Life of Pi by Yann Martel is just plain fun to read. It’s both deep and light, and walks the balance between darkness and levity with the deftness of a tiger stalking his prey. It’s not until almost halfway into the book that the plot advertised on the dust cover begins – yet I never once found myself bored by the introductory material.

In fact, very few essential plot elements were introduced in those opening chapters, that first part of the book. We see how a young man gains an unusual, yet highly accessible understanding of the world – but we don’t gain any real insight into his indomitable survival instinct, or his almost instinctive resourcefulness. What we do get is a deep, yet entertaining fable about the nature of truth, assembled by a fictional editor, and written mostly in first-person from the main character’s perspective (and partly in first-person from the editor’s perspective).

It’s brutal, yet light; subtle, yet straightforward; spiritual, yet grounded. The story will sometimes alternate between these extremes, and sometimes fit them all into a single paragraph, or a single sentence. The words “Instant classic” get used too frequently, but I do think this book will last, and be remembered. I’m pretty certain I’ll remember it, anyway.

I haven’t found a single review that truly captures the spirit of this book, including this review. The book, however, captures its own spirit exceptionally well – better, in fact, than most books do. Read it, enjoy it, and let me know what you think.

I was one of the premier watchers of Sesame Street. When it first came on the air, I was just the right age to watch it, and I did watch it – sometimes twice in one day. It was a different show back then. They’ve made it a lot more PC. For instance, there was a song on Sesame Street when I was watching that went something like this:

One of these things is not like the others.
One of these things just doesn’t belong.
If you guessed this thing is not like the others,
Then, you’re absolutely right!

The word “thing” was generally replaced by a more specific noun, such as “shape” or “toy”. But, I think sometimes the word was “girl” or “boy”, and then we were excluding people from groups.

So now the song’s more elaborate, where you look for one of two or three groups to include the thing in question in. I don’t know if anyone will remember the new song 37 years hence, but I kind of think not. Progress must be made, I suppose.

Another disappointment is the disappearance of the running gag about Snuffleupagus, the Wooly-Mammoth-looking character who, for years, was seen only by the children and Big Bird. They’d try all sorts of things to keep him there until an adult arrived, but he always seemed to amble off before anyone over eight could see him.

I heard this gag was dispensed with so as not to encourage imaginary friends, but I don’t know for sure. It kind of seems unlike an enterprise that always encouraged imagination. Maybe it was the adults’ disbelief that didn’t sit right with the SSPB (Sesame Street Powers that Be).

The biggest change in the Sesame Street format, however, was the introduction of Elmo. I hated him. Perhaps “hate” is too strong a word. But he rubbed me so far the wrong way that I could get sent back ten paces just by hearing his voice. The red furball was bubblegum sweet, innocent, and without a single vice to his name, unless not having a vice is a vice. Plus, Elmo never used pronouns, even when talking about Elmo. (This might be my stickler showing again!)

The other Muppet characters all had their vices, but Elmo had only his wide-eyed naiveté. Cookie Monster had his cookie obsession, The Count needed his numbers, Oscar was the anti-Elmo before there was an Elmo, and Ernie and Bert were as mismatched a pair of friends as you could hope to meet. Elmo had none of that. Worse yet, because so many kids and parents loved him, I knew he wasn’t going away.

I’ve finally started to understand the phenomenon. Elmo wasn’t as naïve as I might have thought. Elmo, you see, knew The Secret, hidden from the masses for centuries, and only recently brought to light by author Rhonda Byrne. Long before her book came out, he’d secured about fifteen minutes of the Sesame Street program, or about 25% of the broadcast, and still made regular appearances during the rest of the show. I don’t have the statistics to back this up, but he must have more airplay on a typical Sesame Street show than any other character.

How did he manage this? Well, his end-of-show segment, called “Elmo’s World”, is all about the Principle of Attraction. He starts the show thinking about a topic, and, from there, things just keep happening. The visitors who come by, the email he receives, and even the local cable TV schedule, all cooperate. Elmo does choose the channel to switch to, but the channel always exists, and there’s always a short show, right on topic, starting right when the TV turns itself on.

Elmo’s mastery of The Secret is not complete. He still has perennial trouble with the window shade that gives him access to Mr. Noodle. He has similar trouble opening the drawer, and you have to think that Elmo is attracting some of the negativity to himself by expecting to have trouble. Elmo also tends to associate with people who don’t give him positive results. He asks three-year-old level questions of a baby, and almost never gets a meaningful answer. He also spends an inordinate amount of time working with Mr. Noodle to get a satisfactory result, when small children reliably deliver without any issue.

But you can’t argue with his overall success. Day after day, he starts with a thought, and makes that thought into an educational segment that PBS keeps paying for again and again. He unites people, animals, and animate objects (things that can talk) toward the goal of expressing this thought, attracting elements of the universe and defying probability at every turn. He is a catalyst. The universe works for him.

Finally, I have to admit that he doesn’t irritate me so much anymore. He keeps my daughter occupied, and probably isn’t completely rotting her brain. He may even be good in small doses. He lets other people talk, and they usually use pronouns. Maybe, at one point, he thought about acceptance, and he attracted mine. I still don’t love him, though.

Long, long ago, sometime in the 80’s, I think, comedian George Carlin observed that, in traffic, every driver who wants to go faster than you is a maniac, and every driver who wants to go slower is an idiot. I think something similar is true regarding people’s opinions of correct grammar. Everyone has a standard; and anyone with higher standards is hopelessly pedantic, while everyone with lower standards is borderline illiterate. It helps when I examine my own views in that light.

I’m not a big stickler on things like split infinitives and the conjunctive case. If you use the conjunctive, as it were, most verbs take the same form as the past tense. “If I went”, “If you had”, and, even “If they were”. So, if someone says, “If I was”, who am I to complain? “If I was” can’t mean anything else, and English isn’t Latin.

I feel the same about the insistence that the nominative case be used with any form of the verb “to be”. It’s an academic insistence on the equivalence of the subject and object. If there’s anyone who feels inclined to break that rule, it’s me. I also think that prepositions are perfectly fine words to end sentences with. When I’m being more formal, I sometimes still follow that rule, and I may even use conjunctives correctly – but I’m firmly on the page of those who coined the many and various “up with which I will not put” phrases commonly attributed to Winston Churchill.

I also think that the word “data” has changed from its original Latin meaning. Over the years, common usage has made it a mass singular in the style of “sand” or “glass”. The glass is being melted, the sand is on the beach, and the data is stored on this DVD. You can have a piece of glass, a grain of sand, or a bit of data. The pieces, grains, and bits can be plural, but the sand, glass, and data, in common usage, can’t. I mean, what is a datum in common usage, anyway – a one or a zero? We already have a much shorter word for that. I’m okay with people using “data” as a plural, but I’m not okay with people insisting on it.

Usage does change language. The word “pea” came from the mass singular “pease”, which eventually became the plural “peas”. So, “peas” and “data” are traveling the linguistic road in opposite directions.

So far, I don’t sound like much of a stickler, but I actually am. There are phrases in common use that absolutely make me cringe. If someone writes, “Your to funny”, I’m tempted to answer “My am?” The phrase makes no more sense than “My from stupid” – except, of course, that it does. One makes perfect sense if you speak it, and one does not. Even in written form, there’s no ambiguity in its meaning. So, why do I even care? I just do.

In text messaging done from phones, I understand why abbreviated usage happens. “yr 2 fny” is partly the result of every letter taking multiple keystrokes. In instant messaging from computers, however, where a full keyboard is being used, it’s probably better to spell stuff out most of the time. In either case, “Your to funny” isn’t abbreviated. It’s just wrong.

As a child and teen, I used to refer to “magic marker English”, defined as the type of written English found on handmade signs in small stores. These signs still exist, but many of them are now computer printouts, looking much more refined, until you look at the words on them. It used to be that printing up a sign took some money, so it was less common to see glaring errors in printed signs (not that they didn’t still happen sometimes). But the means of production fell into the hands of the people, and the quality of production suffered.

Signs would typically confuse “there”, “their”, and “they’re”. They’d use quotes for emphasis, where simple underlining would do. A sign might read:

Customers are “required” to where there shoes.

If I exaggerate, it’s only by a tiny bit. In a buffet restaurant in the Tampa Bay area, I once saw a sign that said:

Mashed Potatoes Made From “Scratch”

It made me wonder if they were using “Scratch” brand powdered potatoes – but, if so, I highly recommend “Scratch” brand. I’ve never had better instant potatoes anywhere.

Online classified ads are another place where gut-wrenching errors happen. They’re not all typos. They can’t be. In the absence of editors who take at least a little care with printed classifieds, you get gems like one I saw in my company’s classifieds about a dozen years ago, advertising a used camera.

Perfect for beginner and novice a like!

it boasted. I used to keep a log of these gems, but that one stands out. So, there was an uncorrected typo, or near-typo, along with complete misuse of one of two words (you take your pick). Both made me cringe. I cringed in stereo, and I remember it to this day.

I know I’m not alone in this. I have a friend, with whom I’ve bonded on this for all twelve of these years. This friend has even considered ending relationships over this issue. I don’t think I’d take it that far. Many people who never met a semicolon (or, possibly, even a comma) that they knew what to do with are way better at math than I am. I’m not too bad at math, either – but the point is, we all have our talents. I don’t think I ever struggled with third grade grammar – not even in third grade. It was no accomplishment. So, if someone else did struggle, and finally decided the struggle wasn’t worth it, who am I to judge? But I don’t judge, not intellectually. It’s all in my gut.

I realize I can’t write an article like this without some risk that people will point out errors in it, finding the irony delicious. I welcome your comments. Also, if there’s any linguistic pet peeve you have, or, if you differ from me in your opinion about what’s acceptable and what isn’t, I’d love to hear about it. Am I a hopeless pedantic, or am I a borderline illiterate? I’d like to believe that what I think is okay represents usage common enough that we should accept it as a change in the language, while what bothers me is simply bad grammar that will never be adopted by the people at large – but how can I know that?

Does it help, at least, that I know that my opinions on this subject are arbitrary? Would George Carlin be proud of me?