Image of the Day: Off to Ottawa Edition
By · Aug, 30 2010, CommentsGonna be away for the next few days. Updates from the hotel possible but not promised!
Punctuation Mystery of the Day: M-Dash Edition
By · Aug, 30 2010, CommentsKeyser’s been noticing this peculiarity of punctuation a lot recently, and just came across yet another example:
Press — whom I like personally (and who has previously appeared on my podcast), made what were (in my estimation) the most controversial comments of the day.
What the hell is going on with opening a logical intrusion into a sentence with an m-dash (that is, a large large the same size as the letter m–here represented by two regular dashes) but closing it with a comma? Perhaps Keyser was misinformed about correct punctuation when he first studied English back at Medio-Central Hungarian State (Debrecen)–it was, after all, just a distribution course in his double major of daemonology and taxidermy–but he was taught that you close an intrusion like that with a second m-dash (as Keyser just illustrated!).
After noticing a few instances and being struck by their wrongness, Keyser’s been finding this error all over the place. Did someone forget to send him the memo on this new practice?
Remiss Image of the Day
By · Aug, 29 2010, CommentsSo What Have You Been Up To Anyway?: Keyser Edition
By · Aug, 29 2010, CommentsYo, readers/viewers! Perhaps you’ve been wondering what Keyser’s been up to of late, since it obviously hasn’t been blogging. The main thing is that term is coming up in ten days, and there’s a book that Keyser wants to get as much done on as possible before then, so he’s been daemonologizing at quite the pace recently. (The keyboard’s even been known been to start emitting vapor, but that may be caused by something other than the celerity of typing…) Also, Mrs. S. has to go to some dopey meetings in Ottawa next week, and Keyser will tag along, which will put a crimp in both writing and blogging. Actually, Keyser went to a Lady Gaga concert on Thursday. He asked Mrs. S. if she thought he should take along his camera, and she said no. Keyser stupidly went along with the advice Totally wrong decision! Remember, you should always seek advice, but you have to go with your own instincts and bear in mind that you’ll have to live with the consequences. Her reasoning was in fact wrong, and there might have been cool photos to share. As it is, it seemed pointless to blog about the concert with no images. (It wasn’t bad, though the opening act was awful.)
Oh, and the housing market is completely collapsing and the swine Geithner pretty much admitted that the HAMP plan was knowingly constructed to fuck-over a large number of applicants because it’s intended purpose from the start was to help out Fannie Mae and the big banks. Could you imagine what would have been the reaction in the media to such a revelation under Bush? As it is, everyone’s all, “Oh, okay, so you screwed thousands of regular people to help out Goldman Sachs. Cool.” Christ, what a world…
Image of the Day
By · Aug, 23 2010, CommentsBusy day. Went and took for measurements for a medical survey about cancer (they’re tracking tons of people to find out variables for cancer rates, so it has nothing to do with whether Keyser has cancer), grabbed a quick dinner and then went to a bookstore for the filming of a demo to get the okay for the production of another documentary about witch hunting. (The main production company is headquartered in Ireland, but they have an affiliate right here in Iglooland, which was convenient for them. The demo is sort of like a commercial with sound bits from, in this instance, various daemonological talking heads. The shoot here seemed to go okay. We’ll see if this show flies…) On the move, on the move!
Bad Attitude of the Day: Would-Be President Edition
By · Aug, 23 2010, CommentsJohn Quincy Adams is pretty much uniformly recognized as the biggest asshole to win the presidency. He was brainy all right, but a complete tool when it came to dealing with people. When he was sworn in, he tossed a bunch of way cool ideas over at Congress and basically said, “Here, morons. See if you’re smart enough to recognize how great these ideas are. And don’t forget, if you think otherwise, you’re just proving how retarded you are, and really, why do I even bother, since we already know from square one what pack of world-class cretins you are.” (Shown above is the famous presidential painting “Take it Or Leave It, Chumps.”) Oddly enough, the reaction on Capitol Hill was to instantly send the proposal to the Fuck You Subcommittee. Things went steadily down hill from there. [As for the use of the word, "retard," bear in mind that those were simpler days. They also referred to people with dyslexia by the technical term "stupid."]
And just to show that this attitude of his was not something he had to work on, here’s a snippet from a letter he wrote upon entering Harvard. For the previous five years he’d live with his father in Europe while the latter was engage in diplomatic work, so JQA now considered himself smarter than the rubes teaching at Harvard. This situation made him feel that it was “hard for me to submit to” what he considered the haughty faculty. Nonetheless, he believed that deferring to the authority of these idiots:
may be of use to me, as it mortifys my Vanity, and if anything, in the world, can teach me humility it will be to see myself subjected to the commands of a Person that I despise.
Talk about your lose-lose attitude! His self-indulgent arrogance means that he thinks he’s smarter than his teachers, yet he’s willing to give in to their erroneous views because such “humility” will make him a better person.
You know, the only bigger asshole president is generally considered to be JQA’s own dad, John Adams, so you can see that JQA came about his passive-aggresssive smugness honest. But you’d think that the voters might have learned better the first time around. Seemingly, not. And it doesn’t take a lot of empathy to see why Andrew Jackson (who beat JQA in the popular vote in 1824 but lost out to him when Congress decided the election) absolutely loathed the man.
Actually, there’s no need to cite Jackson. Everybody hated John Q. Adams, including the man himself. With good reason!
Image of the Day
By · Aug, 21 2010, CommentsDangerous Sex: So Bad Not Even the Picture on the Wall Can Look Edition
By · Aug, 21 2010, CommentsThe perils of just picking up any willing babe at the bar…
Don’t try this at home, children! Even trained professionals find it hard to make it out alive (though at least it’s a dandy way to go…).
The Throes of Passion: Fruit Edition
By · Aug, 21 2010, CommentsAnd they aren’t even passion fruit!










