“I know. How about we play the basketball. I’m no Harvey Globetrotter, but-” – Marge Simpson “Ahh. . .” – Bart Simpson Yesterday afternoon, venerably contradictory web magazine Slate published an article called “Has Liz Lemon Become “Dumbass Homer”?”. (As you can probably guess, it’s about whether or not 30 Rock is going downhill the way The Simpsons did.) Set aside the question mark in the headline for a second and look at that term, “Dumbass Homer”. I’ve probably called Homer a dumbass before, but it’s not a capitalized term I’ve ever seen people use. The term commonly in use,…
Category: Poor Usage
A Review Worthy of Zombie Simpsons
Image used under Creative Commons license from Flickr user g_kat26. “No children you’re not seeing things. This, my little friends, is a schwa.” – Principal Skinner I generally avoid criticizing the tics and tacks of other people’s grammar and sentence construction. When it comes to the rules of the English language my knowledge is scant; the whys and wherefores of clauses and participles have always eluded me. On top of that I have a principled objection to the idea that my communications with other people should be rigidly governed by rules that were created long before I was born. If…
Zombie Simpsons Commercial to Air During Super Bowl (Updated)
“The bubbles are burning my tongue!” – Abe “Grandpa” Simpson It’s late January and that means that it’s time for the annual torrent of news about Super Bowl commercials. How much do they cost? How clever are they? Will the NFL franchise that drafts Tim Tebow wish he had been aborted? Well, Coke is going to have an ad that sounds like the plot of a Zombie Simpsons episode: In one commercial starring characters from The Simpsons, Mr. Burns has lost his millions and only looks at the bright side of life after convenience store clerk Apu gives him a…
And It’s Not Even Close
Apparently Jerry Seinfeld is coming to Ottawa. This prompted a columnist in The Ottawa Citizen to praise Seinfeld and his show for being second only to Shakespeare in terms of adding “catchphrases” to the language. That’s all well and good, but this paragraph cannot go unremarked upon: Most catchphrases are pure confection and essentially hollow: think of the greatest hits of Seinfeld’s closest competitor in numbers, The Simpsons: “D’oh!” or “don’t have a cow” or “eat my shorts” are memorable, but they don’t really say anything that we didn’t already know how to say ourselves, though perhaps not so memorably.…
Simpsons FAIL at The New Republic
The New Republic, like some other franchises I can name, has a proud past and a rather disgraceful present. However great it may once have been, it certainly isn’t great any longer and that includes its presence here on the internet. Last week on one of their “official” blogs, “The Plank”, Christopher Orr wrote a piece called “The Homer Simpson Party” (emphasis mine): First it was Arlen Specter announcing that he was switching parties explicitly because he didn’t think he could be reelected as a Republican. Next, of course, it was Sarah Palin eschewing politics as usual by vacating the…
It’s a Baby Translator (Seriously)
Via Dintz and ThinkGeek comes the real world baby translator. This one doesn’t speak in the voice of Danny DeVito, it just shows you whether the infant is Hungry, Bored, Annoyed, Sleepy, or Stressed. (That’s the symbol for “Annoyed” on the display image.) The read out on the front, for lack of anything better to do, also displays the current temperature and humidity. Maybe this thing could be tremendously useful to on-the-go 21st century parents, but I’m skeptical. What is the difference – for an infant – between “Annoyed” and “Stressed”? What qualifies as “Bored” for a person with extremely…
Forfty
XKCD #386 Quoting and referencing The Simpsons – a lot – is part and parcel of being a Simpsons fan. Since I’m an asshole, I love excellent or appropriate usage and loathe poor or inappropriate usage. (Though I’ll admit that I’m frequently guilty of the latter.) Today during my daily perusing of the internet I came across this from The United Church Observer: Aw, people can come up with statistics to prove anything, Kent. Forty percent of all people know that.” This is a citation that frequently gets screwed up. Can you spot the error? Let’s try another example; this one is…