Well, I was listening to Prairie Home Companion as I was driving to the National Orchestral Institute concert last night, and I happened to tune in just before he started the weekly news from Lake Wobegon. It's unfortunate that I was in my car and unable to record the date, time, and exact quote of this momentous but not necessarily positive development, so forgive me for being a bit vague. But something he said shook the foundations of one of the few remaining things I still believe in.
He used "lay" as a present-tense, intransitive verb. I'm sorry, I should have made sure you were sitting down before I just blurted that out. Sitting down? OK, I'll say it again: he used "lay" as a present-tense, intransitive verb. And he wasn't quoting a character from his story, or speaking in character as Guy Noir, Dusty (or does he play Lefty?) or anyone else.
Garrison Keillor! This is a man who majored in English, and is passionate about correct grammar and usage. He creates commercials for his imagined English Major's Society or something along those lines, and his characters meet other English major characters in lines at supermarkets and exchange views about the state of English today.
I've long been aware that language changes, and that nearly everything we say was considered, at some earlier time, a vulgar, sloppy or otherwise incorrect usage. There must, therefore, be several words or usages that are now in transition. I've long assumed that the lie/lay "problem" is probably one of these, and that the use of "lie" to mean "rest" or "recline" will someday be thought archaic. But I've held out in case there is hope for a recovery.
GK has also expressed this idea. In one of the aforementioned conversations between English majors, he and his counterpart in the supermarket line are comparing notes about English usage (and you wonder why Congress is trying to end funding for public broadcasting), and when she mentions one common error that bothers her, he replies that he's given up on correcting people on that, and is not sure he hasn't committed that abuse once or twice himself. For all that I know, he may have actually been talking about the lie/lay issue at that moment.
So is this the sign from above that it's time for me to give up resistance to this particular misuse, and perhaps adopt it myself? I mean, Good God, GK is the one public figure in the world whom I would expect to hold the line. I swear that the continuation of the Ketchup Council ad-skits owes primarily to the fact that it gives him a chance to have someone say, "These are the good years for Barb and me" (not "Barb and I") week after week.
Or did he simply slip? Do I have to listen to it next weekend to find out if he issues a public apology? So much rests on this!
Hey, how come this blog doesn't have more readers?
Maybe we should pass a goddamned Flag burning amendment just so that it doesn't get brought up again every five years or so.
I hope they add a clause that requires capitalization whenever the Flag is referred to in writing. Also, isn't it about time we started referring to the Flag as "He" and "Him"? Such a lack of respect we've been showing Him up until now!
Just wanted to create a sort of bookmark for this page of Google hints: Google Guide.
I wouldn't need most of this stuff -- if you need to do some math and you have access to Google but not to some sort of calculator program on your computer (or a Python shell :)) then there's something seriously wrong. But I didn't know, for example, that you could look for two words separated by exactly one word. Neat.
Today I filled up with 14.4 gallons of diesel fuel in my Golf. My tank capacity is 14.5 gallons.
It turns out that going 80 miles past the point where the fuel light goes on cuts it a lot closer than I'd calculated. I suppose that I should recognize that there's no guarantee that the fuel light comes on precisely when the fuel level reaches some set quantity. It could be that this time around, it came on a little later than it had in the past. This would still meet the stated standard of "hey, bozo, you weren't watching the fuel gauge, and now you're about to run out of fuel! (Well, not for a while yet, but you don't need to know that.) Get thee hence to the nearest diesel station and feed me!" but is rather unsatisfying to this C programmer who's perfectly content to do his own array bounds checking.