Remember the memorable 1997 sequence at the beach, when Gene’s friend Mary Lou is expecting a baby? Of course you remember it; it’s memorable! Well, the above is the lesser-known final cartoon in that storyline; the family is back home, and Mary Lou is forgotten. Or so it seemed at the time. I guess you would equate this one to the little skit they would tack on the end of television sit-coms, little jokes that stood apart from the basic plot. You know, the last minute or so that was always dropped when a show went into syndication, to make room for another commercial.
Letter of the Law
By Jimmy Johnson
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236 responses to “Letter of the Law”
Jean dear, even worse is when a Yan…er…non-Southern writer interchanges the singular “y’all” and the plural “you all”. What’s the difference, one may ask? Well, it could be a significant one, as in the case of a young woman saying “Y’all may” vs. “You all may”. 😉
In my part of the woods, yal, no apostrophe, is only plural. You would not use it to address one person any more than “you guys” would address one person. On the other hand “they ” and “them” could refer to only one person. “Somebody stole my car last night”. “Have they caught them?”
Jean dear, I formally used it religiously, but in recent years I have become a lapsed “Oxford comma” user, other than in sentences in which it is required for clarity. However, inspired by you, I shall endeavor to be more devout in the future.
And now, I must off to the gym, to pay the price for being a lapsed gym-goer for the past two days. The wages of sloth is sweat.
Musing: could “I should have not done that.” be written as “I’d’ven’t done that.”? Contrived construction or not, I just may have to work that into some communications with learned friends! [Perhaps “I should not have -” is better; it’d be “I’dn’t’ve -“. Ach!]
Epitome of dumb: One of our cockatiels insists upon producing 6 or 7 eggs every, say, 5 weeks or so. She waits until finished, at one egg every other day, sits upon them, guards them tenaciously (complete with lowered, spread wings and threatening sounds), until she finally gets the point that her omelet makings are not going to hatch. My MBH then removes those omelet makings.
A day or to ago, said bird was sitting atop a large cage (for our other, blind cockatiel) which has a very curved top consisting of thick parallel wires (or thin rods). Of all places, the oviparous one laid an egg atop the curve! No, it didn’t roll down the side and crash to the floor – though I was guessing that when the MBH told me the story. Instead it slipped between the wires into the large cage, and broke in one of the food dishes. No telling what the blind bird thought of the event if, indeed, she realized such.
Y’all make me laugh! And so do all y’all as well.
And I bothered to put in those pesky little flecks of punctuation that I usually ignore.
Yes, Ghost my phone does many things I cannot. It doesn’t understand my accent and produces some REALLY INTERESTING remarks in response. I will practice it.
You use some words Ghost that one seldom sees. I wonder it understands you but perhaps you enunciate well along with the punctuation?
Love Jackie
I try not to eat grits or cornpone, or drink bourbon, for at least two hours before using voice-to-text, and my phone seems to not be bothered by my accent. Even at that, there have been some hilarious transcription errors, many not repeatable here.
Someone could probably get rich developing an app that translates regional accents to Standard American English text. They should start with Louisiana Coonass…if it would work on that it would work on anything. 🙂 Then they could work on cross-regional accents. For instance, “Howdy!” could translate to “Ayup!”
Ah ha! I may have discovered the cause of the “Reject” message I’ve gotten a couple of times lately. It must mean “Moderated”. In the post above, I originally used an example of “Finest kind!” being translated to a word that begins with B and ends with itchin’.
I guess that was enough to get my post pitch forked into Moderation H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks. The only problem is that the previous times that has happened to me, I have gone over the posts with a fine-toothed comb and found nothing that would have expected to be objectionable to Miss Grundy at her most prudish.
“…nothing that I would have expected to be objectionable to Miss Grundy at her most prudish.” Can’t blame my keyboard for that one.
Jerry – The singular use of they and them is because we, as English speakers, never agreed on a third person singular pronoun. There have been attempts over the years, but none have stuck. Thon makes the most sense to me; it looks correct along side of thee, thou, thine and thy. However, despite much gnashing of teeth of grammarians everywhere, the singular they seems to have won out. (As much as y’all works for me, I sincerely doubt you will ever hear it in formal speeches.)
Bravo, Trapper Jean! Oxford comma till death here, too!
Ghost, I like the Idea of synonyms for regionalisms. Could be kind of like a Roget’s, but identifying provenance!
“As much as y’all works for me, I sincerely doubt you will ever hear it in formal speeches,” Lady Mindy?
You must never have heard what happens to the accent, diction, and vocabulary (Yay, Oxford comma!) of a Deep South Senator or MOC when they get back to their districts at campaignin’ time. Well, I swan. I do declare that butter wudden melt in their mouths, wuddit? But the pore thangs dudden hardly know just how to talk when they first light back at home. Bless their hearts.
In the realm of totally useless information, in the Encyclopedia Britannica World Atlas (copyright 1951 by Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc.) there is a town on p.30, coordinates A2, whose [first] name is ” Suujiin “. Each of the letters “u” bears an umlaut – or whatever is the equivalent in Mongolian – so those 5 consecutive letters ” uujii ” bear a total of 7 dots above them. I imagine that’s a record for consecutive letters bearing dots in any language transliterated to English, but feel free to correct me.
Yep, they aren’t apostrophes, but how often do I get to toss in that trivium?
It’s my understanding that the magnified style of quotation marks is 66 followed by 99. Yet, in the previous message, the first set is 99 followed by 66, the second set is correct, and the last set is 99 followed by 99!
Ghost – I said formal. Not stumping. 🙂
Debbe 😉 What kind of name is “Doobie”, anyway? Would there be a Grandpa and Grandma Doobie? 🙂
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HP_NE4XZGAc
Sunday’s strip! Fantastic!
Good morning Villagers….
I’ve always marched to a different drummer……
ya’ll have a blessed day now, hear!
GR 😉 no….I’m not.
Oh, and I love Janis’ “Summertime”….thanks, and the Doobie Brothers, saw them two days after a cast was put on my left ankle…back then, they were casts and heavy, had crutches too! Dang, I miss the seventies…..
=^..^=
Debbe 😉 Then prayers and hugs for you, hon.
Just thought of another use for “its”, with no apostrophe: the pronunciation of the second syllable of a popular Southern variety of white cornmeal. Actually, as commonly pronounced, the full word maybe need an ‘ as in Hawai’i.
Peace, emb
Worth watching on TWC this morning: Maria Larosa doing the “weather dance” in front of the weather map, wearing her “5 by 5” outfit…5-inch heels and a little blue dress with 5-inch-above-the-knee hem.
A balmy 60 degrees here in Port Ludlow, WA On the pony farm. Really, ponies. Windows open and I am shivering. House is full of wonderful cats, two magnificent furry while Samoyed dogs and paddocks full of ponies. Plus a hostess who eschews house cleaning and quotes great authors.
We watched Magic Mike last night before any men folk guests arrive. Talk about great literature!
Love Jackie
Today’s Sunday script is something that crossed my mine so many times last week as I cut the flooring for my Family Room. Never did it because I think that would be too cruel for my wife.