Guest post by Guyd Tarken
Mr. Tarken has recently taken up residence with about a dozen anachronistic-style granola-eaters. Though he claims to be a vegetarian, the relocation was a tax issue and not a moral one.
I would not recommend living in a house with other people, if you can avoid it. Live alone, if you can, but if you cannot, at the very least avoid living with the people with whom I am forced to, once a week, spend two hours going over the minutia of the house's problems.
This would not ordinarily be a problem, as I usually just pick a seat toward the back and sleep through these sorts of events, but yesterday I found myself in the curious and surprising position to correct someone's grammar using an example from sports; specifically golf.
I have always considered it a badge of honor to not understand a lick of golf, because it is a bullshit game played by modern day Archie Bunkers. The closest I have ever come to golfing was once painting a golf course while casually employed as a housepainter. I had a solidly good perspective into the world of golfing, as the golfers considered me a reasonably white person to whom they could bitch about minorities, and the caddies saw me as a reasonably working class person to whom they could bitch about golfers. The best conclusion I could reach on the sport is that it is an awful way to spend one's time and I could NOT fathom why so many people think the subject is funny. For Christ's sake, Groucho Marx devoted about half his autobiography to the subject, and it makes for the worst reading in the book.
Anyway, back on subject, one of my housemates (a term that you'd think I'd hate more then the housemates themselves; you clearly do not know my housemates) complained that next to the sink, a pool of water had formed in a divot. This roused me. "A divot," I complained, "is one of those things in golf. Isn't it like the thing that you put the ball onto and then hit it off?"
"No," it was condescendingly explained, "the divot is when the club hits the grass and tears up some turf."
"So is it the turf or the hole in the turf?"
"Both."
This is bullshit. We cannot have the same word for an empty space and the item that is meant to be in that space. It would be chaos. But, though I thoroughly disagreed with the explanation (see any dictionary website and I will be proven correct), I found within myself a strong kinship with the person who explained it. She clearly does not know much about golf, either. We both apparently have the same idea of what a horrid sport it is. And, in that, we are united against God knows how many awful human beings.
I would not recommend living in a house with other people, if you can avoid it. Live alone, if you can, but if you cannot, at the very least avoid living with the people with whom I am forced to, once a week, spend two hours going over the minutia of the house's problems.
This would not ordinarily be a problem, as I usually just pick a seat toward the back and sleep through these sorts of events, but yesterday I found myself in the curious and surprising position to correct someone's grammar using an example from sports; specifically golf.
I have always considered it a badge of honor to not understand a lick of golf, because it is a bullshit game played by modern day Archie Bunkers. The closest I have ever come to golfing was once painting a golf course while casually employed as a housepainter. I had a solidly good perspective into the world of golfing, as the golfers considered me a reasonably white person to whom they could bitch about minorities, and the caddies saw me as a reasonably working class person to whom they could bitch about golfers. The best conclusion I could reach on the sport is that it is an awful way to spend one's time and I could NOT fathom why so many people think the subject is funny. For Christ's sake, Groucho Marx devoted about half his autobiography to the subject, and it makes for the worst reading in the book.
Anyway, back on subject, one of my housemates (a term that you'd think I'd hate more then the housemates themselves; you clearly do not know my housemates) complained that next to the sink, a pool of water had formed in a divot. This roused me. "A divot," I complained, "is one of those things in golf. Isn't it like the thing that you put the ball onto and then hit it off?"
"No," it was condescendingly explained, "the divot is when the club hits the grass and tears up some turf."
"So is it the turf or the hole in the turf?"
"Both."
This is bullshit. We cannot have the same word for an empty space and the item that is meant to be in that space. It would be chaos. But, though I thoroughly disagreed with the explanation (see any dictionary website and I will be proven correct), I found within myself a strong kinship with the person who explained it. She clearly does not know much about golf, either. We both apparently have the same idea of what a horrid sport it is. And, in that, we are united against God knows how many awful human beings.
posted by (Dan) at 9:26 PM
2 Comments:
"You must replace that divot."
"With what?"
"The divot."
As Kramer once said, "First and first? How can a street intersect with itself? I'm at the nexus of the universe!"
I feel quite grateful to have encountered the website and look forward to some more cool ideas by reading here. Thank you once more for everything.
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