six months of no heckling

I didn't realize it's been six months since the White House had a press briefing, but as this PJ Media article by AJ Rice points out, Trump has taken away reporters' ability to just heckle when they could be doing real journalism, and in the meantime, as the above-linked article says, "And do you know what? Clocks didn’t stop. Bees didn’t stop pollinating flowers. The time-space continuum has not been torn asunder. The republic still stands."

Some idiot will, of course, make this about restriction of press freedoms, but the press doesn't have any sort of legal or intrinsic right to a White House press briefing (just as Brett Kavanaugh didn't actually have to undergo Senate hearings on his way to becoming a Supreme Court Justice: that was a courtesy). The press is certainly free to keep on mouthing off since it seems to have shirked its job of actually reporting facts. But:

Always remember the heckler's purpose is not free speech; [his] purpose is the suppression of free speech.

Good to keep in mind. The article also notes how old this adversarial relationship is:

Quick quiz: Who said, “I deplore... the putrid state into which our newspapers have passed and the malignity, the vulgarity, and mendacious spirit of those who write for them.”?

Answer: Not Donald J. Trump. It was Thomas Jefferson. Despising the media literally goes back to the author of the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson was no fan of garbage reporting.

Amen to that. And this is why I watch Tim Pool: because he's a real journalist.

don't fuck with the British SAS

Here's why.

Impressive. Most impressive.

(h/t Instapundit)

over-brining test

Tonight, I pulled my brisket out of its brine, worried that the meat might have over-brined because I didn't take it out Wednesday morning. So I cut a hunk of brisket off, sliced it thinly, and pan-fried it in a bit of oil—no extra salting or peppering!—just to see whether the meat was too salty.

I needn't have worried: the meat was fine. If anything, it tasted just salty enough without being over-brined. So when I do bake the brisket in the oven Thursday night, it's going to rock and roll. I'll give the meat a dry rub after patting it down, but only the most modest of rubs. I don't want to push my luck, and I also don't want the rub to dominate the gravy that I'm going to be making for the steak-and-kidney pie filling. That would suck.

Still to do:

1. dice up and boil carrots (for peas & carrots)
2. peel and boil potatoes, then make mashed potatoes
3. make pie crust
4. make chocolate panna cotta
5. prep and cook kidneys
6. make gravy
7. combine brisket and kidneys with gravy
8. prep egg wash for pie crust

Commas, Part 2

Separating Clauses in Complex Sentences

In Part 1 of our series on commas, we talked about clauses, and about how important it is to recognize a clause when you see one because that's one of the ways to know whether you need to use a comma.

Look again at the above sentence. Were you itching to put a comma in before the word "because"? If so, that's probably because you're still thinking that a comma always marks a pause, and I warned you that thinking that way would get you into trouble. Granted: if you were an actor doing a line reading, you'd want to insert a pause before "because" so as to break the sentence up and make it more digestible for the listener. That's perfectly reasonable for spoken English, but it would be ungrammatical in proper written English.

The first sentence of this post is a complex sentence. Let's talk a bit about sentence types—simple, compound, complex—before we get into commas.

A simple sentence has a subject and a predicate—it's just one clause, and that's it. The subject could be a single subject, or it could be a compound subject. The predicate (i.e., the verb part of the sentence, where all the action is happening) could be a single predicate, or it could be a compound predicate. Let me show you some examples of these concepts before we go further.

SINGLE SUBJECT: Tom sharted in class. (Tom)
COMPOUND SUBJECT: Tom and Darlene sharted in class. (Tom + Darlene)

SINGLE PREDICATE: The class screamed as one. (screamed)
COMPOUND PREDICATE: The class screamed as one and bolted out of the room. (screamed + bolted)

COMPOUND SUBJECT AND PREDICATE:
Tom and Darlene sharted in class and cackled evilly.
(Tom + Darlene, sharted + cackled)

The above sentence, despite having both a compound subject and a compound predicate, is NOT a compound sentence: it's a simple sentence. How do you know? Because it has only one clause. Compound sentences come next.

A compound sentence has at least two independent clauses. These clauses can be separated by either a semicolon or a comma-conjunction, as discussed in Part 1.

NOT COMPOUND: Tom and Darlene farted and belched in harmony.
COMPOUND (1): Tom farted; Darlene belched in harmony. (semicolon)
COMPOUND (2): Tom farted, and Darlene belched in harmony. (comma-and)

As mentioned, we've already covered the need for a comma in such situations in Part 1, so let's move on to complex sentences.

A complex sentence has at least one independent clause and one dependent (subordinate) clause. If a sentence has a subordinating conjunction in it (such as if, when, because, though, although, until, before, after, that, which, etc.), then it's a complex sentence.

Complex sentences can normally be written at least two ways: with the subordinate clause first, or with the subordinate clause last. The rule is this:

If the subordinate clause comes first, PUT A COMMA AT THE END OF THE CLAUSE.

The Brits, in particular, seem to hate doing this, so please ignore their punctuational barbarity (yes: punctuational is a word). I'm pretty sure that this rule originated in the British Isles, where they used to over-punctuate everything, but I suppose the Brits themselves have moved on. Now, it's up to us uncultured Yanks to carry the torch.

Here are some examples of when a complex sentence needs a comma. The subordinating conjunction has been put into boldface to make it easier to see what's going on.

Because he had an uncontrollable armpit fetish, Zack was fired from the children's show.
If I punch you in the gut, I'll cure your constipation.
Although Carl definitely like salted-caramel Oreos, he preferred women's nipples.
When I look into your eyes, I see alligators.
Before I flay off your skin, I want you to know this is purely for scientific purposes.

Here are some examples of when a complex sentence doesn't need a comma. As before, the subordinating conjunction has been put into boldface. Note the different location of the dependent clause!

Alexis stamped on the cockroach because its name had the word "cock" in it.
Babies can be punted pretty far if you inflate them with a bicycle pump first.
The terrorists will shoot all the hostages unless you hand over 50 kilos of peanut butter.
I'll send you a pic of my lubed-up grandmother when you send me a pic of your depilated Uncle Enos.
Karen somehow ate her way out of the elephant carcass before Niko could finish reciting the Bhagavad Gita.

So as you see, when it comes to complex sentences, if you focus on where the subordinating conjunction is located, that location will give you a clue as to whether or not you need to slap a comma onto that sentence. If the conjunction comes first, use a comma. Simple enough, ja?

CONCEPTS TO REMEMBER
clause
independent clause
dependent/subordinate clause
subordinating conjunction
compound subject
compound predicate
simple sentence
compound sentence
complex sentence

QUIZ 1
Identify what kind of sentences these are: simple, compound, or complex.

1. Mark and John have itchy assholes because they just got out of prison.
2. Taryn, Jessica, and Brenda drank a keg dry, vomited lustily, got into their jeep, and drove into a wall.
3. Whenever Barton sings, I feel ants crawling all over my fucking scrotum.
4. Barry stalked Emily at school; Emily stalked Barry online.
5. The leper didn't mind offering her johns a scab/pustulation discount on Wednesdays.

[ANSWERS (highlight to see): 1. complex; 2. simple; 3. complex; 4. compound; 5. simple]

QUIZ 2
How many clauses are in each sentence?

1. I don't know who that is.
2. Before Sandy got married, she used to be a titanic slut.
3. The friend I hate the most is coming to that party.
4. Sandy drunkenly told us she had no idea where we were.
5. Bilbo told Smaug that the reptilian beast was the goddamn sexiest thing he had ever seen.

[ANSWERS (highlight to see): 1. two; 2. two; 3. two; 4. three; 5. three]

QUIZ 3
Which of the following sentences need commas?

1. Because his porn name was Frank Pole everyone thought he was a blunt-spoken piece of lumber.
2. And if I ever see you again I'll take out my knife and give you four ass cheeks.
3. It's always a good day when the cocaine is fresh and smooth.
4. When Linus found Lucy's Pokémon dildo he demanded to know whether she was hiding anything else because he was secretly excited.
5. Janice taught me how to eat eggs with my ass.

[ANSWERS (highlight to see): 1. needs comma; 2. needs comma; 3. no comma; 4. needs comma; 5. no comma]

Part 3 coming soon.

ululate!

Three deaths in a row over the past few days. From John McCrarey, I learned of the deaths of 80s music icons Ric Ocasek (lead singer of The Cars) and Eddie Money (of "Take Me Home Tonight" fame). From other sources, I learned of the death of news anchor/reporter/analyst Cokie Roberts. Ocasek and Roberts were 75; Money died at age 70.

80s musicians—and Cokie Roberts, too, for that matter—are fixed and eternally young in my memory. It was more shocking to hear that Cokie Roberts was 75 than to learn that she had just died of complications from breast cancer. Time stops for no one.

a fascinating Korean-food challenge

Over at the Bon Appétit channel on YouTube, chef Chris Morocco is a supertaster, i.e., he has far more taste buds per square centimeter on his tongue than the average person does. This has made him a prime candidate for a series of quirky "reverse-engineering" food challenges. The idea is that Chris gets blindfolded, but he's otherwise allowed to experience a certain dish via smell, taste, and touch. Once he thinks he has a lock on what the dish is, what its ingredients are, and in what proportion they appear in the dish, he must go shopping for ingredients and attempt to reconstruct the dish based on his sightless experience of it. Despite being a supertaster, Chris isn't infallible, and in every challenge, he messes something up. Yet, incredibly, he also tends to get each dish mostly right. Supertasting is indeed a superpower.

In the challenge below, Chris has been tasked with the reverse-engineering of a Korean dish called dakbokkeumtang (닭볶음탕). As host Christina Chaey explains, this particular version of the dish (which might go by other names like dakdoritang (닭도리탕) is made by Maangchi, YouTube's "Korean Julia Child." (I've blogged about Maangchi before.)

Chris doesn't normally cook Korean food, but he's an educated chef with experience in many food cultures and styles. Will he get Maangchi's recipe right, or will he create a monstrous, foul-tasting travesty of Maangchi's dish? The only way to find out is to watch!

embedding is back, so here's some Hans Zimmer

And we can embed videos again!

Hans Zimmer (whose name translates to "John Room," like the French surname La Salle, which also means "room"; a Zimmermann is a carpenter, i.e., a room-man) has been improving with age, although I'm still not the biggest fan of his music. I've enjoyed his scores for "Interstellar" and "The Dark Knight," but I hated his superficial-sounding work on "The Rock" and didn't think his work on the Pirates of the Caribbean movies was much better. With time, Zimmer has expanded the instrumental repertoire in his compositions, and he's gotten his often desperate-sounding strings under control, harnessing them and channeling them to create greater intensity of feeling. I don't think his score for "Man of Steel" dethrones the iconic (and infinitely memorable) work done by John Williams for the original "Superman," but Zimmer's piece is worth listening to:

Unfortunately, the use of modern instruments like electric guitars in the above piece makes me think of the moving-but-corny "An American Symphony" from "Mr. Holland's Opus," a three-minute piece that Glenn Holland, the movie's protagonist, supposedly spent thirty years writing. "An American Symphony"—which was actually composed by Hollywood regular Michael Kamen (who scored the Lethal Weapon movies alongside Eric Clapton) incorporates electric guitars, thus combining modern and classical instruments. The result is music that has a somewhat similar feel to Hans Zimmer's score for "Man of Steel." Here's the version of "An American Symphony" that appears in the movie:


There's a fuller, eight-minute version of the piece here. I still think that taking thirty years to compose an eight-minute piece is glacially slow. Mr. Holland's life, as portrayed in the movie, is event-filled and full of ups and downs, but surely he'd have had large blocks time to work intensively on his music, no?

in the brine

This was a 2-kilo slab of brisket that turned out to be one huge flat with almost no point. I'm not complaining. There was very little silver skin to cut away, so after I sliced the meat into two 1-kilo chunks, I dropped the brisket halves into a large plastic container and poured over the brine I had prepped: muscovado sugar, a combination of salts (sea salt, kosher salt, fleur de sel, and even a little table salt), pickling spices, chipotle chili flakes, red chili flakes, paprika, a dash of apple-cider vinegar, and a bit of ginger. The brine itself smelled awesome. One end of the beef was just beginning to oxidize, transitioning from red to something slightly grayer, but I think I got the meat into the brine in time. Nothing smelled rotten or rancid.

I'm going to have to pull the brisket out of the brine right when I come back from work; from everything I've read, it's always better to under-brine than to over-brine, as over-brining leads to meat that is gray, dead, and way too salty. That would be a waste of a good brisket. I might also cook the brisket Wednesday night instead of Thursday night; either that, or I can freeze it before cooking it, then break it out for baking Friday night.* I don't plan to use more than 600 grams for the steak-and-kidney pie, so that's going to leave me with a ton of leftover brisket to do something with. I'll probably make BBQ brisket sandwiches, and since I have a lot of chimichurri in storage, I'll have a ready-made dipping sauce again.

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*Baking the brisket from a frozen state is possible; I do that with chicken breast all the time, and the result is super-juicy. But what I might do is pull the brisket out of the freezer, give it a two-hour thaw, then stick it in the oven for an extra few minutes. Ultimately, after several hours' cooking, the brisket will turn out fine whatever its initial state might have been.

Instapundit on the new Brett Kavanaugh bullshit from the left

Just go to Instapundit, find the search window, and type "Brett Kavanaugh." Or if you're lazy, click here—I've done the search for you. There's plenty to read about the current shitstorm—or bullshitstorm, really. The New York Times is losing what little credibility it has as its latest breathless reporting is being debunked right and left. Tim Pool thinks the whole thing is a sick farce (here and here). That's because it is, and it smacks of desperation.

YouTube embedding is down: I hope you feel relieved

YouTube seems to be having a snit here in Korea: I can't embed any videos on the blog because, when I hit the "embed" command (whether on my Windows machine at the office, my cell phone, or my MacBook Air at my apartment), the HTML code doesn't come up, i.e., there's nothing to embed. Videos still play just fine on YouTube itself, and from what I can see, already-embedded videos on my blog still play just fine, too. If you're in the States and experiencing the same problem, let me know. If you're in Korea and not experiencing the problem I'm experiencing, let me know that, too. Such data will help me understand the shape and extent of the problem. Thanks. Meantime, enjoy not seeing any of the usual political rants from Styx, Tim Pool, and Jon Miller.

toujours sans reins

I still haven't gone back to Majang to get those dang kidneys. I'll go tomorrow. Meanwhile, tonight, I'll stick the brisket in a brine and get it ready for some low-and-slow ovening on Wednesday, or maybe Thursday. To preserve the brisket after it's been baked, I'll probably also make a nice, rich, fatty beef stock that will eventually become a component of the gravy for the steak-and-kidney-pie filling. Thursday will also be the night I prep the pie crust. Kidneys will be prepped Friday evening. Somewhere along the way, I need to prep mashed potatoes and some Amurrican-style peas and carrots.

Photos of the prep are probable.

your moment of surreality

She guards a hair salon one floor below where I work:

the William Tell archery challenge

The nutballs at Corridor Crew, the VFX nerds who analyze movie special effects and produce plenty of special effects of their own, have gone a bit frat-boy and decided to try and shoot apples off each other's heads with a bow and padded arrows.

Watch their "Odysseus shoots through axes" challenge, too:

lurvely

Our immediate boss is away in Louisiana, which of course means that, according to Murphy's Law, any seismic shift in our office will occur during his absence. And sure enough, two people from Human Resources came by today to tell us that the R&D department would be acquiring two new staffers. One is someone we've worked with and already know; the other is someone who has done nothing but teach, and who knows nothing about R&D work. Our current office space is also rather cramped; adding two people here is possible, but it's going to feel crowded. So the HR guy mentioned that we might all be moved, as a team, back to the Mido building, where my career at the Golden Goose began. My ex-boss is currently there, languishing: he got "put out to pasture," so to speak, over a year ago, and he's nearing retirement age. While it'd be pleasant for me to be back in proximity with him, I know it wouldn't be for long, as he's on his way out. The Mido office also contains one or two unsavory characters with whom I'd rather not associate, so that could be an issue, too.

Anyway, there may be some room to negotiate how the addition of team members will work, but that we're getting new members isn't negotiable at all. Nothing's going to be done until our immediate boss is back in Korea; we also need to inform our big boss, who is the head of a whole branch of our company. One coworker noted to me that I'll likely be on my long walk when the new team members arrive. At this point, I don't know whether that means we'll still be here in the Classia building or back over at Mido. I view the immediate future with morbid curiosity. In Korea, nothing is ever stable for long, and in this company in particular, the higher-ups seem to love juggling staff around. With the recent use of R&D as a dumping-ground for an obstreperous employee a month ago, the precedent has been set to use us whenever there's a staff-shuffling issue. I had been worried that that would happen, and sure enough, my fears have come true.

Lovely; fuckin' lovely, as the Irish joke goes.

Majang Meat Market: success and failure

I went to the Majang Meat Market on Sunday and got a huge slab of brisket:

The thing I didn't get was kidneys. I talked to the ajeossi at the Jeongseon Livestock Distribution, the butcher shop I've visited twice before. He said the place to get kidneys was right across from his market, but—and he gestured over yonder to emphasize his point—as we could all see, the shops across the way were all closed. "Come back tomorrow after twelve," he said. I asked how long the shop would be open. "Until about six or seven," he said. What about Saturday? "Closed," he said. Were there any other shops, currently open, that would have kidneys? "Nope," he said. I made a face and told him I worked from about noon to nine, so coming here during the work week would be difficult. He had no reply to that. Eventually, I joked that I'd just have to make the time. The ajeossi laughed.

So I'll be going back to Majang on Monday, arriving a bit after noon to try and find some dang beef kidneys. I've arrived at work as late as 1:30 p.m. on several occasions; I always put in my eight hours of work, and my boss is usually lenient about my schedule. In fact, my boss is in Louisiana with his family right now, so he won't even know how late I am to the office tomorrow. I'll try to buy some kidneys, then taxi straight to the office and slap the kidneys into our office's communal freezer. Maybe the ladies who use the break room will peek into the freezer, see bloody body parts in there, and wonder whether some staffer is Jeffrey Dahmer.

Don't freak out about the price shown on the price tag in the above photo: I was given a 15% discount. My blubbery good looks have helped me out again.

Commas, Part 1

The time has finally come to talk commas. I did a piece on semicolons five years ago; you can see that one here. Today's focus will be on commas, and it's partly because of a running joke between me and John McCrarey, who is a fine writer, but who has almost no idea where and when to use commas.

Commas are actually a complex subject because their placement isn't governed by a single rule of punctuation, but I don't think they're that hard to master. That being said, this comma spiel is going to be in several parts, moving from major points to rather minor ones.

Part 1: introductory expressions and separating independent clauses
Part 2: separating clauses in complex sentences (independent + dependent clauses)
Part 3: comma splices
Part 4: marking items on a list (featuring the dreaded Oxford comma)
Part 5: vocative commas (I've covered these before; see previous link)
Part 6: parenthetical expressions
Part 7: coordinate and cumulative adjectives
Part 8: "which" and non-restrictive clauses
Part 9: quotations
Part 10: appositives and commas (Marshall rushed to tell his boss, John Sutter of his discovery. [error])
Part 11: commas interrupting subject and verb
Part 12: miscellaneous uses (commas before participial phrases, surrounding geographical names, the one "because" exception, etc.)

First and foremost: the thing that makes me want to pull my hair out is when people heedlessly claim that "a comma is used to mark pauses." This is a highly frustrating claim. In a sense, it's not completely wrong, for commas can indeed be used to mark pauses. My problem with such a guideline (and that's all it is—a rule of thumb and not anything close to a definition) is that it's misleading. If this is the only thing you know about commas, you're going to end up putting them where they don't belong, and you'll stupidly leave them out when you actually need them.

I should step back and make a cultural note, too: comma usage is fading in all English-speaking societies, especially as the corner-cutting that comes with online writing makes us all less and less literate, but the Brits are ahead of the Yanks when it comes to comma-murder. I don't know why, but the Brits seem to have a fairly visceral hatred of commas, and much of what I'm going to lay out in this series of posts will seem quite foreign to modern speakers of the Queen's English, despite the fact that the rules I'll be referring to arguably had their origins in England long before they migrated to the New World. Examples of British comma-hatred abound. Look at some recent ugly specimens from The Guardian online:

• In total[,] some 100 jobs are earmarked to be cut from the 725-strong editorial workforce and 150 from commercial departments, support functions such as finance and human resources[,] and other parts of the business.

• “Our plan of action has one goal: to secure the journalistic integrity and financial independence of the Guardian in perpetuity,” they wrote, before adding they hoped the cuts would all be voluntary[,] and that compulsory redundancies would only be considered only “if necessary”.

Take a look at any random British publication online, and you'll see this hatred for commas pretty much everywhere. Will it be up to us barbaric Yanks to defend the dying comma? I doubt it; we're busy murdering it, too, albeit more slowly.

Commas, Part 1: introductory expressions and separating independent clauses

An introductory expression can be a single word or a phrase. It comes at the head of a sentence and sets the mood or frames the situation. This is also one of the places where comma-murder is most visible because people on both sides of the pond are increasingly dropping their commas here. So keep in mind that, while I generally advocate using a comma after an introductory expression, modern usage is working against me, and in all likelihood, either most modern readers won't notice when you've dropped the comma, or they will notice but just won't care. Some examples of introductory expressions (with commas, of course):

• Five years ago, I had a record-breaking bowel movement.
• Unfortunately, my wife wasn't able to video it in time.
• To add insult to injury, my two-year-old immediately ran in and flushed the toilet.
• Inside, I was seething.
• Nevertheless, I smiled at my daughter.

See how that works? For the "commas mark a pause" crowd, you'll see quite clearly that the marking-a-pause role is fulfilled in all of the above cases. If, however, your introductory expression is a coordinating conjunction, I think you're free to leave the comma off. Keeping the comma in feels archaic, even to me. Look at the following:

• But I admit I sometimes wanted to flush my daughter down the toilet.
• So I'd sneak over to the local Catholic church to confess my murderous thoughts.

To be clear: I'm saying that the above sentences are correct without commas. Mentally insert commas after "But" and "So," and you'll note how archaic those sentences suddenly feel.

Now, let's switch gears and talk about using commas to separate independent clauses.

If you don't know what a clause is, then you'll never master the art of comma placement. A clause is a group of words containing a subject and a predicate. Every complete sentence has at least one clause in it, and a clause can be as short as two words: Jesus farted.

Jesus = subject
farted = verb (predicate)

An independent clause is a complete thought. It can stand on its own, and that's why we call it independent. The sentence Jesus farted is an independent clause. A dependent clause, by contrast, cannot stand alone. It is not a complete thought; it depends on something more to complete it. To make a dependent clause, introduce your idea with a subordinating conjunction (before, after, because, until, although, if, once, etc.). Note that, once you slap on that subordinating conjunction—which creates a subordinate, i.e., dependent, clause—you'll need an independent clause to complete your thought. Behold a series of incomplete thoughts:

Before Jesus farted,...
After Jesus farted,...
Because Jesus farted,...
Until Jesus farted,...
Although Jesus farted,...
If Jesus farted,...
Once Jesus farted,...

That's what a dependent (or subordinate) clause looks like: it's incomplete. It depends on something else to make it a complete thought. So let's complete the above incomplete thoughts by adding independent clauses:

Before Jesus farted, the cosmos was in disarray.
After Jesus farted, the temple was dead silent.
Because Jesus farted, Man is no longer condemned to eternal hellfire.
Until Jesus farted, no one had any idea what to do.
Although Jesus farted, Satan refused to depart from the girl.
If Jesus farted, my cancer would disappear.
Once Jesus farted, the race began.

The above are all complex sentences, which are a mix of independent and dependent clauses; we'll talk about this type of sentence later. For now, though, let's concentrate on compound sentences, which are made of two independent clauses. Let's begin by looking at two independent clauses written as two separate sentences:

Jesus farted. The dog exploded.

We could join these sentences with a semicolon to make one type of compound sentence:

Jesus farted; the dog exploded.

Or we could join these sentences with a comma-conjunction, in which the conjunction is a coordinating conjunction like for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so: the so-called FANBOYS. Coordinating conjunctions, along with a comma, are used to link two independent clauses together. The comma comes first, then the conjunction. To wit:

Jesus farted, and the dog exploded.

We could use other coordinating conjunctions, thereby altering the meaning of the compound sentence by changing how the independent clauses relate to each other:

The dog exploded, for Jesus had farted.
Jesus did not fart, nor did the dog explode.
Jesus farted, but the dog exploded.
Jesus farted, or the dog exploded.
Jesus farted, yet the dog exploded.
Jesus farted, so the dog exploded.

So: if you're dealing with a compound sentence, which has two independent clauses, you can link them with either a semicolon (as shown above) or a comma-conjunction. I hope, by now, that you know what these terms mean:

1. clause
2. independent clause
3. dependent clause (also called a...?)
4. coordinating conjunction (which, with a comma, links two what?)
5. subordinating conjunction (which introduces a what?)
6. compound sentence
7. complex sentence

Before we conclude Part 1, let's talk a bit about two instances in which commas aren't necessary. First, we have "or" expressions: Chicken or beef? Superman or Captain Marvel? Muhammad or Lao-tzu? Your place or mine? Trump or Hillary?

Earlier, I wrote:

An introductory expression can be a single word or a phrase.

I did not use a comma:

An introductory expression can be a single word, or a phrase.

That second, erroneous case will happen because some dumbass is thinking, "Duuuuhhhh... a comma marks a pause, and since I would read that line with a pause in it, I guess I'll stick a comma right there. Duuuuhhhh..."

Read my lips, said the vagina: Don't fucking do that. Disjunctive locutions (this usually refers to two contrasting things linked by but or or) don't take commas unless the disjunction is occurring in a compound sentence:

You can have a Fleshlight, or you can have a hand grenade up the bum.

Second, compound predicates don't take commas, either. A compound predicate is a verbal expression depicting two distinct actions separated by a coordinating conjunction—usually and or but. Examples of compound predicates, correctly and incorrectly done:

WRONG: Socrates coughed up blood, and died.
RIGHT: Socrates coughed up blood and died.

WRONG: Harry glimpsed Hermione naked, and thought about her all day.
RIGHT: Harry glimpsed Hermione naked and thought about her all day.

One exception to the compound-predicate rule is if your compound predicate contains more than two verbs:

Socrates coughed up blood, glimpsed Hermione naked, and died.

In the above sentence, the three verbs basically form items in a list (or they can be thought of as a tricolon), hence the need for commas.

We will have plenty more opportunities to talk about when not to use commas as this series continues. Pay as much attention to those sections as to the main explanations. The unnecessary addition of commas is just as bad as the unnecessary omission of commas.

Styx with a postmortem on the 3rd Dem debate

throw dem knives!

I've watched a few Adam Celadin knife-throwing videos before, and I've even blogged about the man (see here). He's a five-time world-champion knife-thrower, as well as a cancer survivor. He's also friends with German nutcase Joerg Sprave of The Slingshot Channel, and in this particular episode of The Slingshot Channel, Celadin makes an appearance as a guest, showing off what are purportedly the world's best throwing knives. After the two build a large, wooden target together, Celadin demonstrates a sort of "no spin" technique (as Sprave points out, there's actually about a one-quarter rotation) that is useful for short-distance, close-quarters, self-defense throwing.* Sprave proves to be a quick study. The man is lucky to have friends and acquaintances who can teach him weapons techniques; another of Sprave's associates, Stefan Roth, is a smith who makes katanas in the traditional way, and who is also trained in Japanese swordsmanship. In one Slingshot Channel video, Roth shows Sprave (at the very end) how to cut a tatami mat properly.**

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*I think that Khan (Benedict Cumberbatch) uses the no-spin technique to kill a Klingon at close range in "Star Trek Into Darkness."

**Sprave has had Roth on his show a couple times, and in each case, Sprave speaks in English while Roth speaks exclusively in German. Many commenters express amazement at how Roth understands Sprave's English perfectly and replies in a way that shows his comprehension. I'm once again reminded of the linguistic universe of the Star Wars films, in which every alien speaks its own language, but everyone seems to understand everyone else (e.g., Han and Chewie, Han and Greedo, Lando and Chewie, etc.).

birthdays

September 10 was my goddaughter Rachael's 22nd birthday.

September 12 was my friend Dr. Steve's 50th birthday.

September 14 was/is my little brother David's 43rd birthday.

Happy Birthday, all!

more memes via Instapundit

Hee.