This guy can't talk normal

Mr. Jean-Baptiste Drouillard, who runs a rent-it store in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec, and has never ventured into the U.S. before because he is afraid of the primitive health care system here, writes:

Mon cher Génie Grammaire,

Ma femme et moi avons l'intention de aller aux États-Unis pour faire des courses. Nous voulons acheter de bacon et de fromage, parce qu’on ne peut pas obtenir ces choses au Canada. Et nous aimerions aussi obtenir du sirop d'érable. Le sirop d'érable canadien a le goût du poisson.

Pourriez-vous nous suggérer quelqu'un bon magasin dans le New York où l'on peut acheter de telles choses? Nous vous remercions beaucoup.

Jean-Baptiste et Octavie Drouillard

Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec

P.S. Est-il vrai que vous avez des punaises dans votre pays?

Dear Jean whatever,

What the hell do you think this is, the United Nations? If you want to get along on this continent, LEARN THE LANGUAGE! Your letter makes no sense at all, froggy.

The Grammer Genious

The Tea Party vs. Jimi Hendrix

Danny Crook of Guthrie Center, Iowa, who writes and sells term papers and master's theses on the Internet and plays bass with the grunge band Worst Case Scenario in Des Moines on weekends, writes:

Dear Grammer Genious.

I am a huge, huge fan of Jimi Hendrix. He’s mostly all I listen to, and of course I’ve memorized everything he ever wrote because I've heard it all about a million times. My favorite line of his is in Purple Haze, where he says “Scuse me while I kiss this guy.” I love its charming gayness.

So imagine my shock and surprise when I went to a website that's supposed to have his lyrics, and they had changed them to “Scuse me while I kiss the sky.” What the hell??! That sounds weird! What he said was a clear as a bell, and everybody knows what it was. I don’t understand why they’re trying to change it now. What do you think?

Signed, Danny Crook

Dear Danny,

This is clearly part of the Tea Party Movement’s campaign to remove all traces of gayness from the arts, and to recharacterize all the gay icons of the past and pretend that they were all straight -- Sinatra,  Liberace, Johnny Cash -- all the well-known gay icons.

I agree that the words he said are so plain and clear, and so well known, that trying to change this bit of “charming gayness,” as you call it, into something other than what it manifestly is, is just plain silly. The best proof of that is the fact that “Scuse me while I kiss this guy” gets a quarter of a million hits on Google. Case closed! That’s why the Tea Party is not going to get away with this.

The Grammer Genious

Finally, a smart person!

Mary Ellen Patterson, the assistant manager of West End Bowling in Minot, North Dakota, and a real crowd pleaser during Friday night karaoke at Gino’s Lounge in the same strip mall, writes:

Dear Grammer Genious,

What’s the difference between an occultist, an oculist, an ocularist, an ophthalmologist, an optometrist, and an optician? There’s a case of Bud Lite riding on this.

Signed, Mary Ellen Patterson

Dear Ms. Patterson,

I see your point – and a very clever one it is indeed! All of those names designate people who help us to see things more clearly.

Why do we have so many different words that mean essentially the same thing? I don’t know, Ms. Patterson, it's a real waste, isn't it? You’ve posed a good question, made all the more astute by your not having overtly stated it. I wish all my correspondents were up to your level.

The Grammer Genious

Hurray! Pivoted Stochastic Instantiations!

Rutherford B. Hayes McDonald, the Chairman of the Board of the humungous multinational arms conglomerate Weapons Systems Я Us, writes:

Dear Grammer Genious,

Our firm is currently ramping up and rolling out an open source-based cloud data storage and processing solution, embodying an innovative paradigm of distributed, self-organizing structures in analytics, employing stochastic processes to incorporate pivoted values thereby providing a multi-level infrastructure of interconnected testbeds of interdisciplinary, heterogeneous, scaled scenarios for tailored solutions to produce context-based instantiations of self-management concepts with roll-up and drill-down operations, leveraging stakeholder expectations for transformational algorithms, mechanisms, and multivariate, quantitative protocols.

We have worked hard to make that description as clear and simple as we could, without being inaccurate or misleading. But, surprisingly, we are encountering comprehension barriers with our potential customers, which is causing us to wonder if there is some way that we might describe this product more cogently. We would therefore be grateful for any suggestions you might give us in that regard.

Collegially yours,

Rutherford B. Hayes McDonald, Chairman and CEO

Weapons Systems Я Us

McLean, Virginia

Dear Ruthie,

Frankly, you took the very words right out of my mouth. If the customers can’t understand that, they’re not worthy of the product. What, they don't know how to use a dictionary? What do they want from you, baby-talk? I say, screw ‘em.

The Grammer Genious

The Grammer Genious on Classical Music

William Jefferson Slade ("the Grammer Genious") has kindly produced a little music appreciation lesson, as a cultural benefit for all his blog fans, and to aid them in their personal growth.

A rather objective case of an overly passive voice

Jade Bernadette Panagiotopoulos-McGillicuddy, an 11^th grader at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, Maryland, writes:

Dear Grammer Genious,

Our AP English teacher Miss Medzigian made us write college application essays for practice, the kind you have to write to get into college. I wrote mine about like that I was a dog and I was going to go to college with my human, and what would college be like for my human and I, and what would I want to get from the college experience as a dog, ecsetera. I thought that up myself. You have to take some weird, imaginational attitude like that in your essay to get into a descent college. It’s title is “College For My Master And I”. Nobody helped me write it, my nosey mom wanted to but I wouldn’t even let her look at it because it’s none of her business.

Anyway I spell checked it and everything and I thought it looked real good and I turned it in, and when I got it back old Medzigian said “the pronouns confused the objective with the subjective,” and there was “too much passive voice” in it. I have *ZERO* idea what she is talking about. Do you?

Signed, Jade Panagiotopoulos-McGillicuddy

Dear Jade,

Sure I understand, Jadey! Words mean what they mean! Look them up!

By “objective,” your teacher must have meant that the dog in the story objected too much about something, and also what the dog said was too subjective and not factual enough. And she thinks the dog’s voice was too passive sounding. If your teacher would prefer a more assertive voice, then change the dog into a cat! There ya go! Problem solved!

Use your DICTIONARY, Jadey. It solves everything!

The Grammer Genious

Glennbeck, Maine

Bill Colly, an unemployed real estate salesman on Medicaid, and the head of the Tea Party Movement in Bangor Maine, writes:

Dear Grammer Genious,

I am the chairman of the Tea Party Movement here in Bangor, Maine. There is a rumor going around here that Bangor was named after Bangalore, India, except the people that originally named it spelled it wrong. If that's true, we're going to run candidates to change the name of the city, probably to Glennbeck, Maine. Is it true that Bangor was named after some foreign place?

Signed,

William Colly, Chairman, Tea Party Movement of Glennbeck, Maine (formerly Bangor)

Dear Bill,

Of course it's true. Everybody knows that. Why, it's even on the internet. I'm surprised you thought you should even ask. Now go out there and kick ass!

The Grammer Genious.

A pitiable unintentional poet

The Grammer Genious received the following letter anonymously, from a sad victim of that tragic, newly recognized mental illness that compels its poor victims to couch any expression of opinion in Shakesperian sonnet form. 

Dear Grammer Genious,

Help me if you would. My wife keeps nagging me about the way I talk to her. So give me, if you could, your thoughts, and let the chips fall where they may. She says that every time I talk to her, it sounds as if I think I’m some great poet. She claims that rhymes seem always to occur in such a way that, although I don’t know it, I’ve made a poem. In a way, I’m flattered that she’d think I’m that smart. As if I’d ever have any notion how to write a “sonnet”.  I’ve never written anything that mattered.  For sure she ought to know I’m not that clever.  I don’t know what put that bee in her bonnet.

Signed, the Unintentional Poet.

Dear Unintentional Poet,

Roses are red, violets are blue. You have our deepest sympathy.. um,  bada-boo, bada-boo. Or something like that.

Signed, the Grammer Genious.

A canine epitaph

Mrs. Caesar Rodney du Pont IV, the famous waste-management heiress and leading social figure of Wilmington, Delaware, writes:

Dear Grammer Genious,

Recently, our dear and beloved bloodhound Leslie passed away suddenly. Caesar and I are utterly devastated. A treasured family member for many years, Leslie had a remarkable artistic sensibility and a unique and well-known sense of humor, despite the continual, lifelong burden of humiliation at having his gender misconstrued by ignorant people due to his ostensibly ambiguous given name. In addition to keeping the du Pont family larder well supplied with game, this extraordinary canine's unsurpassed olfactory skill was responsible for the apprehension and incarceration of more than 480 fugitive miscreants in three states.

In early January, Leslie's earthly remains were temporarily interred in a local pet cemetery with a moving High Episcopalian ceremony, pending the design and realization of his own sarcophagus to be erected in the ancestral family plot of the du Ponts. My husband and I have commissioned the celebrated Italian marble sculptor Finocchio di Balducci with the tomb's design and execution, and we are now searching for an appropriate poetic sentiment to be carved upon its base. That is the reason for our writing to you. As a person of broad belletristic knowledge and famously exquisite literary taste, you would be our choice to proffer suggestions for a befitting epitaph. Our gratitude would be most profound for any help you might give us in this our hour of deep sorrow.

Yours very sincerely,

Cunegonde Felicity du Pont (Mrs. Caesar Rodney du Pont IV)

The Boxwoods

Wilmington, Delaware

Dear Mr. and Mrs du Pont,

The sentiment that springs immediately to my mind for her would be a version of Edgar Allen Poe's "To Helen," with certain modifications."Leslie, thy beauty is to me / Like those Nicean barks of yore..." I cannot think of a more appropriate poem for your dear departed bitch, particularly in light of the artistic sensibilities that you say she exhibited during her lifetime.. For example, where the original has "thy hyacinth hair," the version for Leslie would read, "thy hyacinth ears." "The agate lamp within thy hand" would become "The agate lamp hanging from thy muzzle." And so forth.

With deepest sympathy,

The Grammer Genious