quote

October 7th, 2020

That’s enough out-of-context quote jokes – Ed.

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Discussion (32)¬

  1. Mockingbird says:
    October 7, 2020 at 12:34 pm

    Me agrees.

  2. Jesus F Iscariot says:
    October 7, 2020 at 2:14 pm

    A Catholic documentary proved, or at least supported, the fact of the Virgin Conception and Birth. They highlited a Sacred Turkey Baster in a golden showcase that had the corporate logo of The Archangel Gabriel and contained residue of Deity Ejaculated semen that still glows after two thousand years. Not fake news! Not a hoax!

  3. Forteatwo says:
    October 7, 2020 at 3:20 pm

    …..giving rise to the secret society, The Illuminaughty.

  4. jb says:
    October 7, 2020 at 3:30 pm

    Slightly off topic, but the linguist John McWhorter makes a very interesting argument that “Billy and me went to the store” is actually better English (in the sense of being more natural English) than the “Billy and I went to the store” rule that gets beaten into us from a young age. The point is that all languages are full of deep subtleties that young children nevertheless manage to pick up effortlessly, so if you have to beat a rule into a child’s head then maybe something is wrong with the rule. (The Atlantic article I linked to is only partly about the “Billy and me” rule — if you are interested there is a podcast where McWhorter goes into the rule in considerably more detail).

    Of course this isn’t really applicable here, since even McWhorter would agree that “me want to worship you” is wrong.

  5. Jveeds says:
    October 7, 2020 at 4:31 pm

    jb: I used to listen to McWhorter regularly but got tired what I have come to call his “shakespeare fallacy” statements–that is, a word or phrase that we consider ungrammatical or awkward now is OK because Shakespeare (who couldn’t spell his name the same way twice) used it. The “Billy and me” instance is not quite as flagrant (IMHO) but I’ve never heard of someone getting that “beaten into him” (figuratively, of course). I don’t think ‘Billy and me’ is any more “natural” than ‘Billy and I’. Some of the style rules, like putting the other person’s name first are perhaps “instilled” in us as customary, but that’s different from “beating a rule into a child’s head”

  6. Jveeds says:
    October 7, 2020 at 4:36 pm

    Brilliant episode, Author! One of your best. This is so good on at least two different levels: the silly use of Isaiah to fulfill a prophecy — what I call “prophecy mongering” — and then the coup de grace…the brilliant fake use of quote-mining in the last panel by Mo.

    As a side note, the “Immanuel” reference has always confused me since apparently no one actually called Jesus that. (But i’m open to clarification on that point).

  7. Paige Turner says:
    October 7, 2020 at 4:40 pm

    OOO, i love your language ones!

  8. Dr John the Wipper says:
    October 7, 2020 at 5:33 pm

    Jesus F Iscariot:
    A Catholic documentary proved, or at least supported, the fact of the Virgin Conception and Birth.
    And some prove it is!
    Actually, the “fact” of Mary being a virgin at Jesus’ birth was “established” by majority vote (but just barely…) at the Council of Nicea (i. e., the first council) AD 325; only more than 3 centuries afterwards.

  9. M27Holts says:
    October 7, 2020 at 5:51 pm

    Virgin birth? Supposing Mary wasn’t a particularly clean young lady….the holy ghost just jizzed on her feet and the holy bluebottles did the rest…

  10. Mockingbird says:
    October 7, 2020 at 6:11 pm

    ETERNAL WALL OF BULLSHIT is still promoting Jesus and Mo.

  11. Son of Glenner says:
    October 7, 2020 at 6:17 pm

    Dr John the Wipper: ‘the “fact” … was “established” by majority vote …’ You have seen the minutes of the meeting? Do they show who voted each way, or do they just record the numbers?

  12. WalterWalcarpit says:
    October 8, 2020 at 2:28 am

    Wow, that McWhorter link was a veritable rabbit hole.
    If in doubt, say the sentence without anyone else included.
    If ‘I’ fits, it’s invariably correct. If it doesn’t, it isn’t.

    As for ‘they’ for a gender neutral singular pronoun … it may catch on but i will continue to use ‘se’ ‘hes’ and ‘hem’ even if they don’t catch on.

    Great fun, Author. I’m always up for word games.

  13. jb says:
    October 8, 2020 at 4:15 am

    Jveeds — “Beaten into” is a bit of rhetorical excess, but the fact is that this doesn’t seem to be a rule that English speaking children absorb naturally, but instead acquire only after repeated correction. This is in contrast to some incredibly subtle rules that all native speakers learn without ever even being aware of them. The podcast I linked to goes into this in more detail than the Atlantic article, and it’s a pity there is no transcript.

    A particular example is “adjective precedence”. For example, a native speaker might say “a little old red schoolhouse”, but will never say “a red old little schoolhouse”. But why not? Well it turns out that in English, adjectives fall into classes, and the classes always appear in a fixed order (aside from certain exceptions, which follow their own rules). The never taught you about that in school, did they? But then they never needed to, because you (if you learned English as a child) just got it right without thinking.

    So why is the “Billy and I” thing different? Why do children need to be corrected, and have it explained to them in detail that since you say “I went to the store” you should therefore also say “Billy and I went to the store”? It’s a telling question, and I think McWhorter is probably on the right track.

  14. Mike hunt says:
    October 8, 2020 at 6:30 am

    “Billy and me” .? “me and Billy” is much more natural. “I and Billy” is too horrible for words. Strange isn’t it.

  15. M27Holts says:
    October 8, 2020 at 7:08 am

    Yip. When I bailed my swede out today. Wifey-tifey ponted out that I am definately a low-light sprout merchant…both she and I threw a stitch and considered the vagaries of local colloquialisms…

  16. Len says:
    October 8, 2020 at 8:09 am

    @Jveeds: I think the Immanuel reference is a retro-fitted prophesy. They pretty much always work as no-one who was around way back then is still around when you make the prophesy, so 100% accurate.

  17. Len says:
    October 8, 2020 at 8:32 am

    Me and Bobby McGee.

  18. Laripu says:
    October 8, 2020 at 1:11 pm

    Len, I see your “Me and Bobby McGee”
    and raise you “I and Bragger, and Junior Lee”
    from Rickie Lee Jones’ song Coolsville.

    Lyrics:
    https://www.rickieleejones.com/lyrics/coolsville.html
    Video of live show:
    https://youtu.be/Dr3siVqjzCY

  19. Uncle Roger says:
    October 9, 2020 at 12:00 am

    “Billy and me” (or even “me and Billy”) sounds extremely unnatural to me, not because I had anything beaten into me but because I grew up around people who could speak and write using correct grammar so what’s correct sounds natural to me while incorrect grammar hurts. My wife likes to put on “Family Feud” hosted by Steve Harvey while she works in the evenings and his horrible English pains me every time. “Somebody gonna win theyself a lot of money!” (Not to mention his christian hypocrisy.) btw, “I and Billy” sounds wrong because you should always put others first (unless you’re a christian, of course.)

  20. Laripu says:
    October 9, 2020 at 1:12 am

    What drives me crazy is “mute point” instead of “moot point”.

    If I meet someone that says it, I want to drown them in a moat. I could lose my mind, and then you never know… That might be what I mete.

    Off curse wot I really height is pour spling.

  21. Mockingbird says:
    October 9, 2020 at 2:01 am

    Jesus and Mo and me are all a bit fucking pissed off with the English Language lessons now.

  22. Laripu says:
    October 9, 2020 at 12:32 pm

    Mockingbird, are you now a spokesbird for J & M?
    If so, are they paying you in miracles?
    Or merely with thoughts and prayers?

  23. two cents' worth says:
    October 9, 2020 at 7:21 pm

    What irks me is when people use “I” after a preposition–for example, “Adam is staying with Bob and I.” I hear this sort of thing much more often than constructions like “Billy and me went to the store.” Nowadays, noticing such grammatical solecisms sometimes is a comforting way of diverting my attention from bigger issues, but other times I feel I’m wrong to care about grammar when there are so many major problems (COVID-19, climate change, racism, fascism–you name it) that need to be addressed :-/ . I think it’s time for me to take a walk outdoors, admire the new autumn leaves, and give my mind a rest!

  24. jb says:
    October 10, 2020 at 5:03 am

    two cents’ worth — WcWhorter suggests in the Atlantic article (and probably goes into it in more detail in the podcast, but I’m too lazy to check) that the “…staying with Bob and I” mistake is a consequence of imposing the unnatural “Billy and I went…” rule on English grammar. After being required to use “I” in one place where it doesn’t entirely feel right (i.e., as part of a compound subject at the beginning of a sentence), people, out of insecurity, end up using “I” in other places where it doesn’t really belong (e.g., as part of a compound object at the end of a sentence). More evidence that something is amiss.

  25. M27Holts says:
    October 10, 2020 at 9:06 am

    I always hated English at school…I still fook up my apostrophes to this day…

  26. Laripu says:
    October 12, 2020 at 12:56 am

    Fake bible quote generator:

    https://phrasegenerator.com/bible

    Enjoy!

  27. Son of Glenner says:
    October 12, 2020 at 9:45 am

    Laripu: Fake bible quote generator is hilarious! Even funnier than the real thing.

  28. PaulT says:
    October 12, 2020 at 10:53 pm

    “Me and Mrs Jones, we got a thing going on.”
    Billy Paul messing with my grammar in the 70s.

  29. Laripu says:
    October 13, 2020 at 12:54 am

    An example: “To Mishma, son of Amasa, thus saith God the Father: collect ye not boxes of curvy swords, but pots of waterfowl.”

    I’d like a meal of magret de canard. 🙂

  30. postdoggerel says:
    October 14, 2020 at 12:22 pm

    M27Holts
    “”…but it never stphruck your mudhead’s obtundity…that the more carrots you chop, the more turnips you slit, the more murphies you peel, the more onions you cry over, the more bullbeef you butch, the more mutton you crackerhack, the more potherbs you pound, the fiercer the fire and the longer your spoon and the harder you gruel with more grease to your elbow the merrier fumes your new Irish stew.”” – James Joyce

  31. Vanity Unfair says:
    October 14, 2020 at 2:02 pm

    Len,
    That’s good enough for me and Bobby McGee.

  32. Walter says:
    October 19, 2020 at 2:44 pm

    Hey we haven’t seen any female deities or prophetess. Like Maker Baker Eddy, Ellen G. White, and Kali etcetera.

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