Why use unorthodox punctuation styles?

This one I really don't get. For whatever reason (and it doesn't matter why), we are programmed from an early age to read things in quotation marks as dialogue, and things outside them as exposition, and so on and so forth.

So why do some novels disdain these conventions?

Cold Mountain is the one that sticks in my head. It uses em-dashes, I believe, to denote dialogue. For this reason it does not read very smoothly. It leaves people wondering why this was done.

The only tenable reason is that the author is a pretentious jackass. "My dialogue is too brilliant to be shackled to some fuddy-duddy old convention." "People must take pause before every line, because every line is simply wonderful." "I do not care if people dislike my book, because they are not intelligent enough to understand it."

Well, if you don't want people to read your book, why write it? And then, why make it a burden to them?

Jerks.

Why do they make Smirnoff Ice?

Seriously. That stuff is vile.

It's girly, but that's not the problem. Well, that's not the main problem. That is a problem, because I find it frankly insulting that women are relegated to drinks made of fruit and disgusting.

But the fruit juice is okay, I guess. It's the disgusting that gets me.

I don't even know what it tastes like. I mean, ouzo is gross, but it is gross because it tastes like liquorice. Which is okay if you like drinking burning alcoholic liquorice.

But Smirnoff Ice is just ineffably vile. It's a little sweet, but sickeningly so, and it tastes like it may have had something of the malt or fruit variety in its past, but it's impossible to tell what.

Also it looks like milk of magnesia, which seems like an interesting choice for something people are supposed to want to drink.

Why don't people know that "pence" is plural?

In the lead-up to the NFL game at Wembley Stadium, which was rather cute, really, in many ways, many columnists tried to work in hackneyed phrases of British English. Some were more successful than others.

Some schmuck on ESPN.com spoke of "a pence." This has also occurred in the American blurb to an English mystery novel. They are both unforgivable.

The single coin, of which there are now one hundred in a pound (after the English went decimal), is called "a penny." I know this is a huge disappointment to everyone, because in this country we also call it a penny, and therefore it is not fodder for darling little headlines and ledes.

I'm not sure why we in this country say "pennies" instead of "pence," but that phenomenon really should not totally prevent the cognitive leap that implies that a sibilant at the end of a noun probably denotes a plural, if an archaic one.

Don't these people have editors? That can read?

Why can't people speak at an intelligible volume?

Seinfeld hated close talkers, and everyone hates loud talkers, especially loud cell phone talkers, but I hate people who don't talk at a high enough level for me to hear.

It's really not tough not to whisper, people. If you don't speak loudly enough, then I can't hear you, and you waste both of our time by making me ask you to repeat yourself. Also you make me feel like an idiot because sometimes I cut you slack and think maybe I just can't tell what you're saying, for some other reason than that you haven't bothered to inflate your chest cavity enough, or whatever.

Don't yell, don't whisper. Moderation can be difficult, but this is an easy one.

Why do Red Sox fans think that they are superior to all other fans?

I don't mean the ones from Boston who suffered for many years (although, seriously, the Sox were often pretty good).

I mean the ones you see everywhere, in their Red Sox baseball caps. They're not from Boston. They probably didn't care about the Sox before 2004, and probably only started caring after Game 6 of the ALCS. And yet, they think they are somehow better than equivalent people who root for the Yankees.

Well, they're not.

And what makes it worse is they try to play on the suffering. But you know they didn't suffer. And then, even if they are legit Boston fans, they are not currently suffering, because they are from Boston and the Patriots are a bona fide dynasty and the Sox have won a World Series in the last three years and Boston College are second in the country and they should just shut their damn whining because their lives are not hard.

You're supposed to root for your home team. There's no reason, it's just because. And there doesn't need to be a reason, because this is baseball.

Why do people pass themselves off as less literate than they are?

It now seems the fashion among the young, even among the over-educated, to throw rules of spelling and grammar away on a whim.

I don't mean just text messaging or MSN, AIM, or whatever. I mean in semi-permanent, non-real-time formats. And I don't mean people who can't spell--I understand that this is a talent and not so much a skill (although you could probably try a little harder).

This has got to be the first generation that is proud of a slovenly disregard for all establishment. I mean, hippies could generally spell. People did come up with words like "herstory" and "womyn," which are barbarisms (and stupid) but at least there's something behind them that isn't sheer stubborn laziness.

There are spelling and grammar conventions for a reason. They are an aid to understanding. Half of these people probably couldn't figure out a seventeenth-century manuscript (and neither can I), but they act as though an ignorance or disdain for everything that scholars have achieved since then is desirable. I'm pretty sure that more people are more able to read than ever before--why throw all that away just because you're an idiot?

Oh, and I'm not talking about split infinitives, or even noun/verb agreement. Those questions of usage have been relegated to the pedants, and while this may be tragic, I am fairly satisfied to be among the Spartans in that rearguard action.

It does not make you cooler, or more street, to pretend you don't know how to write. It merely makes you look like a moron.

Why are people obsessed with historical realism in films?

Look, we know that in the eighteenth century (or the third) hygiene was not particularly good. Also we know that in Britain they have hard water and therefore wearing more white than strictly necessary is not good laundry strategy.

However, when I see a film, I am not particularly interested in watching dirty people wearing brown.

In a film set in the Middle Ages, I would prefer Errol Flynn's Robin Hood to the new BBC one, for all the absurd bright colors they made Olivia DeHavilland wear. For Jane Austen, the early 90s BBC version of Pride and Prejudice, with Jane and Elizabeth always in white, clearly beats the one with Keira Knightley, in which everyone wears brown, all the time. You tell me that the first is not realistic. Well, absurdly rich and handsome men who love women with embarrassing families, through thick and thin, do not actually exist.

I do draw the line at perpetually shiny armor. That's just silly.

Why are hippies so damn sanctimonious?

So perhaps you'd like a paper bag instead of a plastic one. Maybe this is because you like how the paper one has a flat bottom, or you prefer the handles. Or maybe this is because you are a ginormous hippie and you recycle paper, so you don't want to get a bag you can't recycle.

All of these are acceptable.

What is not acceptable is going "Could I have paper, please? I'm a conservationist" in a cutesy little voice that would have small pink bunnies searching for a garrotte with which to kill you.

Nobody cares! No one asked! Keep your damn sanctimony to yourself.

Why do all soundtracks have derivative battle music?

If it's a classy movie, like Lord of the Rings, it sounds like Mozart's "Dies Irae." If it's a gritty movie, like Gladiator, it sounds like Holst's "Mars."

Always. And without exception. (Well, except for John Williams, who is fairly honest and extremely talented at this sort of thing and makes it rather less odious, and--and this is the important thing--catchy in its own right.)

Perhaps they are too afraid to strike out on their own, too worried that with all the swords and spears and what-have-you on the screen it will be too confusing for the viewers to tell there's a battle going on unless there's an insistent, driving 5/4 ostinato going on in the background. Or someone singing angrily and incomprehensibly backed by furious brass and frenetic strings.

This is lazy, people. This makes you the Aaron Copland of soundtracks. He sucked.

Why do sports uniforms get increasingly hideous?

So, it used to be that soccer was played in solid tops and solid shorts, football was played in a sweater (possibly with stripes on the sleeves) and solid trousers, and almost everything was in a color you could name, like yellow.

Now, the Seattle Seahawks have their own profoundly strange greens, including that ghastly narrow neon green stripe. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers have pants that are sometimes described as "pewter" but look like sick. The England national soccer team have unexpected mottled strips under the arms. They used to have strange, stylized, and nearly unrecognizable crosses of St. George on the shoulder, but appear to have recovered somewhat.

The other side of this sad story is the obsession with asymmetry. And by this I mean asymmetry beyond having the crest on the left chest and nothing on the right chest, which is natural and traditional (perhaps it is now appropriate to note that the bizarre St. George's cross was, of course, only on one shoulder). Now they have ugly hallucinatory swoops and splashes, which make England rugby look like Jackson Pollock or someone was strung out on meth when designing their kits.

The reason things have, in general, been symmetrical, for centuries, is that symmetry is pleasing to the eye. The Greeks figured this out a very very long time ago. Also, colors that are not naturally occurring, like the Philadelphia Eagles' "midnight green" are, like El Greco's red, fundamentally off-putting.

I really don't feel like "not ugly" is a very high bar.

Why don't people use their turn signals?

Turn signals are not just for fun. They are not just pretty flashy lights. They are in fact intended to help other people on the road figure out what you, with your tiny little pea-sized brain, are going to do with your automobile.

This is so they don't die. Which is, to my mind, a positive upshot. Go on the road, don't die, come home. This is a good day.

If you don't have your turn signal on, I am going to think that I can cross the intersection on my bicycle. Well, if I weren't sure that you were a) stupid, and b) a jerk. Fortunately, I know that both of these are the case, so I wait for you to turn.

And don't tell me it's broken. You spent too much money on that huge and hideous car for you to let things break on it.

Why do people who pretend to be serious scholars work in translation?

It means you are lazy jerks. I don't care if you're not good with languages; if you don't bother to learn Greek (for example, in philosophy), you are at the mercy of the guy who did the translation you use. It might be a good translation. It might not be. He might be trying to sell a point, whether he knows it or not.

In such things, the shades of meaning matter. The gist of the passage is not sufficient. You also need to know if, say, another form of the same word occurs, because that tells you how the writer is thinking. This might not come through in a translation.

If you claim to be expert in your field, you should be equipped with the basic tools.

Why are the fat police such killjoys?

So I've been seeing signs in my town for the "Halloween Candy Buy-Back." According to this system, if a child brings his candy in to one of the participating places, he will receive fifty cents for each pound.

Or, something between, say, three and ten percent of what was paid for it. Also this will leave a kid, even a kid who has extremely good trick or treating strategies, with about $2.50 to show for enough candy to make him sick till Christmas.

This is lame and cruel.

Hallowe'en candy does not make your kid fat. Do not make him dread Hallowe'en because you are simultaneously too lazy and too interfering to be a good parent.

The candy might make him sick for a day, or bounce off the walls. This is a small price to pay for his not hating you for the rest of his life.

Hooray for Step #1483 in the systematic destruction of childhood. (It comes right after not letting children eat cookie dough.)

Why [the hell] did Al Gore win a Nobel Peace Prize?

Last I checked, there were awards for films. They're called the Academy Awards, or the Oscars. Everyone knows about them, everyone watches (at least part of) them, and they are given for outstanding work on film (at least theoretically; I'm not going to nitpick here...yet).

If there were a Nobel Prize for Film, then maybe. I haven't seen An Inconvenient Truth and I don't intend to. I also haven't read Earth in the Balance and I'm not going to.

But the Nobel Peace Prize is not for film, literature, or even climate change science. Not by any demented stretch of the imagination. That's why it's called the Nobel "Peace" Prize.

He already has the Oscar. I'm not sure I want the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences dictating who gets the Nobel Peace Prize. It's not actually relevant, but there are people who pay attention.

Why do they make string cheese that doesn't string?

So I went into the fridge today and saw some nifty mottled (as in orange and white cheddar mix, but not the twisty kind) string cheese.

Or so I thought.

I go to peel off a string, and a tiny little chunk comes off. Undaunted, I attack a different corner. The same thing happens. Indeed, it happens on every corner. I had to eat it like a candy bar.

The whole point of these things, unless you are a joyless crank, is to peel off the little strings. If I wanted to eat non-interactive cheese, I would get a hunk of it and use a knife, jerks.

Why do unskinny-leg girls wear skinny-leg jeans?

They look ridiculous! They look ridiculous on anyone over 1% body fat, which means that you can be underweight and still look bad.

Therefore, fight the power! Stop looking like an idiot when you could look nice! You do not look edgy; you just look fat.

I see wide leg trousers are back in. Look to the future, people.

Why are people idiots about the obligatory ethnic sidekick?

So there's this show, "Robin Hood," on the BBC. It involves, among other things, a scruffy and kind of gross Robin, an eyeliner-wearing black-clad Guy of Gisbourne, a Sheriff eerily reminiscent of Billy Joel, and some seriously weird script-writing.

What it also involves is perhaps the most absurd ethnic sidekick of all time.

1. It's a woman. Which is neither here nor there, really, but smacks of "all literature/film/television is sexist so here is another female character and damn the torpedoes!" This involves strange, ill-timed, and unfunny comic relief on the sexism theme.
2. It is alleged to be a Saracen. This is so that we can somehow move on and grow and be progressive about a story that's set during the Crusades, following in the grand tradition of Morgan Freeman playing an Arab to Kevin Costner's ineffable portrayal of nobody knows what.
3. Its name is "Djaq." Which is ridiculous and stupid. And, contrary to the beliefs of the writers, does not make for amusing gender confusion.
4. It's an alchemist. So there are explosions. Well, that, at least, is lots of fun, if, strictly speaking, also completely insane. Well, I enjoyed the shrapnel in 300, so I should suck it up.
5. This is the worst one. "Saracen" to me says "someone from the Holy Land at the time of the Crusades." And I checked on Wikipedia and appear to be correct. That is to say, someone from the eastern littoral of the Mediterranean. Well, the actress's name is Anjali Jay, and her features are from somewhere east of the Indus, I'm pretty sure. Which...um...makes her not a Saracen. Whoops.



All I'm saying is, if you're going to have an obligatory ethnic sidekick so you don't look racist, could you not just pick the first person with slightly dark skin and decide he is the particular ethnicity you're looking for?

Why do people gesture during divine service?

I'm pretty sure God gets embarrassed at that sort of thing.

Why would you wave your hands in the air during church? Savages do that.

It's a hymn. It's by, you know, Sabine Baring-Gould or someone. It is not improved by strange movements of the hand. In fact, you just look like a weirdo.

I'm fine with spiritual uplift. Or whatever. Just keep it to yourself.

Why is Renee Zellweger in films?

Lollipop with squinty pouty head! What is that?

Now...Jerry Maguire was okay, but that was because it was before she got all squinty and pouty. I wonder why it got worse, but I don't wonder too much because then I'd actually have to think about her and then I'd have to jump in front of a train.

But, seriously, Chicago? All she did was detract from quality Catherine Zeta-Jones time. And Down With Love? Sarah Paulson, Ewan McGregor, and David Hyde Pierce. Fabulous remainder of ensemble, so why the hell was she the odd man out?

And Bridget Jones. Aren't there British actresses for that part who aren't phenomenally annoying?

All I ask is that you find me an actress so that I don't have to like movies in spite of her. Yuk.

Why do intentional walks exist?

To continue our theme of baseball, which is making me super angry right now because, well, on the (very short) list of things I don't hate are the Philadelphia Phillies:

I hate the intentional walk.* I think it makes you a sissy. I also think it guarantees a man on base instead of giving you a chance at an out (this is incontrovertible).

My special favorite is walking the bases loaded. What? WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT? Yeah, the big hitter's not at the plate, but most people can dink a single. And now someone's going to score. Jackass.

Also, pulling the pitcher with the bases loaded and two outs. Yes, he could give up the grand slam ball. That's the worst that could happen. (The reliever could serve up a grand slam ball too, Kyle Lohse.) The best is a strikeout. Both of these could happen. Just give him the out, man.

* Sentiment bows to principle in this one when Barry Bonds is chasing Hank Aaron's record. If there had ever been a time to walk someone intentionally--forever--that was it. Way to drop the ball, Major League Baseball.

Why are the television networks so un-American?

They just hate freedom so very much.

For one, Monday Night Football is now on cable. Now, this is the second year, and most people who like watching football have ESPN, so you may claim that it's not really that big a problem. In addition, the home market cities get the Monday night games for free, thanks to ESPN's having ABC as a sister station. (Of course, it's still, on a very basic level, un-American to have MNF on cable.)

Much worse is that the National League playoffs are on TBS. This is the nation's pastime, right? Right?

And yet, if you live in Philadelphia, and you don't have TBS (for which you should probably be commended, since it means you don't want to watch six hours of sitcom re-runs a day), you can't watch the Phillies play the Rockies in their NLDS. There is no home market exception.

What are we, communists?

Why does Firefox hate me?

Sometimes, when I have two windows open in Firefox, and one of them is smaller, it will snap back to the upper left corner of the larger one, when I try to move it (the smaller one).

This is really really annoying.

The second, smaller window, is usually GameCast, or the run-by-run cricket updates from BBC Sport, or StatTracker--anyway, it's almost always sports, and I want at least part of it visible at all times. And if it snaps back like that, it will not be visible.

When it does this, it can usually be moved in one of three directions--down, left, or right. It is not consistent as to which direction it can be moved, and if you guess wrong it will snap back. It is completely unclear why it does this, from start to finish.

Plus, somewhere, I can hear the GPL laughing at me. And I resent that.

Why do people use extraneous subjunctives?

For instance, the ever-popular and agony-inducing "I wish you would have [called me earlier/not spilled Perrier on my topsiders/died in a fire]." I'm not really sure what this means, and I suspect the people who use it do not know either.

It's also awkward and unwieldy. For example, "I wish you would have not spilled Perrier on my topsiders" sounds horrible. But "I wish you had not spilled Perrier on my topsiders" is straightforward.

"I wish you had called me earlier." That makes sense. Why introduce the other conditional? It does not belong in the apodosis, fools!