Don’t let this happen to you!

Stifle your inner pedant. I find that very difficult to do with "literally," though. Just a day or two ago I saw a particularly bad example in a news story: I don't remember it now but it was on the order of "he was literally on fire with ambition."

Moreover, I thought this as a modern lapse, but I ran across it in something fairly old not long ago. May have been a line of dialog in David Copperfield.

xkcd has been a little off lately, so I was glad to find it funny today. Wednesday's was pretty good, too, though, not being a Tetris player, I didn't get it at first, even though it should be obvious. My wife did–she was a bit of a Tetris addict for a while.


9 responses to “Don’t let this happen to you!”

  1. Janet Cupo

    Becca emailed me a link to the Wednesday comic. I took me a minute, too, for the same reason. But my reason for not having played is probably different from yours. I know that once I sit down to play Tetris, I may never get up again.
    AMDG

  2. Janet Cupo

    At first I thought this said, “Stifle your inner pendant.” Sounded kind of new-agey.
    AMDG

  3. antiaphrodite

    I knew it said pedant but I still thought of pendant.

  4. Don’t be de pendant on de pedant.

  5. antiaphrodite

    I have some dependancy issues, obviously.

  6. Better than de pedancy issues, I guess. At least for everybody else.

  7. Daniel Nichols

    Man, I hate that comic. A comic with stick figures is like a concerto for two rocks. People who can’t draw should not try to make comics…
    Personally, I have been looking for years for an excuse to use “Department of Superfluous’ Apostrophe’s”…

  8. Now that you found your excuse, you can open a couple of beer’s.
    I love xkcd. Well, at least when it’s not being extremely crude. The stick figures are part of the humor, and I think the guy can actually draw better than he lets on, as the figures are oddly expressive sometimes. But still, it’s a pretty…what’s the word?…abstract kind of humor, in that the joke is more in the idea than in the execution.
    I think this one succeeds in both aspects. Although it’s not exactly a joke…I think it’s rather touching.

  9. Louise

    re: tetris –
    LOL!

Leave a reply to Louise Cancel reply