I was listening to "Free to Be You and Me" in the '70s, so I realize I'm out of my element, but both my memory and my amazing powers of Google place "Lust for Life" in 1977. Am I spelling water underwater, here?

BTW, another sign of 1970ism is John Mayer's success. When I first heard "No Such Thing" on the radio, I swear to God I thought it was Gerry Rafferty.

no. it does google out in 77. I just don't think of Iggy as being a "70's" guy. I don't think he got much fame in the 70's and when one talks of the bad part of the 70's it isn't Iggy.

spring has sprung
 

You've got to be joking. You missed questions on that game?

(You all know, I'm sure, what my score was...)

The only one that probably had two correct answers was the one about "Of course there were no tickets left." (Then again, seeing as how it didn't end with an exclamation mark, the comma was the way to go -- which is the way I went, natch -- but I wonder if you'd get a correct answer with "no comma".)

spring has sprung
 

you do not get a correct answer with no comma. fuckers. they are quite comma happy, I think. Though I thought it was funny that NFH's statement about being good at commas was arguably missing a comma. Or maybe I'm whiffing. dtb?

spring has sprung
 

I was told that a clause over three words (at the beginning of the sentence) gets a comma. A clause under three words does not. Of course, my HS English teacher was a biker bitch, so I have no idea if that's correct...

spring has sprung
 

I don't think you're whiffing, but clearly I am not cool enough to know the vernacular you kids are using these days, so I could be wrong.

However, if "whiffing" means what I think it means, you didn't whiff, as the comma's absence was not meant to be funny. This was demonstrated with the subsequent defensive remark, "It was a typo! Sheesh!" (or something to that effect).

AI Results
 

I have become quite comfortable with this sort of hero worship. With my feature article by Rich Cohen in the May '04 Vanity Fair, and then another mention on p. 181 of that same issue, my popularity is zooming. I am quite in.

spring has sprung
 

but the typo comment was made by someone else. the entire exchange was quite perplexing to me, but I kept silent (until now, that is).

PS. dtb, I need your input over on Politics. stat.

paying for drinks
 

This question in some form or another has probably been asked ad infinitum already, but I guess I never paid attention to those posts.

I'm going to be going out with my friend shortly (ex-bf, but that is really neither here nor there). Whenever we go out, he always insists on paying for my drinks. I always protest but I hate making a lot of fuss so I don't protest vehemently. I always feel bad because he is a teacher and I make hundreds of thousands more than he does - although I would never say such a thing.

My question is, should I be protesting more vehemently? I don't want to insult him - at the same time I don't want to be a cheapskate.

And, because you all want to know, no, our evenings out do not end in torrid encounters. Far from it. Sorry to be so boring.

AI Results
 

At the time I posted that, he still had that extremely muscley guy in the angel wings.

Now, the avatar is likeable by the ladies.

spring has sprung
 

I think your biker-bitch teacher was messin' with youse guys. (I actually had a candidate use the words "youse guys" in an interview -- and I still pulled for him to get the job, because he was otherwise charming and seemed as though he would be hard working. However, I lost that battle. He apparently used similar phrases in other interviews at the firm.)

If that axiom your biker-bitch teacher taught you were true, you wouldn't need a comma after "however" or "nonetheless" and those types of words, where clearly a pause is required (although I suppose one would say that one word doesn't a clause make; but then why limit the axiom to "fewer than three words" and just say "two words"? Hmmmm?).

spring has sprung
 

Sounds like a South Sider. The entire Chicago PD talks like that.

paying for drinks
 

Give him two shots: "let me get this round"; "no"; "really, you always buy" After that, it's machismo or something, so let it lie.

Or just get there early, and start a tab before he arrives.

spring has sprung
 

Based on Sunny's goading yesterday, I did a little digging into ignore list usage. Some of the info pretty interesting:

1. Rather than put up with the clutter, many people just ignore socks, whether they are of a persistent or one-off variety.
2. The higher your user number, the more likely you are being ignored (xenophobia? or, are the only new users socks?). Likewise, the lower your user number, the less likely you are being ignored.
3. That being said, if you are a regular poster and think you couldn't possibly be on someone else's ignore list, you are wrong.
4. Somehow each of the original admins managed to make it onto someone's ignore list. Those entries are going to be manually deleted in accordance with our FAQs/TOS. Also, we are disabling the ability to add admins to your ignore list. It was supposed to have been disabled, but someone got enabled. A side effect is that you won't be able to add moderators to your list. However, if you want a particular moderator added to your ignore list, PM me and I can manually add it into the database.

spring has sprung
 

"Whiff" is not a comment on the post to which the response is being made. It is a statement by the responding poster that he or she would like to continue the witty exchange, but is temporarily at a loss for what to say.