884 The Usual Thing.

by

That goddamn hat… When I sketched that hat it was perfectly fine. I could draw it no problem. The first few times. Every day after that my ability to draw that thing varried wildly. Eventually I just let it ride. Believe me, it looked really cute in every sketch. Every time I inked it things went awry to varying degrees. XC

Anyway, here we see the first person over 30 years old ever shown in the comic. At least as far as I recall. Thomas’s mom looks like my mother to about the same degree I look like Thomas. Meaning, simply, not at all. That said, I did give her one trait my mother has. Well, three actually, depending on how you count. What I’m talking about is a penchant for wearing t shirts with very pedestrian logos or what have you. The Kansas one in particular is a reference to a shirt my mother more for at least 20 years. I haven’t seen it in a while, but I’m not sure if the thing was finally retired or not. I suspect it’s cryogenically frozen until such time as scientists find out how to repair faded and deteriorating t shirts.

I have a feeling that the “to whom am I speaking” line is also going to draw out pedants. I actually went and checked what the right thing to say would be. Unfortunately the debate about it is roughly as vehement as the one about when to use a or an. So pick a side and duke it out in the comments. I’m sticking with this.

There was a surprising ammount of interest in the pony set. So either I’m more popular than I used to be, or ponies really do draw out the fans. It’s got it’s home already, but the set hasn’t actually arrived. For being unable to cancel an order TRU certainly takes its sweet fucking time getting your stuff to you.

Whatever… Everyone who emailed me is going to get a sketchcard since they couldn’t all have the toy set. Which will hopefully take the sting out of the loss. I’d also like to put out that I am willing to buy any doubles people get from the blind bag sets. As long as you aren’t dicks about it. I don’t want any of this after market horseshit. If you end up with extras though, I want them. Until I have a complete set at least. For the record, I want Firecraker and Pepperdance most of all. XD I am also willing to trade a sketchcard for one of them too if you want a little drawing from me. I’ll even let you pick out who I draw. Just throwing that out there.

Actually if any UK readers can get me some Character Building figures I’d be in to that too. I feel like I could get a better deal going through a person rather than a company that dicks me over on shipping. I dunno. I’m not sure exactly what all exists because it’s hard to make Amazon belive that I want to see the UK version of the site, but I’ve been sent links to stuff that is totally awesome. Really reasonable too. At least they seem that way in unconverted money…

I have stuff I need to get done. I’ll come back to these topics later on I’m sure.

46 Comments

“Whom” is grammatically correct. The test my teacher taught us pretty simple. Make it a statement. Did you put him/her in, or he/she? Him/her is whom, he/she is who.

“I am speaking to he/she” makes no sense. You would say “I am speaking to him/her.” Therefore, whom is right, grammatically. Most people hate grammar nowadays though.

I don’t, and I actually appreciate the lesson.

I’ve always wondered when it’s supposed to be used, and I think your little trick will help me remember from now on.

So thank you.

you, sir/madam are a god/goddess of grammar, praise shall be rain down upon you until the end of time for this great lesson you have given us. You are comparable to Moses (I think that’s the correct biblical figure) with the 10 commandments.
translation: thank you! I always wondered what the difference was and felt kind of stupid for not knowing. =]

First to say: Tom’s mom is hot.

Tom’s mom kinda proves the whole “you end up dating your mom” motif. As initially messed up as that sounds, it makes sense that the traits we would associate with being “womanly” and thus desirable would coincide with the first female in most of our lives.

Hooray for Oedipus Complex!

I was actually going to say the same if no one else had.

Additionally, I want to go over the grammar of “To whom am I speaking?” Whom is accurate, of course. Also, as my English teacher’s sweater said, “Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.” (Cookies if you get that.) So your sentence is absolutely correct. Good job!

Oedipus Complex indeed!

So this is where Tom get’s his thing for redheads?

I don’t have an odiepous complex (just trust me on that one. . .) but the first girl I ever dated like the same colors as my mom, had a similar personality, and I found a photo of my mother where she looked my girlfriend. . .

Wasn’t as attracted to my girlfriend after that. . .

KANSAS??? Oh boy that better not be KU…

Not KU, UK.

And in all likelihood, it IS a UK shirt. School colors are blue & red, but an images search for UK t-shirts show most of them to be blue with white lettering.

Besides, if it was the band, the name would have been in their logotype. (Although that would have been more work for our artist.)

For the record: I’m not any sort of Kansas athletics fan. More a Big Ten fan. Butthe band was pretty cool in the day.

UK? What? That’s the University of Kentucky. Your fan claim has been disproved. Anyone who’s seen any game, whether football, basketball, or otherwise on any sports network knows that. Shoot, if it was in anyway a reference to the college it would need a Rock Chalk Jayhawk (school chant) or Jayhawk (mascot) reference on there somewhere. The only google-found shirt I saw that was similar had an Adidas logo below the word Kansas, and it wasn’t as whimsical a font/typeface as the one Tommy’s mommy is sporting.

It is most likely a tourist shirt. Living in a town with two big tourist attractions, and occasionally driving my mother to her reunions in a town with its own touristy stuff, I recognize the genericness of it.

Why would it matter whether you used who or whom? You’re not writing a literary paper, you’re writing dialogue.

It’s just a speech trait. Come on, guys; not everybody can just stop and say, “Oh, I am having a conversation. That means that I do not have to use proper grammar! Hey, y’all!”

I have this problem 82% of the time.

I’m telling you folks, no one should be getting doubles of blind bag ponies! Look at the flap on the seam of the bag. You’ll see a number imprinted on one end on it. You can find a chart online, the one I use is on the strawberryreef website.

The fact of the matter is that I’m a 6’1″ 35 year old man with a leather jacket and a beard. I can’t really stand in front of the goddamn box with a chart. I scare away the little girls. I don’t want to ruin a trip to the toy isle for them.

Heh heh. ^^ Yeah… I’m usually present when we have to sift through the LEGO minifigs, too. It’s kind of hilarious when you guy stuff like Monster High or doll house accessories and they’re like, “Oooh! Some little girl is going to be happy!” and you’re like, “… they’re for my boyfriend.”

GO MOM! GO KANSAS! If i could keep my wifes glasses on her head she would look just as cute! And yes this is dialog. Normal grammatical rules simply don’t apply to dialog. So all y’all wi’ sticks up yer hinders kin jus leave po’ crave ‘lone!!

You’re correct with the grammar there. And I’m putting in a vouch of appreciation for your willingness to bother with it.

Also, it sets a nice framework for Ms. Blackwell’s speech pattern.

“Who” is the person doing the doing, while “whom” is the person being done unto (preposition! Ten points, woohoo!). So in the sentence “My brother kicked me in the balls yesterday”, my brother would be the “who”, and I would be the “whom”, or in this case, Thomas’s mom is speaking about herself speaking to someone, so she’s the “who”, and the person she’s speaking about speaking to would be the “whom”.

In other words, as others have said, the way you did it (or she did it: just because an author might be expected know better doesn’t mean the characters must, and vice versa)is correct.

How could it be clearer than that? ;)

What I’m interested in is Carol’s reaction when she realizes she’s talking to her boyfriend’s mom.
I’ve always wondered if women get that same feeling of trepidation when meeting a guy’s mom that I did when meeting a girl’s dad.

Sometimes it is important to realize that pedantism is only a good thing to the extent that it is useful.

The a/an controversy. I have always believed that the general rule is that you drive a car, and fly an ornithopter, that is to say that the thing to which you are about to refer determines if you use a or an. Typically if it starts with a vowel you use an, if it starts with a consonant you use a. This rule will often become skewed by words where the original spelling once began with a consonant but now begins with a vowel, or just the opposite, as well as by words where the opponent sound you hear when the word is spoken aloud is a consonant, but the word actually begins with a vowel, like we see with opossum.

Who and Whom: this one is actually a bit easier if you speak a foreign language, and easier still if that language is german. English is a germanic language, and who is one of those words that still has dative/accusative tenses. You alternate according to the dative accusative rules. Accusative form applies when you are doing something to the something, and the dative applies when the something you are doing to the something is also blank, where blank might be with, around, etc. The problem: I don’t remember which is which. But a simple rule of thumb is that if when you read it you hear yourself saying “To who ma’am I speaking” then either you are doing it wrong, or even if you are doing it right you shouldn’t bother phrasing it that way. As it happens, I believe you used the correct weight of gram hammers, but I think you should have just picked a different way to phrase it. +1 for dodging your problems rather than confronting them head-on.

To be fair, I’m not sure how the difference actually has any relevance in English. “Whom” is technically correct, but using “who” wouldn’t grammatically or semantically change or confuse the sentence’s meaning, it would simply be “incorrect”.

“Who” has pretty much entirely replaced “whom” in common speech, and unlike with some other common grammatical complaints, this one doesn’t really make any difference. In modern English, at least, “whom” is a functionally extraneous word. It adds no clarification or flexibility, prevents no confusion or malappropriation, and persists pretty much solely out of residual academic/pedantic momentum.

Alright, this is only partially correct. Who has only begun recently replacing whom in its proper places, and I for one don’t like it. I always was taught that it was a very precise difference, and “to who am I speaking” sounds just wrong to my ears (and looks wrong when I read it). Whom, as is stated here in higher-up comments, is accusative (that’s the right word, is it not?) and who is dative. In plain English, whom am I doing an action to, who is doing an action. As in: “WHO keeps emailing me asking for My Little Pony stuff?” and “To WHOM do you keep sending emails begging for My Little Pony stuff?” It’s kind of like a/an honestly, in that “a” apple is not correct, but widely accepted (much to the chagrin of those of us who really like flowy sentences). I want a apple. If you say it, it flows until a apple. the repeated vowel makes you short-stop. Like a speed bump for your tongue. Eww. I like an apple, because the closed tongue that is needed for an n flows back up to apple well. you can say an apple five times really really fast. a apple is harder. you begin to say uh-apple, which sounds not nice at all and isn’t the intended way of saying things. #grammar rant

Backtrack up a little, and you’ll see that I already made another comment talking about the difference between “who” and “whom”, so you’re barking up the wrong tree in trying to educate me on the difference.

The point I was making is that, despite there being a technical difference in their meaning, that difference itself is entirely redundant. No one actually needs two different words for this, because the only possible context where the case is not already communicate fully by sentence/phrase structure is that of a single word question.

“Whom” creates a similar class of verbal awkwardness you cite to using “a” before a word starting with a vawel (BTW, I’ve never in my life heard anyone over the age of five say “a apple”, much less imply they think that’s correct), so non-pedants and people who triaged that detail back in elementary school (i.e. a majority, like it or not) just end up reflexively using “who” for both without ever realizing they’re doing it “wrong”. This has been happening for at least half a century (probably much longer) with ever increasing frequency. This is why the confusion exists in the first place.

There may have been dialects centuries ago where it did make a difference, but in modern English it’s functionally redundant and verbally awkward. As I said before: it doesn’t clarify anything that isn’t already clear, it doesn’t add any extra flexibility or expressiveness, and it doesn’t prevent any potential semantic derailments. It’s the grammatical equivalent of a salad fork, and its sole de facto practical purpose is as a pedant merit badge.

Since the character shares attributes with your mom ask her opinion and fix it her way. Anyway I’m glad his Mom seems happy about Carol and I wish you luck with your hat problem.

That Kansas shirt is actually 2 identical shirts…..and I haven’t worn it for 20 years….it just seems like it. ;-) It is neither KU or KState….it is a cheap, Wally word, state of Kansas kind of t….which I love because the neck & shoulder seams fit perfectly & don’t slide backwards. (I pick my t’s by the way they fit) I also have both KU & K-State t’s in my closet. ;-) ;-) ;-)

Gee Mrs. Crave… Here I was thinking it was a “Kansas” the rock group T! I was hearing choruses of carry on my wayward son. Don’t be ashamed of such a long history. Any T that is cool enough to enjoy wearing in public and has the added benefit of feeling good on your person is good enough to wear till the laundry disintegrates it. I have several that are 20 years old and a whole drawer full that is over 10. Just like cars, “Run ’em ’till they blow,” then spread their ashes at the laundry-mat.

I don’t trust the whole idea if [cryogenic-ally freezing] someone.

Just- to my knowledge, it can’t be done at all, in current times, because-

science hasn’t figured out yet- how to keep someone alive, while that person is being c. frozen, + how to keep them alive: 1] when they are frozen for a long time, + then 2] they, the scientists-type people, don’t know how to [thaw out someone who has been c. frozen], without killing or harming that person.

Or a short-form way of saying that is:

cryogenic freezing…it just don’t WORK yet!

[Thus endeth the lesson.]

…Truth be told, I never really notice or remember people’s eye colour. Not that I’m staring people in the tits all day; I look at their face, but the eyes don’t really register beyond what direction they’re looking.
Not sure what that says about me.
I’m somewhat an introvert, but not unfriendly, or like the autistic folks who won’t make eye contact. I’m somewhat nearsighted, but not quite too blind to actually SEE their eyes from a conversational distance. I just don’t pay attention to the colour, at all.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.