Isn't Punctuation Our Friend!!!1!?!

I have a pet peeve. It's the abuse of our common good friends: Excy the exclamation point, Questioney the question mark, and their host of other mistreated sentence ending buddies.

Let's start with Excy. He's just a little line and a dot. He never did anything to anyone, but people seem to treat him like he was a two-bit n-dash.

Excy has some great qualities. I like what they do in Spanish with the exclamation point -- how it sits in the front of the sentence saying, "Hey you, read this sentence with enthusiasm buddy!"(Otherwise you run the risk of not knowing to be excited until after you're already done reading it, and then everyone is sad inside.)

But some evil people believe that using several exclamation points is acceptable. Just like the question mark, some think that redundant punctuation is somehow helpful to their cause.

Many of you may be saying, "But Nate, I love my exclamation points!!1! Why should I stop using them, you punctuation fascist!?!?!?!? And What's wrong with ? marks???"

Fisrt of all Questioney has a name -- and it's not "? mark."

Second, does a reader know that your question is more of a question by your putting several question marks? Do I think your thought to be more important to me because you used nine exclamation points? (Answer: No.)

Here's the thing, in English we have superlatives. We have words that indicate interrogatives. We have lots of really useful words that indicate what we're feeling, thinking, etc. The punctuation mark only servers to clarify the intent of the sentence.

Multiple exclamation points, question marks, or other redundant punctuation at the end of a sentence only makes the reader think you haven't developed your ideas enough to express your thoughts using actual words.

The next time you feel the need to use excessive exclamation points or question marks, perhaps you should try using Rebus (Pictograms for words, like you did back in elementary school) instead of paragraphs.

Here's an example of how you should probably start writing:

had a

(Translation: I had a frontal lobotomy.)

As for me, I'm off to rip the exclamation point key off the keyboards of everyone in America. It's been abused too long, and I won't stand for it anymore!

Election Day Spectacular

Let's play a game! Pick the gubernatorial candidate with the most clearly identifiable mental ill . . . er uh, craz . . . er uh, oddity -- yeah, let's just call it most obvious oddity:

Jon Huntsman
Bob Springmeyer
"Superdell" Dell Schanze

I'll give you a hint: This was his entry in the Utah Voter Information Pamphlet
I have a basic belief in life. That no person should have "Super" in his name unless it is immediately followed by "Man" or ". . . eme Commander NATO Allied Forces."

Also, ideally in the case of the former, any such person is required to be from Krypton.

EuroPower Pimp 2000

I give you the Euro Power P(i)MP 2000.

More Power, More Features, Less Weight (For today's body conscious pimp.)

Scanner Scan

Sometimes error messages are really useful. In fact, they often help you figure out what went wrong, and how to fix it.

However, what does one do when then get an error message on a PDA?

Why you take your PDA to your scanner and e-mail me the image result, of course!


I guess it works, but it's still freakin' ridiculous.

Man Ray for Teenagers

I saw this ad on the New York Times Website:

It's animated, so perhaps you can't see it here. But it takes a punny stand. It reads:

When When kids think Man Ray is a poisonous jellyfish, clearly there isn't enough art in our schools.

For those of you who don't know, Man Ray is a photographer with a weird name and, tastes that maybe we'll just call "salacious".


Take a look at the girl in the ad, then take a look at the first few hits on Google's Image results for Man Ray.

OK, actually, don't look at that link. It could get you fired if you're at work, but I wanted to make the point.

Avant-garde?
--Sure.
Art?
--Yeah.
Naked women as the subject of art for teenagers first exposures to the fine arts?
-- Er, uh . . . maybe we should do less exposing of people and introduce from now on . (Or at least until they think that hanging a Marcel Duchamp print is just as cool as a Man Ray.)

Technically Dada, one could still safely call "The Fountain" by Marcel Duchamp Avante-garde.

One word:

No:What's with the shirt? Ergo Old Navy Delenda Est!

Power Dogs

There's a hot-dog stand near BYU campus, popular with the locals called J-Dawgs. Today at work, we visited J-Dawgs.

However, being so close to campus, it is really hard to find a place to park

Unless you work for the Power Company

There they were in line with their truck parked, admittedly with lights flashing, in the middle of the street.

If I had lights on my car, I would totally have done this too.

Bathroom Humor

There is a place in between Provo, Utah and Salt Lake City called Thanksgiving Point. Near this place is a gas station, and in this gas station is a men's bathroom.

In this bathroom, one will find this sign (assuming one has good hygiene and is looking for paper towels).

But does one find this sign in the women's restroom?

That's a negatory, Ghostrider.

One must wonder what constitutes "misuse of paper towels"? Further, how was this so consistent that they felt the need to remove paper towels from their restroom all together? It's as if the area suffers from a roving paper towel abusing gang.

Little do they know that havoc that can be wrought with a hand dryer . . . .

Embryo Imbroglio

I found this at the BYU bookstore's discontinued books shelf:


I have a few guesses as to why they are no longer using this as a text book.
Seriously though, The Haunting Fetus? That sounds like a really bad Sam Raimi movie.

The plot: all the babies that were aborted have come back to haunt their mothers and the doctors who preformed abortions.

The Haunting Fetus. Rated R. Now playing at theaters everywhere.