I tried reading her speech over at LGF but got lost in the letters: sort of like looking at a Roman inscription where (1) the language is foreign and (2) all the letters run together anyway so you have to figure out what the individual words are and what sentence they belong to.

It was such hard work it made my brains hurt!

Thank you Yas, for making it all "crystal clear," as if you were deciphering fragments from The Satyricon to show us the real poetry behind seeming incoherence.

Now, if only The Donald would choose her as his running mate!

Thank you Yas, for making it all "crystal clear," as if you were deciphering fragmentsfragrance from The Satyricon to show us the real poetry behind seeming incoherenceincontinence.

sorry, had to.

Oh very good. Put that in Yastreblyansky's Greatest Hits already.
But you can't claim all of the credit; some of it belongs with the material.

Thanks so very much, Smut. You and Beth have definitely put it there. Yes, the material is very rich. I was certain I'd fuck it up by not knowing where to stop.

This brought a tear to my eye, seriously. I'm sorry I haven't been here before. Well shot, skillful hand!

Needs to be read by that great orator, William Shatner.

We can hope he'll come up with his own edition.

Somewhere in heaven, Seamus Heaney is drinking a celestial Guinness and cursing the fates for not being born a Palin.

This is outstanding. Thank you.

Brilliant. Just brilliant.

I am weeping with joy. Thank you.

Skewering Palin by way of Adorno, my least favorite philosopher, is your ultimate achievement. Having to read and dissect "Dialectic of Enlightenment" has almost been made worthwhile by your ecstatic take.

I love Adorno, but I guess that's because I've always refrained from reading him, so I can maintain a strictly unbiased view, free of actual knowledge. I am to Adorno as Republicans are to the Constitution and the Bible.

Bravo!

This is beautiful.

An anal-ysis worthy of Pseud's Corner

My goodness, Palin is smarter than the average bear! Which she shot from a helicopter.

"A thing of beauty is a joy forever." Keats

After Chapman turned up at his niece's birthday party, blind drunk and clutching a hand-made gift that brought great delight to the recipient, Keats was heard to remark that "A string of kewpies is a joy for Heather".

That's a homer!

So, umm, I guess a pint of Palin is yer only man?

Yes!
GENIUS!!!

It's like "The Waste Land," with plenty of former!

'ThIs is the way the world ends,
This is the way the world ends.
This is the way the world ends...
Not with a bang, but with a simpering idiot's hateful whimper.'

It actually does read like some brilliant fringe poetry the way you set it up. Seven cantos, no waiting.

But really, is it not less "poetry" than "peotry"?

She's the broad bard of Wasilla's trailer park crack roomettes, the dim Dylan of self-induced early dementia, screech owl to the teapster set, the dumbest bunny in the great north woods hutch, not so much a mama grizzly bear as a sadly undeniable multi-mama who's increasingly grizzled and definitely unbearable.

In fairness, it's hard to out-dung an actual dung beetle.

A Battle of the Brevity Classics? LUV to, thnx: http://tiny.cc/weze8x

Always enlightening to learn of the cultural reach of Sam the Eagle.

You need to consider the possibility you might just be pretentious whippersnapper. How do you know I'm not 68 and remember watching live not just the first the first moon landing, not just being subject to the military draft, not just the first TV news feed that showed Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald while Oswald was being transported in police custody, not just as the Beatles' first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, not just Ike's last keynote speech as president when he delivered his warnings about the power of the American "military-industrial complex", but, on a teevee set with rabbit ears and a quarter inch relay line to a metal weather vane on top of neighbor's garage as Ted Williams pinch-hit in the second All-Star game of 1959.

Speaking of being pretentious in fewer (not "less") than 10 words, Strunk and White managed to combine pretentiousness and complete grammatical cluelessness with the most extreme brevity. Classic example, on the passive voice.

Hahaha. Geoffrey Pullum's frequent tirades at Language Log (not exactly an "opinion blog" but a hangout for some of the most distinguished voices in the field of linguistics) against the stupidity of Strunk & White are famous in the trade, and though I generally disagree with him on theoretical issues (he's a mathematizing formalist, I'm a radical functionalist), he is always right on this subject. I knew what I was looking for and chose what I thought was the funniest and most devastating. You have no idea what you're saying.

The less/fewer distinction has nothing to do with word order; it's about meaning, as Strunk & White themselves say:

Less refers to quantity, fewer to number. "His troubles are less than mine" means "His troubles are not so great as mine." "His troubles are fewer than mine" means "His troubles are not so numerous as mine." It is, however, correct to say, "The signers of the petition were less than a hundred, "where the round number, a hundred, is something like a collective noun, and less is thought of as meaning a less quantity or amount.

Though they spoil the point, typically, with their incomprehensible terminology and incoherent examples; I'm sure there are exceptions to the rule, as there always are, but I defy anybody to figure out what S&W think they are from this garbled account. You're much better off following the simple and concise standard linguists' rule of "fewer" with count nouns, "less" with noncount nouns, which is what you violated above.

When you run across grammatical errors in this space feel free to let me know, and I'll thank you.

Top Notch Yastreblyansky! An adornoment to the oeuvre.

Perfect.

Oh boy.

Thanks, Beth. You and Smut have made me a star. Glad I didn't go to work today (waiting for a plumber who's not in fact coming until tomorrow) so I could just sit here and watch the stats.

I was happy to do it. I need to get out into the blogosphere more and broaden my horizons. Great post--you deserve all the applause.

Happy to be just a face in the crowd on this one.

You will always be the Original Fan. At least I hope you will.

Thanks. MUCH appreciated.

Very nice!

I am severely hooked on O P uM: Outrageous Palin, uh, Mumblings!

I am severely hooked on O P uM: Outrageous Palin, uh, Mumblings

Wonderful. It's like she is reciting a patter song.

And now a link & quote from Amanda Marcotte in Salon. "One blogger ..." indeed!

Wow.