Grammar Grump

I'm not trying to be grammar girl (who else can? I love you, grammar girl. I love you so muuuuch) or anything. I just need to get some things off my chest.

"Myriad" is an adjective.

A group "comprises" individuals.

Individuals "compose" a group.

A group is "composed" of individuals.

"Its" is possessive. "It's" is a contraction of "it is."

"Impact" is a noun, unless we are talking about your "impacted" teeth, in which case, ugh, sorry.

"Affect" is a verb. "Effect" is a noun.

I'm tired of seeing people who get paid lots of moolah to write and make these mistakes that a) they don't realize they are making but should have learned how to avoid in, I don't know, elementary or middle school and that b) their editors, if they have any, don't notice.

If you are a writer by trade, please take pride in your craft. I was knitting tonight, and dropped a bunch of stitches, and thought, "Well I'd like to do better but I don't really do this professionally, I am just learning."

But if I ever open an etsy shop (yeah right) I will damn sure take pride in my craft. I will not try to sell people scarves with dropped stitches (saving those for your Christmas gifts, dear cousins). I will respect my suckers customers enough to present my very best effort.

I wish people who wrote for money on the internet would do the same.*

The end.

*I am exempt from my own rule because I don't really do this professionally, I am just learning.

Dog Day Disappointments: A Listicle-Link Dump Combo

With limited commentary, please allow me to present a top-ten list of petty/petit bourgeois annoyances* that always seem to rear their ugly heads and stick their tongues out at me - and maybe also at you, yes, you! - in August, the year's crappiest and most inappropriately named month.

10. Paying your third electric bill of the summer, oh hello air-conditioning overuse

9. Humidity-induced makeup-smeared faces resembling infected characters in Outbreak

8. Realizing that Outbreak came out 15 years ago and you are therefore old for thinking about it

7. Lazy kneejerk political ads, especially ads produced by people with whom you usually agree

6. Doing everyone else's work while they are on sweet vacations (#7 might be related)
5. Sweating without provocation - like, when you are sitting down doing absolutely nothing
4. No built-in three-day weekends like "4th of July weekend" or "Labor Day weekend"
3. The thundering sound of 1,000 18 year olds setting foot onto campus for the first time
2. Reading the sucky news: I mean, you've got your slow news days, and slow news weeks, but August may be the only slow news month**
1. Biting into a bad peach

* They really are petty. The pettiest things you can imagine. I was grumpy this morning and thought it would be funny and possibly therapeutic to draw them out.
** And by slow I don't just mean fluffy stories, I mean stretching stories out until they are unrecognizable. I mean how long have we been talking about this "ground zero mosque that is neither at ground zero nor a mosque" (h/t Mike3550 and maybe Keith Olbermann, too, I think, probably others, for the Coffee Talk joke).

And The Cover Is Two Women Licking A Cone

"That's the great thing about blogging! You don't have to do something better, you just get to criticize other people!" -Mike 3550

And with that, I bring you a rant. This Rolling Stone "100 Agents of Change" list list had some major flaws. (h/t to JL) I suspect some of it had to do with the fact that we feel we have to have a number in the multiples of ten. 100 most change-agenty! 50 most beautiful (People)! 500 best-performing companies (Fortune)! So some lists get inflated. Also, it's Rolling Stone, so it caters to the limited attention span, and, on occasion, the rollingly stoned. I would have cut at least a) Michael Moore, b) Radiohead, c) Arne Duncan, and d) Nick Denton - because they haven't done anything a) that changed anything, b) recent, c) yet and d) unusual. #79 Neil Young had someone convert his car into a hybrid and then talked shit about GM. Really, Rolling Stone? The governator rings up at #61. The only thing he's changed is my opinion of the California electorate.

Given that, I see and raise the ridiculousness that is the fact that only 13 women made the cut. How about Michelle Obama? Isn't she changing the way we see the role of the first lady? Hillary Clinton made enormous strides to show us how close we are to having a female president. How about fewer pop and internet darlings and more artists and scientists? Cindy Sherman comes to mind. Unlike Michael Moore, Sherman has produced something in the last four years.

Also let's add more people who live in other countries and/or who aren't white. #76 Wafaa Al-Sadr is a great example of the type of awesome person that could be featured in this kind of article. LeBron James and Taylor Swift get enough media attention, let's feature people who are doing some good in the world.