"Need money for *what*??"

[bostonman]

I tend to browse my local Backpage ads daily, not expecting to find much, but often just for entertainment value. And this morning I found a good one.

 

The header is "Need money for collage (22)"

 

And so I'm thinking:

 

1) Cool - the guy has found a fun way to fund his art project!!

 

or

 

2) Money or not, if you can't spell "college" by the time you're 22, there ain't much hope...

 

(Of course, clicking on the ad, we find out he's only looking for women...just as well. But we also find out he has "tattos" and is "very enirgized.")

 

http://boston.backpage.com/MaleEscorts/need-money-for-collage/34736367

 

 

Oh, I know, there really are very wonderful/worthwhile/talented people out there with terrible spelling...but still...

[Mo Mason]

I will never utilize that website for a hookup - being murdered by some meth addict isn't the way I want to go.

[+ purplekow]

I will never utilize that website for a hookup - being murdered by some meth addict isn't the way I want to go.

Yes many of those Back page hook-ups use the bones of the murder victims to make collages.

[bostonman]

I will never utilize that website for a hookup - being murdered by some meth addict isn't the way I want to go.

 

I will just say that there ARE some wonderful surprises to be found on BP...I first met our own studly Brian Kevin through a BP ad. So though many of those ads may seem skeevy, there are absolutely some diamonds in the rough. I think you really just have to use common sense and be careful. There are bad eggs on any escort site, no?

[Mo Mason]

I will just say that there ARE some wonderful surprises to be found on BP...I first met our own studly Brian Kevin through a BP ad. So though many of those ads may seem skeevy, there are absolutely some diamonds in the rough. I think you really just have to use common sense and be careful. There are bad eggs on any escort site, no?

 

True dat.

 

[MikeBiDude]

I will never utilize that website for a hookup - being murdered by some meth addict isn't the way I want to go.

A common response...but some have had luck with Backpage, use due diligence and your sixth sense, etc.

 

To each his own...

[Mo Mason]

A common response...but some have had luck with Backpage, use due diligence and your sixth sense, etc.

 

To each his own...

 

Yeah, I should probably stay away from Backpage then. I've lived a fairly sheltered, small-town life, and... well let's just say that if I were in a horror movie I'd be the first to die. I'd be the bimbo running up the stairs instead of out the open front door while being chased by a psychopath. lol

[rvwnsd]

I wonder how many "ladys" (one of his other ads) and "milfs" would reply. Thinking about women I know, somewhere between 0 and 0.00.

[bostonman]

I wonder how many "ladys" (one of his other ads) and "milfs" would reply. Thinking about women I know, somewhere between 0 and 0.00.

 

I would agree. Though I do feel that there are true diamonds in the rough to occasionally be found on Backpage, and though I also agree that there's someone for everyone, sometimes I do look at some of these these ads (especially the glut of copycat "thug" ads) and really do wonder who in hell they actually appeal to.

[LivingnLA]

I was robbed by a perfectly rated regularly featured rentmen guy, so yes, there are criminals everywhere. Since it was my first time ever trying to explore a bit, I'm not surprised it happened. I'm sure he's done it again since he took advantage of me, but such is life. This is a criminal economy. There are a**holes everywhere. Live and learn.

[+ quoththeraven]

I wonder how many "ladys" (one of his other ads) and "milfs" would reply. Thinking about women I know, somewhere between 0 and 0.00.

 

He can't even spell "ladies" right!

[+ beethoven]

Daddy wrote in a recent post, discussing this web site's finances, that a professor of his used to say, "The data is what the data is." Maybe that's what the professor said, and maybe Daddy forgot that data is plural.

 

Give a break to this kid who wants to go to collage to meet the ladys.

[rvwnsd]

Daddy wrote in a recent post, discussing this web site's finances, that a professor of his used to say, "The data is what the data is." Maybe that's what the professor said, and maybe Daddy forgot that data is plural....

 

In contemporary English, "data" may be classified as a "mass noun" and, therefore, "the data is..." is correct usage.

[mike carey]

The Economist is always a good place to go for this sort of discussion. There are some diverting links from this article.

Data are? Revisited

Jul 6th 2012, 15:37 by R.L.G. | NEW YORK

 

WHETHER "data" is singular or plural is one of those hardy perennials of usage debate in which both sides have impossibly entrenched positions. Or so I had thought, but the Wall Street Journal has, as of today, taken an unusually fence-sitting position:

 

Most style guides and dictionaries have come to accept the use of the noun data with either singular or plural verbs, and we hereby join the majority.

 

As usage has evolved from the word’s origin as the Latin plural of datum, singular verbs now are often used to refer to collections of information: Little data is available to support the conclusions.

 

Otherwise, generally continue to use the plural: Data are still being collected.

 

(As a singular/plural test, try to substitute statistics for data: It doesn’t work in the first case — little statistics is available — so the singular is fails to pass muster. The substitution does work in the second case — statistics are still being collected – so the plural are passes muster.)

 

I admire the attempt to satisfy both tradition and change, but it does leave some leeway that I can imagine many writers having a hard time handling. People crave hard and fast rules: they don't have time to make judgments all the time, like the suggested route of substituting "statistics". (This is the first time I've heard of this remedy, for what it's worth.)

 

But hard-and-fast doesn't always work, as I noted in my last submission on "data". We don't use the foreign morphology of every word brought from a foreign language. But we do sometimes. Since that last post, I have found this excellent one supplying some new counterarguments against always-plural "data". Among them: we certainly don't use "agenda" and "stamina" in the plural, though they have come to us the same way "data" has. (If your boss ever does say "moving on to the next agendum", let us know.) The "media" question remains mixed: some have it singular, others have it plural.

 

We have a strong urge to just have language behave, but regular readers of this column know that, as the original Johnson knew, it just won't. He wrote that "to enchain syllables, and to lash the wind, are equally the undertakings of pride." Less well known, but perhaps more to the point, he pointed to the unruliness of language as the sign of a healthy culture constantly enriching itself:

 

The language most likely to continue long without alteration, would be that of a nation raised a little, and but a little, above barbarity, secluded from strangers, and totally employed in procuring the conveniencies of life; wither without books, or, like some of the Mahometan countries, with very few: men thus busied and unlearned, having only such words as common use requires, would perhaps long continue to express the same notions by the same signs, But no such constancy can be expected in a people polished by arts, and classed by subordination, where one part of the community is sustained and accommodated by the labour of the other. Those who have much leisure to think, will always be enlarging the stock of ideas, and every increase of knowledge, whether real or fancied, will produce new words, or combinations of words. When the mind is unchained from necessity, it will range after convenience; when it is left at large in the fields of speculation, it will shift opinions; as any custom is disused, the words that expressed it must perish with it; as any opinion grows popular, it will innovate speech in the same proportion as it alters practice.

 

Aside from the casual slur of the "Mahometan countries", this remains realistic good sense, as does the rest of the essay, much recommended.

[Mo Mason]

Satisfy everyone and say "data be" like most of my half-retarded kinfolk.

 

My family is from Kentucky.

 

[mike carey]

My family is from Kentucky.

"My family be from Kentucky"?