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Re: Worst Sentence You ever read

Posted: Wed Apr 29, 2009 10:17 pm
by LordRetard
Warren G. Harding wrote:I would like the government to do all it can to mitigate, then, in understanding, in mutuality of interest, in concern for the common good, our tasks will be solved.
In the words of E.E. Cummings at his death, "The only man, woman or child who wrote a simple declarative sentence with seven grammatical errors is dead."

Re: Worst Sentence You ever read

Posted: Sat May 02, 2009 6:54 pm
by Edminster
Joey Comeau wrote:I am applying to the position for university linguistics professor with your university, because while my love is language, it is also worth noting that language's love is me, for real, and it isn't as strange as it sounds because I think you will agree that while the verb love requires an agent of a living nature, language fills that requirement nicely – living as it does in the hearts and souls of every man, woman, child, and seeing eye dog that wanders this earth with a song in masculine, feminine, or neuter's possessive pronoun's heart and mind, and I feel that working in your university program, teaching undergrads and graduate students would not be the hell that this description evokes, but instead an opportunity to teach a love of language to a world that has decided to hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate, and hey, have you ever stopped to think that explicity is a much nicer word than explicitness on all fronts, at every border, in every way I feel this is true, and because I sat down to write them out, about a dozen times each, I feel I can speak with authority, using definiteness, definity, and seriously –it's just nicer I think, spiritually, though I'm still working on this study to try and prove it through polling of students at my current university, even though they just sort of stare at me all slack jawed, drool making the mad dash for a pavement that couldn't help but offer more in the way of intellectual stimulation than the chasm that is the modern undergraduate mind, that couldn't help but challenge the drool in a way that no English composition course could hope to, not in a world where universities are just as willing to hire professors who prescribe standard grammars as truer languages as they are to grant doctorates to such nincompoops with nonsense in their heads, no hearts in their chests, making me wonder about, well, don't think I haven't noticed that explicity has that little red underline in my word processor, my computer's way of endorsing those effers and their effing prescriptions, their nasal voices preaching "no prepositions at the ends of sentences, unless you have to, no split infinitives, no run on whatever, no this, no that," and I sincerely believe that they've cheated on their significant others, like I bet they've heard someone say something hateful toward the speech patterns of foreigners just learning English, and laughed, like I bet they've used the word "ebonics" knowing full well the condescending, racist nature of the word itself, relishing that root, "ebony", smiling at their coworkers from the African studies department in the hall, all the while having to consciously refrain from asking "what is it that be the up?" in perfect imitation of the phonetic transcripts they've been reading about in little journals, hate rags, and maybe they've picked up on the careful lexical selections in my anonymous letters, in the casual threats I leave on their answering machines, and no I can't promise that I won't physically attack these people if you hire me, but I can promise you this, I will be the best linguistics professor you've ever had, the professor that students recommend to one another, the new hotness, the rad, and in dark corners my colleagues over in the department of "Standard English is the one true lord," will fear the truth I bring to their students, my anger, my explicity.
I think this may be the best sentence I have ever read.

Re: Worst Sentence You ever read

Posted: Sat May 02, 2009 7:04 pm
by Cirtur
TL;DR I use commas liberally.

Re: Worst Sentence You ever read

Posted: Sat May 02, 2009 7:06 pm
by cheez.wiz
Cirtur wrote:TL;DR I use commas, libe,rally.
Fix'd that for you.

Re: Worst Sentence You ever read

Posted: Sat May 02, 2009 9:09 pm
by LordRetard
tl;dr that was my introductory linguistics text right there.

Re: Worst Sentence You ever read

Posted: Sat May 02, 2009 9:20 pm
by Cirtur
LR, I'm not sure you understand how TL;DR works.*

*Yes that's right, I am being stupidly condescending.

Re: Worst Sentence You ever read

Posted: Sun May 03, 2009 12:13 am
by LordRetard
Nah I just made a mistake, and it was crudely written at that. For some reason I thought it would be quicker to read an introductory text on linguistics than one rambling sentence. Really I meant the opposite; every ridiculous thing I spent learning this year is probably somewhere in that line, down to the "everyone is racist" and "prescriptivism is wrong" lines.

Re: Worst Sentence You ever read

Posted: Sun May 03, 2009 12:15 am
by Cirtur
I'm not racist.*


*Lies are fun.

Re: Worst Sentence You ever read

Posted: Sun May 03, 2009 4:00 am
by Sahan
It's not racist if you are also a race.

Re: Worst Sentence You ever read

Posted: Sun May 03, 2009 4:03 am
by Edminster
In that case I'm glad that I am a 10K Marathon.

Re: Worst Sentence You ever read

Posted: Sun May 03, 2009 4:07 am
by LordRetard
Sahan wrote:It's not racist if you are also a race.
Unfortunately, I am white, which is "unmarked".

Re: Worst Sentence You ever read

Posted: Sun May 03, 2009 1:15 pm
by Cirtur
Get some facepaint and you can be stripey. You can say that all your life you've been called "Stripes" and you laughed along with everyone, but deep inside it really hurt.

Re: Worst Sentence You ever read

Posted: Mon May 04, 2009 6:16 am
by Lethal Interjection
Or you could use the same paint and just Al Jolson it up.*

*When you get back from the hospital, be sure to let us know how it went.

Re: Worst Sentence You ever read

Posted: Mon May 04, 2009 3:19 pm
by ruotwocone
Chuck Dickens wrote:There were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a plain face, on the throne of England; there were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a fair face, on the throne of France.
Seriously Charles? There were a king!? Isn't that first grade english dumbass? Good god a tale of two cities sucked ass.

Re: Worst Sentence You ever read

Posted: Mon May 04, 2009 3:31 pm
by Cirtur
There were a king and a queen. That is correct.

There were a king and a queen on the throne of England. Also correct.

There were a king with a wide jaw, and a queen with a plain face on the throne of England. Technically correct but because of all the qualifiers the plural is forgotten and the "were" sounds wrong.