I notice I have a category on this blog called 'Grammar rodeo.' I ought to explain...
Yes it is because I can get carried away by a debate about language, its variations, and the dots and squiggles that we drop through its written version. I'm the one in the office who they'd ask their 'who and whom' questions. That is, to whom they'd ask their who and whom questions. Or whether it's practice or practise that makes perfect.
And grammar stuff does make me laugh. I'm not a balaclava-wearing, spray-paint-toting member of the Apostrophe Preservation Society or anything. I'm pretty relaxed, because I believe language should be about getting a point across first, and not a mission for its own sake.
'Grammar rodeo' is actually one of my favourite phrases from the Simpsons. In the episode 'Bart on the Road,' Bart Milhouse, Nelson and Martin use Bart's fake credit card to hire a car and go to Knoxville, Tennessee to see the Sunsphere. Now this is just next door to where I spent a good many years growing up, so it warrants a picture.
Since Knoxville's a long way from Springfield (wherever that is), the boys tell their families they're going to the National Grammar Rodeo. I must admit my heart skipped a beat when I heard mention of it... 'I must go! What do I wear?' As Lisa's did, when she complained she hadn't been selected to represent their school.
Do you remember the rest of the story? The advert for the Sunsphere turned out to be from the 1982 World's Fair, and since then the Sunsphere had fallen on hard times and was now called the Wigsphere. Nelson chucks a stone at it and knocks it over, 16,000 unsold wigs spill, and Bart ends up delivering organs to try to get them all back home again.
There's more that's closer to home in that episode (and I don't just mean Cletus and his family), but I'll save that for another time.
Y'all come back now, ya hear?
