Erase & Rewind.

So! It's been a while. I think the last time I attempted this, I produced 7 comics (Technically, 6, as I never posted number 6) over the course of six months or so. It's a weird feeling to have someone--with genuine amusement--quote something to you that you wrote. I liked it. Still, there was room for improvement, so here goes attempt number 2.

Layout stuff. I decided to experiment with some alt text, which isn't really alt text at all, as it's under the title attribute, but let me know what you think. You may also find that there are no tables on this page, and I'm going to try to keep it that way, even if this is a far cry from validatable code.

The Useless Words thing is true. You can read about it at CNN , though in my brief digging I haven't turned up the original material--perhaps it's one of those unfortunate nuggets of information that isn't actually posted in full on the Intertron. Having struggled for years with our natural inclination to judge language and attempt to divert its direction with Style Manuals and Dictionaries and other things written by Old Dead White Guys (or ODWG), I've gotten a lot of entertainment out of people's rants. It may be noted here that my personal pet peeve is the term "pet peeve." So, a couple of notes on the "Useless Words" list:

< SOAPBOX >

"It is what it is." ...is actually a phrase. Not to be that guy, but if you're going to rant about how people are misusing words, then I can't recommend misusing the word "Words," or people will take you less seriously.
Half of the words are politically loaded, and, inevitably, shallowly provocative. C'est la vie.
A good number of these words, at least from the samples of the list I can find on the internet, are sort of dated, even for a fogey like me who's not in school anymore. Stop ranting about iStuff. It's marketing, and it's going to continue as long as someone is making iMoney off of it.
Where's literally? It deserves the first, second, and third place on this list. Maybe it belongs on the "2007 List of Words to Stop Mis- and Over-Using because they are the word Literally," and it can have 19 entries, and literally all of them are the word "literally."
With maybe just a tad of irony, just a smidge, two of the most hip and fashionable phrases are in the body of this article, one in a quote, one by the author: (a) "when it referenced storms..." and (b) "as evidenced by..." I know this is overly revealing about my psyche, but I have nothing but disdain for a verb that is modified into a noun and then re-verbed. What's wrong with referring to things? Why must we reference them instead? Is that necessary? Evidence, on the other hand, was a thing, and I believe we've skipped a form somewhere along the way. How did a noun get a past tense?

< /SOAPBOX >

Anyway, thanks for sitting through that, rant-like though it may have been.

stub | 01.06.08