1: The big news there is down to 66% in his own personality cult party.
hey! today's my birthday! someone in the prosecutor's office likes me!
for my birthday, yo quiero follar a Laura
Sex scandals are great, because they're easy to follow, and in this case, I don't mind, since the sex scandal is reflective of a larger problem. Yjis scandal is a microcosm of s lsrge part of what's wrong with the Reublican Congress. I won't say everyting, since our current government is just so depraved. The tie-in of the very real issue of botched and corrupt (culture of corruption, anyone?) national security contracts with sex gives a decidedly Profumo-esque quality.
You know, Bostoniangirl, I think you're missing the big picture here. These guys work hard. For you. And well, men have needs. And, correct me if I'm wrong, but contracts need to be filled. This just sounds like a win, win, win scenario to me.
[now, imagine me tilting my head forward, looking at you through my eyebrows, and nodding as if to say "don't you feel pretty foolish now?"]
7 should be:
Sex scandals are great, because they're easy to follow, and in this case, I don't mind, since the sex scandal is reflective of a larger problem.This scandal is a microcosm of a large part of what's wrong with the Republican Congress. I won't say that it's a microcosm of everything, since our current government is just so depraved in so many ways. The tie-in of the very real issue of botched and corrupt (culture of corruption, anyone?) national security contracts with sex gives this scandal a decidedly Profumo-esque air.
a microcosm of everything
It was cooler with the Jamaican accent.
Business first, then the whores. That's the way things are done on the Hill.
Since I'm desperately trying to cling to principle here, I'll note that this is a prostitution sex scandal, not a consensual and unpaid sex scandal.
It's the principle of the thing!
It's more than a prostitution scandal. It's a lobbyists providing hookers for Congressmen in exchange for favorable legislative treatment scandal. Clinton's pathetic office affair is downright charming by comparison.
Your principles remain intact.
It may also be a "Now that blowjobs are involved maybe the chattering classes will pay some fucking attention" scandal.
It's more than a prostitution scandal.
Oh, it gets even better. Laura Rozen's writes
"The limousine company was in Virginia and, it appears, it transported prostitutes across state lines into the District of Columbia. That's a federal crime - and one that's in an entirely different class than merely providing an illegal gratuity to a congressmen. If Wilkes is convicted of sex trafficking, he'll face significant jail time."
"Sex trafficking scandal" sounds even racier than "prostitution scandal."
Apo, did you see this? They got themselves a plague of witches in Gastonia.
"I'm not for it if it's got anything to do with witchcraft," resident Mildred Bumgardner said."
16: Shit, if that's all it takes, we should all just decide to take one for the team and draw straws.
Apo, did you see ?
Hey could we maybe get some Seinfeld episode references?
18: I'm willing to get a blowjob if it will help.
Seinfeld episode references
No comment for you! Back of the line.
"The limousine company was in Virginia and, it appears, it transported prostitutes across state lines into the District of Columbia. That's a federal crime - and one that's in an entirely different class than merely providing an illegal gratuity to a congressmen. If Wilkes is convicted of sex trafficking, he'll face significant jail time."
He's got hos,
In different area codes...
Also, here's me.
Hmm. That was not the picture I had in my head of you. I'm pretty sure I would say this to anybody here who posted a picture.
At Joe's concert, ac predicted who among the crowd was Joe before she had been told who he was.
I don't know. It probably had to do with your prominent position in the room (it was before the concert) and previous descriptions.
18: That's not taking one for the team. Chicken.
I don't really understand this whole "sending signals" thing, but I read 24 + 27 as "ac wants to have a million of Joe's babies."
Also, can we photoshop a hot chick into these pictures?
If w/d is right about the implication, since I was the one sending signals on behalf of ac, the deeper implication is that *I* want to have a million of Joe's babies.
In retrospect, though, w/d, I probably was sort of easy to spot, seeing as I wasn't wearing any pants.
ac wants to have a million of Joe's babies
Is ac a spider?
30: Dude, hotcongressmenwithdouchebags.com is going to sue your ass for stealing their pictures.
Joe has so many admirers, he has to beat them off with a broom.
Even more amusingly, JM, Tia, and I walked right past Joe in the lobby without realizing we had, even though we all had met him before. ac, the one person who had never met him, was like "Hey! I bet that's Joe!"
Joe has so many admirers, he has to beat them off with a broom.
ATM.
Cute -- he calls it his "broom".
The bristles are at the wrong end of this euphemism.
The bristles are at the wrong end of this euphemism.
I am left with a mental image in which one's short-and-curlies are replaced by long-and-bristlies. This is unpleasant.
Joe D, working the Rat Pack look. Also, tell us stories about Wetherhead.
Tim, do you know her? She's great. She's on Broadway now, understudying one of the leads in Spelling Bee.
Joe, I'm just wishing that you would have worn the shirt Tyler Maynard is sporting.
Nah, you should have worn the awesome "The Decider" shirt which Robin Williams wore for his Daily Show appearance last night.
#45: I don't know her. I know she's cute, though. And now I know she's impressive (I'm assuming - Broadway, and all) as well.
So, Joe, any chance of your music being made available for the listening pleasure of der Minenshaften?
and 37: That's not quite how it was for me. *Actually* I totally recognized Joe, and in fact tapped him on the shoulder, but at that very moment he was leaning in to hug a girl and closed his eyes, so my tap wasn't notice, and I though, "oh, I am but a blog friend, too incorporeal to be perceptible by sight or touch." Then I slinked off.
Then I slinked off
...and had millions of my babies.
That's not quite how it was for me. *Actually* I totally recognized Joe, and in fact tapped him on the shoulder, but at that very moment he was leaning in to hug a girl and closed his eyes, so my tap wasn't notice, and I though, "oh, I am but a blog friend, too incorporeal to be perceptible by sight or touch." Then I slinked off.
But I do remember thinking, whoa, this girl's hands are all over me!
52: After I get rejected, Apo's always there to pick up the pieces.
Joe
ac
Clarence
Marissa
that guy in Reno
the bike messenger in the alley
the woman who wouldn't take off the head of her Easter Bunny costume
my parents
my dog
Apo!
w-lfs-n isn't here to be the grammar nitpick, so I'm going to have to do it. Modesto KId, I apologize for being rude, but inappropriately phrased conditionals are a huge pet peeve of mine
Joe, I'm just wishing that you would have worn the shirt Tyler Maynard is sporting.
should be
Joe, I'm just wishing that you had worn the shirt Tyler Maynard is sporting.
I think that people elide the conditions in a weird way. "It would have been great if Joe had worn the shirt" becomes not "Would that Joe had worn the shirt," (archaic), but "I would hav elike dit, if Joe would have worn the shirt." Ick. And I can't remember the grammatical terms right now.
B-girl, how come the rephraser of the "would have been great" statement places his (or her) spaces in a nonstandard way?
58: I can't type, and, yeah, I know that my corrections are *really* obnoxious. As I said, it's a huge pet peeve of mine. And pet peeves tend to mak eme behave badly.
I don't really understand your objection, BG. What's the difference in meaning between MK's sentence and yours?
MK's sentence is ungrammatical and bad syntax. It is a common usage, but it is wrong.
It doesn't seem ungrammatical to me. Can you explain what's wrong with it?
This is not a full explanation, but here's a passage from Bartleby which may help:
would have for had. In spoken English, there is a growing tendency to use would have in place of the subjunctive had in contrary-to-fact clauses, such as If she would have (instead of if she had) only listened to me, this would never have happened. But this usage is still widely considered an error in writing. Only 14 percent of the Usage Panel accepts it in the previously cited sentence, and a similar amount—but 16 percent—accepts it in the sentence I wish you would have told me about this sooner.
That was supposed to be a blockquote. Damn!
Hmmm. "joe would have worn the shirt" is not the same as "joe had worn the shirt" which is what MK actually wishes. (?)
I wish that Joe had worn the shirt [SUBJUNCTIve], but he did not.
Or If joe had worn the shirt, I would have been hjappt, but he did not. Subjunctives following a verb of wishing are generally morphologically indistinct of the past tense indicative indicative. If the verb within the dependent clause would be in the past tense, then the subjunctive is teh pluperfect form.
Joe's not wearing the shirt. I wish that Jee were wearing the shirt. (present contrary to fact) It's not "I wish that Joe would wear the shirt." I am now too tired to be coherent.
I would say that this is because of the loss of the subjunctive in English. Do you notice this in speech, or just in writing?
Back when I was a proud member of the American Subjunctive Society, and displayed their initials after my name, I would have been able to explain this. But that was then. Had I but known what would happen, I would have taken notes. In my next life I will be sure to have taken, and remembered, grammer class.
But I think BG is right, and I think mcmc has hit the point: that the wish is that the shirt had definitely been worn - not that the shirt would have been worn but for the intervention of the flying spaghetti monster.
I would have been hjappt,
Had I not just come from http://houseoffame.blogspot.com/, I might have spent less time trying to translate "hjappt".
This is clearly a usage thing, though, and indicative of a change in the language. "Ungrammatical" is a technical term in linguistics, and it definitely doesn't apply here. Finding a semantic difference seems like the height of Latinate absurdity; BG's argument seems to be that the meaning is the same, but that her version is the only correct way to express it. This was surely true at some point, when the English subjunctive was more robust, but I doubt it still is. To me both sentences are equally grammatical and mean the exact same thing.
no, it's like a double-negative--it almost says what it means. We all understand it, but the expression is still incorrect. Not that I care really. I'm no tight-ass latin-speaking freak!!11!!
I wish I would've phrased that more elegantly.
No! There is right, and there is wrong, and we shouldn't be seduced by the permissiveness of relativism to accept the abomination of the ungrammatical! This country was built, our greatness founded, upon principles of strict grammatical construction! Save Our Subjunctive!
Fight! Fight! Classicist-linguist prescriptivist-descriptivist SMACKDOWN!
Should
Joe, I'm just wishing that you would have had worn the shirt Tyler Maynard is sporting.
be
Joe, I'm just wishing that you had had worn the shirt Tyler Maynard is sporting.
?
Take out one "had" in each, and that's BG's claim. I dispute it.
Joe, I'm just wishing that you had had worn the shirt Tyler Maynard is sporting.
that's all.
BG's right, technically, about the semantic differences. But the construction teofilo cites is very, very, very common. (googlefight for the correct construction beats it two to one.)
I suspect it stems from the varied roles of 'would.' (57 seems plausible to me.) And I expect, were I to be speaking quickly and casually, that I would use the construction, but only in the negative. ("If you wouldn't've eavesdropped, I wouldn't have to be having this conversation.")
Oh, what I mean is:
"Fight! Fight! Fight!"
63: Also, I did not know that Bartleby had taken up his pen once more. Big news!
Do people really perceive a semantic difference? If so, okay, I have no problem with there being a slight difference, but I can't see it mattering. I use this construction all the time, in both speech and writing, synonymously with the other one, and I've never heard anyone object to it before. Huh. It's still not ungrammatical, though.
BG's right.
Teofilo: one knows what TMK meant, but at the cost of extra processing power. The thing is: "I wish that you would have fallen in a well and died" doesn't make sense. Here is my completely factitious explanation, based on the introduction and elimination rules for "you'd": one can get from "I wish you had fallen in a well and died" to "I wish you'd fallen in a well and died", and "you'd", as is well known, is also a contraction of "you would", so people falsely expand it to "I wish you would [have] fallen in a well and died". For penance, both you and TMK should say twenty Pater Nosters, and then fall in wells and die.
You're all missing the point. He wasn't wearing pants.
That says something significant about the point, I think.
Ben: can you explain exactly how it doesn't make sense, though? It makes sense to me; I can use "would have" for subjunctive "had" in any context--they're totally synonymous for me. I had assumed this was the case generally, and I'd never heard anyone assert otherwise until this thread. Those of you who don't accept the construction: is this really a grammaticality problem? That is, if you hear someone say this, do you actually have to stop and think about how to parse it? Or is this a rule you learned in school or something?
Ben has explained the problem with "would have *" before.
Some things that make sense:
He would call if he liked you.
If only he would call!
If only he had called!
A thing that doesn't make sense:
If only he would have called!
I mean, what tense is that supposed to be? The post of mine Weiner linked was, obvs, facetious, but honestly, in "if only he would have called" my first instinct is to interpret "would" along the lines of the "would" in "he would call if ..."; having something to do with intent or willing.
Or is this a rule you learned in school or something?
The only rule I learned in school was to keep my head down.
I guess this really is a grammaticality judgment, then. Interesting. Like I said, I would interpret it exactly like the subjunctive "had" example. I stand by my statement that this probably results from the loss of the subjunctive.
Can't we all just agree that Joe should have gone up onstage and started undressing Tyler Maynard? And that Euan Morton should have joined in?
As the guy who started this brawl I ought to weigh in. Roughly reconstucting my thought process when I posted 46: [Go look at the pictures Joe posted.] 1. "I wish Joe had worn that shirt with all the spangles." [Hm. Rephrase that as a comment addressed to Joe.] 2. "Joe, I'm wishing you had worn that shirt with all the spangles." [It will sound better if you specify what shirt you're talking about.] 3. "Joe, I'm wishing you had worn the shirt Tyler Maynard is wearing." [Hm. "wear" is repeated. Let's find a synonym. "sporting" sounds kind of cool, plus as a bonus it is a verb I would never use right off the bat. Also let's say "just wishing".] 4. "Joe, I'm just wishing you had worn the shirt Tyler Maynard is sporting." [Ooh, sounding better! But that "had worn" isn't quite idiomatic to the English I hear spoken around me every day. Maybe if I use "would" can get B-Wo to freak out.] 5. "Joe, I'm just wishing that you would have worn the shirt Tyler Maynard is sporting." [Mission accomplished! Thanks, B-Girl!]
Oh and I meant to say: I would pay for a ticket to watch Joe and Euan undressing Tyler. You guys could produce it as "After Hours: The Zipper Unzipped" and donate proceeds to the Mineshaft Archival and Records Society.
Modesto Kid, I shouldn't have said anything, and, in real life, I wouldn't have.
MHS--I know that you're poking fun at me, but I have to say that my grandfather declared himself a charter member of the Society for the Preservation of Suppressed Positives. Keep couth alive!
I want to be the one undressed by Euan Morton. Is he so shallow that my equipment really matters? We're all just people underneath.
would of
Tia, takin' it up a notch!
Joe, would you just change your damn shirt already?
I'm glad everyone was paying attention to the music.
Tia, thanks for the link! It's cool to hear Joe's work.
MHS--I know that you're poking fun at me ...
Sorry, that was not my intent. I was agreeing with you. I really do mourn what Teofilo so casually calls 'the loss of the subjunctive'. I'm trying to make it a political issue in the congressional elections. "Who lost the subjunctive?" could be bigger than "who lost China?". Although perhaps, like China, the subjunctive has merely been misplaced and will turn up again.
I like the Society for the Preservation of Suppressed Positives. I'd join if it had a better acronym.
To my ear, the 'would have worn' construction sounds vaguely lower class, but it may be a regional variation (California?)
I can't believe I missed the thread where I was having someone's spider babies.
At least you had a good excuse.
I can't believe I missed hating on subjunctive "would have". My brain is saying let it go, but my heart is saying no, no.
You're living in the past, guys. Subjunctive "would have" is the wave of the future.
Seriously, does your grammar thingum not barf all over this:
The verdict would have been easier to swallow if the jurors wouldn’t have been hypocritical in their reasoning.