I acceded to your wishes to be a pretender to the British throne only because I loved you.

Listen Anymore, I don't love you, and you're taking that stupidly-named dog back as well.

That's the spirit!

I don't get the difference between 2 and 3, in terms of meaning.

You people got no poetry in your souls, you know that?

2 is "We were never together, and as far as you know I never loved you. But I actually loved you this whole time!"

3 is "As far as you know, I don't love you anymore. You think I stopped loving you. But I didn't, ha-ha!"

Got it.

This may not be the most interesting thread ever. But two dull threads make a whole thread, right?

Also I make it a policy to never try to predict what will appeal to you yahoos.

8: Free candy?

Flippanter is my three year old?

I have a childlike sense of wonder!

Similar to 2 & 3: I Can't. (But you should still) Keep Pretending I Don't Love you Anymore.

I haven't gotten an acting gig in 4 months and had to take a job as a waiter. Thanks for the bad career advice, mom.

I'm pretty sure you misheard it and the actual lyric is:

Ike and keep Rhett ending guide owned love view, Anne E. Moore.

That's pretty unambiguous.

What kind of MOTHER would give an innocent three year old and/or Flippanter free candy?

I think an innocent Flippanter deserves free candy.

What, you want her to charge?

Did anyone here used to watch Dr. Katz? There was a sketch where one of the comedian-patients was imitating his three year old, in response to the question "Whatcha thinking about?" The answer, super-dreamily, is "Caaaandy..."

For some reason it's very closely related in my head to how Vanessa Huxtable used to say "Raaahhhbert", especially when being sampled by Stevie Wonder.

Both those dreamy voices show up in my jokes that no one gets far too often. Folk jokes!

You know that Dr. Katz's son Ben = Archer, yes?

No I didn't! Jammies loves that show but I'm embarrassed to say I've never actually watched it.

You know that Dr. Katz's son Ben = Archer, yes?

Wowzers!

-- I know that you will sneer at me if I admit to liking the irritating song "You Any More", but the effort of keeping my admiration concealed is just too great!

-- I borrowed your self-published romance novel, "Pretending I Don't Love You", last June, and I should really admit that I'm never going to review it for the Mineshaft and just give it back to you now.

Archer!!!

I feel bad that I waited so long to watch it, since no matter how good it is, it can never be better than the end of season 2 and beginning of season 3, which means I obsessively analyze every episode for signs of the impending decline.

Though whenever I need to give myself a pep talk, my goto quote is now "Because Ron Cadillac is freaking epic!"

I'm embarrassed to say I've never actually watched it.

There are about five possible meanings for this sentence.

Danger Zone!

Bonus quote: "Daredevil, Ben? There's no work as a daredevil?"--Dr. Katz

Interpretation 1 doesn't work without punctuation or, whilst singing, a line break with a pause long enough to be punctuation equivalent.

See???? Punctuation matters!

There is actually an ambiguous pause in the singing.

17: I think I've seen the standup version of that joke. It's Bobcat Goldthwait, I think. He goes on to talk about how his daughter can entertain herself by swinging her arms around.

Kudos for both 21.1 and 21.2.

The silence at last was broken

We flung wide the prison doors

EVery joyous word of love was spoken

And now there's twice the despair, twice the pain for us

Twice the deceit, twie the strain for us...

Is it too early to ask about a San Francisco meetup? I'll be there 4/1 - 4/7 for a conference, and have some free time on both the first and the last days.

In the early days of the Loglan artificial language (now Lojban), the standard example of an English phrase that could be parsed a great many ways was:

"Pretty little girl's school"

Of course it's worse when spoken, since the apostrophe is not pronounced.

Are you on maternity leave, heebs? Or just really bored for some other reason?

Nope, I'm at work until the second week of April. I just heard the song on the way to work.

I can make such a meetup.

I will no longer house your gerbil, Pretending, as I don't love you and can no longer sustain that burden.

When is the L.A. meet-up in my pants?

Sounds nuts.

ok, then can we have it?

(pssst, that's the signal for the pie in the face)

I'll probably be available for an early-April SF meetup.

I never miss the chance to hang out with Josh and the gang in the city.

30: I was tempted to propose it at the other place but didn't want to blow your cover!

Yay! What works better for folks, 4/1 or 4/7? A location near the Hilton Union Square would be fabulous.

I lost the link the the DC meet up page.

will, I think this is it. (Google was indirectly helpful.)

43 and previous: you guys should break into Tu Lan!

The 7th in SF would probably be easier for me, being Sunday, rather than a Monday night. I might be able to make a Monday, but I'm not sure.

Wikipedia tells me (and my faded memory) that this was one of the three Travis Tritt videos where he was playing a Vietnam Vet in a wheelchair.

I, Kant, Keep Pretending I Don't Love You Anymore.

I Can't Keep Pretending I Don't Love U Anymore

["saying otherwise would be a Lie"]

I. Can't keep pretending.
I. Don't love you anymore.

21.1: I can't keep pretending I don't love you, "Anymore".

I can't keep pretending. I don't love you any, Moore.

Nice work!

Since this is the language thread, I put this here:

For the literature majors and grammarians in the house:

A friend writes: "my copy editor wants me to turn "romantic era" into "romantic-era""

What say you, Mineshaft? Please show your work. Why is "romantic-era" wrong or unnecessary (as it seems to me)? There's some sentiment that it's appropriate when the words are forming a compound adjective, e.g. "romantic-era literature".

Thoughts? This is actually a Facebook bleg from a friend, who explains that she means something conceptual in speaking of "romantic era literature" rather than "Romantic literature." That's sort of a separate question from the hyphenation, it seems to me.

This is a question I am completely unequipped to answer -- my sense of when to hyphenate is a mess. But the hyphen seems wrong to me.

I despise copy editor bullshit, but I think the hyphen adds some clarity when used as a compound adjective, but should absolutely be dropped when era in "Romantic Era" is being used as a noun. Also why not punch the copy editor in the face for kicks?

57 nails it. If it's a compound adjective, fine. Otherwise, nonsense.

I dunno, I tend to disagree when it's a compound adjective as well. Are we to walk around saying (writing), all the time, things like "locally-grown tomatoes"? It seems to me clear enough that they're locally grown tomatoes. How does the hyphen add clarity? What is confusing?

The house editors and grammarians might be able to tell us something. Nosflow? Apo? Minivet?

Standard usage is to use a hyphen in compound adjectival phrases except when they involve adverbs ending in -ly. So "romantic-era" but "locally grown." It's not really a matter of clarity. It's just an orthographic convention.

There is also a sidebar on this of potential interest to the literature types among us: were my friend to be writing "Romantic era literature", she wouldn't be asked to hyphenate. Since she's demoted the Romantic to the merely romantic era [a move which is apparently not radical these days], she is supposed to hyphenate.

Erm, I guess because the Romantic (era) is a noun? There is apparently a similar dispute with the copy editor over Enlightenment vs. enlightenment.

60: Aha! Thanks.

Standard usage be damned, "locally-grown tomatoes" and "locally grown tomatoes" don't do the same things: the emphasis is in a different place, for one thing.

62.2: I agree with this. The first is designating them as being part of a class of tomatoes that are grown locally while the latter merely indicates that they were grown locally. Two slightly different things.

I understand 62/63, but it still seems like a huge inflation of slight usage differences - the meaning is 99.999% the same, and lots of people will swap them to no practical impact, so even articulating the distinction feels counterproductive. And it can't be broadened into anything about hyphenation.

And it can't be broadened into anything about hyphenation.

I gather that my friend who's being arm-twisted into "romantic-era" thinks that the hyphenation does do something to what she's saying which she does not want to happen.

A 99.999% sameness of meaning isn't the point, as it's the gesture/nuance/resonance/import of the demotion from Romantic to romantic that the writer doesn't want to be glossed over. Hyphenation glosses over.

I'd say this applies with locally grown tomatoes as well: think about how we say "locally-grown tomatoes" vs. "locally grown tomatoes". I, at least, speak the "locally-grown" part much more quickly, as though it's one word, than I do when speaking of a "locally grown tomato": in the latter case, my emphasis is equally on each word, and I'm pointing as much to the locale and the growing (by a farmer who's local!) as I am to the tomato.

Forgive me for keeping on about this, but my friend's dilemma re: "romantic-era" has moved into a discussion of prescriptivism vs. descriptivism. She's been referred to a Google trends result that shows that the hyphenated form enjoys no favor at all these days, but Google trends don't mean much. (People probably don't include hyphens when they search, for one thing.)

I feel as though some people here sometimes refer to some kind of literature search? Like a search of usage in actual written text over time? Minivet, maybe, or Stormcrow?

I wouldn't mind looking at that, for "romantic-era literature" vs. "romantic era literature" (or, substitute "sentiment" or some other term in place of literature).

What is that place you look for the literature search?

Oh, wait. Is it the Google Books ngram thingy?

One more bit about this, which I grasp is intensely boring to most.

The Google Books ngram thingy for this shows that usage of "romantic-era", hyphenated, is virtually nonexistent, at least until 1990 or so, compared to "romantic era", no hyphen.

If anyone's interested enough to click through, it's sort of interesting, but I wonder: is the GB ngram thingy case-sensitive?

I mean, I would hope it is, else what use is it?

In the end, parsi, your friend should be able to tell the copy editor what's what. In other words, so long as your friend is perfectly consistent and taks responsibility for that consistency, the copy editor should accept your friend's choice. And if that isn't the case, the copy editor should present a very good reason why: house style, an editor who has a bee in her or his bonnet, etc. It's almost always true that authors, at least when it comes to scholarly publications, have control of their words (except for book titles).

I'd like to quote you on that, VW, though I obviously can't. I don't know the details, which publishing house and so on, but it does sound as though my friend is throwing up her hands. I don't have the authority to tell her that she doesn't have to do that. Right now she's apparently sending the copy editor links to Google trends and the ngram thingy, in hopes that the copy editor will relent. It's pretty dumb.

The Ngram isn't really relevant because it's not distinguishing between nominal and adjectival uses of the phrases ("the romantic era was..." vs. "romantic-era literature was"); the former is presumably a much more common use. There might be a way to try to tease this out, but it would be tricky. Ngrams in general are hard to use in this sort of context-dependent issue.

I find it hard to believe romantic-era is common usage but I don't read much literary criticism these days.

72: What? That can't be right. Big data will answer all questions!

Somebody got pantsed by a database this week.

I don't understand why consistency is so critically important in style and copy-editing. If both options are ok, what's wrong with using both in different places?

||

This is the music thread, so it seems like a good place to link this video that somebody put together for the Caetano Veloso song, "A Little More Blue." (which Stanley will recognize).

It's a fantastic song, written when he was in London after having been exiled from Brazil for being too politically active, and it's about homesickness. He describes various sad memories and then says that today (being homesick) he feels more blue than he did than. A simple idea, but he's such a charismatic performer, and it's such an emotionally intense topic, it's a powerful song. And somebody found a bunch of different photos of him, in his younger days, looking attractive, charismatic, and bound for trouble.

I don't know much about his history or recognize many of the images (the first image is the cover from the album, with him cold living in England), but it's well done.

|>

I don't understand why consistency is so critically important in style and copy-editing. If both options are ok, what's wrong with using both in different places?

Conversely, if both options are okay, why not just pick one and stick with it?

Options are like nostrils then.

I'm coming to SFO on the 18th, staying 'til the 21st, on my routine spring exercise to test my ability to endure sleep-deprivation. anyone who wishes to help keep this rigorous, here I come!

Conversely, if both options are okay, why not just pick one and stick with it?

Because that is a lot more effort? Especially when multiple authors are contributing.