Re: Not tonight dear!

On 17 Jun 2007 05:56:36 GMT, cybercypher <dontbother@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

Oleg Lego <rat@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote

On 17 Jun 2007 04:54:01 GMT, cybercypher posted:

Oleg Lego <rat@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote
On Sat, 16 Jun 2007 21:27:25 -0700, mb posted:
On Jun 16, 6:23 pm, irwell <h...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I made a mixture of rotten smelling eggs, crushed garlic, red
chili pepper flkaes and coal tar shampoo.

Sounds definitely better than what you get at McDonald's, who
sold billions to supposedly sentient humans.

And dogs share some cultural values, including culinary, with
such humans.

As if you didn't know.

Just adding this on here, because I forgot to mention something
to irwell. Deer don't like Castor Beans, and planting them near
desirable plants will usually protect them. The downside is that
they are quite poisonous, so if you have small children in the
area, you might not want to use them.

But if others have small children in the area, then don't worry
about it: they're not yours.

From this, I gather you are unfamiliar with the use of "you have"
in this sense.

I don't like that kind of unnecessary and pointless (except to
impress through linguistic fraud) ambiguity. This particular
construction and usage was discussed to death here months ago. My
opinion is that anyone who feels it's okay to say "I have a tennis
court next to my apartment house" instead of "There is a tennis court
next to my apartment house" (the particular sentence in question at
the time) is being either deliberately or witlessly indiscriminate
and misleading. How much more difficult is it to say what you mean
instead of saying what can easily be misconstrued?

I see no point in arguing the issue again. It is poor and illogical
style to substitute a possessive for an existential construction and
claim that there is no difference in meaning. Claiming, however
accurately, that when people utter such stupid and unnecessary
ambiguities, they often mean something other than what the words
actually say because they are, as in the fetid case of "between you
and I", standard idioms is no defense of sloppy, unclear, and low-
level expression, regardless of how informal one claims to be being.

I am thoroughly familiar with the stupidity of
"I/you/he/she/it/we/they have = there is, but it isn't mine/etc., so
even though I'm saying that 'I/etc. have it', I really don't mean
what I'm saying at all, because I/etc. really don't 'have' it; I/etc.
merely have access to it -- maybe".

Just as some have an almost religious belief about avoiding passive
constructs, aren't there some style advisors who eschew "there is" and
"there are"?

--
Al in St. Lou
.

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