you have a secretary in your kitchen? you're secretly Bill Gates, aren't you?
I have a secretary in my pocket, I'm secretly Hugh Hefner.
I thought you were just happy to see me.
That was pretty mean of your coworker. It's a good thing you have this blog, where that sort of thing doesn't happen.
Did your kitchen secretary yell "PWNED!!"?
Mine sometimes does.
If you didn't let him win occasionally, he wouldn't keep coming back.
Hey, that thing happened again. Where the sidebar says SB beat me, but clearly I beat SB.
SB is posting from 14 seconds in the future...
Actually I cat-sit for the sidebar when it's out of town.
If Ogged had gone into accounting he'd have a less malicious secretary. Accountant firms are entirely humorless.
I picture accounting firms to be like Leo Bloom's workplace in The Producers (the musical, not the film) -- rows of green-eye-shaded clones toiling like slaves.
The funniest line in that whole show is when the one black accountant stands and sings, Show Boat-like:
Oh, I debits all de mornin', and I credits all de eb'nin', until dem ledgers be right...
Wait, you actually said "Nooooo!!"? Somebody or other is busted.....
It's Standpipe! Sorry.
What if he were invoking the movie cliché? Then I would not be busted. I would be redeemed!
Well maybe Frodo himself was invoking the movie cliché. Didja think of that? Huh? Huh?
Yes I did, and I rejected it as stupnid. That's "stupid" with an "n", which signifies moreness of stupid.
Petty squabbling aside, I would like to note a point of shame, and a point of pride. As to shame, 14 is expressed super badly. As to pride, 14 is expressed super badly in just the right way to prompt a discussion of perlocutionary force.
You know Larry Wall, former linguist, named his language not as a contraction of "Practical Extraction and Reporting Language" as is commonly reported, but rather after the beginning of "perlocution".
Then why has it not so prompted?
Beats me, St. Anselm.
Wait, you actually said "Nooooo!!"?
Um, well, actually...I said "No no no!" but took a little poetic license with the telling...
Someone owes me a peeled grape and an obeisance to be named later.
Yes, and "ill" in rap means "illocutionary."
What's wrong with 14?
And I invoke J.J. Thomson's theory of word-giving: Ogged gave me his word that he said "Nooooo!!", and so he must indemnify me for any losses I suffer by relying on him. So he owes you for the peeled grape and obesiance.
(However, SB, you do rock.)
In 14, my use of "redeemed" implies a prior fall from grace. Now unless calling someone "busted" causes them to be busted, I still possesed AOT(hat)W whatever grace was allotted me.
Also, it seems weird to me that one's redemption could be conditioned on the status of a third party's completed act. So even if "redeemed" were the right word, I used it in an entirely funky way.
Oooh, subtle. I guess you wanted "vindicated."
Which rules out the possibility of its being the right word!
I so do not rock. I barely pebble. I pretty much just silt.
Never compliment SB. It causes some kind of meltdown.
I took a compliment well, once.
From that well springs a fount of compliments, all of which you have taken, few of which you have taken well.
no no, eb, SB was suddenly switching to Spanish. That comment was really "I took a compliment well, 11." Why SB was addressing SB's claim to have taken the well of compliments to Emerson's comment about accounting will forever remain a mystery.
Down Mexico way, we'd call 33 "El Sucko Grande."
There is exactly one google hit for "ooseido", and it apparently has to do with a band called "Las Ketchup". That is vigorously awesome.
Never compliment SB. It causes some kind of meltdown.
SB Identity Index says: SB is female.
It might be sexy sexist in the same way that saying that African-Americans are often more athletic than whites is considered racist, I guess. That is, attributing (perhaps wrongly) something I think of as good to a group traditionally identified as a targeted minority. But seriously, of the men and women you know, which grouping is more uncomfortable with compliments? And orders to smile?
I'm not sure I know anyone who takes compliments well.
Are not displays of elaborate self-criticism, far from being tokens of sincere modesty, instead the most egregious forms of attention seeking?
You have a complicated relationship to your earnestness. Somewhere I might have posted what is said to have been Golda Meir's comment to Henry Kissinger: "stop being so modest, you're not that great."
I now think SB's a woman and ogged's a girl.
Now there are two females in your life.
Also, it seems weird to me that one's redemption could be conditioned on the status of a third party's completed act.
That's because you forget that redemption is first and foremost a financial act.
I'm sure it's clever, but I can never tell what rappers are saying.
So maybe Ben is the accountant wannabe I've been looking for, and not Ogged, Billy Joel, or Neil Diamond.
Ben is not the accountant you're looking for.
"stop being so modest, you're not that great."
That's funny! Also sound advice.
If I recall correctly, Golda Meir won the "ugliest world leader" contest on Seinfeld. I think it sometimes went unnoticed how mean that show/characters on it could be.
No, I doubt that's the reason. Nor do I see arguing the merits of one of the greatest shows in history against someone with a mind too fine to appreciate as being very productive.
a mind too fine to appreciate
More accounting jokes?
There's no accounting for taste.
You may have set a record for distance from "see" to "as," btw.
It's difficult to argue about the merits of a show that had none.
I don't see the claim which you make in your comment above, Weiner (the one pertaining to the distance between "see" and "as" in washerdreyer's comment, numbered 58 in this thread, that is) as being particularly plausible.
You're assuming I'm counting distance in words rather than nodes.
I just assumed that Matt had knowledge of how long it took w/d to type the sentence.
Actually, the goal was to trick Ben into counting the nodes himself. Lord knows I didn't.
Ben, only the prudence that befits the proprietor of an online journal of news and criticism such as this one keeps me from yet declaring you pwned!
I don't know what "nodes" means in this context.
Actually, neither do I. What the hell, Weiner? (I was thinking of it like "claims," but you would have just said "claims.")
Nodes in syntactic trees--see exercise 2.
Is this a good place to note that Fametracker--a reliable guide to all that is good and yummy--uses "demur" the way I like, but makes me look dumb by preceding it with "discretely"?
re 71: shouldn't "copier" and "sales" and not "digital" and "digital" be connected in exercise 2?
There's a typo in 74, but I think it's sales of office copiers that are digital; or parenthetically, ((digital (office copier)) sales). Seems OK to me.
Not copiers for digital, ie paperless, offices? You might say: why would a paperless office need a copier? But is it not precisely the case that paperless office is one most likely to lack a copier?
Sorry, meant "'digital' and 'sales'". So the "digital" that connects to "sales" brings with it, so to speak, the "office copier" that connects to it. Got it.
76: but we don't say "digital office," which is why you need that "ie."
Maybe you don't. I just wanted to be extra-extra clear. I bet lots of people would have known what I meant without the clarificatory remark! Lots, I say!
Actually I think it's like what's connected to "sales" is not "digital" but the node (on the second level) that is the ancestor of all of "digital" "office" and "copier." In fact the top-level node has two daughter nodes--one the node at which "sales" is, one which in turn has two daughter nodes, etc. etc. Every word or branch point gets a node, I think.
Wishing doesn't make it so, ogged.
81: Yeah, that's what I intended by "brings with it," but your explanation is better because it doesn't privilege "digital." Ok, maybe now I've got it.