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HEARD AND READ

On TV

# Paul will come after he. If the writer or speaker was thinking, Paul will come after he comes, maybe. Nevertheless, this example does not work grammatically if the preposition is not followed by a phrase with a subject and verb. That pronoun must be objective when it stands alone after the preposition.

# She became a hotbed for political intrigue. While it's possible that a person could be "a place which favors rapid growth or development", more likely the writer meant that the woman was a magnet for, or an instigator of, political intrigue, or her house was a hotbed, or even her bed was a hotbed. But what did the writer mean exactly?

# Flaunting its rules. "Flaunt" means to show off; "flout" means to mock. People usually flout rules, and flaunt their breaking of the rules.

# People are taking a shining to these lights. This was on a new show called I Want That, about cool new stuff. The script writers are compelled to use lame puns in the belief they will brighten up their writing (no pun intended). "Shine" could have been used for anything from light bulbs to moonshine. In this case, the writer really isn't familiar with this folksy idiom. People take a shine to things.

On Radio

# The vote count was not audible. They weren't talking about an oral vote, they were talking about counting votes. He meant auditable.

# The educational system. I can't say this is really wrong, but education system would do just fine with one less syllable. It is a system of education. This is more a matter of the ear than definition.

In Esquire

In the British June 2005 edition of Esquire, in an article called "Rat Scabies and The Holy Grail," the byline reads "Words by Christopher Dawes." (Photos by someone else.) "Words by" is a bit too cute. But that's not why I'm writing. In their collaboration for this article, Mr. Scabies (punk band drummer) and Mr. Dawes used a copy of The Da Vinci Code "as a platform for rolling joints and as roach material for the spliffs themselves." I thought the slang might have morphed since my slang days, but I've never heard "roach" used to mean "joint." It always meant the butt of a joint, presumably because it's little and brown. However, an online British slang dictionary says that over there it means a joint filter made from waste cardboard. (Why "waste"? Of course in this case maybe it should be "wasted".)

On a Billboard

They make me feel like it is, my bank. Why the comma? I'm not convinced that the ad writer really wanted to suggest a double reading for this sentence: (1) They make me feel like it is my bank, and/or (2) They make me feel like it is [which is my bank]. The second reading invests way too much into the banking relationship, in my experience: Not only is it my bank, but they really make me feel like it's mine! (Of course, maybe other people have much warmer feelings about banks than I ever had.)

In a TOEFL workbook

The house ~ as well as the collection and manner of displaying it ~ has changed over the years. "As well as" is not the equivalent of "and" so this sentence requires the singular verb. Logically, of course, everything has changed, the house, the collection, and the manner of display. "As well as" is not a simple conjunction; it should imply some sort of distinction between the elements linked, and in this example, "the house" stands out for emphasis. I wrote about this way back in PO2. Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage takes the descriptive road, saying that as well as "is often felt to be adding something of a parenthetical nature. This characteristic is usually signaled by the use of commas." So if the writer considers these elements all as part of the subject and uses a plural verb, no commas are used. In the example above, dashes were used instead. But Merriam-Webster's says use your instinctive feeling (but use commas with the singular verb and omit them with the plural verb); but when in doubt, use commas and a singular verb. Which is more or less what the sample sentence does. Got that?

Everywhere

You've probably noticed that the phrase "at the end of the day" has replaced "the bottom line." Don't know where it came from or why. Does it mean that we have turned away from the mentality that bases all values on profit? Probably not. At least we're not saying "at the end of the world."

Noodling Around Again

I just learned about catfish noodling a couple of years ago (catching catfish by hand), but for some reason it keeps popping up again recently. An ESPN article by Keith "Catfish" Sutton gives these other terms for the sport:

"Hogging" also is used (slang for going to the limit) as are the synonyms "tickling," "grabbling" and "graveling." Nebraskans prefer the term "stumping," and in Kentucky, "dogging" is the predominant idiom.

PLUCK AND LUCK

Galaxy Quest is on my list of movies that I watch frequently, and I even found the script online. A character in this Star Trek spoof finds himself unexpectedly thrown into a real adventure with the TV cast. He's afraid he's about to die, being the nameless crew member #6 who appeared only once in the series:

I'm expendable. I'm the guy in the episode who dies to prove that the situation is serious! . . . I thought maybe I was the crewman that stays on the ship and something is up there and it kills me, but now I'm thinking I'm the guy who gets killed by some monster five minutes after we land on the planet. . . . I'm the hysterical guy who needs to be slapped, and then I die!

Finally, a fellow crew member says, "Maybe you're the plucky comic relief, you ever think of that?"

This is my advice for the week: Be the plucky comic relief!

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