Comments Posted By Kevin Kim
Displaying 181 To 210 Of 4,392 Comments
[Second attempt. Please delete the first.]
Well, my fix of adding an “I” requires a comma, right?
So you went for a comma anyway. I did say it wasn’t a comma error. Let’s try one more time with a hint. Here’s the sentence with the error:
I picked up my blood work results yesterday and have an appointment with Dr. Jo this afternoon to discuss what they mean.
And here’s a huge hint: look for the phrasal adjective. What’s missing?
Before, the lack of a comma was appropriate because the original sentence had a compound predicate; it wasn’t a compound sentence with two clauses. By adding “I,” you needlessly made the compound predicate into a second clause, once it was a second clause, it needed a comma. The “I” adds no clarity (but it admittedly helps with a tense-control problem). No—the problem is the phrasal adjective.
As for your correction of the meme: the meme starts off with “Have you ever…”, so you know it’s a question. The most obvious correction—and when you said “the punctuation stinks more than the fart,” I thought you were thinking this—is to change the period at the end to a question mark. But the meme’s language had other problems, too.
Here’s the original:
Have you ever looked at someone while they’re doing something small like driving, laughing or eating and just smile because they don’t know you farted yet.
This sentence is a mess, especially with tense control. There’s also, arguably, an Oxford-comma problem—not technically an error, but the sentence would be improved if it had an Oxford comma. I would change tenses, add the Oxford comma, and stick on that question mark at the very end. Rewrite:
Have you ever looked at someone while they were doing something small—like driving, laughing, or eating—and just smiled because they didn’t know you had farted yet?
Memes are petri dishes of bad English. I’m stealing this one for my Substack. It’s one of the worst ones I’ve seen, and it’s great for discussing tense control.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 18/December/2025 @ 5:16 pm
annutant
I believe the word is “annuitant,” as in “an annuity.”
The punctuation stinks more than the fart.
What’s the corrected version? Let’s have it!
Alright, time to get on with it then. I picked up my blood work results yesterday and have an appointment with Dr. Jo this afternoon to discuss what they mean.
Good luck with that. Oh, and… spot the error! (not a comma error)
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 18/December/2025 @ 1:15 am
I’m not going to do your work for you, but I’ll show you, step by step, how to search my material.
1. Go to your email. Open up one of my Substack emails/newsletters.
2. Look at the Substack entry’s title (like “BOE #44”). Click on it.
3. A new page opens. This is the Substack page, so now, you’re seeing the post as it’s supposed to look on Substack.
4. Look at the top right of the page. Find the “magnifying glass” icon.
5. Click the icon. A search window should appear.
6. Type “clause” into the search window. Hit “enter.”
7. You should see a ton of search results. Click on the one that seems most relevant.
8. Do the search again to find other relevant posts.That should be enough to lead you to a data gold mine.
How do you hang out online as much as you do (blogging, PI forums, etc.) and not know what a magnifying-glass icon means?
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 18/December/2025 @ 5:33 pm
John, you wrote:
The purple line was his short version, the orange line was the wimp way.
It’s your old friend the comma splice, i.e., erroneously using a comma when you need a semicolon to separate two independent clauses.
You were once able to give me the definition of a clause (that was a red-letter day!). Can you define what dependent and independent clauses are and give me two examples of each? Can you recognize such clauses? If you can’t recognize them, you’re going to keep making this mistake over and over and over again forever.
Try answering without seeking outside help (or giving me the old passive-aggressive silence), but if you’re going to seek help, seek it from the material I’ve taught. And please quote and link to your source. That way, I’ll know you’re not bullshitting. After all, what’s the point of subscribing to my Substack if you’re going to consult outside sources whenever I give you a grammar question? Insulting. I’d rather you simply dropped your subscription.
Remember: you can navigate to my Substack site by clicking the title of any of the posts you’ve received via email. I’ve published 44 Bad Online English posts (free content) and 32 Parts of Speech posts (paid content). Once you’re on the Substack site, use the search window to look up “dependent clause” and “independent clause.” You ought to find several posts on each. Please link to at least one of those posts in your answer (and copy-paste your clause-related quotes from that post).
So, to review:
1. Please define “dependent clause” and “independent clause.”
2. Please provide 2 examples of each.
3. If you have to seek an online source to help you, please search my Substack material. Quote the material directly (copy-paste, not paraphrase), then provide the link to the post so I know you didn’t simply visit some random grammar site.EXTRA CREDIT: Show two other ways, aside from a semicolon, to correct the comma splice. There are at least three ways, all discussed in this past Monday’s BOE post.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 17/December/2025 @ 1:59 pm
Sounds like a good recipe. I should try it someday.
Be sure to remove all selfishness.
Leech My Nuggets did his usual fine job laying the trail. The purple line was his short version, the orange line was the wimp way.
Spot the error!
And if I understand you correctly, you’re appreciating the fine job that Leech did in laying out the trail… of which you skipped almost 50% (and by “50%,” I’m referring to 50% of Leech’s “easy” trail).
Years ago, Eagles Bar was a Hash On-Home venue. That was before my time here, but from what I’ve heard, I’m sorry I missed it.
Looks to be abandoned now. Is it?
Please try not to get into trouble today, drunk or otherwise.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 16/December/2025 @ 5:50 pm
You’re normally an over-confessional guy when something goes wrong in your life, so for you to be so coy about whatever happened most recently means it must’ve been pretty bad, whether you were the victim or not.
That looks like something I might have done.
The irony of the lazy smartass is that he expends more intellectual effort on being (unsuccessfully) witty than he does on trying to learn the lesson material. Why the hell is that? And Americans in particular are funny because, on one hand, they worship hard-working winners and team players, but on the other hand, they also worship the lazy smartasses, from Woody Woodpecker to Al Czervik to Ace Ventura to almost any character played by Bill Murray.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 15/December/2025 @ 3:05 pm
With “I wonder” sentences, you’re declaring your state of mind, not asking a question. This is something I’ve mentioned before.
• I wonder where she is.
• I wonder how I got here, with my pants around my ankles and a puddle of piss mixed with blood on the floor.Although saying, “Things went wrong, and then, they got worse,” is okay, isn’t it?
Making “and then” into a parenthetical expression bracketed by commas just introduces too many commas (which do mark pauses in this case). The sentence is better with no commas at all. Or take out the “and” and use only one comma, like so:
Things went wrong, then they got worse.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 15/December/2025 @ 1:49 pm
John,
There’s a reason why my own comments policy says “relevant, succinct, and civil.”
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 15/December/2025 @ 9:33 am
re: the Amy Lowell poem
If I understand the poem, it’s saying, “Please be my ideal of you (“dream of you”) and not some piece of shit.” By the end of the poem, the poet is so stressed out by the thought that the real “you” (whoever “you” might be) is so “unideal” that it’d be better for you not to do anything so that her dream (ideal) of you can continue in her head (“stay your hand and leave my heart its songs”). Basically, it’s the eternal female refrain to the man, “Oh, please be perfect.”
By contrast, men’s poems about women don’t usually wish for the women to be perfect; quite the opposite, men’s poems usually declare the woman is already perfect! (“…and Juliet is the sun!”) This feels a lot like the fundamental misunderstandings that bind humans together with their pets. We think we understand dogs and their loyalty, but it’s likely that dogs simply see us as bigger versions of themselves. And the running joke about cats is that owners think they own their cats, but cats think they own their people. So this poem is one-half of the man-woman misunderstanding: women want their men to be perfect while men know (or at least claim to know) their women are already perfect. And guess which side takes advantage of that misunderstanding.
I wonder what’s up with that?
Spot the error!
Things went wrong, and then they got worse.
I assume an alcohol-saturated temper was involved. I don’t think you really want to “embrace the lessons of a lifetime.” That would require work and self-discipline.
Oh, and I didn’t say “Spot the error!” for the above quote, but don’t use a comma in front of “and then.” Use a comma in front of “then.”
• He erupted with a mighty belch, then he died. (comma-then)
• He erupted with a mighty belch and then died. (no comma)» Posted By Kevin Kim On 14/December/2025 @ 9:32 pm
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.How’s that going? The ‘knowing it’ part? You’ve often talked about not realizing until too late what it was you’d had.
A street scene in Matain.
A very evocative image. Nice.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 13/December/2025 @ 9:04 pm
For what it’s worth, here are some FANBOYS references in my Substack work:
And from my main blog:
Plenty of references just in my own work. I’ll never ask you to dredge up knowledge on anything I haven’t covered myself. If you still prefer to consult outside sources, feel free, but the knowledge is all right here, on your doorstep.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 14/December/2025 @ 2:25 pm
Good catch, Drain. And there’s so much to catch. As I told John in a different comment, I deliberately don’t catch everything, or I’d be here all day.
John had originally written:
Just before I arrived, I got hit with some unexpected rain, but managed to make it inside before getting soaked.
I can see three corrections, but I’d asked for only two. Here are all three:
1. Just before I arrived, I got hit with some unexpected rain but managed to make it inside before getting soaked. (no comma, compound predicate)
2. Just before I arrived, I got hit with some unexpected rain, but I managed to make it inside before getting soaked. (compound sentence, 2 clauses)
3. Just before I arrived, I got hit with some unexpected rain. But I managed to make it inside before getting soaked. (make into 2 sentences, and yes, the sentence-initial conjunction “But” is okay; let’s not overcorrect)I then asked John to give me three things:
…remember FANBOYS. What does that stand for, why is it significant, and how does it apply to the above problem?
1. What does FANBOYS stand for? John looked up the answer. Okay. Why he didn’t look it up in my material—but instead chose outside sources—is beyond me. I would never ask John about anything I hadn’t taught him myself. Maybe he didn’t remember.
2. Why is FANBOYS significant? No answer.
3. How does it apply to the above problem? (a sort-of answer given, indirectly)In looking up FANBOYS, John would have seen that the coordinating conjunction “but” is one of the FANBOYS. Like “and.” Elsewhere, I’ve been talking about the difference between compound sentences (which have two clauses) and compound predicates, so coordinating conjunctions are relevant to this since they appear in compound sentence. A clause has a subject and a related predicate.
• Nellie sat down and farted. (1 clause, compound predicate, i.e., 2 actions by the same subject, and no comma)
• Nellie sat down, and she farted. (2 clauses, compound sentence, separated by a comma-conjunction)The same applies to “but”:
• Nellie sat down but didn’t fart. (1 clause, compound predicate)
• Nellie sat down, but she didn’t fart. (2 clauses, compound sentence)So what I was looking for was:
1. What does FANBOYS stand for? for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so (coord. conj.)
2. Why is FANBOYS significant? Because “but” is part of FANBOYS, i.e., coordinating conjunctions, and one job of coordinating conjunctions is to separate independent clauses—which is relevant to John’s faulty sentence.
3. How does it apply to the above problem? FANBOYS applies as shown in my examples above, and as shown in John’s corrected sentence.Well, I had the comma before “but,” but I guess without the “I,” I assume it wasn’t a proper independent clause. But here’s the thing: the sentence as originally written is perfectly understandable, so what’s the big deal?
So “School B,” basically. “Why can’t someone else pick up my mess?” or “I refuse to acknowledge that there even is a mess.”
About that missing “I”: It’s not a clause at all without a subject, which I think also answers your “What’s the big deal?” question. I mean, I can’t stop you from writing sloppily, and if you want to be willfully sloppy (“Hey, they’ll understand my gist”), that’s your prerogative—a bad, rebellious student to the very end. I’ve just never understood why some people choose certain things to rebel about. I can understand rebelling against social oppression, which is a real problem, but against proper speech and writing? Is every teacher a representation of The Man? At some point, to be a constant rebel is to be a slave because you have to live your life in reaction to others. I correct the grammar; you resist the correction. React, react, react— never act, act, act. An existentialist would say that a life of reaction is not authentic.
Anyway, I didn’t make up the comma-conjunction rule;* I merely learned it and am passing it along. What you do with that information is up to you, and if you’re completely satisfied with the quality of your English, feel free to tell me to shut up.
Otherwise, if you’re willing to listen, think of it this way: language is an ever-changing system of agreements. In US English, we look at a loaf or slice of bread and agree to call it “bread.” In France, everyone agrees it’s “le pain.” In Germany, “das Brot.” And so on. Even though the system of agreements is always changing (some layers of that system, like slang, change faster than others, like basic word order), because it’s a system, there are rules and structures to be mindful of, or people can’t communicate clearly. If I see a TV, I can’t randomly call it a “dinosaur” and expect people to understand what I mean. This applies not just to vocabulary but to grammar, mechanics, diction (perpetrate/perpetuate), etc. All aspects of language are affected.
Does this mean your language has to be absolutely picture-perfect for everyone to understand you? Of course not. No one’s perfect, and most people are comfortable with a certain level of ambiguity because, to some degree, we’re all mentally sloppy, and we’re not all 24/7 vigilant. But how much sloppiness is tolerable? How many cases in your life involve conflicts that arose from vagueness and miscommunication? Language does matter; it affects you every day.
Think about your favorite writers and song lyricists. If they used sloppy English, would you appreciate them as much? If Bukowski wrote like a drooling, ungrammatical moron, or if Joni Mitchell had done a worse job of writing “Both Sides Now,” would these people be in your mental pantheon? Reasons to express yourself well pass beyond mere “communicability” to questions of beauty and eloquence and euphony. There’s more to life than merely being “understandable.”
But some folks are happy just to paddle around in the shallow mental kiddie pool, satisfied with who they are, where they are, and what they’ve got. The future for such people is just stagnation—mental, physical, spiritual. If that’s what they want, if the kiddie pool is what makes them happy, well, who am I to deprive them of their happiness? Paddle on.
__________
*You can also look up FANBOYS by looking at my relevant posts on Substack instead of in your email. Click my emailed Substack newsletter’s post title (e.g., “PTOSP Pronouns, Part 5”), and you’ll see that it’s a link to the same post, but on my Substack site. Once you’re on my Substack site, you should see a search window somewhere at the top. Type in “FANBOYS,” and all of my posts referencing “FANBOYS” ought to show up. That way, you can review what I’ve taught you instead of trolling the internet for something that’s already sitting right in front of you.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 13/December/2025 @ 8:54 pm
Just before I arrived, I got hit with some unexpected rain, but managed to make it inside before getting soaked.
Didn’t we just go over this? Spot the error. And a hint: there are at least two ways to correct the above.
Not sure why no one else ventured in, it’s been busier on my other rare visits.
Sigh… spot the error…
“who’s mind are they reading?”
At least this isn’t your error.
Another hint for that first error: remember FANBOYS. What does that stand for, why is it significant, and how does it apply to the above problem?
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 12/December/2025 @ 7:33 pm
I mean what I say, and I say what I mean; I just don’t always write it properly.
If you’re not writing it properly, you’re not successfully saying what you mean.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 12/December/2025 @ 7:08 pm
I’ve made tons of changes and corrections to my blog over the years, and I’ve been frank about doing so on many occasions. I’ve also been frank about how my typo rate has gone up since the stroke and the heart attack, all while my typing speed has gone down. Some days, it’s a real slog to get my fingers to hit the right keys. And I’ve had to try to proofread and edit myself more strictly. Frustratingly, stuff still slips through, and I’ve never claimed to be perfect. None of us is. But I hold myself to the same standards I hold other people to. “Own worst critic” and all that.
But I really had trouble remembering whether I’d corrected a title recently. So I looked over the past fifteen or twenty post titles and found nothing where I could recall making a change. Have I changed the wording of some titles in the past because I found mistakes? Yes, I have, and over the years, I’ve made such corrections a couple dozen times. If anything, I should think it would be to my credit that I later caught and corrected my own mistakes—something I wish others would learn to do (ahem). This error-catching happens because I often go back and review old (and not-so-old) posts, thereby finding silly things (more likely in the text of the post than in the title) ranging from simple spelling errors to poor word placement (usually adverbs) to unnecessary repetitions to sentences and paragraphs that, upon rereading, just make no damn sense. These errors always make me wonder what I’d been smoking when I’d first written the post. In other words, my blog is under constant revision. So, sure, I freely and happily admit, on a general level, that errors slip through all the time. But I normally do something about it instead of remaining passively complacent. Both the existence and the persistence of errors are anathema to me.
Okay, shifting gears… as to your correction:
Reviewed the lesson and here is my correction: Oh, another benefit of having Scott along is that he takes better photos than me, which I shamelessly steal and post here.
I see you added a comma before “which,” which is all I was looking for. (See what I did there?) But adding the “that,” while improving the sentence’s form and flow, is probably unnecessary. “That” is often just implied.
1. He knew that he was dead the moment that he stepped into the room.
2. He knew he was dead the moment he stepped into the room.Sometimes, the “that” might be necessary for clarity and flow, but in cases like the above, you can drop it and not lose anything.
As for your later discussion of “than I” versus “than me,” you’re fine just leaving it as “than me.” In informal English, that’s okay. I make a lot of allowances for your informal English; if I didn’t, I’d be coming to you with three times as many “Spot the error!”s as I currently do. And as things are, I don’t point out every single error I find. If I did that, I’d be focused on your blog all day. So it’s up to you to develop enough pride in your prose to go back and make corrections for yourself. Don’t be the linguistic version of a litterer. I discussed such people—the people who simply don’t care—in this long-ago post. That’s from fifteen years ago, and nothing has changed.
1. My brother is taller than me.
2. My brother is taller than I.In the first sentence, the “than” is acting as a comparative preposition. Prepositions take objects, and “me” is in the objective case. Fine for informal English.
In the second sentence, the “than” is acting as a subordinating conjunction, i.e., what comes after it is a clause. A clause has a subject and a verb. “I” is in the subjective case, and the rest of the clause is unwritten but implied:
• My brother is taller than I (am).
This is the grammar you need if you’re writing in formal English. So remember: use “than” as a conjunction in formal English.
And if you find any typos or other errors in this comment, feel free to point them out.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 12/December/2025 @ 3:43 pm
Yep, “Eater” was just being sloppy, kind of like a since-corrected title on a post I saw at Big Hominid this morning. Shit happens, right?
Which post are you talking about?
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 12/December/2025 @ 1:27 pm
I’m not complaining, but I liked those 70s better than these ones…
If you draw a line from the 1970s until now, the trend line becomes obvious: people have been trying to become increasingly artificial versions of themselves. Look at the chicks in that picture: no fake boobs, no fake eyelashes, no plastic surgery… nowadays, it’s all “You can look however you wanna look and be whatever you wanna be—regardless of intellectual capacity, skill level, looks, etc.” And nowadays, the truth remains: “No, you can’t.” Just one example: I don’t want an unqualified retard flying my airplanes or designing my skyscrapers or teaching my children.
Oh, another benefit of having Scott along is he takes better photos than me which I shamelessly steal and post here.
Spot the error! (hint)
And a look at Eater Mountain’s ass side.
“Eater” Mountain had better stop eating. Slim that ass down!
How’s the rash today? Is the new ointment helping?
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 11/December/2025 @ 5:14 pm
I have indeed said I don’t like twangy country music, and I’ve also said that singers like Johnny Cash, Kenny Rogers, Dolly Parton, Bonnie Raitt, and Willie Nelson were all examples of non-twangy singers. Do you consider Cash twangy?
Believing everything happens for a reason doesn’t mean you have to believe God is behind it, but it does kind of nudge you in a theistic direction, i.e., toward the idea that the universe makes some kind of ultimate sense, which many people take to imply that there’s an Ultimate Sense-maker. Post-WW2 (French) existentialism formed when people who had been praying to God looked around them and saw what Europe had become, with its blasted churches and ruined cities. How can anyone seriously believe in God after calling upon God for help and receiving nothing? So existentialists concluded the universe was absurd, and that any meaning one derives from the cosmos is what one hammers out through the exercise of one’s own choices. So this whole notion of “you are the sum of your own choices” comes from the existentialist attitude: in a universe with no inherent meaning or sense, you have to make your own meaning through authentic living, i.e., by taking responsibility for your own choices, by living your own life, not by enslaving yourself to a doctrine or ideology that’s been made by someone else. There’s nothing authentic about that.
I see you’ve taken down the fatty-fucks-granny AI-sexbot comment. Good. The moment I saw the phrase “as you requested” at the beginning (I’m sure you hadn’t “requested” anything), I knew the comment would be up to no good.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 11/December/2025 @ 4:18 pm
The 2016 New Year has arrived in the LTG archives. It didn’t start well with this post recounting the circumstances of my beloved wife leaving me for reasons I still don’t understand.
Have you considered coming to Korea and really talking with her face to face, determined to get to the bottom of her “reasoning” (maybe there wasn’t any!) and not leaving until you have satisfactory answers? I mean, I won’t judge you if you don’t: I haven’t spoken to my dad since 2010, when Mom died, and I found out he’d been sneakily seeing another woman—probably before Mom’s death—and lying to his sons about where he’d been going all the time. So I have no moral high ground on which to shake my finger if you’ve concluded that talking would be useless or even destructive. I’m asking my question out of mere curiosity, not to prod you to do anything.
I’m not sure what lessons I should have taken away from that heartbreaking event, but I do know I never want to experience anything like it again.
Be a better judge of character, I’d say. Don’t wear you heart on your sleeve, and never forget Rule #1.
But the wisdom in knowing that everything happens for a reason can be comforting, even if you can’t discern what those reasons may be.
I’ve blogged about a version of this story before (it’s from China; see my post here, for example). The lesson I take away from the versions of the story I’ve read is that life turns on a dime, so great fortune can easily become great misfortune, and great misfortune (not always) often turns into something positive. Highs often give way to lows, and lows often give way to highs. I’m not sure how much I personally believe that everything happens for a reason; some things, like my mom’s brain cancer, just happen, and they suck. Whether I take something good from that experience is up to me, more a matter of personal choice than of the nature of the universe. Mom didn’t deserve what happened to her, and I can’t see that there was any reason for it or cosmic lessons being taught. So I’d submit that if you find reasons for your various misfortunes, it could be that you’ve manufactured those reasons yourself, sort of like finding a treasure that you yourself had buried long ago.
I don’t know… the whole question of invention versus discovery is a murky one. Is math something we’ve invented, or is it something we’re constantly discovering—like an Aristotelian abstraction—as we suss out subtle patterns, principles, and relationships in the cosmos? Are the lessons you take from a tragedy (or just from hard times) already there to be found, or did you craft them yourself? Hard to say.
Most places you arrive, sign in, and are seen on a first-come, first-served basis. The wait can be hours long.
My local doctor operates on a first-come, first-served basis, but after signing in, I’ve never waited longer than fifteen minutes. It’s a different story when I go to Samsung Hospital for my seasonal appointments: there, I have to come in two hours early to do blood work, and sometimes, if I have two appointments that day, they’re spaced a few hours apart. It’s good to have something to read during such times.
re: your REM song
I’m glad that that song saw you through some troubled times, but I’ve never been able to stand the nasal whininess of Michael Stipe. Lord, gimme some Johnny Cash.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 10/December/2025 @ 4:51 pm
I’ve never found Jim Gaffigan all that funny, but if you enjoy him, then more power to you.
Looks to have been a good shortcut. A return to form after all of that traveling.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 09/December/2025 @ 4:41 pm
As we paid our tab, I tipped her and said, “Next time we hear the music this loud, we’ll just keep on walking.” I hope she heard me.
Better learn to make birria. In your do-over life, this is the sort of thing you say “yes” to instead of your usual “nope.”
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 08/December/2025 @ 1:25 pm
yesterday’s Haggis Hash Bash in Pozorruio
Interesting spelling of “Pozorrubio.”
stuck mostly to Zero low-alcohol beer
Isn’t it a contradiction to call a low-alcohol beer “Zero”? Low alcohol isn’t the same as no alcohol, after all. If my soda is a “Zero,” but it contains 10 g of sugar, it ain’t “zero.”
A bushy goat on a rope.
That’s got to be the most dignified goat I’ve ever seen—straight from the 1700s.
Over a squishy suspension bridge that left me feeling a little seasick at the end.
Looks solid, though.
I know what to do when I come to a fork in the road
As Yogi Berra supposedly said, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”
Watching the lunch being prepared (and smelling the burgers on the grill) only exacerbated my hunger.
Burgers! Sticking with that Scottish theme, I see.
Refreshments for the Hashers.
Finally—a Scotch egg. But those originated in England, possibly inspired by an Indian dish. See more here.
A small sampling of haggis with potato sides was served as an appetizer. Like a good Scot, I ate all of mine, even though it is not my favorite dish.
I’ve never had haggis, but I’ve heard that it’s nowhere near as gross as it sounds when it’s described, mainly because of carby fillers like oatmeal.
Well! Back home and back to the routine, then!
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 08/December/2025 @ 12:14 am
If it’s fake but you don’t know it, it’s still better than being dead.
So being a slave is better than being dead? If you say so, but I think I’d rather die.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 08/December/2025 @ 6:49 pm
Ugh. Sorry—
“Do you see what you did right in both cases? You hyphenated your phrasal adjectives that came before the nouns they modified! So look again at “early morning view.” What do you need? Yes, a hyphen! Just learn the rule and apply it consistently.”
Other examples of hyphenated phrasal adjectives:
a tax-paying citizen
a violent-weather seminar
a knock-down, drag-out fight (or “knock-down-drag-out fight”)
an eight-inch… pinky
some strong-smelling feet
her blood-sucking tendencies
laughable prison-reform suggestions
three twenty-car pileups in a row
my five-tiered burger of madness
the fourteen-billion-year-old cosmological problem
soul-crushing work
that seven-legged spider» Posted By Kevin Kim On 08/December/2025 @ 4:28 am
re: “early morning view”
What’s frustrating is that you kind of know the rule, but not really, which is why you apply it so inconsistently. You did the thing right at least twice in your post:
1. end-of-trail snack
2. falling-down drunkDo you see what you did right in both cases? You hyphenated your phrasal adjectives that came before the nouns they modified! So look again at “early morning snack.” What do you need? Yes, a hyphen! Just learn the rule and apply it consistently.
I doubt you remember this, but the rule about phrasal adjectives has three exceptions, one of which is relevant here: if the first word in the phrasal adjective is an adverb ending in -ly, don’t use a hyphen. So “a rapidly changing situation” gets no hyphen because “rapidly” is an adverb ending in -ly. But in the case of “early-morning view,” the word early is not an adverb—it’s an adjective despite the -ly (like the -ly adjectives friendly, kindly, timely, kingly, surly, ugly, etc.), so you can hyphenate. Therefore:
early-morning view (correct)
That’s all you needed—one hyphen, no overcorrections.
1. end-of-trail snack
2. falling-down drunk
3. early-morning viewCheck out BOE #12, BOE #19, and this post.
Kevin, that second kind [of] “do-over” life is my fantasy. Choosing a different path, knowing where the original route led me. Yeah, I’d likely fuck up on that road too, but it would be a new way of doing so. One thing’s for sure: I wouldn’t accumulate four wives along the way.
By going back in time and making different decisions, you’d be altering more than just your own history: we’d all end up being affected, too, as your choices rippled outward to affect all of history. No, thank you. Now, if you had the chance to play out your do-over life in a separate bubble, a “pocket universe” that doesn’t affect anyone else’s history, then my libertarian feeling is that there’d be nothing wrong with that… just know that everyone around you, in that little bubble, is not a real person being affected by your new, supposedly wiser decisions. If you’re in a separate bubble, you’re basically in a fantasy realm, and we’re back to the Captain Pike scenario again (the Star Trek captain who is confined to a wheelchair but granted the illusion of health and vigor by a race of aliens able to alter other beings’ consciousnesses). So if you’re okay with your do-over life being an illusion, like a “holodeck” scenario that has no real consequences, then have at it with my blessing. But really replaying your life by plunging back into real history and affecting the lives of real people? I doubt that any god would allow that.
You’ve got just this one real life. It’s not precious if you get do-overs; it’s a mere video game: die, respawn, and continue. There have to be consequences for mistakes and transgressions, or at least, there has to be a definitive end (i.e., death, followed by nothingness). Any mulligans granted by whatever gods you’re thinking of would have to be illusory in nature. But like Cypher in the The Matrix, maybe that’s all you want or need: you’re okay with being fooled. Cyber eats his juicy steak, knowing perfectly well that the steak isn’t real, but he doesn’t give a damn because all he cares about is himself. As long as he’s wrapped in his comforting illusion, he’s fine being a slave for the machines. Reality is for chumps.
So the basic problem with your do-over scenario is that it’s reflective of the selfishness seen in other parts of your life: it’s only about what you want and never about what others might want or need, never about how your new choices might affect others around you for the worse. And a movie like The Substance teaches that, when youth returns, even if you retain your accumulated life-wisdom (as Demi Moore’s character does), that wisdom goes out the window the moment you’re in a young, frisky, energetic body: the temptations are just too seductive.
Your fantasies are giving me ideas for a short story, though.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 07/December/2025 @ 10:55 pm
But I was drinking like an Irishman last night, and from what I’m told, it didn’t end well. Oh well, live and learn. Or not.
Sigh… Your do-over life will be more of the same.
Keep in mind that people are sloppy in what they mean by “do-over.” In one sense, a do-over is an exact repetition of what had been done before—you are literally doing everything over again. In another, looser, sense, a do-over is just a second chance to go back to a certain time period or set of circumstances and try again in the hopes of greater success or fulfillment. Not a literal repeat, but merely a second chance/try in the spirit of a mulligan.
So a “do-over life,” in the first sense, means making the exact same mistakes all over again because nothing can be different: it’s a literal do-over. You’re trapped and constrained, unfree. I’m pretty sure, though, that what you’re hoping for is the second version: another chance to get things right. That would, of course, mean carrying back the wisdom you’ve earned from this life so you can look ahead with more clarity and avoid the pitfalls and mistakes you’d made this time around.
But what wisdom will you carry back with you? You insist on making the same mistakes again and again and again—the very definition of samsara, the painful wheel of repetitive existence perpetuated by unwisdom.
But hey, I’m sure others will be proud of you for making the choices you’ve already made, so congrats, I guess.
And so it begins.
Wow, that one on the right is a cutie. No ring on her finger, either (I think), but she’s got that ajumma look about her. Red flag.
Not to be an arse about it, but we don’t need no education.
This explains so much about your refusal to learn proper English.
Subic’s choice was Bite My Titties.
Did you ever see “Midsommar”? I know what happens next.
Pozorrubio is mostly flat and I like that.
Missing punctuation!
And how do you pronounce “Pozorrubio”? With a rolling, Spanish “r”? And a “z” that sounds like the English “z” and not the German “ts”?
An end-of-trail snack.
Looks like an Indian samosa. Very Scottish! Of course, in the British Isles, they do love their pasties (pronounce it “PASS-teez,” not “PAYCE-teez”). Sort of a British empanada, or a hypertrophic samosa.
Snack innards.
Potato, carrots, chickpeas… I’m still thinking Indian. But no turmeric to make it all yellow? No masala? Maybe they kept it bland for the white folks. Heh.
I don’t remember anything after that.
As I said a few weeks ago—your blackouts happen several times a year. Right on schedule. And no lessons learned. Yay!
early morning view
Missing punctuation again. What’s missing, and what’s the rule?
It is rare that I get falling-down drunk, and it is an embarrassment when I do. Hopefully, I learned my lesson about over-indulgence yesterday. I’ll let you know tomorrow how that works out today.
It’s not rare at all, and apparently, it’s not nearly embarrassing enough. I doubt you learned any lessons, but I’ll hope for your sake that you did.
A photo of my workstation where this post was created.
Just get a new laptop, you stingy bastard!
Good luck with the day. I fear you’re going to need it.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 06/December/2025 @ 11:16 am
Good luck with the leg and with the Hash.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 05/December/2025 @ 1:03 pm
In cases like this, morality and simple decency demand that you surpass your parents and avoid the hell of ketchup.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 05/December/2025 @ 1:01 pm
Filipinas try to learn the language so they can get housekeeping or caregiver jobs in the Land of the Morning Calm. Or jobs in the bars.
Filipinas generally get a lot of respect in Korea for learning the language as well as they do. Some can even pass for Korean… at least until they start talking.
Yes, Siargao is cleaner, has less traffic, and nicer beaches. But I have the comfort of being around people that I know, most of whom are closer to my age than the folks I encountered on the island.
This issue of younger people is one you mentioned several times during the trip. I know old folks who love being around younger people because “it makes me feel young.” So I guess you’re not one of those older folks. Why not? Weren’t you until recently the guy who used to leech the life-force off young, twentysomething women (presumably because they make you feel young)?
I prefer catsup and pickle relish myself.
Clint Eastwood has an opinion about people like you.
Have fun at Pozorrubio. Enjoy the haggis.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 05/December/2025 @ 1:41 am
«« Back To Stats PageA well-remembered man. RIP.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 04/December/2025 @ 5:15 pm