Just to Show Ogged I’m No Prude
And also because the wisdom contained therein is pretty damned good: Fontana Labs’s advice for new grad students. Even if it does contain the word “fellatio.”
Worse yet, even if it does use the word “fellatio” as a noun, with the definite article. As in “a fellatio.”
Something about that really weirds me out. But go read it anyway.
27 September 2005, 2.57 pm
“A fellatio,” I’m fairly certain, was deliberate.
27 September 2005, 3.01 pm
I kinda assumed there was an in-joke in there, given that nobody jumped on it. I was just surprised by how much that little “a” skeeved me.
29 September 2005, 2.42 pm
“A” is an indefinite article. And when is “fellatio” not a noun?
29 September 2005, 7.43 pm
Ah, don’t give me grief. I’ve been up to my eyeballs in writing lectures and reports. Yes I got the definite and indefinite wrong, and yes, the damned thing is always a noun. Just not usually countable; more a principle.
So there.
2 October 2005, 2.24 pm
seeing as how i am a grad student paid to do none other than RESEARCH DEFINITE AND INDEFINITE ARTICLES, i thought it was pretty funny.
2 October 2005, 2.30 pm
ps–just in case anyone mistakenly thought there were only the definite and indefinite articles, think again: a good 1/3 of my research is wrapped up in the phenomenon of the “weak definite” article, also called the “indefinite definite.” my mom’s response to this was “gee, sweetie, and i had thought psycholinguistics and cognitive science was something INTERESTING.”