Some Sententious Sentences on Sentencing

"Jesus wept." It is said to be the shortest sentence in the Bible. I first heard it as an exclamation from my friend Jeannie, from Enid, Oklahoma. Since the expression has biblical origins, one can get away with it as a mild expletive. You can almost hear the sigh that accompanies it. But what else is there to say about sentences? And to whom do I say it? Well, for starters, you can very legitimately start a sentence with "but" or "and," despite what Mrs. Rivers told us in seventh grade at Burdick Junior High School in Stamford, Connecticut. You can also end a sentence with a preposition. It's something you can live with. You can also decide to boldly split an infinitive within your sentence -- and do so with grammatical impunity. The other point I want to make about sentences -- I know, "sentencing" in the heading lured students of criminal justice to this blog under false presentences -- is that, despite a muddy river of digressions, or appositive phrases, or recursively recurring and redundant recasting of words to the point of annoyance, a perfectly grammatical and "correct" sentence is not limited to the soulful brevity of a lachrymose redeemer, but may also include such meanderings as incarnated in this sentence. So, I have said it before and will proclaim it again, "A run-on sentence is not one that 'runs on and on and on' in the impatient reader's mind; a run-on sentence, also known as a comma splice or fused sentence, is a punctuation error -- an error that has nothing whatsoever to do with the number of words or syllables in the sentence, be they running, walking, trotting, sprinting, galloping, sauntering, crawling, or strolling words. I'm done.

The Duke of Hazard

Sometimes it's a sheer pleasure when things work in America, more specifically, at the Hazard Branch Library, on Syracuse's West Side. (However, it decidedly is not a pleasure when things work all too well, as they did under the East German secret police, the Stasi. Turns out I could've visited the Stasi museum, on the U5, in Berlin. Now that would've been a hofbrau barrel of belly laughs.)

I had twice received automated calls to my cellphone, informing me, very erroneously, that I had a book (or books) overdue, return it or face fines, etc., etc.

I explain this to the librarian. She listens. I fully expect this will have to be resolved down at the Central branch, and we'll blame it all on computers and modern life and transistors and sun spots and rising fundamentalism ad nauseam.

But she listens. She seems to actually understand. She seems not to mind the preceding split infinitive.

"Maybe you can check your database or something and you can fix it. Someone obviously entered the wrong information. A typo or something. As you just confirmed, I have no books overdue."

"Let me see."

So far, this is the quintessential opposite from what you'd get at, say, the DMV.

She finds a screen on her computer, enters my cellphone number, and up pops someone else's name, just as I had expected. She discreetly shows me the screen.

"That's my number, all right, but I'm not that person."

She fixes the database, right then and there. . . . just as I had not expected.

Presto. Simple. She even thwarted and arrested my incipient combative demeanor or my full-throttle, laying-it-on-with-a-trowel kindliness when dealing with Official Rulebook Officious Officials. (Herr Doktor, I seem to have this running theme: a problem with authority figures, or figurines.)

Done. Beautiful, with the panache of knowing the other person won't even know of the correction (because that person didn't even know of the problem). A certain symmetrical anonymity.

I am the Duke of Hazard.

(It's been said libraries are the bastion of civilization. So true. So true.)

Comma Drama

Last night, around 10 p.m. a dozen or so young guys paraded out of the second-floor flat of Jesse, the fellow next door. I mean, they looked like a human centipede coming out of the porch. Or like the silk scarves that endlessly come out of a magician's sleeve. Whew!

As predicted by my wife, after their jaunt down the hill, presumably to Coleman's Authentic Irish Pub, the guys (and now a few gals) returned around 2 a.m. and made a ruckus.

Come on, people! We're trying to sleep here!

Speaking of which:

There's a new book out titled:

Come On People

subtitled: On the Path From Victims to Victors

By Bill Cosby and Alvin F. Poussaint, M.D.

Now, based on some of the estimable Mr. Cosby's recent comments and the subtitle, I can surmise that the book has a laudable premise and narrative exposition. Fine. No problem. Applause.

However, I have a quibble with the title.

It needs an important comma placed after the word "on."

Otherwise, without that vocative comma -- how shall I delicately express this? -- the title conjures up an indefensible and impolitic, if pornographic, imperative to broadcast one's seminal "concepts" in a democratic and egalitarian way. Gross!

And Mr. Cosby has a doctorate in education (but not grammar); his co-author is a medical doctor. Come on, guys!

You can rely on The Laughorist to staunchly defend us from solecisms of punctuation.

(And, yes, you can split an infinitive with impunity, as in the sentence above.)

Confessions of an Anachronism

Call me Anachronism. And why is that? I am an anachronism (albeit a proud anachronism) because:

1. I wear slippers.
2. I wear pajamas.
3. Communal meal times are sacred and should not be marred by one's answering the phone or watching television. (If one is alone, anything goes.)
4. I use the word "one" like an old fuddy-duddy (see above).
   
5. I use the word anachronism.
6. I loathe multitasking.
7. The demands and rigors of quotidian, paid labor do not intercede upon my every waking hour and every thought in my head (except for all-consuming anxiety, paranoia, and neurosis related to same).
8. I read books (fiction even! and poetry!).
9. I read newspapers -- in print.
10. I watch news (worse yet, I listen to news reports on the radio).
11. I have not the slightest idea how to use an iPod or the MP3 player that my satellite radio comes with.
12. I know what a preposition is and understand that in item 11 I ended a sentence with a preposition -- and I'm perfectly okay with that.
13. I have diagrammed sentences on a blackboard.
14. I have to gladly say I have split infinitives.
15. I continue to obsessively rant about something called the serial comma.
16. I was taught by Mrs. Rivers in seventh grade that these words take predicate nominatives: is, am, was, were, have been, has, had, appear, feel, grow, become, look, taste, remain; consequently, "I feel bad" is the preferred form. (Hunh?)
    
17. I used to know the Our Father in Latin (let's see now, how does that go? "Pater noster qui es in caelis...").
18. My car lacks one of those automatic key starters and has manual locks.
19. I am a sinning believer, a member of a religious institution who tries to attend and partake of its services regularly.
    
20. I am an anachronism.

Out of time.

Rarely on time.

What century do I belong to? What era? Victorian perhaps?

What era is your era?