Good morning Hank, it's Freitag!
As I've been walking around Munich, I keep seeing people with surfboards, and I'm like "Listen.
I'm not a geographer, but where's the ocean?"
There's the ocean.
I'm coming to you today in a field of sunflowers because, well, because I can.
Let's walk.
So Hank, in your video on Wednesday
you discussed an encounter with Snooki, a reality TV show star.
I sort of knew who Snookie was but I wasn't totally confident so after I watched your video
I went to check her out on Twitter.
And, Hank, what I discovered troubled me.
It's raining. Let's go inside.
People say that grammar and spelling aren't that important,
and certainly their importance can be exaggerated,
but the reason grammar and spelling exist is to make communicative experiences
as clear and transparent as possible.
So today we're gonna look at Snooki tweets to see how poor grammar and spelling can lead to confusion...
...and threesomes.
Snooki tweets: "Everyone stop having heart attacks when I miss an
apostrophe or coma or period. Don't want to pop a blood vessel in your eyeballs!"
First off, Snooki,
I'm not the one who should be concerned when you miss a period.
Secondly, I'm certainly sympathetic to the occasional apostrophe mistake.
But I am deeply concerned when anyone misses a coma.
I realize that you are not a trained medical professional,
but still comas should be relatively easy to spot.
The only excuse for missing a coma is being in a coma.
Another example:
She tweets, "I wish I didn't freeze up when I saw Mark Wahlberg at the MTV movie awards
because he is so bangin'.
FML.
Mark come back! LOL."
Let me submit that Mark Wahlberg might be more inclined to believe that you are a big fan if you
knew that he spelled his name with a "k".
And now Hank, let's move on to the equally troubling problem of poor grammar.
I'm gonna go past the small stuff like the fact that Snooki
repeatedly refers to groups of men as "packs of gorillas"
even though we know that a group of gorillas is called a troop.
I'm not even gonna get into the strange and fascinatingly racist habit
of calling your followers "tweet-ohs".
But Hank, check this out.
Snooki tweets,
"I like pink roses and long walks on the beach and holding your hand
with margaritas and the other this time of year."
Huh?!
This is very difficult text to parse, but so far as I can tell there are three possibilities.
First possibility, Snooki has freakishly large hands that allow her to hold her boyfriend's hand with one hand and
plural margaritas with the other hand.
Possibility number 2, she has more than two hands,
at least three, possibly many more,
so that she has one hand with which to hold her boyfriend's hand and then two or more
hands with which to hold margaritas.
And lastly, and most disturbingly, possibility number three,
given Snooki's hatred of apostrophes and
capitalizations, it is possible that Snooki is imagining some kind of ménage à trois
with her boyfriend and a woman named Margarita.
As in, "this time of year
I like pink roses, long walks on the beach, and holding your hand, with Margarita's in the other"
This is why grammar is important, because without it
we can't tell if Snooki is polyamorously inclined or has a secret third hand.
Hank, I want to emphasize that Snooki isn't stupid. We all make spelling mistakes.
You misspelled her name in your video,
and although it's my job not to, I make grammatical mistakes all the time.
But Snooki doesn't value language, and she doesn't care about the quality of discourse in our society.
And I worry when we celebrate those people instead of people who use language precisely and thoughtfully
that we end up with really crappy
discourse whether it's on "the Jersey Shore" or in congress.
Hank, Munich is lovely. My punishment sounds
horrible so thanks for that.
Nerdfighters, keep suggesting punishments for Hank in comments.
I read them all.
Hank, you'll find out your punishment on Wednesday, but I'll see you first on Monday.
Best wishes!
