Get your airboat on!

Accompanied the 'rents to a shindig put on for an association end of year thang. Am feeling quite stoopid that I never knew you could take an airboat ride in these here parts to traipse around the St. John's River. Yes, you can, at the Lone Cabbage Fish Camp.

Here's the ride heading north from SR-520:



Many gators sighted, we stopped to spy one up close and personal.



Last bit of the half hour ride was South of 520 to Lake Poinsett.



Post-ride eats at the fish camp included fried cat fish, baked tilapia, slaw & beans, and yummilicious hush puppies. Seafood *always* comes with hush puppies. Northern climes often uck this up.

News to me in Southern styles is a Bloody Mary served, not with a stalk of celery, but with - ew! - a pickle. Cheek swoonage ensued, and not in a good way.

Head still spinning from the pickle ick factor, upon departure we spied the requisite Southern entreaty to return. Grrr ... Kernan the Grammarian's bile rose. Move that apostrophe, I do dee-clayuh!

Speak and Write Gooder, all y'all!

"We owe much to our mother tongue. It is through speech and writing that we understand each other and can attend to our needs and differences. If we don't respect and honor the rules of English, we lose our ability to communicate clearly and well. In short, we invite mayhem, misery, madness, and inevitably even more bad things that start with letters other than M. (Seriously—sort of. But it is true that misplaced commas have cost companies millions of dollars. Murderers have been identified based on idiosyncratic grammar errors. And even the oft-maligned semicolon has changed the outcome of court cases.)"

Read and learn more at NationalGrammarDay.com. I'm *so* tempted to buy the T-shirt!

Kernan the Grammarian also offers you a wonderful verb that you've likely been *doing* for some time, but you didn't know there was a word for it: prepone, brought to you by the wonderful Anu Garg and the folks at A Word a Day (A.W.A.D.).

Comma Delays Suck

This tickled Kernan the Grammarian's fancy.

From Tony Carillo's F Minus

Lynne Truss would lurve it!

May Day

At a Daytona concert in 1989, James Taylor shared his grandfather's greeting for this fine day:

"Hooray! Hooray! The first of May!
Outdoor f*cking starts today!"

Grandpa Taylor rocks!

A few weeks back, A Word A Day's weekly theme was "There's a word for it." One of the words was an incredibly serendipitous find, waiting all these years for discovery.

FloridaDad has long discussed navel gazing as a process for examing the old to divine the new. To examine who you are before choosing the next right thing.

He'd rub his belly, which we urchins had nicknamed Ralph, and chant "navel navel navel" as he illustrated navel gazing in action. Little did any of us know, there's a word for it!

omphaloskepsis (om-fuh-lo-SKEP-sis) noun :
Contemplation of one's navel.

From Greek omphalos (navel) + skepsis (act of looking, examination). Ultimately from the Indo-European root spek- (to observe) which is also the ancestor of suspect, spectrum, bishop (literally, overseer), despise, espionage, telescope, spectator, and spectacles.]

Today's word in Visual Thesaurus

Summer, fall, and winter was a time of much omphaloskepsis in Cheekdom. M'aidez calls were answered by many, and my gratitude is profound. In the words of Emily Dickinson: my friends are my estate.

CheekHaiku to illustrate word usage:

Spring's bold green leaves clothe
winter's naked limbs; so ends
omphaloskepsis.

Spring to life!

Kernan and "Rightness"

Grammar Girl has received props from a previous post, but Cheek knows how many of you are slack*ssbast*rds and likely haven't gone to check it out on the site or on iTunes.

Well. Shame on you.

One of Kernan's rules is that, as an English major college graduate, I'm allowed to spell and grammarize however I wish. I'm certified. But I also agree with April Fool's "Grammar Girl" that winners get to make their own grammar rules, as well. That seems only fair. I'm wincing in anticipation on that statement, as certain peeps will gleefully Cheek-bash with this authority.

Text below for the April Fool's Grammar Girl, but trust me, you want to listen to all of its 4 minute glory here. You *must* hear the caller, Stewart, and how he says:

"I thank you mighty kindly for, uh, puttin' up with me. I feel like ever since I started listenin' to yer show, that it's really improved my entire lexuhcun, and it's made me more verboseness in just my whole way of presentin' myself, and I really do thank you kindly."

CountryMouse, I'm sure that's just making yer *sshole quivah with the peevies!

************************************************************************


I hope you enjoy this April Fools' Day show. It was created by Will Ross, host of The Traveling Avatar's Quick and Dirty Tips for a Better Second Life.

[Will's voice] Grammar Girl here, today we’re going to talk about the semicolon—the Roger Clinton of the punctuation world. Considered more useful than the regular colon by most grammar scholars because of its ability to form a winking smiley face, which is far cuter then the traditional smiley face emoticon, the semicolon can also...

[ring]Oh! Looks like we have a call!

[Call from Stewart, who comments on Grammar Girl's “hotness” and asks about bingoing, bingoed, and the plural of bingo.]
From Cheek ... seriously, listen to at least this part!

Hi, Stewart, and first off I’m sorry to hear about your battle with the mysterious assassin known only as “The Ninja.” As for your comments on my smoking hotness, remember, Grammar Girl affected you with her hotness. But the effect of her hotness, was you buying her a diamond tennis bracelet.

I’m glad to hear about your newfound grammatical skills, and I’ll be glad to answer your question. The short answer to your question is that if you win a game of bingo, you can say whatever you’d like. You’re a winner, and you get to make the rules. This is called the “Winners Write the Grammar Rule” which was created by Sir Ethan Fancybloomers, Lord of Wellingsly after his was the only ship of the line to fight the battle of Trafalgar from the shore after being run aground due to confusion about when the celebration rum was to be given to the sailors. Despite being put on the “honor system” to consume their rum only after Napoleon’s fleet was decimated, the entire crew of 415 jumped the gun leading to one of the most darkest moments in Royal Navy History. But I digress.

I use a simple device to remember the “winner’s rule.” Whenever you’re confused, just think “I before thee, after any victory.” It’s this rule that makes any X-Box live victory trash talking grammatically correct, regardless of how it’s phrased.

Now back to the subject of ninjas. When describing a group of ninjas you…

Grammar Girl: Will, what are you doing in my office?

Will: Ohhh, this is your office? See, I get confused because our offices look so similar.

Grammar Girl: Here’s a good way to tell them apart. My office is in Arizona.

Will: Cool, I’ll just finish this one thing…

Grammar Girl: Out!

Will: Grammar girl signing out!

Apostroholics

As CountryMouse puts it, we all have voices in our head. One of mine is Kernan the Grammarian. Kernan can be harsh, but Kernan also takes ultimato liberty with language, abusing it profusely into her own patois. Cheeknacular, if you will.

Never knew that I was also an “anonymous apostrophe flinger” – well, I guess I knew I was, but didn’t know there was a name for it. Good thing I’ve got StrongBad to set me straight (watch at least the beginning). I’ve received my charleyhorse. Run, don’t walk, and catch up on some StrongBad E-mail today.

Grammar Girl

One of the risks in having a big ass-vocabulary and a motor mouth is that I have a large reserve of words that I occasionally misuse, mispronounce, and (eek!) misspell. This is not to be confused with the myriad alternative spellings and made up words found on this blog - those are deliberate. I think.

Certain peeps ebulliently point out my verbal and written gaffes with justifiable glee, as it's my wont to identify theirs with what I'm sure comes across as a truthy air of superiority. But as I pull up my slipped aplomb skirt, face flushed, I am in fact grateful. I ain't perfect, I don't want to suck that way, and my druther is to keep the wheel of my squirrel cage on kilter as it's cranked by language and wit. So Boone, Mr. Pid, Sheena, and others, mea culpa. Mea culpa.

As a path to redemption, Cheek proffers Grammar Girl, a weekly Podcast and blog on word usage. Well written and full of useful examples for everyday readin' and writin', it joins the Links That Don't Suck honor list. If you have similar reference sites, share.

Word Power

Get Fuzzy from 22-Dec-2006, by Darby Conley.

A tip o' the hat to CarolinaMom for starting my love of words. Pre-kindergarten library afternoons, reading languidly and racking up the gold stars as the completed tally grew. Another shout out to Jill Rock, who suffered upon the 12th grade English Literature class my first paperback school text: Word Power, the only book I've ever burned. Don't get yer knickers in a twist - tradition was to cathartically light that weekly quiz-driven pain in the *ss and watch it smolder.

This post is more about the stars than the burning. For many years now, I've enjoyed A Word a Day. Words known and new, with a quote nestled inside (usually of the provocative variety). It joins the vaulted Links That Don't Suck, and I hope you'll consider subscribing to enjoy it every morning as I do.

The power of words is rather stunning. We can't think, feel, or connect with others without them. Wit can't exist in their absence. Poetry may not be universally cherished, but without its lyrical form in music the human race would be SO missing out. Learning is utterly, ultimately dependent on them.

So, words = knowledge. knowledge = power. low word knowledge = ignorance. From here, if you choose to maintain low word knowledge, that equals being clueless (without clue and damn proud of it to stay that way). Clueless = Stupid, and stoopid people suck. If you take the road less traveled and opt for expanding the vocab, then your state can change from cluefree (currently without clue but willing to seek one out), to clueful. Clueful people are the cheekier kind, in general.

G'head. Be particular. Choose not to suck.