A joke in the traditional manner

What did the plumber do when embarrassed?

No spoilers here. The answer is in the comments.

More jokes in the traditional manner
How did Bela Lugosi know what to expect?
How did Samuel Clemens do all his long-distance traveling?
Why did the doctor spend his time helping injured squirrels?
Why did Oliver Hardy attempt a solo career in movies?
Why was Santa Claus wandering the East Side of Manhattan?

[“In the traditional manner”: by or à la my dad. Lugosi, Clemens, Hardy, and this one are his. I have to take credit for the doctor and Santa Claus.]

Hi and Lois watch

[Hi and Lois, February 1, 2015.]

I would prefer “Neither of our teams is playing.”

Bryan Garner’s Garner’s Modern American Usage (2009) explains:

As a pronoun, neither is construed as a singular. That is, it should take a singular verb, and any word for which neither is an antecedent should also be singular. Thus, neither of the offers was a good one is grammatically better than neither of the offers were good ones.

GMAU acknowledges that some sentences can be tricky: the plural form in neither of my parents worked for themselves avoids a certain awkwardness. Garner’s suggested recasting: neither of my parents was self-employed.

But Thirsty’s sentence gets a pass from two grammarians. Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey Pullum, A Student’s Introduction to English Grammar (2005):

Subjects with any, no, and none occur freely with either singular or plural agree­ment. With neither, and even more with either, singular agreement is usual; plural agreement is informal, and condemned by prescriptivists.

For Huddleston and Pullum, Neither of them seems valid and Neither of them seem valid are both valid.

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage (1994) advises the reader to just be (cough, cough) themselves:

If you are writing something in a highly formal style, you will probably want to use formal agreement throughout. Otherwise, follow your own inclination in choosing singular or plural constructions after neither.

Such guidance seems to me only to muddy the waters. Is an essay for a freshman comp class likely to be written in “a highly formal style”? I doubt it. Would it be smart in writing that essay to use singular forms with neither? Absolutely.

Even Steven Pinker’s The Sense of Style (2014) pulls back from okaying plural forms:

Neither means “not one of the two,” and it is singular: Neither book was any good, not Neither book were any good. The same is true of either, even when it picks one item from a pair: Either of the candidates is experienced enough to run the country, not are.

It’s interesting to see Pinker agreeing with Garner and not with Pullum. But it is impossible to imagine any of these observations as useful to Mr. Thurston. When you’re a comic-strip character, subject-verb agreement is out of your hands.

Related reading
All OCA Hi and Lois posts (Pinboard)

Artwork labels

At Oscar’s Portrait, an exhibition of artwork labels.

[This cartoon makes me remember an exhibit at the Whitney some years ago. Among the art objects on display: a bathtub filled with printer’s ink. The ink on the walls was getting more attention.]

Overheard

[In a coffeeshop. Two young adults talking.]

“Have you listened to the whole album?”

*

[Not long after.]

“I can’t wait for their second album.”

Related reading
All OCA “overheard” posts (Pinboard)

[There’s hope, at least if they’re paying for the albums.]

Yet another Sluggo

[Ludwig ”Sluggo” Wittgenstein.]

One more Sluggo, Inspired by the Sluggo variations and Gunther’s variation.

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)

Students and technology

The developmental psychologist Susan Pinker, writing in The New York Times, wondering whether students can have too much technology:

More technology in the classroom has long been a policy-making panacea. But mounting evidence shows that showering students, especially those from struggling families, with networked devices will not shrink the class divide in education. If anything, it will widen it.

Pinker points out that it’s not device use but the “give-and-take” of conversations with parents that predicts “robust vocabularies and school success.”

Still another Sluggo

Gunther’s Sluggo made me laugh out loud, loudly, too loudly.

+1!

National Adjunct Walkout Day

Inside Higher Ed reports on National Adjunct Walkout Day. It’s February 25, 2015.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: The exploitation of adjunct labor is the shame and scandal of American higher education.

[I am not now nor have I ever been an adjunct instructor, and I’m fortunate to teach at a school that treats adjuncts well. Many schools do not. I imagine that schools of all sorts will respond to NAWD by announcing that anyone not teaching on February 25 will lose wages.]

Let’s go . . . places?

In my modern American lit class we were talking about the mannered “poetry voice,” that ineptly . . . musical voice? The one that rises? And falls where you least . . . expect it?

And someone mentioned this: 2015 Toyota RAV4 Beat poetry. Thirty seconds of good fun.

Thank you, Zayne.

Another Sluggo

[Truman “Sluggo” Capote. Artist unknown.]

I wish I had realized last December that there’s a whole series of Sluggos. Follow the link and keep on scrolling.

If anyone knows who created these images, I’d like to know too.

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)