Taken from marveen

*gigglesnorts* Mocking Jack Chick keeps me sane.

I'm starting to wonder if people are just stupid.

Person A: Do you want this to happen?
Me: By "this" do you mean "blank" or "thingy"?
Person A: *repeats entire first question*
Me: *stares*

WTF?

I know what you said, you moron! Please, tell me what you meant so I can answer your question.

Finding change in the house is hard work, especially when the house is freezing. Brr.

Okay, now I *do* have a Jewish-related question.

I vaguely know who the Jews for Jesus and Messianic Jews are. I'm curious, though - the few times I've heard them mentioned, it's been with some hostility. Why?

On "singular them".

I like singular them. English doesn't have a gender-neutral 3rd person singular plural, and "them" fits the slot nicely. I fully support the use of the singular them - if and only if it's the best way to cast a sentence.

Everyone passed their papers foward: this makes sense. Everyone can be construed as a plural, and it avoids "his or her".

So-and-so has won a prize, go congratulate them: this doesn't make sense. So-and-so is a person, even if we don't know so-and-so's gender. Why not say "So-and-so has won a prize, and should be congratulated"?

My current peeve, taken from neopets is "If you own a Bori, you can now paint them Starry.". Gah. First of all, you can paint "them" starry if you own one right now or not, just create/adopt a new bori and paint it. Secondly, the bori you own is NOT a them. It's a he or a she. This could've been avoided by adding "you'll be happy to know that" in the middle.

So, I'm watching a program on burial practices...

...and they just got to a part on embalming, where they say that "ironically, the man who pushed for enbalming during the civil war himself becomes a recipient of the practice".

Arg! That's not ironic! It's fitting! It'd be ironic if he didn't become a recipient of the practice, get it right!