of the English language, how much fun it is to play with its words, and why it reigns as one of the hardest languages to master.

A senior at an Indiana high school was disciplined for using the word "fuck" and a variation of that word in a tweet. The message was reported to have been sent at 2:30 in the morning from what the student claimed was a personal account. The school countered the tweet was adorned with its IP address. I don't much care for involving myself in any debate generated from this issue regarding a person's free speech away from an institution or workplace - or in general - vs. the right of an institution or employer to monitor personal behavior outside their immediate control. Both sides have as much merit as they do fault. I'm not the student here, not the student's parents, not the principal or the teacher or the school board or the moral conscience of our society as a whole. What I am is a writer.

An apparent failure in teaching English

composition is not including where a

“suspension” occurs in sentence diagrams.

As I have stated in previous posts, I believe there are no bad words, only bad judgment in how they are used. An individual chooses what comes out of their mouths (Tourette's exclusion noted), or in this case off their fingertips, and the individual should be held accountable accordingly. I am certainly not in a position to determine that level of accountability. I am qualified, though, to look at the incident from a personal perspective in an effort to form an opinion through which I can attempt to rationalize this behavior, thereby continuing my efforts in facilitating part of the healing process that I believe will bring us back together as a nation. Or, I can just do what I normally do in these posts...pick at the scab. But before I dig in a nail, here's the student's tweet in its original dispatch:

(Warning: The following quote contains some graphic fucking language.)

"Fuck is one of those fucking words you can fucking put anywhere in 

a fucking sentence and it still fucking makes sense."

My initial reaction was one of mild shock. I always thought an -ing word not being used as a verb in the present participle tense was always a descriptive modifier in the form of an adjective preceding the noun, and never used as an adverb in the form of an intensifier preceding the verb.

Additionally, I took exception to the accuracy of the statement that putting the word "fuck" anywhere in a sentence maintains the sentence's sensibility. One must certainly determine in what form the word will be used. In the case of its use as a verb, verb tense must be considered - present, past or future -, as well as the perfect, progressive and perfect-progressive forms of the aforementioned tenses. And in choosing the correct form of the word (e.g., verb, noun, adjective), it should be noted that the application of the word chosen may not conform to the established rules of grammar.

For example, not all prepositional phrases will absorb the -ing form of the word. Prepositions functioning as adjectives or adverbs are already modifying the noun or verb, and therefore the addition of the word would confuse not only the structure of the sentence, but also its meaning.

Example 1: Look at the car with the red racing stripe.

In the sentence above, the prepositional phrase (in italics) is modifying the noun "car." Placing the word "fucking" between "car" and the preposition "with" would be grammatically incorrect. It would be acceptable to place the word before "car," or within the prepositional phrase before "red" or "racing." But not between "racing" and "stripe." The reason for this being "racing stripe" is considered an open compound word, meaning the two words together, although written separately, express a single idea. Any separation of the two words by introducing another word would make the sentence awkward. (Go ahead, try it).

The same holds true when a prepositional phrase functions as an adverb:

Example 2: The light wouldn't work despite changing the light bulb.

Here, as in the first example, the structure of the sentence is unacceptable with the separation of the prepositional phrase from the rest of the sentence. An allowance can be made elsewhere in the sentence, with the exception of splitting "light" and "bulb," which is another open compound.

It should be noted, however, that not all prepositional phrases are restrictive. There is a third type of prepositional phrase in which the words function as nouns even though they aren't themselves nouns. These are called nominals, and can be found when used in conjunction with the verb "to be."

Example 3: The car is under the big tree.

As you can see in this example, "under" is the preposition that acts as the nominal to the verb "is." Separation of the prepositional phrase from the rest of the sentence by inserting the word "fucking" before the preposition, while not necessarily grammatically correct, does not alter the meaning of the sentence other than in its tone. It should be noted, though, that normally an -ing word following the "to be" verb creates a continuous verb, as would be the case if the sentence read "...is idling under..." The use of the word "fucking" to separate "is under" would be grammatically correct if you, say, changed "car" to "couple" and changed "is" to its present indicative plural form "are." Otherwise, its only application is to convey attitude.

For a tweet, I have to admit it's one of the more complete expressions I've read in this age when people rely on communication using cryptic, abbreviated texts with character limitations - both in number of letters and personality. Sure, the student needs to be held accountable for his actions, whatever those actions are determined to be. But to his credit, he 1) expressed a thought 2) in a structured format 3) that was not directed toward another person or culture in a demeaning manner 4) within the limited space provided (121 characters out of 144 allowed) 5) using no abbreviated terminology. That's worthy of at least a B+ with a smiley face.

Again, without having all of the facts in front of me regarding what actually occurred in this tweet incident, it's difficult for me to state with certainty who crossed the line. Regardless of the forum in which the sentence was presented, it could have been written better. In my opinion, the school only addressed part of the problem by suspending the student. If schools feels obligated to take corrective action against students when students aren't seated within their hallowed halls, then schools should not limit themselves to only those acts, actions or activities they feel will bring shame upon their institution. In this case, they also could have taken the student aside to discuss what was written and demonstrate options available to help express the idea in a more grammatically fundamental manner.

Because the education process is a discipline as much as the discipline process is an education.