and now for something completely different.

Sorry about the potato-centric nature of my posting lately. It's just that they're cheap, and ya know, potato, mellon, and something else hit with a mellon baller, then with carrot matchsticks would make a pretty neat home-made molecule building kit.

Anyway. I've been reading all about stereochemistry (but not learning to spell it). So I'm obviously not at all interested in talking about it.

so Instead, I thought I'd give you guys a quick run down of all the things you should never ever ever do with the english language. In approx. order of annoyance, from most to least.

1. Confuse poisonous with venomous. It's very simple, but so many people get it wrong (including a poster in my bio lab a couple years ago, but excluding the OED). I know of no poisonous snakes. It's just not common. In order to remember, and save me the hassle of both correcting you, and tattooing it on your forehead, if you bite it and you die, it's poisonous, if it bites you and you die, it's venomous. example- you will not meet any venomous mushrooms. But you can have poisonous *or* venomous frogs and toads. Yum. so quick-like- bad snakes = venomous, belladona= poisonous. ok, so the poison thing also counts for things that get on your skin. Same idea, tho.
2. Forget to use the verb "to be". In france they kill you for it, I think. With stale bread. In the US, you just sound like an idiot. A backwards idiot. When you are talking about something which needs doing, or is in the future, you use it. No, really. Not " the laundry needs done." Needs what done? needs doing, maybe. Needs *to be* done, yes. If someone asks you what you wanna do when you grow up you don't tell them "I want an astronaut." You tell them you want to be one. Important here, people. If you actually want an astronaut, then you say "I want to be an Air Force Wife." See, that "to be" thing again.
   
3. say "hey peoples" when talking directly to a group. Or "there were peoples there." Please. Just don't, it's so very wrong.
4. Insist on using "y'all" then refusing to conjugate properly. Just because you insist on speaking like an ignorant fool doesn't mean you need to be one. Y'all is singular, Y'all's is singlular possesive. All Y'all is plural, All Y'all's is plural possesive. Learn it, use it (actually, please don't).
   
5. Talk LOUDER TO PEOPLE WHO TALK "FUNNY" OR DON'T SPEAK ENGLISH. Acents and foreign languages don't cause hearing loss. You don't need to speak louder, you need to speak sssslllloooowwwweeeerrrr. And use actual words. They don't teach up to the minute slang in english for beginners.

And there you go. In approx. the order in which they drive me batty. Now spelling, that's just silly- there were "correct" spellings for very few words before wierdos began collecting them and deciding how things were spelled and where. Thus webster and his american dictionary, and oxford and their brittish spellings. I get the feeling the brittish had more type available, since they went crazy with the extra letters. As long as it's (almost) understandable, I really don't care about spelling or punctuation, Tho I admit that huge oopsies make me wince. But I worship at the alter of the comma splice. yum.

There you go- more than you ever wanted to know about the english language. Lucky you.

ok, back to csi/ sleep.

j.