Yeah, good to hear GR via a good connection. It almost sounded like he really was calling from NJ. But is it just me or did he call you ‘Cankleberry’?
It sounded like Cackleberry to me. Not sure. I don’t care what people call me anyway, as long as they do 
I think everyone gets on GR’s case because he talks better than all of us from the U.S. 
You mean ‘all the rest of us.’ This mistake is a pet peeve of mine.
Since we are not all from the U.S. wouldn’t that change the meaning? Just asking. 
Except in this case, “all of us” DOES work, since the comparative counterpart is not one of “us”.
So New Jersey is not part of the US???
Well, they are not, but we like to let them think they are. We try not to hurt people’s feelings, especially if they are armed to the teeth with machine guns and barrels and barrels of toxic waste.
I knew it! I’ve always told my mom she’s foreign.
That’s my Klingon name.
Btw, that book looks great! Going onto my wish list…
My god, I feel like such a bum. Only 525 posts?!? I’m not even OG! <:(
You’re as OG as it gets.
It’s ok Audra! We still love you!
I just finished listening to the cast.
Loved your call at the end, GR. Imagine that! Hearing your voice without static!
I must say, your American accent sounds more real than your Deutsch one.
Not the Jersey GR is from. If I am not mistaken, in that reality, Jersey was captured by the Nazi’s in World War II. They were able to fortify their position and continued to move inland towards the Mississippi. The U.S. was able to take advantage of the natural barrier the Mississippi creates and was able to stop the advance. Eventually the war ended and everything East of the Mississippi was re-named West Germany. 
Several of Hitler’s Top Secret projects continued on and eventually the Bell Project was successful in creating a way to transmit information between realities. I believe they have highly intelligent operatives using the internet to gather intelligence on our society and with it they will plan an invasion. I believe the Code Name for that is “Armageddon”. :eek:
Oh, did I forget to mention that everyone in that reality has a goatee.
Before there were OGs, before there was a blog, before there was a forum, there were Audra, Chuck, and Sean.
Eats Shoots & Leaves is aw’ight, but there’s a lot less action than you’d think. And when I say action, I mean hardcore grammatical stuff that’s useful, informative, and presented in a lively fashion.
As with most grammar books, it has a lot of self-important rattlin’ on about how crucial and earth-shaking the passions of the grammarian are. And, don’t get me wrong, grammarical (sic) work is important. But that kind of talk usually comes from parlor-trick magicians who think they’re wizards.
Eats Shoots also is an British book, and the US version (at least the 2004 version I have) leaves its British usage and mechanics intact. So for American purposes, it’s kinda corrupt. And I don’t mean that as a slam on it. Lotsa words with extra U’s. And they don’t do it like we we do.
I was much more satisfied with the works of Karen Elizabeth Gordon , author of clever, concise, and gothically embellished grammar & usage tomes such as The Deluxe Transitive Vampire: A Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager and the Doomed; The New Well-Tempered Sentence: A Punctuation Handbook for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed; and The Disheveled Dictionary: A Curious Caper Through Our Sumptuous Lexicon.
Now, when it comes to the teaching of writing, if you really wanna go hard-to-the-core-with-a-capital-H, the king of kings is Francis Christensen. And his Notes Toward a New Rhetoric: 9 Essays for Teachers is the bomb-diggity. It’s out of print, so it’s hard to find, but here’s two…
http://www.buy.com/prod/notes-toward-a-new-rhetoric-9-essays-for-teachers/q/loc/106/206844846.html
http://powells.com/s?kw=Notes+Toward+a+New+Rhetoric
And here’s a Google search if you really want to dig for it.
And it’s totally worth it. You won’t find a better practical guide to where the commas go and why. You can build a teaching career on the book.
Homeboy is the king of breaking a sentence down into its constituent parts – phrases and clauses – and elegantly stacking them to flow from one level of generality to the next. Here’s a link to academic talk about the merits of this kind of sentence-based pedagogy and why it’s (sadly) no longer in vogue. But it’s also got some horse[poop] about how diagramming sentences is good, to take it with salt-grains:
http://www.mccd.edu/faculty/mumfordj/usefulteacherlinks.htm
At very least, Gordon has way more pictures than Truss. Christensen, alas, has no pictures.
Announcement:
New Watchmen trailer out! Posted link in the Watchmen Teaser Trailer thread!
So I got some down time before flight ops, and I put on Pod cast #99 and 100. Boy there were some MIB references in there. A lot of foreshadowing that came true. I really think our GWC Crew has a hotline to the writers.
-Robert
It’s not the size of the post count, but how you use it.