Errors Haunt Me Night and Day

In my "Twilight" blog, I misspelled Stephenie Meyer's name twice.

I later repented and looked up "forgiveness" in the dictionary.

Asymmetrical Style (and Why It Rocks)

A short while ago, I was looking for the matching sock to a splendidly un-fouled one I found on the floor of my room. It was white — pure white — Downy white. Mr. Clean would have worn that sock underneath his lumberjack boots (I assume he wears lumberjack boots, which are rubber but steel-toed (in case a lumberjack needs to kick a robot’s ass)).

Anyway, I was looking. On and on I looked, never finding a match. Once I came close, but that sock was not pure and white. It was old and crusty and occasionally it coughed and wheezed, like a foul, miserable, little sock (because that’s what it was). After three years of searching to no avail, I had nearly resolved to clean my filthily cozy quarters (hoping that a good vacuuming/purging would make clean socks easier to find).

I had almost uncorked the holy water when a violent epiphany struck me (violently). I didn’t need to clean my room. That was pointless (it would only get dirty again, as it did every time some ignorant fool tried to clean it). This cleaning was, in fact, almost as pointless as the symmetry of socks. People can’t even see socks. They go underneath shoes, then underneath pants. I grabbed a differently colored, longer, dirtier sock (one that Mr. Clean would probably not have worn, which is senseless because no one has ever seen Mr. Clean’s lower half (and because no one can see socks, which are worn beneath pants and shoes).

I wore the two mismatched socks all day, and whenever someone got in my face (which was never (because you can’t see socks (because they go under pants and shoes))), I kicked them with the foot that had the dirty sock on it (the left one). Then I went home and wrote a kickass blog entry about why it’s pointless to spend three years searching for a matching sock.

(I later found the other clean sock and didn’t care.)

The Twilight Epidemic

I address this distress call to any remaining men, because all of the nation’s women are infected with this unstoppable vampiric craze. Take up your torches, raise your idols and prepare to beat back countless slaves to the “Twilight” curse! The time has come and gone for action, and now, severely disadvantaged, we must face a disease that multiplies every second, and hope that whatever entity is good and pure in the universe will join our side. Though this terrible curse has drawn to it many great minds, there are forces left in the world that will never fall, demigods of masculinity like Chuck Norris and Mr. Clean.

Before we face any enemy, it’s important to understand what compels her. It’s important to understand how this curse works. Before trusting anyone, carefully observe them to be certain that they are indeed still uncontaminated.

The blighted make a habit of constantly withdrawing for hours or even days at a time to perform their unholy rituals in whatever private locales they tend to dwell. A darkness sweeps over them in their pestilent privacy, and they sit, in silence, poring over their captors: medium-sized books of the “Twilight” series. These fallen comrades are forever Stephanie Meyer’s unholy minions, and their numbers are bolstered every time one of our own falls. These lost souls are mostly teenage girls, who are the most susceptible to the “Twilight” curse, primarily because of their faintness of heart and weakness toward pale men who aren’t attractive enough in the real world and have to create an alternate reality where they are and where they can trick others into feeling accepted because of their hatred of worldly monotony and internal desire for outlandish and strange “undead” characteristics which don’t even conform to traditional vampire lore. Edward Cullen has taken these poor souls’ imaginations and twisted them with false romance. Beware, once under the “Twilight” curse’s influence, the pestilent ones can never be restored. We have all lost someone to this terrible epidemic. I have lost my little sister, who was only 16 when she was handed helplessly to the ranks of the damned.

Brothers, do not allow yourselves to be fooled. Reading “Twilight” is most certainly gay. Watching the movies will brand you as homosexual, and there’s no taking it back. False pretexts like, “I’m using it to get into this girl’s pants” or, “I didn’t really enjoy it, my girlfriend made me” or, “I thought I was immune because I wrestled alligators for 10 years” will not earn your soul back. Once a man’s eyes have gazed upon this pansy horror, they will never regain their masculinity, and will be ushered headlong into Stephanie Meyer’s slave army.

The creature responsible for transforming our beloved women, and rather effeminate men, is the sordid book we have all seen. The monster dominates bookstores, festering in its own toxic black aura. Even so, the threat ends not with mere leaflet pages, which are so easily purged with a deep, cleansing flame; the beast comes in many forms, and its most terrible shape yet has stretched across wide screens to poison our minds via motion picture presentations. It was a terrible day when the first “Twilight” movie came out. No one could have predicted that an entity as pure as cinema could fall to a lowly beast of the night, but, alas, it has, and look what fate it has wrought upon us!

The curse is set apart from regular diseases in that the hosts are not simply destroyed, but reanimated and given new drive to infect others, causing the curse to spread through its own unholy minions. As more and more become infected, they begin to resent their loneliness and maliciously draw other innocent minds into the terrible affliction, causing the number of infected souls to increase exponentially with time. Those few remaining braves who are not infected must be wary. We have all seen the compelling force of this foe, whose tainted lyrics have poisoned the minds of our race’s best. One gaze upon a blighted screen or an unholy tome will surely seal a stalwart rebel’s fate.

Do not give up all hope yet, though. Their bodies may be wasted, but the souls of the damned can still be saved, for every force in this universe has a weakness, every foe an Achilles’ heel, and this frightening epidemic is no better. We must strike at the source of our bane, the very pinnacle of unholiness. We must strike down the evil Robert Pattinson before his next rampage. My brothers, rip out this miscreant’s fake plastic fangs and wring his scrawny pale neck before he can bring anymore damage to the ones whom we love — or loved. Once the monarch of this curse is cast aside, his mindless acolytes will abandon his side, and, like all fads, the “Twilight” curse will fade into the fringes of acceptability, whence it came and whence it should have remained.

The Savior

Webster be praised!
The holy prophets Strunk & White have not forsaken us! Our Savior, Reno Sorensen, has come; the God of Style has descended from the Great Beyond to save us from a life of unholy sin! My children, renounce the your stylistic sins and join in praise of the One True Lord, the Almighty Webster, who has sent his only Son back to absolve of us our world of elegant variation and severed adverbs!
Pass on the word, that the Monday following the year's final paste-up shall henceforth be known as Linguistica!
Rejoice, my brothers and sisters, for our Savior has come, and His wisdom is great!

With travesty,
Pope Loren Johnson II

Supersexism

It’s gotten to the point where I can’t even go outside anymore. Everywhere I go, I can feel their cold prejudice looming over me, like a raincloud dampening my spirit. I bow my head and look at my feet as I walk down the city street, with thousands of burning, glaring feminist eyes boring into my back, all seeming to hiss, “QUIT OBJECTIFYING ME!”

Supersexism, the most crippling form of bigotry today, is the preconceived notion all women possess that all men are sexist. No matter what I do, no matter how courteous and respectful I am, no matter how many times I compliment their makeup, I cannot for one second escape the label with which women have branded me: the label of a sexist.

Despite workplace anti-sexism laws, female employers deny me jobs time and time again simply based on the fear that I possess a higher mental and physical capacity than they do and that I will earn one dollar for every 75 cents they make. Supersexism, therefore, has cost me jobs and distorted my life.

Thanks to ridiculous sexual harassment regulations, I’m afraid to make eye contact with girls at school for fear of being exiled to Antarctica for sexual harassment (figure 1). This is unfair. If women don’t want to be eyeballed they should dress in uglier clothes, or perhaps put on a little weight. All women are always watching to see if a man’s eyes ever, for even a microsecond, pass over their breasts. When most women talk to me nowadays, I simply close my eyes to show that I am taking extra steps to avoid ogling them. That’s why most men hate push-up bras.



Figure 1: There are no anti-sexism laws in Antarctica, largely due to the fact that there are no women in Antarctica.

Push-up bras are the most evil invention ever (figure 2). If you don’t know, they’re a type of underwear designed to lift a woman’s breasts and cause them to protrude even further than they normally do. This creates a weight imbalance in thinner women, and often causes them to stumble forward slightly when walking in high heels. A man who has closed his eyes to avoid accidental eye-rape, hearing the staggering girl coming, will often make the mistake of extending his arms to catch the falling female lest she fall and hurt herself; yet it’s so hard for most women to see how these circumstances could accidentally lead to a man catching two giant handfuls of cleavage, especially in the more breastically endowed females, whose naughty parts cover a wider surface area (the entire front of the torso).

Men, here’s some serious advice if you want to avoid this kind of inadvertent groping: let the bitch drop.

Figure 2: Just look at the evil. Disgusting!

These days, I can’t state my opinion in public anymore (except on blogs where women can’t slap me), for fear of accidentally “objectifying” nearby women. In recent weeks I have been apprehended for “offensive sexist remarks” so many times that I have simply resolved not to talk anymore in the presence of the opposite gender. Here’s an example of how a common remark could be labeled as sexist:

“Anne, make me a sandwich.”

Most women would first look at that sentence and feel that Anne is being domesticated and objectified. They would feel as though the speaker views Anne as a kitchen tool more than a person, yet notice the sentence’s structure: Anne is clearly the subject of the sentence, not the object. "Me," the guy, is actually one of the objects, despite what any feminist would tell you. (The other object is "sandwich." I will talk about sandwich objectification in future blog posts.) If the lesser gender would simply realize that a humble request for a sandwich is nothing more than a compliment about a girl’s culinary skills, the world would be a happier place for men.

Luckily, supersexism rehabilitation is simple: just embrace your inner ancient Greek and turn to homosexuality when your woman pisses you off. For men with too much dignity for that, it might help to become a sadomasochist, because there are many, many facial slappings along the path you have chosen.

Men, hold your heads high through this storm. Though women everywhere will persecute you solely for your sex for the rest of your life, help is on the way. In my next column, I will show you how to make yourself deaf to higher pitched noises (like a whiny woman’s voice) by blasting hardcore rock music in your ears until they bleed.

By the way, women or sensitive men who disagree with anything in this article are supersexists.

Linguisticism

Let it be known! The prophets Strunk & White have not forsaken us! As of about 10 p.m. Dec. 10, in the holy year of 2008, the call of our omniscient Lord was answered!

The Holy Church of Linguisticism was christened on Paste-Up evening. Our eyes were opened wide and all the ultimate questions were answered! All our eternal Lord, Merriam Webster, asks in return for everlasting deliverance — for protection from the stylistic sins of this world — is reverence of Him.

Open your eyes and your hearts for our Lord, for His knowledge is great and His power is ultimate! Only by turning to Him can life’s most awesome questions be answered. Yes! He will open your minds to the meaning of this life, for all is known to Him! In universal knowledge the Church of Linguisticism is superior to all other faiths. It is the only faith with the clear understanding of the Meaning of Life! The followers of our great Lord need only turn to the Book of L, in the holy doctrine of Linguisticism to find the Meaning of Life:

1. --Life: –noun, pl.: lives – the condition that distinguishes organisms from inorganic objects and dead organisms, being manifested by growth through metabolism, reproduction and the power of adaptation to environment through changes originating internally.

This is one of the many answers to the ultimate question. My good people, turn away from your lives of unholy sin — your lives littered with misspellings and split infinitives. The book of Linguisticism does not discriminate against any of the peoples of the world. Let us all be unified in our reverence of the one true Lord, Merriam Webster!

Our first Holy Communion will take place with the acceptance of rough drafts in the next Holy Cycle, when the observant will make themselves known.

Cordially,
Pope Loren Johnson II

What I do at Paste-Up Thursdays

NOTHING.

Obscenities

Being on a successful newspaper, I’m not allowed to print certain common phrases like “FUCK YOU.” This goes against my natural instinct to use one of my favorite rhetorical devices: the obscenity.

I have wanted to do this for so long. Upon the creation of this blog, I gained the ability to publish any word I want for the whole world to see. I can tell anyone what I think of them here, with no consequences — unless you call losing friends a consequence. I don’t. Screw them.

Here it comes! Three years of pent-up vulgarity, all in one explosion of curse words and dirty phrases:

Tits.

Whew. I feel so much better.

Spelling Error

I made a spelling error today. It was awful.

Loren makes an error

It has come to my attention that I used some pronouns without antecedents in the last blog post, and I just wanted to apologize in advance.

I know that most people have no clue what an antecedent is, and often the word pronoun brings looks of discomfort and confusion to my cohorts' faces, but I felt dirty just leaving the errors there without calling attention to them. It's a curse.

Here's the delinquent sentence:

Moving out of the way of the water, I turn the knob to its hottest setting and cry out in pain as it burns the bottoms of my feet while it flows into the drain.

The first pronoun "it" refers to the scalding water. The second "it" also refers to the scalding water.

There. This has been my most fulfilling blog post yet.

Shower Math

Family members often inquire as to what I could possibly be doing in the shower for 40 minutes each day. Sometimes I think about telling them, but then I realize these things are just better left alone. Does anybody really want to know what I do in the shower, besides apply soap to my wet, naked body?

But I don’t care what you think of me, blog readers! See? I just began a sentence with a conjunction. Oh, that feels dirty.

So I will tell you what I do in the shower for 40 minutes every day, because it really is amazing; just as penguins migrate miles and miles to mate each year, I go on my own sort of special adventure each morning as I strip down and lather up.

My attention span, some may say, is much like lightning. It’s a beautiful sight, but it’s always gone in a flash. That doesn’t apply only to class lectures and summer reading assignments though. Often, I get distracted in the shower during my daily routine. What could possibly distract me for a half-hour? Soap, shampoo, the various peculiarities of my own body, but most often, it’s my damned curiosity that threatens to make me late for school each morning.

One day, I had nearly remained focused for the entire shower cycle. I had gotten through the body wash, and I had already poured the shampoo into my hand when it happened. I was dumbfounded; a random question had taken hold of me, and at any cost I would know the answer:

What are the odds of rolling a yahtzee in Yahtzee?

Damn. Instantly, nothing was more important than knowing the answer to this, the question of all questions. I began to work it out in my head. What are the odds of rolling all the same number with five dice? Well crap. I’d better start small, I thought, the shampoo oozing off my hand. What about one die? That’s easy, it’s always all the same number with one die, so 100 percent. Sweet. One step closer. The shampoo slithered off the shower floor into the drain.

OK, how about two dice? Well, how many combinations are there? Steam began to rise around me. There should be six possibilities for the first die, and then six possibilities for its partner. Sweet. So that’s six times six? Duck? Wait, no – 36. Duck? Why would I think that? I saw a duck yesterday (figure 1). Wait. Focus.

Figure 1: A distracting duck.

OK, so 36 possibilities for two dice. Sweet. Wait, though, it seems too easy. More steam. HEY! One and two is the same as two and one! Shoot. I give up. If only I had a sheet of paper… but it would get wet…

...

…

...

WAIT! The steam! The sliding glass door is caked with it! It’s practically a white board!

1 – 1 2 – 2 3 – 3 4 – 4 5 – 5 6 – 6

1 – 2 2 – 3 3 – 4 4 – 5 5 – 6

1 – 3 2 – 4 3 – 5 4 – 6

1 – 4 2 – 5 3 – 6

1 – 5 2 – 6

1 – 6

(If you’re wondering, “Did he really write all of this with his finger on the foggy sliding glass door in his bathroom while hot water rolled off his naked body?” then the answer is yes. I did.)

That’s 21 possibilities for two dice. Six of those possibilities are doubles; therefore, the odds of rolling doubles are 6/21. Wait, but that’s almost a third of the time. That doesn’t seem right. Scratch that. Since there are two combos for 2 and 1 and 1 and 2 it’s twice as likely to occur and should be counted twice, bringing the odds back to 6/36, or 1/6 (I have a way of making things more complicated than they actually need to be, which you’ve probably noticed by now).

This means all of the numbers are complete idiocy. I find that I’m often a victim of my own idiocy. Unfortunately, I had used the entire foggy space of the glass to write this large sequence of meaningless numbers, leaving myself no room to further study my complex problem. How, though, do I clean the sliding glass shower door?

Then I remembered how innovative I am, and my superior brain quickly dissolved the problem.

Moving out of the way of the water, I turn the knob to its hottest setting and cry out in pain as it burns the bottoms of my feet while it flows into the drain. Soon the pain ends though; a fresh blast of steam covers the above collection of nonsense numbers like the large, foreboding wave that washes away one’s pointlessly intricate sandcastle (figure 2).

Figure 2: A pointlessly intricate sandcastle.

After having figured out the odds of rolling doubles with two dice are 1/6, and the odds of rolling a yahtzee with three dice are 1/36, I found the pattern. With four dice the odds are 1/216, and with five dice the odds are 1/1,296. After covering my shower door with multiplication problems, I had found the answer.

My life could now continue, once I had de-pruned. I stepped out of the shower/laboratory and dried myself by shaking like a dog for approximately seven minutes. Damn, I am interesting. Anyway, I resolved to move on with my day, having satisfied my thirst for Yahtzee knowledge.

Regrettably, I later realized that my findings were useless because you don’t just get one roll in Yahtzee, you get three. You’d have to first figure out the odds of rolling it on the first try, then the odds of rolling the same number with four dice out of five on the first try, then the odds of rolling three dice the same on the first try, and so on and so forth multiplying and dividing and adding all sorts of numbers. It’s a question for another shower.

Hopefully, this has shed some light on what people, or at least what I do in the shower for 45 minutes each day, other than the usual cleaning and the drinking warm shower water and the drawing obscene things with my finger on the foggy sliding glass door. I hope this has brightened someone’s day.

Pleonasms: another reason I hate my life

I hate pleonasms.

What’s a pleonasm you ask? I will tell you. It’s a thing designed to be difficult for me to notice, which I must remove, partly because they aren’t supposed to be there, but mostly because I just don’t like them. They are words that are really unnecessary but that people still include in their writing:

Tuna fish

ATM machine

Safe haven

Foreign imports

Free gift

So why do I hate them? You see, there are these things called “writers.” A writer’s job is to make my job as difficult as it can possibly be by being arrogant, stupid and unbearable. Writers decide to flip out when they see a circle around one of their words, because I put that circle there, and it means that I don’t like that word, which means that I don’t want it to be there, which means that they have to remove it.

Unfortunately, this opens up the door for a writer to do two of their favorite things in the whole world: 1) to ignore the circle, hoping that by the time their work returns to me for the final purging of errors I will be too tired and malnourished to see the error again, which I probably will be, or 2) to find me and force me to spend a significant portion of my life listening to their complaints and reasons as to why the word in question should not, in fact, be circled, as if I am not, in fact, the copy editor whose job it is to circle words like the one in question.

A writer will often try to explain to me the artistic elements and necessity of the word “that” in a sentence like this one:

“The cookie that I fed to my cactus this morning was delicious. Don’t ask me how I know.”

Notice that the word “that” is stupid and unnecessary. To my writers, this word is highly appealing, and its removal greatly detracts from their efforts. Mostly though, I think that my writers spend ridiculous amounts of time inserting pleonasms into their works as a covert group effort to drive me over the brink of insanity.

Often when encountering pleonasms, I regret my decision to become a copy editor, and I wonder how much I would need to pay to get my soul back — but then I stop and think about the difference I make in the world every day by removing these somewhat unnecessary words.

Then I cut myself and I usually feel slightly better.