Way #34 to improve your morning commute July 20, 2008
Posted by argotnavis in Life, Music.Tags: Boston, iPod, Nine Inch Nails
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I recently had the idea to update my iPod with several songs from quite a lot of artists, rather than whole albums from relatively few artists (these are really the only options you have when your iPod is a beefy 2ish GB). I find that this keeps me more entertained on the way to work, and it also allows me to include artists who otherwise might not have made the cut. Not that those are bad bands, but one has to make some tough choices.
The point of all of this, though, is that this also allowed for the inclusion of some early Nine Inch Nails. You see, when listening to Nine Inch Nails on the Green Line, the loud screeches from the wheels of the remarkable Breda Type 8s actually sound like parts of the song! It’s beautiful. Of course, this calls for further research.
Wait, are we still talking about cars? July 14, 2008
Posted by argotnavis in Cars, Humor, News.Tags: circumlocution, SUVs, writing
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Dan Neil’s review of the Ford Flex in the L.A. Times is a thing of beauty. It was published on July 2nd, but I just read it today, so it’s new to me. The Ford Flex, like most crossovers, is something I have basically no interest in. If I’m going to spend $45,000 (the “as tested” price in that review) to get 24 MPG on the highway, I’m going to at least do it in style. Of course, I’ve never claimed to have very practical taste. The point is, this isn’t a review I enjoyed because I think the car is cool.
So why did I enjoy it? Because it contains what I have to believe is the most circumlocutious description of a car’s styling ever written:
A vivid bit of hyper-design, with postmodern insouciance combined with a kind of raw primitivism — the squared-off profile is what you’d expect a 4-year-old to draw with a fat crayon — the Flex brought the station wagon into the sardonic age.
Translation: It looks like it was designed by a mental patient, or a hillbilly, or a chimpanzee, but in a good way!
How to waste an afternoon (or three) July 9, 2008
Posted by argotnavis in Language, Life.Tags: blogs, craigslist, Dan, errors, language resources
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I now have a new way to spend time when I’m not busy hitting refresh waiting for that cheap VB-2 to materialize on craigslist. Yes, I have recently rediscovered Paul Brians’ fantastic Common Errors in English (he asks that everyone link to that page, which answers any questions you might have about the site. If you’d just like to skip to the errors, well, go here), thanks to a comment on a recent entry in Dan’s blog. If you’re like me, there will be a lot to entertain you there.
It’s not that I make a lot of these common errors, or that I’m particularly picky about the way other people use language (although he does address my current, mystifyingly common pet peeve). Part of why I’ve been enjoying it so much is that Paul Brians is pretty funny, in an English professor sort of way. I think what I really enjoy, though, is guessing what the entries will actually be about before I click them. The entry for “ax” is a good example. I thought it was going to discuss the two spellings of the tool, but no, the ax in question is just a futuristic pronunciation of ask.
Anyway, check it out. There are some pretty good ones.
