Pointless But It Does My Head In

Slothrop

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
Bands who are transparently ripping off a small range of other bands, but get very coy about their influences.

Bands who list their influences as "Miles Davis, the Kinks, Lee Perry, the Aphex Twin, the Clash, Anton Webern, Megadeath, Giorgio Moroder, Queen, King Tubby, Aretha Franklin and Public Enemy" and then sound exactly like the less interesting bits of Sonic Youth.

Bands who are transparently ripping off another band, but complain about 'lazy journalism' when people say that they sound a bit similar.
 
STN

STN

sou'wester
Slothrop said:
Bands who are transparently ripping off a small range of other bands, but get very coy about their influences.

Bands who list their influences as "Miles Davis, the Kinks, Lee Perry, the Aphex Twin, the Clash, Anton Webern, Megadeath, Giorgio Moroder, Queen, King Tubby, Aretha Franklin and Public Enemy" and then sound exactly like the less interesting bits of Sonic Youth.

Bands who are transparently ripping off another band, but complain about 'lazy journalism' when people say that they sound a bit similar.
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They always say Miles Davis, don't they? My personal favourite of this ilk is the Bluetones citing Method Man as an influence.
 
bruno

bruno

est malade
those pictures with animals saying i'm on ur this doing that, it makes me want to smash the computer screen.
 
E

elgato

I just dont know
Mr. Tea said:
Same goes for use of 'I', as in "that conversation between you and I", sort of thing.
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i dont understand, what about in the sense of "a club night run by a friend and I"?

as given that half of this thread is bemoning colloquial 'bastardisation' of traditional grammar, is this not a little controversial? although i dont know whether this is strictly a question of grammar. i do also like it because its humble, it places oneself as secondary
 
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Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
elgato said:
i dont understand, what about in the sense of "a club night run by a friend and I"?

as given that half of this thread is bemoning colloquial 'bastardisation' of traditional grammar, is this not a little controversial? although i dont know whether this is strictly a question of grammar. i do also like it because its humble, it places oneself as secondary
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The way to think about this is to question whether the sentence would make sense if you removed one of the people involved: so "a club night run by a friend and I" would become "a club night run by I", which sounds amusingly Jamaican/West Country, but is certainly incorrect. I also dislike the usage "He's a better runner than I", which can be said to be short for "He's a better runner than I am" - all the same, I'd prefer "He's a better runner than me". And in any case, your sentence should be "a club night run by a friend and me".

The thing about putting yourself second is, as you say, just a politeness thing: when people say "you and I", it would be equall correct to say "I and you", it just sounds odd because it's not the way people usually say it.
 
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elgato

I just dont know
interesting. language is something that i haven't thought that much about before. why is that the way to work it out? in what circumstance would it ever matter whether it works without the other actor?

if misuse doesn't obstruct the clear communication of ideas, why bother with the rules?
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
"I" is a subjective pronoun - it's used when "I" am doing something.
"Me" is objective - it's used when something happens to "me".

As for why it's important to use proper grammar and spelling, well, I'm not sure why, but I just feel that it is. u kan get ur mesij akros widout ritin proper if u rilly want but den u risk soundin liek a fukin dikked innit lol!!!!!
 
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elgato

I just dont know
but that kind of text obviously obscures the message for those unused to it, undermining the central aim of language (communication) wheras these little issues dont...

complete bastardisation i agree is potentially a bad thing, because in a broader sense it opens the possibility of the richness of language being (over time) diminished

but surely rules should never be protected just because they're rules
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Weeell, some 'rules' in grammar are completely pointless, and are in fact 'pseudo-rules' made up by prescritptive Oxford grammarians in the 18th century in an attempt to make English more like Latin - despite the fact that English, unlike the Romance language, isn't even directly descended from Latin. So all that guff about not splitting infinitives - according to which "to boldly go..." is wrong, is exactly that: guff. As is the 'rule' about not ending a sentence with a preposition.

On the other hand, saying "I should of thought of that" (simple laziness) or "Come and see Bob or myself" (hypercorrection) really does annoy the hell out of me. They just make me want to say "I didn't make mistakes like that when I was twelve and you're a grown adult, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?". :mad:

Edit: another pet hate is people saying "they" instead of "he" or "she" for a single person, even when the sex (n.b.: 'sex', not 'gender') of the person is known. It's as if they think they're at risk of being 'sexist' merely by acknowledging that the person is of one sex as opposed to the other. It's Political Correctness Gone Mad!
 
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Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
elgato said:
sorry, im spoiling an otherwise light hearted affair with this seriousness
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[insert long incoherent rant about how rules of spelling and grammar are merely enforced to maintain social heirarchies by appealling to the authoirty of an imagined Big Other] :)
 
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elgato

I just dont know
Mr. Tea said:
[insert long incoherent rant about how rules of spelling and grammar are merely enforced to maintain social heirarchies by appealling to the authoirty of an imagined Big Other] :)
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lol yeh well i wouldnt argue the intention, but the effect...
 
Guybrush

Guybrush

Dittohead
elgato said:
if misuse doesn't obstruct the clear communication of ideas, why bother with the rules?
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In Sweden in the 1970s, there was a backlash against the bourgeois notion that there was a ‘wrong’ way to spell a word. Rather, people were encouraged to ‘spell it like you say it’, which worked fine ... until someone noticed that — lo and behold — people from the southern parts of the country didn’t find the northeners’ spelling the least bit natural, and vice versa. Needless to say, this social experiment was abandoned swiftly.
 
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