YOU BASTARDS. YOU MURDERED IT ALL TO HELL. randomwise.

[slow west vultures]

exactly.  i think the interpretative dance portion of the mass was a deliberate nod to them. 

[hannah]

Maggie, did anyone ever call you Peggy/Peg/Daisy/Maisie/Meg/Greta/Gretchen? Can I call you Toots?

I have no secret name, unless my nickname counts!

[maggiego]

John called me Mags on another thread today and next time I see him he's gonna get it! Pow--right in the kisser!

Other than the dreaded Mags, 2 men I loved independently found Magpie. When he wants to piss me off my brother John calls me Marge. In seventh grade I spent a week signing my math homework Greta, and in French class I was Marguerite. I prefer Magdalena to Margarita. I make a mean margarita from scratch.

Hannah, I already call you Hannah Banana in my head, because my sorta cousin is Hannah and that's what we called her when she was little.

[hannah]

Holy shit, I am your cousin!

[hannah]

Actually, my cousins all called me by my nickname (Goose) or a variation on my middle name (Maitland/Mait/Maity).

[hannah]

So no

[maggiego]

Goose is a great name.

And aren't all 'us people' cousins anyway?

[Andrew_TSKS]

Andrew, that Chicago Maggie is cute. You shoulda HTS.

oh hahahaha i would love to have had that opportunity. we met for all of two minutes, at a show her band played. i asked her about some of their lyrics. she was very friendly and i probably could have talked to her for longer but i was doing the whole thing where you get into a conversation with a cute person without realizing it, then as the realization creeps up on you you feel yourself start to lose control of your words. so i got out of the conversation with the quickness so she didn't realize that i thought she was awesome. once a girl realizes you dig her, it's ALL OVER.

also, i used to date a girl who was named gretchen, and that was her given name. i didn't realize that it was a nickname for margaret, that's weird. that's like how in english jack is a nickname for john, but in french there is both "jean" and "jacques", and sometimes "jean-jacques", which i suppose translates into the english "john-john". god, this is getting weird.

oh, and finally, my friend jojo's real name is joana. that's like the english "jo" plus the spanish "ana". and i just realized that she's lucky she ended up with the name jojo, because having a name in which the second syllable is pronounced in a spanish manner but the first syllable is not is actually really confusing. she probably would have spent her life being called "joanna" and having to correct people.

[elpollodiablo]

Man I'm hungry

[girl]

exactly.  i think the interpretative dance portion of the mass was a deliberate nod to them. 

If my church had interpretative dance, I'd probably still go.

Hannah, in my head, I refer to you as "hannita". I don't know why.

[hannah]

Andrew, Gretchen is originally the diminutive of Greta, which is in turn a short form of Margaret. And Jacques is the French version of Jacob and James, so I guess it is a false cognate w/r/t Jack.

Edit: Girl, I think of you as Girlie. I hope that is okay!

[girl]

With an "ie"? Hmm. . . 

(Nah, I'm kidding, it's fine.)

[elpollodiablo]

Andrew, Gretchen is originally the diminutive of Greta, which is in turn a short form of Margaret. And Jacques is the French version of Jacob and James, so I guess it is a false cognate w/r/t Jack.

Edit: Girl, I think of you as Girlie. I hope that is okay!

Huh! I never knew that, either. I know a girl named Gretchen; I'll have to inquire as to her name's origin.

[hannah]

Girleigh?

Oh, and "Gretchen" is often a given name, just like "Jack" is now, and "Molly" and "Kate."

[elpollodiablo]

Mongrel America: POWER UP

[Maaik]

I got a spam email just now that's too funny not to share:

"Carlos Blackmon" <flattoe@manhattanframe.com>
Subject: My walloping penis Bethany

stimulate a tremendous rod Mattie
http://____.com

"My walloping penis... Bethany"?!  Oh man.

[elpollodiablo]

If I were good at maths I would make a chart that showed how the frequency of my posting goes up when I need to study for a German exam

[elpollodiablo]

Also when I post in In the Earbuds I feel rather like a closeted gay man hanging out at a strip club

[bethany_m]

Subject: My walloping penis Bethany

snicker

[coldforge]

margaret is my MOM"S NAME

[diesel_powered]

If I were good at maths I would make a chart that showed how the frequency of my posting goes up when I need to study for a German exam

Okay, pop quiz grammar hotshots. Can someone provide me with good explanations as to why:

A) It should be referred to as math in the singular (to describe a single field of study that may encompass many related fields of study... e.g. medicine)

or

B) It should be referred to as maths in the plural (to describe a collection of multiple fields of study... e.g. uh... I can't actually think of another field of study that's referred to in the plural... so I guess you could probably help me out on that one as well.)

or for that matter...

C) It doesn't matter because when Pollo refers to not being good at maths, he's referring to multiple fields of study whereas if Pollo were referring to math, he'd still be referring to a single category encompassing many fields of study and each word is equally true.

Ugh. See what happens when I quit drinking?

[Swimmy]

Look around you, and then go with "maths."

[diesel_powered]

AWESOME. 

[coldforge]

From a blog I like:

...

Castigation is common on the math/maths issue, and the castigation is usually British to American. So, I'm going to castigate a bit in the other direction, because there's absolutely no reason why maths should be considered to be more correct than math.

The castigation usually goes: "Mathematics is plural, so maths needs its -s." It's a logic based on a false (AmE) premise/(BrE often) premiss. Just because there's an -s at the end of mathematics doesn't mean it's plural. The suffix -s is homonymous. Homonymy is when the same lexical forms (i.e. words or affixes) have unrelated meanings/functions. That is to say, it's when two words/affixes just happen to be pronounced/spelt the same. So, can is a homonym because either it can refer to a kind of container (can of Coke) or it can be a modal verb (I can go). Those two cans are completely unrelated.

...

How can we tell whether or not this -s is marking a plural in mathematics and folkloristics? We do so by seeing whether the words trigger plural behavio(u)r in other words in the sentence. A first test might be whether you can count mathematics (* means 'ungrammatical'):

    *one mathematic   *two mathematics
    *a mathematic   some mathematics

Mathematics doesn't work with numbers because it's not a countable noun, it's a mass noun. That is, it does not take plural marking because it is not the kind of thing one can or does count. Similar examples (without the confusing -s) on the end are cinnamon and boredom. Note that you don't talk of putting *cinnamons in your food (unless you're making the point that they are different types of cinnamon--which is a different matter), nor does one suffer *boredoms if the boredom happened at different times. Cinnamon and boredom are treated as masses with undistinguishable (or at least not-worth-distinguishing), and therefore uncountable, parts. If we want to make such words countable, we have to use another noun to do so: two teaspoons of cinnamon, three episodes of boredom. Similarly, you can have three theories of mathematics or three mathematics classes, but not *three mathematics.

...

[diesel_powered]

COLDFORGE FTW.