Pickles by Brian Crane for August 13, 2011

More meanless wisdom from Earl.

Meanless or meaningless? (OK, I know it’s just a typo; I make plenty of ‘em myself, but I couldn’t resist this.

@Number SixI TOLD you I make plenty of typos myself! Missing brackets are my BIG problem :-(

Earl’s point got dulled when he mishandled Nelson’s question.

I think I’d rather forget where it came from.

1. (On the side that won the American Revolution we call these parentheses, not brackets.) [These are good old American brackets.] {We call these braces; somehow the Brits and their Dominions use them to hold up their trousers.}

2. I lament the near disappearance from English of great old words like hither and thither and whither, so I appreciate the relative survival of hence, thence, and whence, but the redundant “from whence” just rankles me.

3. If it’s ring/rang/rung, why should it be spring/sprang or sprung/sprung? I learned “sprang” myself. If English is going to preserve Germanic irregular verbs (ringen/rang/gerungen), then we should be consistent in our irregularity.

As long as it doesn’t come from the septic tank.

Does anybody really want to know where it came from??

“from” is redundent with “whence”

JP Steve: I don’t know if you’ll see this comment but I got your comment on yesterday’s Pickles strip.. It made me laugh. I hate being left handed as I can’t even write without my hand hurting.

LOL, Take care.