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[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by dtb
Thanks to same-day delivery in Manhattan, I received my copy of "Eats, Shoots & Leaves" yesterday, and all I can say is, FINALLY, a kindred spirit (the author, Lynne Truss)!

Text from the book illustrating our comparable attitudes toward this urgently important subject follow. (I hope this isn't some kind of copyright violation.)

• It's tough being a stickler for punctuation these days. [...] Everywhere one looks, there are signs of ignorance and indifference. [...] Part of one's despair, of course, is that the world cares nothing for the littel shocks indured by the sensitive stickler. While we look in horror at a badly punctuated sign, the world crries on around us, blind to our plight. We are like the little boy in The Sixth Sense who can see dead people, except that we can see dead punctuation. [...] No one understands us seventh-sense people. They regard us as freaks. When we point out illiterate mistakes we are often aggressively instructed to "get a life" by people who, interestingly, sidplay no evidence of having lives themselves. Naturally we become timid about making our insights known, in such inhospitable conditions. Being burned as a witch is not safely enough off the agenda.

I think I am in love.




(It's really a very funny book, and an enjoyable read -- even if you're not as obsessi.. uh, particular about punctuation and grammar as, say, oh, I don't know... I?)

Did you ever think how your life would be differant if you hadn't moved, and you'd graduated from the Detroit Public School System?