From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org (fegmaniax-digest) To: fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Subject: fegmaniax-digest V13 #163 Reply-To: fegmaniax@smoe.org Sender: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk fegmaniax-digest Friday, June 4 2004 Volume 13 : Number 163 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: The Paw-Paw Carboard Digipak ["Fortissimo" ] Re: pedantry (both millennia and band names) [Aaron Mandel ] From TV Guide [Eb ] Re: From TV Guide [Capuchin ] Lemon Jelly [James Dignan ] Re: pedantry (10% Eno) [James Dignan ] Re: From TV Guide [Eb ] Re: fegmaniax-digest V13 #162 [Michael R Godwin ] PS to last [Michael R Godwin ] Re: Jeme has pretty much nailed it, as have others [Jeff Dwarf ] RE: The Paw-Paw Cardboard Digipak [Jeff Dwarf ] Re: fegmaniax-digest V13 #162 [Capuchin ] Re: Jeme has pretty much nailed it, as have others ["Matt Sewell" Subject: Re: The Paw-Paw Carboard Digipak On Thu, 3 Jun 2004 17:42:43 -0700, "Eb" said: Jale - So wound. > > Maybe I'm wrong, but isn't So Wound *undersized*? Typically, you think it's oversized, but they think it's undersized. - ------------------------------- ...Jeff J e f f r e y N o r m a n The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com/ :: "In two thousand years, they'll still be looking for Elvis - :: this is nothing new," said the priest. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 3 Jun 2004 23:01:22 -0400 (EDT) From: Aaron Mandel Subject: Re: pedantry (both millennia and band names) On Thu, 3 Jun 2004, Fortissimo wrote: > Anyway: the handful of tracks so far entered by The The: listed under > "The, The." Although how do we know the intent wasn't just to repeat the > article, without it actually *meaning* anything...? I thought it was a reference to the last line of Wallace Stevens' "The Man On The Dump". So I guess if I felt like I understood that poem I would have a sense of how the band name was meant to be parsed... a ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 3 Jun 2004 22:19:44 -0500 From: "Michael Wells" Subject: Re: pedantry (both millennia and band names) Rex offers: > And more fun for aphabetizing! Technically it seems that her first two records, when PJ Harvey was theoretically the name of the band, should be filed under "p", and all subsequent ones under "h". This protocol, of course, has been followed by exactly nobody ever under any circumstances. Next up: Iggy Stooge and/or Pop and/or the Stooges. Go! Once I determined it was cool to file "Was Mothers Just Another Band from L.A.?" under "Z" things became simpler. Ignore convention entirely...reorganize your entire collection by increasing order of funkiness. Have debates with yourself about where the mothership would rank that old +Animal Logic cd. And if Barbara Walters had multiple personalities, would she debate herself in third person plural? That's always bugged the hell out of me. Michael "Us...er, They the The, The...um...them...oh, forget it" Wells ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 3 Jun 2004 22:38:42 -0500 From: steve Subject: Re: Jeme has pretty much nailed it, as have others On Jun 3, 2004, at 3:26 PM, Jill Brand wrote: > and they all seem to be into their children. I think that, by definition, soccer moms would be "into their children". Else they would just have their nannies take the kids to the game. ;) My next door neighbor will be attending the institution from which Jill's email address derives. She was astonished that someone of my advanced years would present her with the two The New Pornographers albums as a graduation gift. I told her I just read the bumperstickers on the back of her car, but I owe it all to the internet. And it's true about reissues - the two Rhino Yes albums I just purchased are cardboard foldouts. Relayer and Tales From Topographic Oceans, if you must know. Alert! - - Steve __________ In press conferences, TV ads, and interviews this year, President Bush has manifested a series of psychopathologies: an abstract notion of reality, confidence unhinged from facts and circumstances, and a conception of credibility that requires no correspondence to the external world. - William Saletan ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 03 Jun 2004 23:15:20 -0500 From: Dolph Chaney Subject: announcement (100% me) I just finished recording on my newest album. Details, as always, are at . Mixing etc. should be complete before my trek to the UK (and the Oxford gig w/ The New Moon and... possibly... anotherfeg to be named later! - -- dolph who files his CDs in expediential order (where in the apartment do I like to be when I listen to this CD, and how far do I like to reach for each one?) ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 4 Jun 2004 00:15:02 -0700 From: Eb Subject: From TV Guide TV Guide has listed its top 25 "cult" shows. What do you think? 25. Freaks and Geeks 24. Absolutely Fabulous 23. Forever Knight 22. H.R. Pufnstuf [hmm, I don't know about this one] 21. Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman 20. Twin Peaks [seems way too low on the list] 19. Dark Shadows 18. Doctor Who 17. The Avengers 16. My So Called Life [I don't think I would have included this] 15. Quantum Leap 14. Beauty and the Beast 13. Babylon 5 12. Family Guy 11. Mystery Science Theater 3000 10. Pee Wee's Playhouse 09. Xena: Warrior Princess 08. The Twilight Zone 07. The Prisoner 06. The Simpsons 05. Monty Python's Flying Circus 04. Farscape [seems *way* too high...how many people even *saw* this show? I don't know *anything* about it myself, beyond that it was on the Sci-Fi channel] 03. Buffy the Vampire Slayer 02. X-Files 01. Star Trek Objections? Missing shows? I guess The Brady Bunch was too popular? How about SCTV? Saturday Night Live? Highlander? Police Squad? The Young Ones? Benny Hill? Just tossing out a few names. Eb ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 4 Jun 2004 01:10:39 -0700 (PDT) From: Capuchin Subject: Re: From TV Guide On Fri, 4 Jun 2004, Eb wrote: > TV Guide has listed its top 25 "cult" shows. What do you think? Well, "top" on what scale? You want straight up quality television with interesting thematic material and adeptness and innovation within the craft? Hell, this order is WAY off. And what's with with the one entry labelled "Star Trek"? For pure cult draw with no real marketting engine, the original series gets some high marks (for the period between the end of the series and the first film, anyway), but I think most folks would profess greater fondness for one of the other series. > 25. Freaks and Geeks Way too low for some criteria, way too high for others. I know there are a whole bunch of people hopelessly dedicated to this show (and working to REVIVE IT! That's clearly insane.. it isn't The Family Guy -- you can't just draw everybody the same way a few years later.) I'm curious to see the next thing Jake Kasdan does. While I thought Orange County was a pitifully mediocre film, Zero Effect is straight-up genius and I watch it probably bi-monthly. > 24. Absolutely Fabulous I'd hardly call that "cult". > 23. Forever Knight > 04. Farscape "Cult" because their Canadian? Because they're sci-fi/fantasy? I'm under the impression that Farscape has some following, but that's true for every sci-fi/fantasy series... literally. > 22. H.R. Pufnstuf > [hmm, I don't know about this one] Yeah, can't possibly count. > 20. Twin Peaks > [seems way too low on the list] Nah. It's very much of a time and a place. For maybe me and you, it's significant. But I can certainly see that as very much a generational thing. It was innovative, but not really as kooky as we all remember it being. That is to say, much of what was strange about it has become commonplace. > 19. Dark Shadows > 18. Doctor Who > 17. The Avengers > 15. Quantum Leap > 14. Beauty and the Beast > 13. Babylon 5 > 09. Xena: Warrior Princess These all go with the above sci-fi/fantasy camp. They have a following because those types of fans are are never-satisfied, empty gullets of need and projection. On second thought, maybe Dark Shadows, Doctor Who, and Quantum Leap really do have something. The rest are just soaps with fancy costumes. (OK, strictly speaking Dark Shadows is a soap, but it's so freakin' weird!) > 16. My So Called Life > [I don't think I would have included this] Yeah, totally mainstream. Like including "The Wonder Years" or something. So it didn't run very long, does that make it a cult series? > 12. Family Guy Phew, too close to call on that one. I don't have the distance. > 08. The Twilight Zone I wouldn't call that a "cult" show in any way, shape, or form. It's just an old, popular show. It wears better because of the anthology nature and the quality of the acting, writing, and directing. Just about everybody has a favorite Twilight Zone episode. > 06. The Simpsons Yeah, I don't know about this one, either. Doesn't pretty much everybody watch this? I mean, maybe not NOW and maybe not all the time, but what gives it "cult" status? > 05. Monty Python's Flying Circus > [seems *way* too high...how many people even *saw* this show? I don't > know *anything* about it myself, beyond that it was on the Sci-Fi > channel] See, the funny thing is that I cut "Farscape" out of here to include in the comment above, but forgot when I came down to this left-over. So, at first I thought "Seriously? Does he think it's too high?" Then I thought, "OH, he's being sarcastic... lame." And THEN I thought, "Sci-Fi channel? Is he trying to pretend blatant ignorance and harken back to what he wrote about Farsca... Oh, shit. I'm an idiot." Well, I thought it was funny. > 03. Buffy the Vampire Slayer > 02. X-Files > 01. Star Trek I already commented on Star Trek and I would almost put Buffy in the above fantasy-soaps category. X-Files really did some great and interesting things with their series from the ongoing storylines that are expected of such a series to the really out-there episodes that imply a whole different weird universe than the one in which you usually think the show takes place. I would order them VERY differently based on different criteria. > Objections? Noted. > Missing shows? I'm sure somebody (Steve, probably) will list a dozen or so sci-fi/fantasy shows that surely count for at least as much as Forever Knight and Farscape just because they're of a genre that is inextricable from the label "cult". (Quick, name a sci-fi/fantasy series that isn't a "cult" show.) > I guess The Brady Bunch was too popular? Saturday Night Live? Way too popular. > How about SCTV? Not bad, but, as was noted on this very list, quite dated and so any cult is pretty well dead. > Highlander? Hell, you may as well include Hercules: The Legendary Journeys (or whatever that was called). > Police Squad? The Young Ones? Benny Hill? Those are all good, too, I think. Maybe Benny Hill is too mainstream... I've always gotten the impression that his show appealed to different sets of people in the US and UK (outside of horny pre-adolescents). The brits seem to take him with a whole lot less irony. > Just tossing out a few names. It's hard to say what qualifies. I can list any number of television series that have some small following and had some quality (even if that quality wasn't intended when the series was made). Blackadder surely has to count for something... probably more than many on that list. The problem I'm having is defining my terms. I don't think there's any series you could find that MOST people like, so it can't just be a strong opinion among a minority of viewers. Is it fan devotion? Well, that opens up a huge number of shows that are just enormously popular. OK, here's three: Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy, The Price Is Right. Now THOSE have some funky cults... particularly that last one. I've got a friend who is a TPIR junkie. Keychain, picture in her wallet of herself with a price/nametag from her visit to the show, whole nine yards. Desperately avoiding work, J. - -- _______________________________________________ Capuchin capuchin@bitmine.net Jeme A Brelin ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 4 Jun 2004 20:41:18 +1200 From: James Dignan Subject: Lemon Jelly >weird -- I have both LJ CDs (in Canadian release, no less), and they >both fit in my rack fine. The Jelly are a guilty pleasure of mine; for I >while I had to restrained from adding "... and a big fellow too!" onto >the end of ever sentence. Both? did you say both? Tell me about the other one! James (who occasionally has to be restrained from singing about ducks swimming in the water) - -- James Dignan, Dunedin, New Zealand -.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.- =-.-=-.-=-.- You talk to me as if from a distance .-=-.-=-.-=-. -=-. And I reply with impressions chosen from another time .-=- .-=-.-=-.-=-.-=- (Brian Eno - "By this River") -.-=-.-=-.-=-.-= ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 4 Jun 2004 20:42:32 +1200 From: James Dignan Subject: Re: pedantry (10% Eno) Eb, then me, then Eb: > >> Oh, and regarding oversized cardboard sleeves which don't fit right > >> into a CD collection, I have exactly two [...] > > > > Epsilon Blue - Waterland > > Lemon Jelly - Lost horizons > > King Crimson - Cirkus > > Jale - So wound. > >Maybe I'm wrong, but isn't So Wound *undersized*? Out the door, no time >to check. The cover is square - so it's taller than the other CDs, but sits deeper in the shelf. Jeff sez: >What's been driving me bats - since I'm inputting my collection into the >Music Collector database - is morons who input faulty data & submit that >to CDDB etc. Christ - if you're going to bother submitting, at least >proofread first. Amen brother (something we agree on at last! :) The most irritating are those who catalogue compilations by making the artist name part of the track name and listing the artist as "various artists" for all the individual tracks. >Anyway: the handful of tracks so far entered by The >The: listed under "The, The." Although how do we know the intent wasn't >just to repeat the article, without it actually *meaning* anything...? sounds like the problem I had trying to convince someone about the name of one of my paintings: "Untitled". It wasn't an untitled painting. It's just that its name was "Untitled". >Now, I treat names as names (unless they're fictitious >and don't designate a band member: i.e., something like Bent Hammer & the >Nails, w/no one in the band using that name, goes under B. If a band >member called him/herself "Bent Hammer," it'd go under H. Examples of the "Bent Hammer" category include Aussie band Barry Plankton, and Lazlo Bane. Can't thimk of any others off the top of my head (except the obvious Jethro Tull and Echo and the Rabbitpeople), but someone here is bound to start listing them. (I suppose cases could be made for both Alice Cooper and Marilyn Manson - hopefully with reinforced lids and padlocks). >On another note: The packaging pretty clearly billed the Eno reissues as >being "remastered from the original tapes" - not just reissued. And if >they're "copy protected," they're not done very well (thank god): I just >ripped a track from one to check, and it sounds fine. Are we talking >about the same issues? AGW in this series has a UPC of 7 24357 72912 3... I'm just going by what i read on the Nerve Net list. Cap added: >The band isn't called Clean, it's called The Clean (now that's an >ambiguous number! Are they The Clean or is it The Clean? -- Talking Heads >answered that question for us when they named their record "The Name Of >This Band Is Talking Heads".). no they didn't! "The name" is definitely singular, but is the band? The name of Robyn fans on this list is Fegmaniax. The Robyn fans are Fegmaniax. > > The obvious difference is that "Faces" ends in -s and "Who" doesn't. > > Makes perfect sense to me. > >It's not even the ending in "s", really. "The Faces" is a plural and "The >Who" is not. Consider what one would do with a band called The Few. >It's a plural, so you'd treat like you would The Faces, but it doesn't end >in "s". Things could be so much simpler if band names were all in Maori. The noun doesn't get a plural ending - "The" changes ("Te" is singular the, "Nga" is plural the). Then again, no-one would be able to pronounce the band names then. James NP - "Riders on the storm", by Nga Kuwaha - -- James Dignan, Dunedin, New Zealand -.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.- =-.-=-.-=-.- You talk to me as if from a distance .-=-.-=-.-=-. -=-. And I reply with impressions chosen from another time .-=- .-=-.-=-.-=-.-=- (Brian Eno - "By this River") -.-=-.-=-.-=-.-= ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 4 Jun 2004 02:00:23 -0700 From: Eb Subject: Re: From TV Guide >> TV Guide has listed its top 25 "cult" shows. What do you think? > > Well, "top" on what scale? You want straight up quality television > with > interesting thematic material and adeptness and innovation within the > craft? Hell, this order is WAY off. Based on the list's order, it seems clear they were ranked more in order of "fanbase zealousness" than "interesting thematic material," "innovation," etc. > And what's with with the one entry labelled "Star Trek"? Yeah, you could definitely make a case for "Star Trek: The Next Generation" warranting a separate entry. Heck, even I know a woman who regards Capt. Picard as a *major* personal hero. ;) Not sure about the stature of DS9/Voyager/Enterprise -- I haven't seen one episode from any of them, myself. >> 24. Absolutely Fabulous > > I'd hardly call that "cult". Seems cult enough to me. I have no objections to its inclusion, though I personally get very little enjoyment from the show. An-NOY-ing. Dahling, dahling, dahling, dahling...hand flip, hand flip, hand flip, hand flip.... Ugh. >> 19. Dark Shadows >> 18. Doctor Who >> 17. The Avengers >> 15. Quantum Leap >> 14. Beauty and the Beast >> 13. Babylon 5 >> 09. Xena: Warrior Princess > > These all go with the above sci-fi/fantasy camp. I don't know about Dark Shadows and The Avengers...I'd say they merge into the "dapper Anglophilia" camp. > Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy, The Price Is Right. > Now THOSE have some funky cults... particularly that last one. Well...I think this requires some expansion of the article's apparent definition of "cult." I mean, if you're going to head in this (dare I say!) soccer-mommy direction, you might as well start adding things like Oprah, Martha Stewart Living, The View and daytime soaps. Some other random candidates for discussion: Jerry Springer Baywatch Red Dwarf WWE/WWF shows The Kids in the Hall Ren & Stimpy South Park The Office might gain a place on this list, with time.... Eb ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 4 Jun 2004 11:19:15 +0100 (BST) From: Michael R Godwin Subject: Re: fegmaniax-digest V13 #162 Jeme opines: > It's not even the ending in "s", really. "The Faces" is a plural and "The > Who" is not. Consider what one would do with a band called The Few. > It's a plural, so you'd treat like you would The Faces, but it doesn't end > in "s". As you gathered, I don't accept this idea of band names having any grammatical content. A band is a collective noun, and collective nouns are plural. "The charm of goldfinches twitter attractively". "The exaltation of nightingales fly high in the sky". takes the hair-splitting view that the Beatles are plural and Metallica are (they would say 'is') singular, and then goes on to quote an interesting discussion on sports team names which quotes William Safire of the NYT attempting to maintain the same distinction, but then concedes that "just about everywhere else in the world of sports reporting, this is not the case". - - MRG ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 4 Jun 2004 11:25:48 +0100 (BST) From: Michael R Godwin Subject: PS to last This interesting page: makes a distinction between American and British usage on collective nouns, and includes the wonderful sentence: "The group gave its first concert in June and they are already booked up for the next six months". - - MRG ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 4 Jun 2004 04:18:16 -0700 (PDT) From: Jeff Dwarf Subject: Re: Jeme has pretty much nailed it, as have others Fortissimo wrote: > The problem seems to arise from parents who suddenly > both seem to care about nothing else at all (although > that may simply be a time-factor thing) and who also > metamorphose into suburban drones, if not literally > suburbanizing then in terms of appearance, politics, and > general social attitudes. It's as if they'd been told > that certain things go with being "parents," and figure > that they now must *be* those things. Even worse are people who assume because they have children, those children now have to be the center of everyone else's universe as well. > Obviously, I'm talking about a general attitude, and not > anything I'm assuming about you, whom I don't know. > > I could be wrong - but didn't the phrase "soccer mom" > originate as, essentially, code for "white middle-class > female voters" and their presumed interests? Some > journalist somewhere was casting about for a > lifestyle option to stand as synecdoche for this package > of interests and outlooks, and latched onto the > popularity of soccer among middle-class white kids...and > voila, a phrase was born. That sounds right to me. I never really think of the phrase all that literally anymore than I would think that all young young professionals working in a city are inherently Yuppies. When I hear the phrase Soccer Mom, I tend to think more of a general sort of behavior built around overly structuring a child's life to the point of suffocation, almost like Stepford Parents. (I almost said they care about the idea of the children more than the actual kids, but that's probably unfair; they are just so intellectually constipated by information overload, of every "new study" saying that if they do something it will destroy their children (even when the study says no such thing) but if they do something else, they kids will end up junkie whores, so they do _EVERYTHING_ and fry themselves and their kids out.) Maybe if Soccer Mom formed a better acronym. ===== "Life is just a series of dogs." -- George Carlin "I'm going to keep playing music until somebody shoots me." -- Scott McCaughey "It would not now surprise me in the least if, one night on TV, right there during The Memo, [Bill] O'Reilly declared himself to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia." -- Charles Pierce on MSNBC.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Friends. Fun. Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger. http://messenger.yahoo.com/ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 4 Jun 2004 04:41:44 -0700 (PDT) From: Jeff Dwarf Subject: Re: Jeme has pretty much nailed it, as have others Tom Clark wrote: > *And if you'll allow me a slight tangent, I've just been > itching to say that I think Pat Tillman was just a > selfish jar-head who lived to inflict pain, and saw the > Army as the perfect opportunity to do so. Know the guy he almost went to jail for assaulting as a juvvy 10 years ago, eh? Everything I read made him seem far more complex than that. More of an ex-stupid kid who managed to find a better way to target his aggression. And he was an Army Ranger, not a Marine, so jarhead is out. > He's ten times less a hero than the poor inner city kid > who joined up for college tuition and ended up blasting > his way out of a Baghdad firefight. Sacrifices are sacrifices; comparing the two is ultimately unfair to everyone concerned since it's not Pat Tillman's fault he wasn't a poor inner city kid and it isn't the poor inner city kid's fault he didn't have a multi-million dollar contract to play in the NFL available to him. The kid is far more of a victim than Tillman (especially if he/she joined up before Sept 2001), of course, and Tillman knew exactly what he was signing up for. And both are victims of an administration that is almost psychotically incompetant, even before getting into the questions of which military actions were or were not appropriate. The whole of the Pat Tillman coverage was over the top to the point of turning him into a cartoon (since when should a football player's funeral be shown on national TV, though his brother's swearing like a sailor and trying to take his brother back from all the various factions ready to exploit him memory was great; and no, I didn't watch it), but it did make it far more tangible that the death toll isn't mere numbers, but actual people who had actual lives and actual people who cared about them etc (Americans and Iraqis and Afghanis, of course; we haven't gotten the gutcheck on the latter two though). ===== "Life is just a series of dogs." -- George Carlin "I'm going to keep playing music until somebody shoots me." -- Scott McCaughey "It would not now surprise me in the least if, one night on TV, right there during The Memo, [Bill] O'Reilly declared himself to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia." -- Charles Pierce on MSNBC.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Friends. Fun. Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger. http://messenger.yahoo.com/ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 4 Jun 2004 04:43:13 -0700 (PDT) From: Jeff Dwarf Subject: Re: plurality Fortissimo wrote: > On the flipside, if standard American usage treats group > nouns as a collective entity & thereby takes the > singular form (i.e., "The Who has..." would be typical > here), it's only a further step to reason that, > well, if the group is acting as an entity and not as > individual members, even if its name is plural, it > should be regarded as a singular entity - resulting in > constructions like "Talking Heads is talking about > reuniting, but only if Chris Franz loses enough weight to > not require his own tour bus." Wouldn't Chris Franz's problem be needing his own bus for his height? As opposed to Chris Frantz "And if you're gonna make a fucking fat joke, how'zabout makin' a clever one." ===== "Life is just a series of dogs." -- George Carlin "I'm going to keep playing music until somebody shoots me." -- Scott McCaughey "It would not now surprise me in the least if, one night on TV, right there during The Memo, [Bill] O'Reilly declared himself to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia." -- Charles Pierce on MSNBC.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Friends. Fun. Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger. http://messenger.yahoo.com/ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 4 Jun 2004 04:43:27 -0700 (PDT) From: Jeff Dwarf Subject: RE: The Paw-Paw Cardboard Digipak Fortissimo wrote: > Okay - and remember "longboxes"? When did those > disappear...'94? '95? > > Christ I'm old. 1993. I remember because a friend (at the time) of mine was really pissed he wasn't going to have a _Songs of Faith & Devotion_ longbox. But they did make convenient wallpaper chunks for dorm rooms. ===== "Life is just a series of dogs." -- George Carlin "I'm going to keep playing music until somebody shoots me." -- Scott McCaughey "It would not now surprise me in the least if, one night on TV, right there during The Memo, [Bill] O'Reilly declared himself to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia." -- Charles Pierce on MSNBC.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Friends. Fun. Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger. http://messenger.yahoo.com/ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 4 Jun 2004 05:21:52 -0700 (PDT) From: Capuchin Subject: Re: fegmaniax-digest V13 #162 On Fri, 4 Jun 2004, Michael R Godwin wrote: > Jeme opines: > > It's not even the ending in "s", really. "The Faces" is a plural and > > "The Who" is not. Consider what one would do with a band called The > > Few. It's a plural, so you'd treat like you would The Faces, but it > > doesn't end in "s". > > As you gathered, I don't accept this idea of band names having any > grammatical content. A band is a collective noun, and collective nouns > are plural. "The charm of goldfinches twitter attractively". "The > exaltation of nightingales fly high in the sky". See, that's just the british versus american view of collective nouns. And it's here that I'd have to say the american way actually does make a little more sense (whereas most grammatical rules are arbitrary). See, a collective noun is a container for the individual items collected within it and you refer to a container as singular regardless of whether you specify what is or isn't in it. The bucket sits on the shelf. The bucket of brains sits on the shelf. The bucket of blood sits on the shelf. Same thing. Also, you've got your idiomatic singular thingie like this: That stand of trees is taller than the other one. It's just the one stand of trees, exhaltation of larks or murder of crows. J. - -- _______________________________________________ Capuchin capuchin@bitmine.net Jeme A Brelin ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 04 Jun 2004 14:04:52 +0100 From: "Matt Sewell" Subject: Re: Jeme has pretty much nailed it, as have others Though Alice found Golf, rather than God... Though Alice found Go >From: "Jason R. Thornton" >At 04:07 PM 6/3/2004 -0700, Tom Clark wrote: > >>I remember her being a defiantly anti-establishment, rock-n-roll, >>free thinking person until her second kid was born and she moved to >>a "planned community" in Arizona where everyone wears sensible >>shoes and goes to church on Sunday. > >This is exactly what happened to Alice Cooper. > > >--Jason - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Want to block unwanted pop-ups? 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