23 responses to
“Google is my teacher.”

1. Danny said on February 25th, 2008 at 1:07 pm

   Gawd, what a pain in the butt you are. I’m just sayin’.

2. Jen said on February 25th, 2008 at 1:10 pm

   I cringed at the phrase “Don’t get me wrong,” because I know I overuse that way too much. At least now I have a new goal for phrases not to use as much in my writing…

3. Cathy D. said on February 25th, 2008 at 1:31 pm

   “I’m just sayin’” is the new black.

4. Danny said on February 25th, 2008 at 1:32 pm

   Jen, don’t for­get “death to adverbs.” If you didn’t see Nancy’s post on that, look for it.

5. brian stouder said on February 25th, 2008 at 2:34 pm

   and to the list of qual­i­fiers and pre­emp­tive phrases, good ol’ Madame Telling Tales slyly added I know nobody cares about this stuff but me, but…

6. nancy said on February 25th, 2008 at 2:37 pm

   Good catch, Brian! I shall revise. Stand by.

7. brian stouder said on February 25th, 2008 at 2:42 pm

   Much clearer, and corner-stoney!

8. Dexter said on February 25th, 2008 at 3:07 pm

   I ain’t sayin’, I’m just sayin’ I could care less.

   C-YA !!

9. beb said on February 25th, 2008 at 3:59 pm

   And the pas­sive voiced “some peo­ple say…”

   As in some peo­ple say Obama isn’t black enough or some peo­ple say that Obama is too black to be pres­i­dent of Amer­ica. Some peo­ple have an agenda that don’t want to talk about…

10. Mindy said on February 25th, 2008 at 4:05 pm

    Pain in the butt, Danny? Not that there’s any­thing wrong with that, I’m just sayin’.

11. nancy said on February 25th, 2008 at 5:21 pm

    You dis­ap­point me, all of you. “I’m just sayin’” is not the new black. It’s the weasel usage I object to:

    “I’m not say­ing all work­ing moth­ers are abu­sive nar­cis­sists more inter­ested in get­ting a late-model Mer­cedes than nur­tur­ing their infants. I am say­ing chil­dren do bet­ter with a full-time mother who has their best inter­ests at heart.”

    “I’m not say­ing any­one who likes hip-hop is tone deaf. I am say­ing it’s a shame the proud tra­di­tion of African-American music has come to this.”

    When in doubt, always check what they’re not say­ing, because fre­quently that’s what they’re saying.

    I mean: Just sayin’.

12. Peter said on February 25th, 2008 at 6:37 pm

    In my neck of the woods I’ve heard it as “I’m not sayin’, I’m just sayin’”

13. john c said on February 25th, 2008 at 7:07 pm

    Thanks Peter. I was going to add that one. I con­sider it sort of a Sopra­no­ism. I can pic­ture Sil with the shoul­der shrug. “Ahhhhh-ahm not sayin’ T. I’m just sayin’.”

    And has any­one seen Ebert’s new col­lec­tion of reviews. Methinks it might be a nice anti­dote to the Albom style. It is called: “Your movie sucks.” (It is a col­lec­tion of bad reviews)

14. Julie Robinson said on February 25th, 2008 at 8:57 pm

    I love read­ing Ebert’s reviews of bad movies. I think he’s writ­ing as much to enter­tain him­self as his read­ers. He’s already had to waste the time he spent see­ing the movie, but at least he can excer­cise his own cre­ativ­ity while writ­ing the review.

    So he’s still a national trea­sure. The statute of lim­i­ta­tions for The Val­ley of the Dolls has run out.

15. nancy said on February 25th, 2008 at 9:02 pm

    Pans are easy; praise is what’s hard. The thing about Ebert is, he man­ages to make his four-star reviews as read­able as his scathing dis­missals of crap like “Deuce Bigalow.”

16. Danny said on February 26th, 2008 at 12:34 am

    A few years ago, there was a site where the folks reviewed the movies after watch­ing just the movie trailer. Hilar­i­ous stuff when Hol­ly­wood goes so for­mu­laic that it is obvi­ous what the movie is going to be about.

    Another site that I used to get a chuckle out of was the filthy critic. He can get tire­some, but if you go to his archive he has is “in short” movie reviews, which can also be funny. A few samples:

    13 Ghosts 2001 Life­less, soul­less crapfest.
    Anchor­man 2004 Ha ha, peo­ple dressed funny in the 70s.
    Anger Man­age­ment 2003 More mature fart jokes from San­dler
    The Ani­mal 2001 One joke(?), eighty min­utes
    Eyes Wide Shut 1999 Well-directed dumb story
    Kin­sey 2004 Bor­ing movie sort of about sex but mostly about Oscar
    A Knight’s Tale 2001 If you’re dumb and a teenaged girl, you’ll love it.
    Lit­tle Miss Sun­shine 2006 Road com­edy taken over by the NPR crowd.
    O Brother, Where Art Thou 2001 If you love PBS, you might like it
    Rata­touille 2007 Rat cooks, audi­ence yawns.
    Sec­re­tary 2002 A very good love story that also hap­pens to be about bondage

17. Danny said on February 26th, 2008 at 12:52 am

    Hey, let’s not for­get about Cin­tra Wil­son, when talk­ing about the Oscars. She does a nice job every year.

    As per usual, Radioac­tive Jack [Nichol­son] was there in the aisle in a pair of sun­glasses, and I was on my bed with a in a pair of sweat­pants, with my lap­top star­ing at him, with intent to mine him for larger cul­tural insight.

18. MarkH said on February 26th, 2008 at 4:17 am

    Just remem­ber that, when there’s noth­ing more to be said…they’ll still be say­ing it…

    (…still be say­ing it).

19. Jeff said on February 26th, 2008 at 8:42 am

    Michael Kins­ley, say­ing noth­ing on Slate about McCain — http://​www​.slate​.com/​i​d​/​2​185134 — make sure to read the last para­graph (or is it a sentence?).

20. brian stouder said on February 26th, 2008 at 8:56 am

    Wow! Jeff — your link to Kinsley’s piece gave me my laugh of the morn­ing. The sen­tence looks like it could have come from A Farewell to Arms (even allow­ing that Kins­ley was mak­ing fun — the thing still seems to have got­ten away from him!)

    More trou­bling, how­ever, is the issue of whether McCain’s let­ter may have led some peo­ple to worry that other peo­ple might con­clude that McCain’s let­ter cre­ated the appear­ance of a con­flict of inter­est, as well as the issue of whether the New York Times, in dig­ging up this eight-year-old let­ter, was cre­at­ing the pos­si­bil­ity that some peo­ple might think there was a pos­si­bil­ity of an appear­ance that the Times was sug­gest­ing the pos­si­bil­ity of an appear­ance of a poten­tial con­flict of inter­est in McCain’s behav­ior, along with the most dis­tress­ing pos­si­bil­ity of all: that in this very arti­cle I may be cre­at­ing the pos­si­bil­ity that some peo­ple might worry that other peo­ple might think that I have cre­ated the appear­ance of sug­gest­ing that the New York Times has cre­ated the pos­si­bil­ity that some peo­ple might worry that other peo­ple might think that McCain has cre­ated the appear­ance that some peo­ple might worry that other peo­ple might think that there could be an appear­ance that McCain was hav­ing an affair with a lobbyist.

21. Del said on February 26th, 2008 at 9:18 am

    That sentence’s gotta be a joke.

22. Jeff said on February 26th, 2008 at 9:30 am

    Kins­ley for­got the but i’m pretty sure he’s going for irony.

23. Jeff said on February 26th, 2008 at 9:31 am

    Ack, i hate the logo emoti­cons … that was (try­ing to be tricky with spaces) ;  —  ) [i just wanted to see if doing that dis­abled the logo func­tion; sorry to clut­ter, nancy]