Glob

Did you know that priests in the Church of England must condone capital punishment? To be ordained, priests in the Anglican Church must assent to the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion. Article 37 states that "The Laws of the Realm may punish Christian men with death, for heinous and grievous offences." (This was changed by the Episcopal Church in the U.S., whose Articles of Religion contain no reference to capital punishment.) This causes me to wonder if a defrocked Anglican priest would receive a heady dismissal with a severance package. (I'll refrain from a chorus of "I'm Henry VIII, I am".)

Here's another list of fours about me. Enjoy!
4 Jobs I've Had in My Life:

1. Lab Aide at Genetics & IVF Institute
2. Parking Attendant at Koons Ford at Seven Corners
3. Receptionist for Allied International Marketing Corp.
4. Data entry drone at Quintiles Transnational Corp.

4 Movies I Could Watch Over and Over: (None, so I'll give you a list of movies that I could enjoy watching twice.)

1. The Usual Suspects
2. A Beautiful Mind
3. The Matrix
4. The Jacket

4 Places I've lived:

1. Annandale, VA
2. Greenville, SC
3. Harrisonburg, VA
4. Tallahassee, FL

4 TV Shows I Love to Watch:

1. Lost
2. Two and a Half Men
3. Cold Case
4. Good Eats

4 Places I've Been on Vacation:

1. Los Alamos, NM
2. Rosemary Beach, FL
3. Niagara Falls (both sides)
4. Lake Champlain, VT

4 Websites I Visit Daily:

1. Bloglines
2. My Yahoo! (for News, Entertainment, TV and Movie Listings)
3. The Set Daily Puzzle
4. Dictionary.com and Thesaurus.com

4 of My Favorite Foods:

1. Vegetable Pad Thai (or anything Thai)
2. Alu Palak (or anything Indian)
3. Mu Shu Vegetables (although there are never enough pancakes)
4. Cheese-Filled Tortellini with Pesto

4 Places I'd Rather be Right Now:

1. Any big city (Atlanta, Washington, New York, etc.)
2. Paris
3. Lincoln Center
4. On the Foothills Trail with my best buddy

4 Bloggers I'm Tagging:

1. Stacy
2. Sean
3. Mark
4. Chris

Even though it's not a popular topic, and even though I've successfully avoided grammar rants on my blog up until now, I've reached the point where I must indulge my frustration at how badly many otherwise well-educated Americans speak the English language. Allow me this one diatribe, if you please!
The relative pronoun has been abused and neglected long enough. Here's the lowdown: We have three main pronouns in English that can be used to introduce a subordinate clause: which, that, and who/whom. Here are examples of each:

• The problem is that people never learn grammar in grammar school.
  
• The grammar police, which consisted of bespectacled pencil-necks in academic regalia, strictly enforced the correct declension of pronouns.
  
• One conjugation cop castigated a kid who had repeated the word "is" instead of using a relative pronoun.
  

Usage:

1. "That" introduces a clause normally serving an adjectival function: The clause beginning with "that" either modifies a noun, or stands on its own as a subject or predicate nominative.
   
2. "Which" introduces a clause serving as an appositive. Thus, a "which" that is not preceded by a preposition should nearly always be preceded by a comma. In fact, as is the case with most appositives, the entire clause should be set off by commas. Further, the clause provides only supplemental information to the sentence, not essential information. If you are only referring to the grammar police at Harvard (not Princeton), then you may use "that", because the relative clause becomes essential to the understanding of the sentence. Here's the example: "The grammar police unit that patrols the campus of Harvard is stricter than the Grammar Gumshoes who prowl Princeton's property."
   
3. "Who/whom" introduces either type of clause, but only if the pronoun replaces a person. It is thus incorrect to say: "The boy that didn't speak English properly was punished." The boy is a "who", not a "that".
   
4. The pronoun agrees with its antecedent (whatever noun it replaces) in terms of whether to use the animate (who, whose, whoever, for whom, etc.) or inanimate (that, which, where, whatever, etc.) case, but gets its subjective or objective case (who vs whom) from its function in the relative clause. It's incorrect to say "Please return the book to whomever left it behind." While "to whom" certainly sounds right, in reality the whole clause is the object of the preposition ("to"), and "whoever" is the subject of that clause.
   
5. Don't leave your relative pronouns out! It is perfectly correct grammatically to say "The house he was turning into a meth lab burned down." However, leaving out your relatives can often cause confusion. ("He was turning into a meth lab"?!?) Moreover, relative pronoun omission leads to that annoying habit of repeating the word "is" in place of the relative pronoun: "The problem is, is people never learn grammar in grammar school." I've even heard people say "The problem being is....", which is grammatically correct, but syntactically grotesque.
   

Whew! I'm glad I got that off of my chest. Thanks for your indulgence: I know that sermons about verb conjugation can make one "tense".

Even though BU! didn't actually tag me, I thought that I'd give my answers to his quaternary quiz on knowledge. Thanks four the blogpost idea, Bri!

Four truthful ways of completing the sentence "I know....":

• I know how to solve the Rubik's Cube.
  
• I know how to program a computer using the Java programming language.
  
• I know how to do Kargyraa.
  
• I know how to use a slide rule.
  

4 items of past knowledge:

• I used to know advanced calculus.
  
• I used to know how to compose interesting music.
  
• I used to know how to speak French.
  
• I used to know the significance of the music treatises of Fogliano, Gaffurius, and Aaron.
  

IV res quas scire volo: (things that I'd like to know)

• I'd like to learn Spanish (and relearn French).
  
• I'd like to figure out how to win at chess.
  
• I'd like to know how to make lots of money legally without actually working.
  
• I want to know how to build a harpsichord.
  

Don't know, don't care:

• I don't know much of anything about professional sports, but it is still fun to watch every once in a while, even if I don't really care who the coaches are.
  
• I don't and never will care who wins American Idol.
  
• I don't care whether Jesus had a child with Mary Magdalene.
  
• I don't know how to dance and look cool at a nightclub (although I would like to learn to ballroom dance, which is a form of floor-play).
  

I will four-go any fourther punny four-play.