04 Mar 2010 |
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Vancouver’s Winter Olympics made me regret a mid-summer decision to cancel cable TV service. My cable package provided 86 channels, including six featuring documentaries of the Nazi development of the ShamWow!, Confederate submarine attacks, National Geographic specials on Amish goat milkers and home movies taken by cello virtuoso Yo-Yo Ma’s family. The rest of the lineup includes seven choices of ancient movies and magic lantern slides, two Jesus channels, 18 cooking channels and a number of slick pitch channels selling everything from Viagra to the above mentioned ShamWow! Checking the spelling of ShamWow! just now, I learned the name of the pitchman: Vince Sholomi. Sholomi was pinched last year for beating up a prostitute who allegedly tried to bite his tongue off. Cops called the fight a draw and no one was charged. No longer having access to the “Watching Paint Dry” channels, I caught several events on local TV. I was cheered to see downhill skiers using a technique I perfected on Red Lodge Mountain and patented in the winter of 1968. I call it the Clawson Full Body Brake. One March afternoon I was ripping down the hill when the trail broke to the right and I went straight. A giant spruce drew a bead on me and came rushing uphill to meet me. Lightning reflexes enabled me to invent and apply the Full Body Brake in time to avoid the tree. The CFBB requires a skier to throw his body at the mountain and wait for friction to overcome gravity. Had I hit the tree, I would have been using the SBFBB (Sony Bono Full Body Brake). • • • Ten or 20 years from now your grandchildren may ask: “What were you doing when Montana’s population topped 1 million?” Tell them you were reading this column. The state closed 2008 with 967,440 souls. Rough calculations reveal that we gain 89 persons per day. Or maybe 89 persons every 10 days. (I’m sure it can’t be 10 persons every 89 days.) That would bring us to the 1 million mark right about ... hmm ... just exactly ... NOW! In the course of this ciphering, I discovered a map of Montana counties and a half dozen novelties: Cascade, Judith Basin, Granite and Jefferson counties are shaped like corn flakes. Gallatin County was plotted in the shape of a 1956 Ford ignition key. Five giants – Blaine, Phillips, Valley, Garfield and Fergus counties – sprawl over an area larger than the European Union. Population density in these counties approximates that of the Canadian and Siberian tundras. The western edge of the state forms the profile of a face. Beaverhead County forms the chin, Ravalli County the nose, Mineral County the eyebrow. Tiny Deerlodge and Silverbow counties are boogers falling from Ravalli County. • • • If you were elated by Canada’s victory over the USA in the gold medal round of the hockey competition, don’t feel guilty. It was not your fault. Thirty-three million Canadians hugging themselves created a gush of endorphins that thundered south in a tsunami that crested at 27,000 feet as it crossed the border and washed over the Hi-Line. Endorphins are opioid polypeptide compounds produced by the pituitary gland and hypothalamus during exercise, excitement, pain, orgasm, the consumption of spicy foods and (in Canucks), any victory over the United States. “We did it, aaaay. We fair kicked the you-alls’ arse.” – a cheer heard in Vancouver and as far south as Havre. • • • Speaking of teams, what’s with collective nouns? Our team are red hot. Our cheerleaders is hot, too. Collective nouns denote a bunch of individuals. Examples include: army, crowd, flock, team or public. There are some soft and wiggly rules for determining whether a collective noun should be treated as singular or plural. If you think of the team as a bunch of individuals, treat it as plural. “The guys on our team are red hot.” If you think of the team as one group of players, it becomes singular: “Our team is hotter than a pistol.” When in doubt, lie. Tell whoever questions your choice that you were thinking of a group of individuals or an individual group, depending on which choice you are defending. Generally, British and American writers are divided on treatment of collective nouns. Brits prefer treating all as plural. Yanks go for the singular. I found the above explanation at a web site offering “Quick and Dirty Grammar Tips.” Who doesn’t love dirty grammar?  |
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