Billboards are cheap, right?

Enter the grammar nazi once again.

We're driving home from a great weekend of fishing and hanging out in Ennis, Montana, and what do we see?  No fewer than 5 billboards for Young Kia, a car dealership in Kaysville containing a textbook grammar offense. I am seriously dumbfounded that companies will pay tons of money for someone to create them an ad, buy billboard space, print and post a huge billboard WITHOUT HIRING SOMEONE TO CHECK IT FOR CORRECT GRAMMAR.

Dear businesses: I will do this for you! For a very minimal cost!  Maybe even for free!  It's worth it for me to not have to see these atrocities on our streets and highways.  Who will think of the children?  Carly will, that's who.

My anger towards Young Kia had cooled slightly, but then today, while innocently watching a video on YouTube, what ad do you think popped up on my sidebar?

That's right.  Young Kia in Kaysville.  With the INDUSTRIES best warranty.  Really?  The fashion industry, the fast food industry, the steel manufacturing industry, the medical supplies indudstry....none of these have a better warranty than Young Kia, people.  And even if that's what they were trying to convey, their punctuation STILL would've been incorrect.  Let's break this down:

• INDUSTRIES' BEST WARRANTY:  The best warranty belonging to multiple industries
• INDUSTRY'S BEST WARRANTY: The best warranty in their industry (what they meant to say)
• INDUSTRIES BEST WARRANTY:  Doesn't even mean ANYTHING (what they did say)

Apostrophe Catastrophe, volume 973

Why are apostrophes so difficult for the general population to understand and use correctly?  And why oh WHY don't companies have more than one proofreader before they name their establishments and have giant signs and window stickers made? 

The name of this store has always bugged me, as well as their hideous fonts and colors, the fact that it's all lower case, and that it ends with an exclamation point.  But it's the apostrophe usage that ticks me off the most:

 

Seriously?!  All that wear for just one kid?  Ugh.

Coffee's what????

Taken in the break room at my office on the side of the office coffee box.  Apostrophes are hard for America to understand.

Making the world safe for grammarians everywhere

"There is a large number of students.......[continued quote]"
- A Utah high school principal, as quoted in the newspaper
"That's incorrect grammar! What a moron! It should be 'There ARE a large number...' "- Bill Allred, DJ on X96's Radio From Hell morning show
"You owe that guy an apology, his grammar was not incorrect."
- An X96 listener
"Can anyone who knows the rules call in and let me know if I owe the principal and apology or not?"- Bill Allred, DJ on X96's Radio From Hell morning show
Who can possibly swoop in and save this impending radio catastrophe? Who has the grammatical prowess to decipher this potentially unsolvable subject/verb agreement mystery? What self-respecting English teacher and faithful FOP (friend of the program) could possibly turn down this chance to prove Bill "I'm never wrong" Allred WRONG?

It's a bird...
It's a plane...
It's....Carly the grammar nazi!

So they put me on the air and I was able to explain that the HS principal was in fact correct in his statement that "There is a large number of students..."

But Bill shouldn't be distressed, this is one of the most common errors I catch when grading my English 101 papers.

Even though students is plural, the word number is a singular noun. There are many students that make up that singular group, but we're still talking about one singular group, not groups or "...numbers of students..." Therefore, to maintain subject/verb agreement, the singular form of the verb, is, should be used rather than the plural form, are.

Similar example: "The whole group is starving." is correct while "The whole group are starving." would be incorrect.

Pause and discuss.

A blog by any other name...

I wanted to explain the name I've chosen for this blogderdash. I've already stated that I LOVE words and grammar, which pathetically wasn't an exaggeration--so I actually deliberated and agonized over what to call this blasted contraption for WEEKS.

The title of this blog, these words that I will choose, are words that I will potentially be looking at and directing people to for years to come. I mean, it has to be good. It has to be funny. Clever. Witty. Something I won't get sick of. Something pleasing to say and look at. Something that will have good visual appeal when I force Mason to design me a masthead.

So I built a list of literally 37 possibilities, and would text myself a good idea whenever one struck me. This list is seriously a gold mine of delicious one-liners and puns on clichés, so if anyone wants to pay me like $50 to see The List of Genius, just let me know.

So why did I end up picking an inside joke among friends, Lady Bombay, instead of one of those aforementioned clever titles? I'll never know.

The story of Lady Bombay takes us back to 2004, when three friends began a passionate hate affair with those companies and restaurants that insist on publishing signs with incorrect grammar and spelling. Morris, Cham and I would constantly text and IM and email each other with the semantic blunders, punctuational catastrophes, and spelling calamities that we came across.

One evening, Cham was having dinner at one of my favorite Indian places: Bombay House (going there tonight actually, weird). She noticed a horrendous sign on their front door and immediately texted her grammar police posse the awful news:

lady bombay has dinning hours posted on the door

Now we all know that punctuation and capitalization go a little lapse when it comes to texting. So her actual meaning of the text, which was:

Lady (a name which we all affectionately call each other), Bombay (Bombay House, the restaurant) has 'dinning hours' (a misspelling of 'dining hours') posted on their door. (Those idiots)

....was completely lost on the recipients.

I didn't even bother trying to interpret the nonsense, but Morris took Cham's text to mean the following:

Lady Bombay (Carly) has posted dinning hours (which are a bundle of letters or notes or something fun for you to read) on the (your) door

So, thinking that I, Lady Bombay, had 'posted' a note on her front door, Morris bounded right down the stairs and checked her front door for the dinning hours that I, Lady Bombay, had left for her.

To this day, Morris isn't even sure why she thought I was Lady Bombay.
Oh, but I was.
And I am.
Even the world wide web says so now.

"Ooooh! They have the internet on computers now!"

The scariest thing I'll see today...

...comes in the form of a paper I just graded. Yowza, now THAT will give you nightmares.

There's a first time for everything.

There’s your first kiss, your first time flying, the first time you get punched in the face (funny story…remind me later), and indeed, your very first blog post.

Let’s just be honest, I don’t know how often this’ll happen. I mean, this could very easily just become another MySpace page that I won’t log in to and won’t update, but sometimes you just have to carpe the damn diem and try it anyway. There is quite a wide spectrum of bloggers out there, as far as frequency is concerned. There are those whose pages have been sitting there, lonely and without an update since the series finale of Dawson’s Creek, and those whose pages catalog TMI from their morning breakfast cereal right up to the song they heard on the drive home. Not sure where I’ll fall on that spectrum yet, but you’d better believe that this one goes to eleven. Maybe I’ll score, like, a nice 5.5 or so.

Me: a brief pictorial tutorial (a pictutorial, if you will)

I like racquetball.

I play it twice a week with my mom, who beats me 50% of the time. I’m currently on a 2-game winning streak, go me. Those who don’t think racquetball is a real sport can just kiss my racquet. And yes, we do super cool wall moves like that one.

I sing...

...in both a choir and a band…..two very opposite outlets for the very different things I love about singing.

I work...

...1.5 jobs. The whole job is for a software company as a project manager and technical writer, the half job is as an online English Profetzer. Work is a necessary evil, but I really lucked out as far as jobs go.

I will pimp out my husband at every chance I get.

I meant pimp him out as an artist, so get your mind out of the gutter. He is a freelance graphic designer and artist and I will always brag about him, advertise for him, and try to get you to commission or hire him. So get used to it. It’s what proud wives do. So, does anyone need a family portrait commissioned for Christmas? Or a new logo or business card? Anyone?

I love my family.

Yes, I know, everyone loves his or her family, by law. But I’m pretty sure I love mine a little more than you love yours. This includes the family I was born in to, the family I married in to, and the other family that I’ve constructed myself through the years.

I dance. I party. Therefore, I Dance Party. (Yes those are capitalized)

If I had my choice, I would spend every single night of the century doing just what you see in the above. All week, I just sit in my cube, eternally plugged into iTunes, tapping my feet and biting my tongue so I don’t burst into song and dance, simultaneously.

I go to a lot of shows.

I intend to blog about them as an attempt to spark my atrophied writing hobby. I used to write articles and CD reviews for SLUG, but once I didn’t have an editor giving me deadlines, the hobby died. Here’s hoping.

I have an unhealthy obsession with good-looking European cars.

This obsession is mostly with Saabs, but I am open to Maseratis, Aston Martins, Mercedes, Audis, BMWs, Porches, Bentleys, Spykers, what have you. But I’ve had 4 Saabs already, I’m partial.

I’m kind of a grammar nazi.

I love words. But when people misuse them and their friends, punctuation marks, I go kind of insane.

Ice cream is my passion.

No explanation necessary.

Fassion is another passion.

Though, once you tell people you like fashion, they sort of expect you to be fashionable, which is a lot of pressure. I just love clothes. I love shopping, getting dressed in the morning, accessorizing, helping others accessorize, making fun of bad accessorizing, and seeing and experimenting with the fashions created by the masters—like Chanel, above. It's a good mix of the classic Chanel tweed ladylike suit, but with a splash of new, like the leggin-2-tone-hose-thingies that they were OBSESSED with at fashion week, and the dark-toed-feathered-platforms also featured on 8/10 of their runway models. I'm not so sure that I would rock either of those. But the dark jewelery with the suit? Chanellllo!

I camp.

That’s in tents, like camping. Mason bought us a new tent for our 5th wedding anniversary in June, and we spent at least 10 weekends this summer living in it. I may or may not like it better than our loft. There are less hobos sleeping underneath the front porch, for sure.

I’m really good at road trips.

The road trip can have many end destinations: a friend’s wedding, a family reunion, etc. But the best destination by far is a concert. The concert road trip is an art I’ve perfected since my first one to see The Ataris in Las Vegas like 8 years ago. Since then it’s been Baton Rouge to see Rx Bandits, San Diego to see Ghostland Observatory, and most recently, Hollywood to see Jackopierce. I’m slightly embarrassed to admit this, but I stopped counting how many times I’ve seen Rx….because it hit 30. The Stone Pony in Asbury Park, New Jersey was probably the farthest we’ve ever traveled to see them. I know, a bit ridiculous. I have a problem.

I may turn into a Crazy Cat Lady one day.

I already have two, and when the littlest one ceases to be a kitten (as is the cruel course of nature), I’m going to want another kitten. This will inevitably lead to….