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Howdy! Make yourself comfortable. Have a look around. Feel free to continue to point out that I occasionally punt a sentence or misspell a word. I appreciate the opportunity to correct my mistakes. (I've only written, according to last count, five billion words on this blog. Some of them are bound to be wonky.)

That said, using the word "singular" to mean "one only; one and no more" is not incorrect, according to the OED. Neither would using it to mean "separate from others by reason of superiority or pre-eminence," again according to the OED.

This has been yet another example of why those who complain about other people's diction on the Internets are so insufferable.

(In all seriousness, though, welcome! I'm really an affable fellow once you get to know me. I mean, there's a chance we've even met before. Or that you read this. Or this.)

Comments

[Ahistoricality]

I'm gonna go ahead and use this as an open thread, because I have a question that SEK is perhaps uniquely suited to answer. In "Walking Dead," why is there only one black male in the group at a time? There was the dad at the beginning, then he got left behind. There was a little overlap with TJ and Oscar, but as soon as another black guy shows up, Oscar gets it. Is this something that comes from the original comic, or a TV producer tic? Some sort of TV Trope Law of Conservation thing?

[SEK]

It's actually to do with the actor playing T-Dog, who apparently was a handful. (Google will turn up links.) Give me a few days to work up a post and I'll cover it all. (There's also a more pernicious people-who-aren't-white-don't-matter angle to it, which is why I'm asking for a few days. That, plus I can't watch the new episode until I finish grading the last 56 of my papers, which won't be happening until very late tomorrow. I hate being a responsible adult.)

[mxyzptlk]

It's not something from the comic; there are plenty of multiple black characters in the storyline at one time, and they even have speaking parts. The distinction of the series is that not only is there almost never more than one black male in the story at a time, but they have almost no lines.

My other question is why -- or how -- no one's hair grows on that show except Hershel's. It's been over a year in the narrative now, and the producers are making efforts to show that the walkers are decaying, but Hershel's the only guy whose beard has grown or has had any real hair growth. Are there barbers hiding out in the post-zombie-apocalypse woods of Georgia? For a show that puts so much effort into production value, it's weird.

See the image below for proof (click on the thumbnail for the full image); three seasons in, and Rick still has the same coma-scruff since the first episode. I grew more facial hair for Movember than he has in a year.

[SEK]

Holy crap, you can post images on my blog? How does that work? I fear the future spam ...

... that said, as someone who currently looks like an extra from Game of Thrones, I wholeheartedly agree that the neatly trimmed beards and hair a little off-putting, but I can stand that lack of realism given that I can't understand the show's zombie rules anymore. Zombie rules should be the first thing a zombie show establishes, unless of course the inability to learn the zombie rules is foregrounded, which in this case might only, barely, be the case.

[mxyzptlk]

The code for posting a thumbnail is/was just an < a href='link' > and < img src='link' > Sorry I can't post the full code; I don't recall the escape codes at the moment, so if I post the full code, it'll just show another thumbnail.

The lack of foregrounded zombie rules is also there in the comic, and seems to be a hidden plot device to guarantee a prolonged series. After all, after the first 10 issues or so (and first five or so episodes), the zombies are almost secondary to this story.

[Ahistoricality]

I tend to assume that writers know what they're doing unless the evidence otherwise becomes too great (Lost, Phantom Menace): I assumed that the instability in zombie rules was an organic part of the story, literally an evolving organic concept, and a nice critique of more rigid game-theory versions of zombie narratives.

But the zombies in the series are worse than secondary: they're almost authorial stand-ins, toying with the characters like the artist in "Duck Amok."

[Ahistoricality]

I tend to assume that writers know what they're doing unless the evidence otherwise becomes too great (Lost, Phantom Menace): I assumed that the instability in zombie rules was an organic part of the story, literally an evolving organic concept, and a nice critique of more rigid game-theory versions of zombie narratives.

But the zombies in the series are worse than secondary: they're almost authorial stand-ins, toying with the characters like the artist in "Duck Amok."

[mxyzptlk]

And you win acephalous today for the Duck Amok reference!