:: who knew diagramming sentences could be this fun?

my least favorite part of english class, in all my years in school, has to be diagramming sentences. i hated it. i never really understood why you had to do it. i still don't understand why it was so important. i guess it was supposed to show me how to better construct sentences, but it really just irritated me.

something else that irritates me :: sarah palin.

i just can't stand her. i don't know why, but when she starts talking every fiber of my being starts to cringe. some people just love her to death, but since the first time i heard her speak, the morning after the dnc, when she was nominated, i disliked her. maybe it's because she came right out of the gate and lied about so many things (she said "thanks but no thanks" to the bridge to nowhere? really?). maybe her attitude gets under my skin. maybe it's the fact that she just re-treads every speech and every joke and just runs it into the ground. maybe it's the fact that whenever she gives an interview she just strings key words together into some poor semblance of a sentence that makes no sense whatsoever, and people dismiss her answer as the result of a "trap question". maybe because i see her whole candidacy as a ploy by the republican base to make mccain seem interesting and to grab those women who feel disenfranchised by the democratic party since the end of hillary clinton's campaign for the presidency. maybe it's all of those reasons. she just irritates me.

but when i found this article, i had to chuckle. it's the combination sarah palin and diagramming sentences. someone actually took some sentences from sarah palin's interviews with katie couric and charlie gibson and attempted to diagram them. you can read the full article at that link, but here is the jist.

here is a quote from sarah palin ::

It's very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where—where do they go?

and here is the diagram of that "sentence" ::


here is another quote from sarah palin ::

I know that John McCain will do that and I, as his vice president, families we are blessed with that vote of the American people and are elected to serve and are sworn in on January 20, that will be our top priority is to defend the American people.

and here is that diagram ::


wow. she can seriously make absolutely no sense sometimes. i'm glad that the sentences i had to diagram in high school were nowhere near this bad. i'd have to kill myself. did she just spit these words out as they came to her? did she even think about the sentence that she was constructing?

to be sure, barack obama and joe biden have made there share of verbal gaffes. obama misstated the number of years he'd been married, saying 15 instead of 16. he also misstated that he'd visited 57 states instead of 47. biden recently said that theodore roosevelt wouldn't have gotten on the television during the depression, which is correct, essentially. mostly because roosevelt wasn't the president during the depression, and the television hadn't been invented yet. blast away at those guys for those mistakes. but it seems like every week, every chance sarah palin gets, she says something stupid. i think that's why i'm so anxious to see the debate tonight. it's like a little game :: "follow sarah palin's meandering sentence construction". i hope you'll be playing along with me.

more to come...

:: some things i just don't understand...

and this is one of them.

yesterday, in the face of the crumbling economy and a bailout costing $700 billion in taxpayer's (yes, our) money, republican presidential nominee john mccain suspended his presidential campaign. he said it was time to drop the partisan politics and return to washington to get this deal banged out and get the economy back on track. he called for democratic presidential nominee barack obama to suspend his campaign as well (to which obama said "no") and asked that the presidential debate, which is scheduled for tomorrow night up the road from my current location, postponed.

and in his hurry, he had to blow off an interview with late night talk show host david letterman. he had to, there is a crisis at hand... katie couric wanted to do an interview. so he did that interview and rushed over to his hotel in new york, where he spent the night. because there is a crisis at hand, and john mccain needed to get... to sleep. and then he got up and left... for a speech in new york. yes, he had to make the speech at the clinton global initiative in person (obama also spoke there, via satellite). and then mccain got on a plane and got to washington... 22 hours after he essentially said, "things are so bad i'm going to drop everything to get to washington to help get things done," he finally got there.

does anyone see a disconnect between mccain's words and his actions?

i don't get it. first off, the audacity to think that john mccain arriving in washington will be the final push to get things done while people have been arguing over this for at least a week is just beyond me. he wouldn't make much difference. but that aside, if mccain's going to make a big deal about dropping his campaign, why did it take him so long to get to washington to face this crisis?

when i hear people tell me there is a crisis and they need to address it, i generally think they imply that the action will happen immediately. when you find out that your house is currently burning to the ground, you don't call everyone first and tell them you're going home to save your stuff, then stop by taco bell and get some volcano tacos because "fire" reminded you of "spicy tacos", and then drop off those vhs movies (this is a mccain parallel...) that you rented last week, and then get home. you just freaking go home. it's a crisis. it implies the need for immediate action.

unless it's not a crisis, at least maybe john mccain doesn't think this is a crisis. maybe he really does think that the fundamentals of the economy are sound,like he said last week. or maybe he doesn't know what he thinks. i sure as hell can tell.

does anyone else find this odd? just me?


hey, i think there's a new semi-regualar blog feature in this "things i just don't understand...". it's got a very seinfeld-esque quality to it.

"and another thing... who designed the little devider things between the urinals in the men's rooms?!"

more to come...