The Oxford comma:
On a building site there were some tools, Boris, and Thérèse.
On a building site there were some tools, Boris and Thérèse.
Last night my neighbour came home drunk and banged on his door for five minutes. He lives alone. So I went outside and told him he wasn’t there, at which point he left.”
5.
A quote attributed to Michelangelo’s mother: “Mike, can’t you paint on walls like other children? Do you have any idea how hard it is to get that stuff off the ceiling?”
8.
“I’m waiting to hear an Irishman say: ‘Charles III’”.
10.
How is it that we put a man on the moon before we figured out that it would be a good idea to put wheels on luggage?
14.
AN ELDERLY woman is carrying two plastic bags. She drops a banknote on the pavement:
Police officer: “Ma’am, you dropped some money” He picks it up and hands it to her.
“Oh, thank you.”
She puts the banknote in the plastic bag. The cop sees it’s full of money.
“Ma’am, I have to ask you. Where did that money come from?”
“I’ll explain. My house is over the road from the rugby stadium. I have a lovely little garden. After the match the rugby hooligans come out full of booze and they widdle through the fence into my garden. I come up to them with the garden sheers and fine them R100 a time.”
“I see. And the other bag?”
“Well, not all of them pay.”
24.
With thanks to John, Graham, Erik, TM, Dave, Brenda.
MUNGUIN'S NEW REPUBLIC 
Ha ha, all very good, thanks! So er, who is the new ‘Duke of Edinburgh’ now, is it compulsory to have one of them anyway. What is a ‘duke’, and who is a duchess, and, what do they do, can I be a duchess? Might it get me into posh resturants and stuff? Too many ‘unanswered questions’.
Comma, comma, comma.
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Hm. “Duchess” would be a bit of a demotion for me, Hetty. I’ve always preferred “Majesty”.
Re the Oxford comma, known in the US as the Harvard comma. There is a growing tendency Over There to stick that comma-before-and in always, whereas here in Great Brainbin the tendency is to not put it in even when you otter.
Anyway, who does Thérèse Coughey think she is, pontificating on such matters? Thérèse Fowler? Thérèse Webster? What a pretentious (ponders momentarily) puddock. Is it just because she’s got accents both grave and acute?
The “momentarily” was for Danny, for reasons he will understand.
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There’s our Thérèse with her two accents… meanwhile Mark François eschews his circonflexe and makes his name Frankoise.
What a funny lot they are.
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Actually, Tris, I think it’s his cédille that’s caduque.
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Do you think it packed up and left home?
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The cédille reportedly saw (or possible sawed) through the façade, the thin veneer of civilization, of the ineffable Mr. François, and called on the Académie to decide that his name should be spelled Marque Fronquoise. This was to avoid any connection with français, because françois (last syllable pronounced /weh/) is the archaic spelling and pronunciation of our contemporary word français.
We obviously can’t call him Marc, you see, because marc used to be one of my favourite postprandial tipples in company, and I wouldn’t like to pollute those happy memories. So it’s got to be Marque.
This is, of course, patently absurd, which is only fitting.
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Absolutely fitting, given his absurdity!
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You have be reported to the head Commabanner for taking the Mick out of her comma diktat. You will receive a suitable punishment!
No idea who the Duke of Edinburgh is. It’s all down to Grumpy the ungekrönter König.
And you blew any possibility of getting a Duchessdom by upsetting the Coffey!
🙂
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I owe evything I’ve achieved to my parents, God and Munguin. The Oxford comma (Harvard comma on Danny’s side) has its uses and if Coffey things otherwise, she just proves she’s even dumber than Truss. The Sunday Times came up with a classic in a 1998 preview of a travel programme by Peter Ustinov, noting “highlights include encounters with Nelson Mandela, an 800 year-old demigod and a dildo collector”.
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LOL LOL LOL.
One small correction, Munguin thinks he should have come first in that list!¬
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Two bites at first JFAL go, but only this one was intended till I red the piece on Coffey’s punctuation skills. I think I’m far enough away in Bulgaria to avoid being locked up for lese majeste…
Among all the promo emails from companies engaged in desperate marketing thinly disguised as royal tributes, did anyone else get one from Polycell UK? They’re producing special memorial packs of Polyfilla called Quophenfilla. There’s a whole story in the spelling of coffin. ‘Qu’ for queen, ‘o’ for obeisance, ‘ph’ for Philip, and ‘en’ for England. Every time you plug a hole in your budget, just have some handy, and as you wipe away a tear you’ll always be reminded of what a gap she left in your pocket.
Brian’s coronation will be marked by another souvenir product – Camillafilla – so you can join in the celebratory consummation of the consortship, consorthood, consort-i-yum-yum? Whatever the right word is. It’s an orificial memento (or ma’minto).
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Very true, John.
As I understand it, Westminsterites, -onians and -ophiles hew to the bizarre notion that the sovereignty of the “nation” is embodied by the monarch in Parliament.
So, logically speaking, that would make the former Mrs. Parker-Bowles the nation’s sovereignty’s wife. Or consort. Or something.
It all makes about as much sense to me as the Holy Trinity.
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You into nocturnl prowls as well, Ed? Usually I’m her alone at around 02:00 Scotland time. Can only assume that you and Hetty and Jake are already glued to the telly so you won’t miss any of the Eeb’s build-up to Hoyle’s apparent predictions of resurrection and second coming combined, judging by his cegorisation of the significance of the event.
Coming up 07:30 here now and dawn patrol for me. Dawn and about an hour, more ccurately, and with it the first proper sign of what’s not far away. . Only 7C. Soon we’ll be saying 7C? Whoopee, it’s a heatwave. My sympathies to Munguinites on wht you will have to endure today. And you still have Camillafilla to look forward to.
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Totally determined to see absolutely NONE of it, John.
It’s been cold here the last couple of days. I had to put the heating on yesterday. The sun is shining now but it’s still not warm.
It’s some sort of holiday here, but of course Munguin doesn’t recognise any of this holiday nonsense, so I’d better press on with the gardening. The head gardener, Robbie Bird, will be waiting for me.
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Ha ha ha ha…
🙂
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“I’m waiting to hear an Irishman say: ‘Charles III’”.🤣🤣🤣🤣
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LOL. It’ll be hard for the DUP lot, will it not?
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The Royal Mail has announced that with the accession of Charlie they are changing their name to Charles III Post Office or C3PO for short.
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Beaut, Stewart! I’ll be happily plagiarising that it you don’t mind (with source credit of course).
Meantime, just remembered another celebrated – and costly – example of a missing Oxford comma… and a bit of peerless Mr G research filled in the detail.
A US court upheld a claim in 2017 by Maine truck drivers to overtime pay that was available under state law for all workers except those involved in “the canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution” of agricultural produce such as meat, fish and perishable foods.
The dairy that employed the truckers insisted they were not entitled to overtime because they distributed goods. The truckers argued, successfully, that for that to be true, the law should have said “packing for shipment, or distribution”. Without an Oxford comma, only those doing the “packing [for shipment or distribution]” were denied the overtime pay. The truckers didn’t do the packing so the exception did not apply to them.
“For want of a comma, we have this case,” the judge said, ruling in favour of the truckers.
Can’t find anything on how much the missing comma cost, but the legal bills alone must have been hefty. The dairy would have been much better off settling the claim, and lobbying for an amendment to the law’s punctuation.
.
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Brilliant story, John.
On a more serious note. The NHS, particularly in England, is in serious financial and logistical trouble. Even Truss (possibly forgetting that she had been in government now for some extended period) admitted that her own local hospital’s roof is falling to pieces.
And yet the Health Secretary for England and Deputy Prime Minister is concentrating her energies on correcting (or not) people’s use of commas.
!!!!!!¬
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LOL
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Loved the angry post! Needed a laugh so thanks. Wish I’d saved the link to a photo with Truss and Coffey holding two baby Sus domesticus.
Should the headline be
Two piglets, Truss and Coffey or
Two piglets, Truss, and Coffey
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LOL True…
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Coffey solves the 4 hour wait target.
She’s just abolished the target, so clever.
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Goodness. That’s the way to get your figures to look better.
Never mind the waiting list, check your work for commas!
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9 – emits a heavy breathing sound when being filled.
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EEEEEK. I wonder if it sweats when hot.
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Great….as per….better to laugh…than cry….allegedly.
Have a nice day
🙂
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🙂
At least the sun is shining, even if it’s chilly.
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Discovered a new word (to me) – and a laugh into the bargain. Just what we need today: more laughs to build up our herd immunity to mourning sickness. And as Munguinites are invariably happy with another MNR schoolday, the word is: ‘autotomy’.
We’re all in favour of Scottish autonomy, is this a variant? No. It’s the process by which scorpions can detach a body part to escape a predator. All very well, but when scorpions lose their tails, they also lose the last portion of their digestive tract. This leads to constipation and eventual death – ruining the scorpion’s sex life along the way.
This stunning discovery has won an Ig Nobel Award, the prizes for bizarre scientific achievement, as recorded in the Annals of Improbable Research. Held less than a month before the actual Nobel Prize winners are announced, in best Ig Nobel tradition real Nobel laureates hand out the prizes. Winners also each received $10 trillion! Unfortunately for them it was in the form of a Zimbabwean banknote.
The ‘autotomy’ revelations won the biology category and were the work of Solimary García-Hernández and Glauco Machado of the University of São Paulo, in Brazil.
Scottish scientists were also among the winners. Researchers at the University of Strathclyde found that ducklings actually surf in their mother’s wake. They share an Ig Nobel with counterparts at West Chester University, Pennsylvania, who discovered that ducklings also swim in a straight line behind their mother to save energy, using the slipstream like F1 cars, cyclists, and runners.
Further awards went for discovering that couples’ heart rates become synchronised when they are attracted to each other; making a rubber moose “crash test dummy”; and analysing what makes legal documents difficult to understand. Who needs funerals when we have stuff like this to keep us entertained.
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I love it, John.
All very worthy winners and a blast of fresh air in this Mourning Monday, where it seems we aren’t even allowed to buy something for Munguin’s dinner.
A scandal like no other.
Incidentally, Munguin was wondering if he got a prize for discovering that below stairs staff can live on next to mothing… 🙂
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From the economics of the madhouse to the economics of the poorhouse, Tris.
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(21) My onetime favourite cartoon character Snoopy. Totally gazumped by Garfield. No contest.
The first Garfield strip I ever saw, I forget the storyline, but my reaction was “That guy has had cats in his life”. It involved pure feline logic. I was addicted on the spot.
(22) Now, that’s what I call a Chump-Steak.
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Ha ha… yes, I guess you can tell when someone has actually had a cat as a boss.
Brilliant, slightly off colour Trump.
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Oooh lots of funnies and laughter……is that allowed today 🤣😂🤣🤭
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Munguin says it is compulsory.
Goodness, the way some people are carrying on, you think it was he would was being buried! 🙂 🙂 🙂
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