Thanks a Lot, BP

If you hadn’t dumped a bunch of oil in the Gulf of Mexico, then Phillipe Cousteau, Jr., grandson of Jacques, wouldn’t be doing a bunch of interviews about it, and I wouldn’t have just been introduced to another threat to my fragile heterosexuality.

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Due to the circumstances of his birth, he doesn’t have a French accent, which is probably the only reason I’m not already packing my bags for Homoville.

Punctuation Shmunctuation

At work, we have these big vinyl decals that you can put on your walls that have inspirational messages on them, like, “Life is a journey”-type crap.

Well, I happened to be looking at them today, just to mock their cheesy sentiment (becuase that’s the sort of ironic, hipster jerkoff that I am), when two immediately jumped out at me:

  • Dream until, your dream is realized
  • Family one of God’s masterpieces

Okay, these are both big stickers that you can put over your sofa or mantel or what have you, and the phrases are written out in fancy script, complete with punctuation errors.

I don’t think I need to tell you that the phrase about dreaming up there doesn’t really need a comma in it, do I?  Well, it doesn’t.  If you are insisting on a comma, you could put one after the word “dream”, just to tell the reader to pause a bit there, but it would still look unnatural.  One thing’s for certain: that comma certainly doesn’t belong where the geniuses who designed this decal decided to put it.

Then there’s the second one, which reads a trifle awkwardly due to its complete lack of clarifying punctuation.  We’ll overlook the actual content of the phrase, since the notion of “family” is a societal invention that really has nothing to do with “God” and just concentrate on the glaring omission of a colon or dash between “family” and the provided definition.  Why do these people want to make it difficult for people to easily read and comprehend their insprational vinyl wall decals?

I don’t think it’s too much to ask that the big sticker that you’re semi-permanently affixing to your house is free of elementary punctuation errors, but maybe I’m just a joyless stickler.