John Byrne has several popular lies he likes to tell about me. One of his favorites jus resurfaced over on his board in a thread about whether the internet has ruined comics, in which he responds to the following set-up line–
“Wasn’t the ending to Alpha Flight #12 spoiled at a comic convention by another comic professional?”
–with the following lie:
“Peter David handed out xeroxes of Guardian’s death at a con about a month before the book shipped.”
Nnnnnno. A popular lie of John’s, but no. Number one, it wasn’t at a convention; it was at a get-together for retailers. Number two, it wasn’t Guardian’s death. It was an unlettered two page dream sequence in which Heather was seeing a dessicated Guardian tearing out the ground. Number three, it was part of a package of about two dozen photocopied highlights from assorted Marvel titles. Number four, the material in question was handed to me by Denny O’Neil, the book’s editor when I–in my capacity as sales manager at the time–was going around collecting material to put into the package. And when I said to him, “Are you sure you want me to include this in the material?” Denny replied, “Sure, what’s the harm?” Number five, retailers at the get together had no idea that the sequence actually indicated that Guardian really died. I know this because when John showed up at the get-together, he looked at the material, screamed at me at the top of his lungs, “How could you be showing this to retailers?!? It gives away the fact that Guardian dies!” and stormed out of the room, slowing only long enough to kick over a standing ashtray on his way out. At which point stunned retailers said, “Guardian DIES?,” started looking at the xeroxes again, and were muttering, “I thought it was just a dream sequence…”
Set your watches. I’m sure John will be hauling out the equally fun “Peter David was so stupid he had a character fall to his death underwater” lie sometime within the next six months. That’s one of his favorites.
PAD
• 
So, John brought up the Atlantis thing. Bills, you and Jerry can have your cat food deal. Me, I’m going for the Psychic PAD Network, especially if this Mets/Phillies thing happens. Hey, I got experience in TV production! I make music videos! So PAD says it, so it shall be….
Darren, I see your point, but would you really want a rule based on an error? Sorry, it’s the English major/voice guy in me. Mistakes like this really irritate me. The big one for me, you REALLY wanna see a pissy Celt? Mix up effect and affect. And certain dialect things drive me up the same wall, like people in Philly adding an H to “street”, so that it becomes “shtreet.” (This coming from the same guy who for years has called morning meals “brefixt.” Ahh, nobody’s perfect.)
Jerry, you wanna know where these women were? The same place that all the ones that evidently wanted to go out with me, which I didn’t find out about until Stace and I were married.
Our future wives were beating them down, Daffy Duck style, MINE MINE MINE DOWN DOWN DOWN MINE MINE MINE! Oh, wait, you weren’t in that cartoon.
Tim–Whoooooa–hoooooo!
And I always THOUGHT Mulligan sounded like Harvey Manfredjensen.
You know, there’s been many a time I almost committed cold-blooded murder. Whenever somebody tried to ‘axe’ me a question. And if anybody tries to defend it by saying it’s just the natural evolution of the English language, well, you’re on my list. I’m sorry, but we’ve all got to make a stand somewhere.
P.S. for all the ‘Wanda’ devotees out there who discovered that the deluxe two-disk edition was recently pulled from the release schedule, I don’t know if they’re still selling it, but Amazon had it on their website for quite a reasonable price. That’s where I got mine, and spend a very enjoyable evening working my way through all the features, including a great John Cleese commentary track.
Jerry, you wanna know where these women were? The same place that all the ones that evidently wanted to go out with me, which I didn’t find out about until Stace and I were married.
Our future wives were beating them down, Daffy Duck style, MINE MINE MINE DOWN DOWN DOWN MINE MINE MINE! Oh, wait, you weren’t in that cartoon.
i have the sneaking suspicion that my ex-wife is still beating down the ones who want me, just out of spite.
So we’re just supposed to accept language evolution based on stupidity and ignorance?
Well, when you’re the one making the rules on language evolution, we’ll play it your way.
Until then, I think you’re better of just going with the flow.
So we’re just supposed to accept language evolution based on stupidity and ignorance?
is there another cause for the evolution of language?
Ok, now I can’t get to sleep…WHO is Harvey Manfredjensen??? Is that a Fish Named Wanda or Fawlty Towers reference I’m missing?
Okay, Bill, just so I won’t be responsible for you being the Zombie That Ate Your Job tomorrow(sorry, making my son more Danny Phantom and Martin Mystery DVDs at the moment) Harvey was the alias that Otto used when Archie’s wife came home, asked about the car and who the other drink was for in Wanda. I just hope you’re a better driver. And if you’re offended by any of this, I hope you’re not as good a shot.
“is there another cause for the evolution of language?”
The invention of new words, abbreviations, combining two or more words into one, influences from other languages… Changes to the language don’t have to stupid. Sometimes they’re done for very good reasons, other times out of plain laziness.
“Well, when you’re the one making the rules on language evolution, we’ll play it your way.”
Well, when will that be? Can it be tomorrow?
I do admit that there’s really no rational reason behind my adherence to grammatical rules, other than that it seems to me that there’s no reason NOT to follow them other than laziness, ignorance, or just blatant illiteracy (like the “of” thing… anyone who went to grade school, or who has read a book, should know that “could’ve” is a contraction of “could have”… I mean, come on!). I don’t think it’s arrogant to expect literate, English-speaking people to actually know the language. Isn’t that what education is for, at least in part?
And yes, I realize I left out the word “be” before the word “stupid.” And no, the irony is not lost on me.
Just to bring this back around to the original topic, I think I’m just going to start ignoring John Byrne and any quotes that Peter or Rich Johnston or whoever pass on. It’s just not worth getting angry over him. He’s a sad little man, and to be honest I’ve never cared for his artwork, and his writing has gotten so bad that it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that he took lessons from Ed Wood. So nothing concerning him is worth my time.
So we’re just supposed to accept language evolution based on stupidity and ignorance? Turning “of” into a verb is a bit different than favoring “you” over “thou” or eliminating the comma before “and.”
“No, it seems like it’s devolving. Idiocracy really does seem to be coming true.”
The evolution may not be based only on “stupidity and ignorance” alone.
Changes in language just like that were described and explained years ago in parts of Grimm’s Law and High German consonant shift or Second Germanic consonant shift amongst others. Parts of those touch on the fact that it’s the natural order of language to shift from harder sounds to softer sounds over time.
Would have/would of/would’a kind of fits that slow drift theory.
Wow. Play the long shot and it works.
I actually looked up the email of Penn. State, sent a question in and got a response from one of the co-writers of that paper I mentioned above.
Professor De Boef said, “My understanding was that the word evisceral meant short-lived.”
She said that belief was do to something else that they had come across with the word in it that was dealing with certain types of time frames and such. She also pointed out that, once she went looking for it, she couldn’t find it either. But she did hold to the idea that the use of the word was meant to relay the idea of being short lived.
If that’s the case, then neither JB nor the conservative blogs are getting the use of this unreal but maybe soon to be real word right. And I would take a couple of professors’ knowledge of the words’ usage and meaning over JB’s and the blogs’.
“Changes in language just like that were described and explained years ago in parts of Grimm’s Law and High German consonant shift or Second Germanic consonant shift amongst others. Parts of those touch on the fact that it’s the natural order of language to shift from harder sounds to softer sounds over time.
Would have/would of/would’a kind of fits that slow drift theory.”
Yes, but we’re talking about written language here, not spoken language. When spoken, “could’ve” sounds like “could of,” which is why people get so confused by the spelling. But that theory you describe doesn’t account for people actually WRITING “could of.”
Actually, they did have writing back when the Brothers Grimm put forward Grimm’s Law. Less writing, granted. But it was there and did very little to stop some changes.
See, we write like we speak. Both “have” and “of” are real words. If someone comes from an area where it is common to hear “could of” rather then “could have” then they will write that. But the speaking leads the writing.
“Could of” becomes the more common spoken usage. It will then follow that it will replace “could have” as the more common written usage as well.
It’s not the only change that the written langauge has not stopped. American spellings dropped the letter “u” from a bunch of English spellings. There was a big push to replace “though” with “tho” sometime back. Didn’t stick as well as the backers wanted it to but I still see it pop up in magazines, news papers and the Sunday funnies. The acronym “LASER”, due mostly to pop culture and sloppy writing, became the word (noun) “laser”.
Languages, spellings and usages will change over time. Fact of life even if it is a pain to deal with.
There was a big push to replace “though” with “tho” sometime back. Didn’t stick as well as the backers wanted it to but I still see it pop up in magazines, news papers and the Sunday funnies. The acronym “LASER”, due mostly to pop culture and sloppy writing, became the word (noun) “laser”.
I’m not sure the “laser” bit is particularly worrying, though it’s certainly true that it popped up in acronym form first.
As for “tho”, though, my favorite is actually similar to that. Somewhere in the late ’60s, Stan Lee decided that using “thru” instead of “through” wasn’t sufficient, and started using “thruout” in a lot of his scripts. Boy, is it weird looking at THAT on the page…
TWL
Jerry, I see where you’re going, but regardless of dialect, I actually think that “could of” was actually being substituted not for “could have” but the contraction, “Could’ve.” For other examples(none of which I can think of right now, sorry, my brain is toast, video guys shouldn’t work on cars) the passage into the formal language does come from popular speech patterns. I just don’t think this one may be one.
Ok. I’ve got my take and you’ve got yours. Neither of us really has enough magic letters after our names to have credentials enough to even try and claim having the definitive argument and we could go around and around forever on all the little examples from the last hundred years or so of language usage. I’m fine to part ways on the debate with a mutually agreed decision to disagree on the subject.
Sounds like a deal to me, Jerry. Now, for Tim, with a LASER or laser, I’d LIKE to think that most people would know it was an acronym, but I’m finding that maybe I give too much credit. One thing that I’ve been thinking about, reading these last few posts that I’ve seen used in books, comics, movies, and magazines–the word or phrase “Huh?” (I’m SUPREMELY guilty on this one myself) Anyone know where exactly this little verbal doodad came from originally?
Catching up on my reading.
One “word” that bugs me is “proactive.” People use it as an antonym of “reactive.” But “reactive” already has an antonym. It’s “active.”
More bizarre than the fact that people would actually use this “word” is that, according to both the Random House Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary”, second edition, and the Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11th edition, “proactive” dates to the 1930s. 1930-1935, in the former example; 1933 in the latter. But if that’s the case, why doesn’t it appear in other dictionaries?
Of course I wonder why it would appear in _any_ dictionary, whether coined in the 1930s or the 1990s. It’s redundant, any way you look at it.
And like Tara on “Buffy”, I sometimes find the constant misspellings on the Internet a little depressing. Recent examples have included “dieing” (correct word: “dying”) and “microfish” (correct word: “microfiche”).
And, of course, there’s the old stand-by “alright.” No, it’s “all right.” Unless, of course, one means Al Wright, whomever he may be.
Rick