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Moe's Slaps
shemps#1:
There is a major difference between vernacular and a continuous string of spelling errors. Please don't bring up threads that have just died. The whole matter is settled, has been settled for awhile now, and I'm not in the mood to re-explain my position to every Johnny-come-lately.
Dunrobin:
--- Quote from: shempheadbat on November 28, 2004, 08:33:29 AM ---... and are behaving like just the sort of "Hoi Polloi" that the Stooges delighted in shredding with their amazing verbal dexterity.
--- End quote ---
Hoi Polloi means exactly the opposite of what you seem to think it means. From Dictionary.com:
hoi pol·loi (hoi-p&-'loi)
n.
The common people; the masses.
--- End quote ---
Frankly, I don't thinking expecting people to take the time to write an intelligible post is asking too much. If it is, that's a pretty damning indictment of the government's so-called "educational" system.
(And by the way, I'm a high school drop-out - and proud of it!)
shempheadbat:
Actually, i meant "hoi polloi" as the masses of people who believe that a receipt for the huge sums of money that they (or most likely, their parents) paid to a college or other institution gives them some kind of excuse for arrogance and hubris, and who also feel that the number of posts on a frickin' bulletin board is some kind of badge of honour or respect. Common courtesy is at least as important, especially in PUBLIC discourses such as this one, as grammatical oneupsmanship and nitpicking. Please don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to threaten anyone's tenuous hold upon their self esteem, I'm a regular guy. I just wonder if maybe some here are overlooking the power of creativity and experimentation within the form, in favor of conforming to an outmoded set of criteria that only apply in academic settings such as editing, grading, and otherwise judging a book by its typesetting... by the way, I also was 'excused' from finishing my scholastic requirements, ahem, and chose to just read everything I could possibly find. I learned that beyond the classroom, subjects like History and Social Studies were actually a lot of fun, just like this thread... I noticed that a new member calls him/herself 'Kilgore Trout', after the alterego of my hero. Mr. Vonnegut wrote an entire novel on scraps of paper, with little or no punctuation or editing. And Jack Kerouac wrote "The Subterraneans" in a three-day burst of manic (and benzadrine-fueled) creative energy, wishing to convey the patterns of speech like the notes on a musical score, pure raw emotion and reality, rather than just poot out the same old boring form letter to appease the academics who had no grasp of the actual language they were sitting in judgement over. In other words, "Spread out!!" What was Moe's reply when Larry asked, "Where's your dignity??" SMACK!! We're talking comedy here, aren't we? And last I looked, puns, plays-on-words, slang, etc. were all part of this beautiful living organism called communication. ("He means it's okay...") I say, instead of all this head klonking, let's unite and pressure the academic community to recognise Moeisms such as 'homophagle', 'fornisitz', 'annakannaponner', and 'eenot' as a coupl'a adjectives woith utterin'. I am now in Sing-Sing...
P.S.- I dinna mean anything by that 'professional writer' crack, I realise it sounded pretentious... I just meant to emphasize my love of and devotion to the language in all of its weird forms... also, i get just as nitpicky about the rules whenever I hear G.W. Bush say, "Nookuler", so... heh. [whistle]
(edited to replace some 'w's that my sticky keyboard left out)
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