Sunday, July 22, 2007

The Top Ten Surprises in "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows"

Like many people half my age -- okay, okay, 1/3 of my age -- I spent this weekend reading the seventh, and last, book in the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. And while J.K. Rowling has made it clear that this book is much darker than the previous books in the series, many of the twists in the story line still took me by surprise. Please don't read this list if you haven't read the book yet; I don't want to spoil it for you.

THE TOP TEN SURPRISES IN HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS

10. With Dumbledore gone, okay to use "waterboarding" curse.

9. Donald Rumsfeld finally gets job as Defense of Dark Arts teacher.

8. Butterbeer now available with no trans-fats.

7. Bald character added so Patrick Stewart can finally be in one of the damned movies.

6. Ravenclaw Tower demolished to make room for new Wal-Mart.

5. Weasley twins caught by their mom comparing wands.

4. Klingons unexpectedly arrive to fight Death Eaters at the last minute.

3. Right before final fight scene, Harry says "screw this" and joins Hogsmeade National Guard.

2. Hogwarts students master powerful new spell, Expecto uranus!

1. The real identity of Voldemort? Dick Cheney!

Thursday, July 19, 2007

A comment on comments

Every now and then (but not frequently; my blog isn't well-read because there are no pictures of Paris Hilton or Posh Spice) someone e-mails me about something I wrote in my blog that she disagrees with. To date, however, there's only been 1 comment about any of my posts, and I wrote that one.

So, if you have something to say about anything I have to say, say it in a comment. That's what they're there for. Or would be, if they were there.

Monday, July 09, 2007

I'm on a roll

Okay, here's the second post for the day, after a two-month absence that ended only last week. This has nothing to do with grammar, again, but something to do with snobbery. Today, my target audience is waitpeople. The theme of my post is: I don't owe you 15% of my bill just because I sat at your table.

I'm a single male. Chances are I eat out about three times as much as you do if you are married, and about twice as much if you're a single female. It's not that I don't like to cook; I just don't cook as much as I used to, a combination of not having time and being lazy when I do. I like the food I make more than restaurant food, and it's way cheaper. But sometimes, I just feel like having my lunch handed to me. My point is, I go to restaurants a lot. So I think I know what's going on in them.

Consider the following two scenarios. I go to a restaurant about 30 minutes before the rush starts. I'm seated in a waiter's section, at the same time as a family of four.

In the first scenario, the waiter appears, looks at the family of four, looks at me, and then goes to wait on the family.

In the second scenario, the waiter appears, looks at the family of four, looks at me, smiles and says "I'll be right with you", and then goes to wait on the family.

Wonder which one will get the better tip?

I think most customers have reasonable expectations of waiters. We know that when someone gets double-sat (and let's not get into a discussion of whether "double-sat" is a word right now), they have to choose someone to wait on first. If I were a waiter, I'd want to get the big party first. But at least spend a second of your life to acknowledge the existence of the guy who's going to lose the race to the kitchen. Hey, if you want to wait on me first, all the better, but you should go say "hi" to the family, in that instance. It's just courtesy, and that always pay$.

How formal should waiters be? I think the rule should be: too formal is better than too informal. Don't call me "honey" or "buddy". Don't touch me while you're waiting on me. Don't sit at my table. Don't -- Do not -- DO NOT put someone else's dirty dishes on my table ! Are you KIDDING?


I'd rather not be called "sir", but when I am, I assume it's someone being formal to be courteous, and that's okay. It's won't cost you anything.

In fact, it's hard not to get a decent tip from me. The best way to try is not to wait on me for a long time after I'm seated. What's a long time? Someone should come by my table within a minute. Yes, a minute. If you don't think that's a long time, go sit by a table for a minute and then you tell me.

Other than that, the only thing that will really screw up your tip (besides just crappy service, obviously) is bringing me my change. Okay, say the dinner was $9.63. I give you a twenty. First, don't ask me if I need any change. Of course I do, I'm not giving you a 100% tip. Second, don't bring me a ten dollar bill and 37 cents -- that's just as bad. Keep in mind that you're probably getting paid out of the change.

Speaking of which, most waiters don't like to make change down to the last penny, and that's fine. But the last time I went to one restaurant in Austin, I had an $8.20 tab, paid with a $10, and got a dollar bill in change. Fine -- that eighty cents you just stole is your tip. Like I said, it was the last time I went there. (Hope my waiter doesn't miss his "buddy".)

And why should a tip be more than 15%, anyway? Now all the waiter rant sites say you should leave 17%. If the service is great, sure. If it's good, 15% is plenty. Don't whine to me about inflation. You're getting 15% of something that's a lot more expensive now than it was 30 years ago.

Thanks for listening, honey.

Dangling, the wordsmith left the participle

In my last, very recent post, I mentioned that I'd been working on a post about dangling modifiers. Turns out some other folks have already thought about that. So I was going to discard the whole subject; in fact, I just deleted the whole draft. But this morning, I read an article in The Daily Texan, the University of Texas's daily paper, about Troy Patton, a minor-league pitcher who's supposed to be the next great Houston Astro southpaw someday. Though he didn't get a lot of strikeouts in the particular game featured in the article, he gave up only one run in seven innings. It was the description of how the run scored that bothered me, too much maybe.

Patton's only run came in the fifth inning after what easily could have been ruled an error. After giving up a walk to leadoff hitter Bill McCarthy, Jorge Padilla came up to plate and lifted a ball into the outfield....

Padilla didn't give up a walk to Bill McCarthy, though; Patton did. A carelessly hung participle ruined the meaning of the sentence.

But this really isn't about dangling modifiers. It's about this. There's a good chance that the author of this story (I'm not naming names; you can track him down on the internet if you're that ambitious), and his editor, if any, both graduated in the top 10% of their high school class before coming to UT. Either they don't know what a dangling modifier is, or they don't care enough to eliminate one from a printed article; either way, I hang my head in shame for the state of public education in Texas, yet again.

By the way, I'm looking forward to Patton's debut with the Astros. Hope it happens soon.

Friday, July 06, 2007

Comes now?

As always, because I have a real job I don't get to post to my blog as much as I like. I've been editing a post on dangling modifiers, since there are only 52,138 other internet pages explaining why dangling modifiers are bad, but I haven't finished mine, which will be the pinnacle of dangling modifier criticism, I suppose. (Again, for those of you who haven't the foggiest idea what a dangling modifier is, surely there's a NASCAR race stored in your Tivo ready to watch.) Instead, I've got a blog for my fellow attorneys, many of whom file pleadings in court containing the phrase "Comes now". As in:

"Comes now Plaintiff, John Doe, and complains of Defendant, David Evildoer, and pray the Court grant him judgment, and for cause of action would show the following."

A question. You're sitting on your favorite barstool at the local watering hole, taking the edge off a rough day in the salt mine with your favorite poison (for me, a tall draft of Harp or Warsteiner, or on a Friday, a shot of Maker's Mark with a sidecar of ice) and your best friend walks in to join you. Do you exclaim "Comes now Drew, and sits next to mine self to drink beer"? Okay, if you answered this question "yes", an exciting career in writing boring pleadings awaits you. If you answered "no", then I understand why you hate legalese.

I can tell you that the stilted "Comes now" style of prose is not taught in law school. At least, not at the University of Texas School of Law, the shoddy public state school where I learned the law. Instead, this horrible style of "writing" is passed on to law clerks -- the trade slang for interns, or law students with summer jobs -- by attorneys who may or may not know better, but either don't, or are too lazy to care.

Now, no pleading is ever going to make the New York Times's best-seller list or appear in Atlantic Monthly's poetry section, whether it be written by David Dullpen or Clarence Darrow. The pleadings are meant to be read only by judges and lawyers. Okay, they're not even meant to be read by those folks. Arguably, they don't matter at all. Except that I just lied: pleadings should also be read by a group of folks more important than judges and lawyers: clients. And this is the reason that they are written so badly: legalese has to be dense so lawyers don't let on to their clients that what they're doing is not rocket science. It's difficult, of course, but because clients may not understand the real reasons that practicing law is difficult, we have to give them a fake reason: the convoluted pleading language that no one can read, and very few people attempt.

Early in my career, while a measly clerk at the OAG in Texas, I came upon the worst pleading I'd ever read, in which the plaintiff's attorney redundantly paired every word he possibly could, resulting in such legalistic crap as "then and there", "failed and refused", "way, shape, or form", and so forth. A petition for relief that should have taken 6 pages took 17. (It was also printed in some horrible font, like OCR, which was almost impossible to read.)

Here's a sample of an opening statement from one of my pleadings:

"Paula Plaintiff complains of Dave Defendant, and for cause of action would show the following."

Keep in mind that this is the least important, and therefore worst, sentence in a petition; everything else is at least in English. Nevertheless, compared to some pleadings I've read, it's Shakespeare.