Sad Student

I don't have a Tumblr account. I already spend way too much time poking around and creepin' on other people's Tumblrs. It's the best place to find fanart these days. If I had my own Tumblr, I would never graduate. Even now, in the spring semester of my senior year, only six credits away from finishing my degree, I would never graduate.

But I was creepin' around my usual pages tonight. And it was a very sad, slow, disappointing night. There was hardly any new fanart. No cartoons. No updated webcomics.

And I said to myself, "AAAAAAGH. YOU HAVE DISAPPOINTED ME. ALL OF YOU.

"THAT DOES IT. I'M GOING TO DRAW MY OWN COMIC-CARTOON-THINGY. I DON'T KNOW WHAT IT'S GOING TO BE ABOUT. IT PROBABLY WON'T LOOK THAT GOOD. BUT IT'LL BE FUNNY AND ENTERTAINING AND IT'LL BE ON THE INTERNET FOR BORED PEOPLE TO ENJOY.

"HERE I GO. I AM GOING TO GET OUT PAPER AND DRAW SOMETHING. RIGHT NOW. LET'S DO IT."

And then I remembered that I'm behind on my reading for class tomorrow. And I really should be doing that instead.

So now I am sad. And I am going to go read Kim by Rudyard Kipling.

It's for my class about espionage. But in between the little bits about espionage are long, sensory detail-filled descriptions of the people, customs, landscapes, and life in general of India. And I'm really having a hard time getting through it.

Especially since Kim is just so perfect. For crying out loud, he's a kid. In class we estimated he's between 10 and 13 years old. But he just runs around on the streets and he's that stereotypical street urchin who's got all the street smarts and he acts really annoying but everyone just looooves him anyway and he's made, like, only one mistake so far and yeah, I guess living on the streets would give you a fair bit of knowledge of the world around you but COME. ON. HE CAN'T KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT EVERY CASTE AND EVERY PERSON AND I JUST WANT HIM TO FIND THE HOLY RIVER OR YOU KNOW WHATEVER DO SOMETHING BESIDES TRAVEL AND MEET PEOPLE AND TALK TO PEOPLE AND LOOK AT PEOPLE AND GET MONEY FROM PEOPLE AND AAAAAAAGGHHGHHHHGAAHAGHHGGH

I WANT TO DRAW CARTOONS

WARNING: Grammar Rant

Nobody likes a Grammar Nazi. I know this. And I try really, really hard. I do. I've gotten really good at not correcting people's grammar over the years. And this is a good thing.

Because people make mistakes, you know? Slip of the tongue, brain fart, typo- honest mistakes that everyone makes. Even me. So I cut people a break. Because people are human, and nobody likes a Grammar Nazi.

I feel pretentious even talking about grammar. Like I said, I make mistakes, too. Nobody's perfect. But I feel like I just care about grammar a lot more than some people do... maybe that just comes from being an English major? Maybe that's why I'm an English major? I don't know. I couldn't recognize a foul in football, but comma splices rarely elude me. That's just how my brain works.

Long story short: Bad grammar bothers me, I'm sincerely sorry if that annoys you, and now I'm going to talk about grammar that annoys me a whole lot.

So there's this rule in the English language that you're not supposed to end sentences with a preposition.

Prepositions are words like up, over, on, in, out, with, at, from...

You know what, forget it. Schoolhouse Rock does it best.

Yay! Prepositions.

So like I said: the official rule of prepositions is that they must never be the last word of a sentence.

So instead of saying, "Which bench did you sit on?" you're supposed to say, "On which bench did you sit?"

Except people don't really talk like that. Sentences like "On which bench did you sit?" sound overly formal and rather like they're spoken by people who lived hundreds of years ago. So I forgive the breaking of this rule very often and I, myself, break it all the time. The only time I'll pitch a fit about it is in the case of academic writing.

There are just a few exceptions.

For reasons I can't really explain, it drives me up the wall when people end their sentences with the word "at."

"Where did you park at?" "Where is the building located at?" "Where you at?" "Where are the puppies at?" "Do you know where the bathroom's at?"

STAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHP.

...please?

It's hard to say why this preposition bothers me and the others don't (although sometimes I have a real issue with people ending their sentences with "to," as well). I think what gets me is that the word "at" is completely unnecessary in a sentence that already has the word "where" in it.

It's not like "Which bench did you sit on?" in which the preposition is just in the wrong place.

The word "at" does not belong in the sentence "Where did you park?"

At all.

Again: There is no place for the word "at" in that sentence, or in virtually any other sentence that starts with the word "where."

Where did you park? Where is the building located? Where are you? Where are the puppies? Do you know where the bathroom is?

No "at." Ever.

If you think about it, any function the word "at" has is already taken care of by the word "where." So the word "at" is completely useless and unnecessary. Don't let it stay in the sentence just to make it feel better. Get out of here, at.

So when people end their sentences with the word "at," they're saying more words than they have to. They're spending more energy than is necessary, and all that their extra effort gets them is a grammatically incorrect sentence. That's why it bugs me so much.

I know you're all thinking of that old joke right now: "Where did you park at, @%#&$?"

Very funny. Very classy. But still grammatically incorrect.