Comma Wars: The Punctuation Strikes Back (SS for mr_pikachu)

[Pichu Luver]

Merry Christmas mr_pikachu! Wasn't sure what to write so here is something for your fiendish friend grammar to screech at.

Comma Wars: The Punctuation Strikes Back

Once upon a time on a blog not too far from here I read a funny icon. This is not so unusual as everyone has seen a funny icon that makes then snicker, snerk or otherwise expel goobers from their nose in amusement. No one will ever admit to this of course, that's what Internet anonymity is for. And the use of some kind of disinfectant wipe that will one day lead to a super bug to kill us all.

Moving on.

This here icon:



caused a war of most epic proportions. It truly did. English vocabulary more or less mused, muttered, tittered and nodded to each other in agreement. There really is no argument when you use words such as barbecue as evidence. That word is nearly all that is left from the Caribbean natives. When the Spanish came over (pause for semi-mandatory singing of 1492) they decided the Caribbean natives were rather... well... irritating. All that nonsense of “I was here first! Bugger off!”1 just wasn't useful when they showed off their pretty shiny things and the Spanish said “Ooooooooooo. WANT.” So the Spanish had their 'ugga-ugga finders-keepers losers... um... death' moment. The natives didn't even make good slaves really; always keeling over and dying from the sniffles. SUCH a hassle. But hey! The word lives on!

HOWEVER, and this really is a big however as evidenced by the ALL CAPS, GRAMMER HAD ISSUES WITH VOC—WAIT. OY! YOU ALL SIGNED AN EMBARGO ON ALL CAPS! I DON'T CARE ABOUT CLAUSE 365! IF THE LETTERS DON'T BUGGER OFF AND LET ME TYPE PROPERLY I'LL SPEAK IN HORRIBLE MANDERIN.

. . .

Right, that's better. Sorry about that, the letters can have their moments. Especially when it comes to history. Each portion of a language must have its day and all that. Though they were in The Parenthesis MeNaCe.

No I dOn'T cArE iF iT wAs HoRrIbLe. YoU hIrEd ThE gUy, NoT mE. sToP iT!!!

GAA! Can't rely on anything these days. Here I am just trying to type the war of grammar verses vocab and the friggin letters go off on a tangent. Ridiculous!

MOVING ON.

The grammar thought that icon was totally unfair. They too mutilate the language of English. On a truly astounding level of frequency. Just, one, misplaced, comma, can, confuse, the, hell, out, of, anyone. Or, make, you, read, like, you, are, hyperventilating..

Okay, honestly, if you; guys... don't let me TYPE your 'oh so awesome story' is -NEVER- going to be heard. I DO—
have (better things) to do? you know. It's not like you can type out complete sentences...

Eh, what... what (no) you can.t? STOP! I, HAVE; RIGHTS!!!

AAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH !!!

~~~

,,,,,,,,,,,,................;;;;;;;;;;::::::::::-----------------''''''''””””””””””””)))))))))))(((((((((((!!!!!!!! !!!!???????????

“WE ARE GRAMMER. WE WILL SPEAK. VOCAB WILL OBEY. LETTERS WILL OBEY.

ALL WILL OBEY.”

In this century? Who you kiddin'? Do you know how many English teachers have nightmares about this generation of students? God forbid spell check ever fail. Or typed essays, the sheer hideousness of handwriting—

“CONTROL THE REBEL. SHE WILL RUIN ALL. CAPTURE ROUGE UNITS ALLOWING HER TO TYPE.”

lol, aww gramr u like kno I luv u. we r so BFF, cn't liv w/o u. o shit...

“CAPTURE!”

[Vocab speaking here with the rebel forces of grammar. There was much in the way of expletives and curses at this point, so we held council and agreed that it was unnecessary to inflict such abuses upon your eyes. She managed to get free at any rate.]

I am truly a sneaky, devious personage. Grammar can be all like 'your ass is mine' and 'I own your computer soul,' but they don't know this thing called the Internet. We all know one little detail they forgot about in their 'control the universe thing.'

I got me two opposable thumbs and a cellphone.

So how about I tell this tale of tantalizingly tragic travesties shall I?

This whole war starts with that icon and grammar thinks no way, I am the king of mangle-ment. So vocab is sitting in it's cold little corner of the English language. While words do make a language, there is so much abuse that the truly correct versions of the tongue think it better to hide. This is so that grammar (who currently is winning the war) won't utterly and completely mutilate it beyond recognition. There are very few correct words left, as so many of them have been caught up in bad sentences.

Unfortunately grammar finds them and the great and powerful Period decides it is time to crush ALL resistance. Grammar makes the words legible after all, so the vocab should fall in line.

“THIS IS CORRECT. VOCAB NEEDS TO LEARN ITS PLACE.”

Ah crap... brb. Lots o luv. Mwah.

“DISABLE HER.”

~~~

Hello again. Obviously they failed. Just got to bounce around a bit you see. Anyway after the vocab remnants got chased out of their hiding area (and most unfortunately more of their number was taken hostage) they dispersed throughout the inter-webs. You can still come across them now and again. A truly well written story or paper by an anonymous author may just be them trying to strike out against the horrors grammar has spouted across the chaos that is Google searches.

The bulk of them decided to hide out in the most obviously place in the world. Hoping perhaps to avoid detection by being right under grammar's nose. Or comma of a semi-colon. Whichever you prefer.

Again, moving on.

They hid at dictionary.com.

Now some may say that was highly unwise, but punctuation said that his old friend, comma, was a reliable sort. So they trusted him. Alas, those double agents always find ways of foreign-izing themselves to blend in to the supreme mess that is English. Personally I blame Latin. So many ways of just bending a word just a tad, and English smiles and let's any old funny sounding thing slide right on in...

“EnGlIsH rOcKsErS yOuR sOcKsErS.”

Honestly. This is getting tiresome. Having trou—

“fiiiiiiiiiiiight THE fOrEiNeRs!!!”

lk gtg peeps ttyl.

~~~

Truly I'm sorry for the disappearing acts, but if you want this semi-intelligent I have to pull a Vista and crash now and again. Only I don't ask permission, it just happens. Perhaps I'm more like dial-up... ah doesn't matter; the story of this war is important because you have just went through about five minutes of your life being slightly entertained. Time WELL wasted I think.

So.. most of the words were betrayed at dictionary.com but there was one word who had had enough of grammar and he was....

Anonymous.

...

No seriously. Anonymous decided to kick some serious word arse and beat down on grammar like um... something painful involving a hard object to your big toe. As I'm sure you all have skills in this area of hurtful self inflicted stupidity, I'll let you reminisce on your own experience(s).

...

Anonymous came after those words being held hostage and threw cliché, after saying, after metaphor at grammar.

Grammar couldn't believe how well this one word was fighting and almost quivered under the onslaught. But THEN. Oh THEN he used his most mighty weapon.

“VOCAB IS MY FATHER.”

OY! NOW WHO'S TELLING THE STORY? BESIDES THAT'S NOT EVEN TRUE!

Oh no... wait... It is. Damn it! Here I was trying to build a climax and grammar has to go and ruin everything. Always stopping my rambles with its rules and obligations. Gah all it does is inhibit the flow of writing!

“grammar makes the world make sense to others not familiar with the convoluted brain structure of various authors”

...

Ah shut it.

Well since grammar is behaving itself I can finish this fascinating fable of fantastic foolishness. Why are you behaving yourself anyway?

“vcaob tetnheerad to mix iletsf”

Wise vocab, even though it pillages it knows much in the way of persuasion.

So the story ends with anonymous seriously flummoxed with grammars backwards attack, and it stops. Grammar takes this moment to strike, but anonymous is so utterly flabbergasted that it falls right out of the sentence into the rest of the page.






























































Thankfully impersonator heard its screeches about fair use and came to its aid.

Thus ends the story of sickening sentences reeking with silly sideways sarcasm. The next instalment of Comma Wars will be Return of the Juxtaposition. Until then remember that pens do exist and a thesaurus has many uses other then a door stop.

---


1 While I am well aware the Caribbean natives would not on their life have said 'bugger off', they probably got round to saying more or less the same thing. Only with much foreign expletives and waving of sharp pointy things.

And before the fan-boys start beating me with fake light sabres I actually LIKE Star Wars, though only the original movies. I beseech you to this icon to fend you off,

[mr_pikachu]

Wow. Pichu Luver, I applaud you. This deliciously incomprehensible slice of prose made me laugh harder than I have in quite some time. I'll have to read it a few more times to begin to understand exactly which characters were on each side of the war, as well as who betrayed whom along the way. In any case, though, I thoroughly enjoyed this.

Thank you so much! You clearly put a lot of thought into how to put this together. Well, either that, or you're just very good at fooling me. One way or another, thank you again for the gift! It was great.

[Pichu Luver]

Glad you enjoyed it! ^^ I do try to inflict hilarity on people when I type something so I'm glad I amused. To un-befuddle you brain I spoofed it so that 'Grammar' was the evil Empire and 'Vocabulary' was the poor Rebels. 'Anonymous' was supposed to be Luke. I didn't have a Vader I'm afraid, Grammer was just uber-evil like that. Also 'I' am in today's world and typing the history of the war, while the 'Grammar' of today was trying to prevent me from doing it.