Started out as Christmasy, ended up bein' about grammar

FOUR DAYS TIL CHRISTMAS.

My current plans are to finish The Night Watch at home, and then barrel through A Walk in the Woods and From the Closet to the Altar when I get back on the 26th. Five days, four of which will be spent with my parents, for they are coming up here AFTER I go downstate to visit them. I'm sure that'll work out fine and no one will be sick of anyone.

I started Eats, Shoots & Leaves because I'm a horrible person with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. It's already hilarious, so that's a relief, and on the plus side, is about grammar.

I have some issues with grammar. The author (Lynne Truss) is very much on the side of overly zealous grammar snobs, but in a I'm-a-super-fun-person-don't-you-want-to-be-my-best-friend way (yes I do, Lynne). I didn't CARE about grammar until I took a zillion foreign languages in college for opera. I couldn't diagram a sentence at all and I never really listened to the rules in grade school/high school, because I was busy writing Cheers fan fiction. So all of this magnificence you see before you is the result of reading a bunch of shit and unconsciously copying it.

Because of this, I get a bit leery of grammar snobs. They notice things I do that are technically wrong. But because I never took the time to learn these rules and thus have zero attachment to them, my opinion is that they don't matter. If you can communicate your point, I don't care if you have a dangling modifier or whatever other sin I frequently commit. Also -- split infinitives? Fuck. You. Do you know why those are seen as bad? Because the guy who came up with The Rules was going off Latin. WHERE YOU CAN'T SPLIT THE INFINITIVE BECAUSE IT'S ONE WORD. But we can. And 'to go boldly' sounds stupid.

If your language allows you to do fun, word-changey-uppy things, then you do that. 'Boldly' is earlier in the sentence and so it sounds important. 'TO BOLDLY GO' sayeth Patrick Stewart, followed by the crashingly awesome intro (for serious, no theme music is ever going to be as good as the STNG opening).

So I'll read this book. And I'll learn some things. But if anyone ever feels they need to tell me to correct my grammar (I can only assume it hasn't happened yet because you all live in mortal fear of me and my GIF-y wrath), know that my response no matter what the season shall be:

I love you all. Merry Christmas. And Happy Not Actually the End of the World Day. Glad we survived that.

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