Another "Know-It-All" questions the Grammer Genious

The renowned theoretical linguist Dr. Claude Kluckhorn, “The Crown Jewel of the Linguistics Department” at Big Bone Lick College in Big Bone Lick, Kentucky, writes:

Dear Grammer Genious, so called,

Your “blog” was recently brought to my attention by a graduate student whom I have been mentoring. Not meaning to be overly abrupt, I nevertheless feel compelled to inquire where, exactly, you get off, posing as any sort of resource for language knowledge, let alone as an “expert.” From a linguistic standpoint, the absurd responses you dole out to your correspondents are laughable, to say the least.

Allow me to put a simple question to you, as a test of your linguistic mettle: Do you hold with the opinion of Voyles as to the employment of inverted reconstruction using the data made available through the attested daughter languages in light of and at times in preference to the results of the comparative reconstruction undertaken to arrive at Proto-Indo-European? Or do you hold with Van Coetsem’s notion that the Germanic Parent Language encompasses both the Pre-Proto-Germanic stage of development preceding the First Germanic Sound Shift and that stage traditionally identified as Proto-Germanic up to the beginning of the Common Era?

I await your response with gleeful anticipation, you transparent mountebank.

- Signed, Full Professor Dr. Claude Kluckhorn, PhD, Chairman of the Linguistics Department, Big Bone Lick College, Big Bone Lick, Kentucky

Dear Claude, my man,

Could you say that again? I wasn’t listening. Ya dumbass.

- The Grammer Genious

What is the question?

Riley Carr, a Tech Sergeant aerial porter with the 456th Expeditionary Communications Squadron at Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan, writes:

Dear Grammer Genious,

We have a lot of time to talk here in Afghanistan, and we get into a lot of discussions and arguments in the hangar while we're waiting around, and today we were arguing about whether it is "kitty-corner," or "catty-corner." Please tell us the answer.

Signed, TSgt Carr

Dear Sergeant,

Is WHAT catty-corner or kitty-corner? Do you mean the Wawa? The Starbucks? I don't understand the question.

- Signed, the Grammer Genious

Go ahead, dumbell, "turn into the skid."

Mrs. Donna O’Toole of Joliet, Illinois, write:

Dear Grammer Genious,

Our daughter Sacajawea finished her high school driver education course a while ago and has been driving for a few months. They taught her in the course that if your car starts to skid you should always “turn into the skid,” or “turn in the direction of the skid.” They said it several times. I remember that they said the same thing to us when I took drivers education way back in the 80s, and I’ve heard it all my life but I haven’t paid much attention to it because it doesn’t make any sense.

Yesterday evening Sacajawea was driving back from Triple Trio practice in the snow. She was crossing the Jefferson Street bridge and the car started to skid, turning to the right. So following the guidance of her teachers she turned the wheel to the right, and she went off the bridge. The car turned over but landed on the river bank and luckily Sacajawea wasn’t hurt very badly but the Stratus is pretty bent up.

This morning my husband called Sacajawea’s driving teacher Mr. Feeney at the high school and asked why he had told her to do that. At first he laughed a nervous laugh, but then he admitted that he always told new drivers to do that because that’s what it says in the book, but that it had always seemed stupid to him, too. He has never “turned in the direction of the skid.”

So, is there something about English that we’re all not getting? What does “turn into the skid” mean?

-Signed, Mrs. Tecumseh J. O’Toole

Dear Mrs. O’Toole,

When your car is skidding, why would you turn in a way that would immediately and very obviously make the skid worse, just because somebody told you to? Only a stupid person would blindly follow instructions that are obviously wrong, especially when it involves the integrity of your Dodge Stratus.

Apparently, this “turn into the skid” thing is all the result of some misprint in the distant past (or maybe it was just a silly gag by some waggish joker) that has been mindlessly reprinted and repeated ever since by people with minimal intelligence and no common sense, despite the fact that it is patently loony and idiotic. 

The solution is for you to stop being such a complete sheep and to start thinking for yourself. It’s people like you that have voted our country into the toilet. No offense.

-- The Grammer Genious

PS. You probably also believed them when they said you should loosen a screw by "turning it to the left." When you loosen a screw, only the TOP edge moves to the left. The bottom edge moves to the RIGHT, stupid. No offense.

Bells on B/bobtail ring

Fred Brumit, a beer truck driver in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, and a long-time tenor member of the Yuengling Brewery Employees Concert Choir, writes:

Dear Grammer Genious,

Can you settle a big argument we’re having? Last night at the rehearsal for the upcoming Yuengling Brewery Choir Christmas Concert the singers all got into a real big argument about “bells on Bobtail ring”. We tenors are sure that of course it is talking about the horse, whose name is Bobtail. 

A bunch of the choir, mainly those bitches the altos, claimed that the phrase is referring to the bells on the bobbed tail of the horse. But if it meant that it would say “bells on THE [horse’s] bobbed tail ring….” wouldn’t it? Otherwise it would be like saying “Books on table are big” instead of “Books on THE table are big.” I kept trying to explain that and give examples, but those women just kept looking away from me and laughing at me and looking at each other and making faces and ignoring me and making fun of me and ridiculing me, and refusing to think about what I was trying to say to them. They made me completely embarrassed and humiliated, the fat old bitches.

They brought cookies to the rehearsal too – really good ones with icing -- but they wouldn’t let us tenors have any because we told them they were wrong. Also, they sing way too loud, too. Like fingernails on the blackboard.

I’m thinking of wearing my Groucho glasses with the attached nose and mustache to the concert, which is going to be on Public Access Channel next Wednesday, just to embarrass them and screw everything up. That’s how pissed off I am. It all sucks. They won't even listen. They think they're so smart.

Signed, Fred Brumit

Dear Fred,

Hey Fred, listen. I don’t want to hurt your feelings etcetera, but this “Christmas choir” thing is just so lame. It’s pathetic, man. Who gives a crap, honestly. No offense. Sing whatever you want. Wear your Groucho glasses. Nobody will notice, because nobody will come, and nobody will give a crap, and nobody will watch the sorry public access channel except for maybe a bunch of catatonic Alzheimers victims in the rest homes. That kind of local amateur choir crap is just horrible.

But hey I don’t want to discourage you, though, because I’m a very upbeat person! So, rock on, Yuengling Brewery Choir!!

- The Grammer Genious