It's kind of like "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" (or "Let's eat grandma"), only expanded to cover all non-verbal grammar, idiomatic phrases and the myriad illogical things people say every day.
And it's my whole life. My wife says it is Aspberger's (which I hear is no longer a condition). I think I should take offense at being called an Ass Burger, but with McDonald's now advertising Anus Beef as a premium menu item, I guess she just thinks I am delicious.
Anyways, she claims she has Silly Ass disease and I can't see my own condition being any worse than that.
So, my Life Without Commas (a condition much worse for those who live with the afflicted party) means that when someone at the dinner table says, "there's more if you want some" I wonder how my desire for food controls the existence of additional portions. It means, following the rules of boolean logic, when someone asks me an "or" question, they often get a yes/no answer (most often when asking "or" questions, an open ended question is better: "Is it your stomach or head?" should yield a "yes" for one or the other, but a "no" for neither; the response for both could be either, depending on whether or not it is an exclusive or; a better question might be "What ails you?" or "To which body part or parts belong(s) the blame for your discomfort?"). And of course, it means that, since punctuation makes no noise in English (I can only hope that there is another language out there that thought of and corrected this shortcoming), I fear violent Koalas and cannibalism involving grand matriarchs.
I have an idea for a comic to illustrate one of the best examples of this, though having never done one, I can not promise it will happen and doubt that it will look as I desire if it does. I do solemnly swear to try not to outshine Randall Monroe or Matthew Inman or the Hyberbole and a Half chick (is she still around?). Perhaps it should even be my New Year's Resolution, as I think I can keep this one.
In wrapping up this brief explanation, proper blog form requires that I apologize for not posting frequently (I'm sorry) to the one person who actually follows this blog (actually me, through a second email address) and those who cyber-stalk it (probably also me when logged out), offer up lame excuses (I have been so busy, lost the log in info, dog ate the vowels from my keyboard) and promise to do better (I swear on Peter Graves); I must then make one or two attempts to post in the near future before getting interested in another facebook game involving the matching of shapes or colors and not find time to blog again for a while.
Finally, many who know my writing might ask "Why not 'My Parenthetical Life' or 'From Semi-colon With Love'?" My only answer is that this blog is about more than just my writing (I don't have to worry much about whether someone is speaking in parentheses or using a semi-colon instead of some other punctuation to join their thoughts; the existence or lack of a comma really matters... except in large numbers and as the part of a list preceding "and" or "or"). My other answer is that the two aforementioned marks of punctuation get enough attention these days as emoticon elements ;)
And it's my whole life. My wife says it is Aspberger's (which I hear is no longer a condition). I think I should take offense at being called an Ass Burger, but with McDonald's now advertising Anus Beef as a premium menu item, I guess she just thinks I am delicious.
Anyways, she claims she has Silly Ass disease and I can't see my own condition being any worse than that.
So, my Life Without Commas (a condition much worse for those who live with the afflicted party) means that when someone at the dinner table says, "there's more if you want some" I wonder how my desire for food controls the existence of additional portions. It means, following the rules of boolean logic, when someone asks me an "or" question, they often get a yes/no answer (most often when asking "or" questions, an open ended question is better: "Is it your stomach or head?" should yield a "yes" for one or the other, but a "no" for neither; the response for both could be either, depending on whether or not it is an exclusive or; a better question might be "What ails you?" or "To which body part or parts belong(s) the blame for your discomfort?"). And of course, it means that, since punctuation makes no noise in English (I can only hope that there is another language out there that thought of and corrected this shortcoming), I fear violent Koalas and cannibalism involving grand matriarchs.
I have an idea for a comic to illustrate one of the best examples of this, though having never done one, I can not promise it will happen and doubt that it will look as I desire if it does. I do solemnly swear to try not to outshine Randall Monroe or Matthew Inman or the Hyberbole and a Half chick (is she still around?). Perhaps it should even be my New Year's Resolution, as I think I can keep this one.
In wrapping up this brief explanation, proper blog form requires that I apologize for not posting frequently (I'm sorry) to the one person who actually follows this blog (actually me, through a second email address) and those who cyber-stalk it (probably also me when logged out), offer up lame excuses (I have been so busy, lost the log in info, dog ate the vowels from my keyboard) and promise to do better (I swear on Peter Graves); I must then make one or two attempts to post in the near future before getting interested in another facebook game involving the matching of shapes or colors and not find time to blog again for a while.
Finally, many who know my writing might ask "Why not 'My Parenthetical Life' or 'From Semi-colon With Love'?" My only answer is that this blog is about more than just my writing (I don't have to worry much about whether someone is speaking in parentheses or using a semi-colon instead of some other punctuation to join their thoughts; the existence or lack of a comma really matters... except in large numbers and as the part of a list preceding "and" or "or"). My other answer is that the two aforementioned marks of punctuation get enough attention these days as emoticon elements ;)
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