I have noticed that some libertarians don't much like animated corpses that can open their eyes and try to talk or play with balloons. I think it scares them or something.

"Exsanguinate"? Gettin' some good use out of the William F. Buckley "Word of the Day" calendar are you?

If he had, he might've known that it's a transitive verb...

Incidentally, my previous post wasn't meant to imply that Buckley would know good writing if it bit him on his ass. Just wanted to make that clear.

First of all, I got it from reading crimonology books back in the day, but I hear it constantly on CSI of course.

If he had, he might've known that it's a transitive verb...

Not on CSI. What would the object be? Exsanguinate blood? Blood is implied by "exsanguinate."

CSI gets a lot more wrong than just plain old grammar, Ace. ;) And blood is more than implied in the word; it's part of it. "Ex-" is out of and "sang-" is blood. Exsanguination is the extraction of blood. But it has to be out of something. If you want a TV reference to back that up, watch "Bad Blood" from Season 5 of The X-Files (one of the best episodes ever, incidentally).

***

SCULLY: You want us to go to Dallas?

MULDER: Yee-haw! Actually, a town called Chaney, about fifty miles south of Dallas. Population 361. By all accounts very rustic and charming, but as of late, the locus for a series of mysterious nocturnal exsanguinations.

SCULLY: Exsanguinations? Of whom?

***

See? Scully presumes an object for the word (though it's in noun form here). Again, later:

***

SCULLY: As with the previous victim, it appears that the subject was most likely incapacitated with chloral hydrate, and then exsanguinated.

***

Bingo! Verb form. The object of the verb is the subject of the autopsy.

Where are all the "pot head" jokes? Come on, people, you're letting me down here!

Megan, none of the examples you cite includes an explicit object.

If you're talking about implications, well, I think it's pretty obvious I mean you'll exsanguinate from the ears.

And yes, I know ex- means "out of" and "sangua" means blood. You're not dealing with a retard here.

SCULLY: As with the previous victim, it appears that the subject was most likely incapacitated with chloral hydrate, and then exsanguinated.

***

Ace, I'm not just fucking with you. Seriously. It's a transitive verb. People are exsanguinated. Cows are exsanguinated (see episode cited above). You don't just exsanguinate thin air.

Look, I'll try to do a real simple diagram of one branch of the main clause.

subject| was | exsanguinated
----------------------------------
| |
| \
| likely
\ ------
the |
\
most

I'm not lying to you. It's the truth. Check a dictionary.

Okay, so that diagram came out really screwy. I'm still right.

Megan, none of the examples you cite includes an explicit object.

A shortened version of your sentence, Ace, is, "You will exsanguinate". Megan's example, shortened, is, "The subject was exsanguinated".

Megan's sentence is passive, so the object of "exsanguinated is, confusingly, "the subject". Ha ha, that's a good one, Megan.

Her sentence is the equivalent of saying, "??? exsanguinated the subject." That is correct, as is the passive version. Your sentence is wrong, as is your correction. Something like, "The brainbots will exsanguinate you", would be correct.

I'm trying to find a quote I'd jotted down once from the Libertarian nutjobs. It was some guy during the last mid-terms, IIRC.

Megan, Bob

Please stop before I exsanguinate myself.

Aha! Here we go.

"I would rather not see the money go to Washington in the first place, I'd just as soon see it stay in New Hampshire. One of the ways that we can do this is to help stimulate the north country by, uh, as a Congress, taking the regulations off the product of hemp. Hemp is a good product, it's a renewable product, we can renew our farms, we can energise our paper mill by making quality paper with hemp product as a base, it's just a go-go situation. We don't have to send the money to Washington and then bring it back here!"

- Ken Blevens, Libertarian candidate for US Senator from New Hampshire
10/21/02 Senate debate

-----

Hey, what are we waiting for, people? It's just a go-go situation!

...say Ace, y'all gonna eat all those Cheetos?

Brewfan wrote: Please stop before I exsanguinate myself.

See, so the object here is "myself," and the subject is "I." You agree with me too!

(snark.)

If you f'in pedants don't stop soon, I'm gonna fall prey to ocular exsanguination...do you have any idead the damage you're doing to our collective drooling retard cred? That reputation can't be rebuilt overnight, you know.

I mean, unless there's another poetry contest or top ten.

Oh, okay, I guess I see what you mean.

But CSI just says "he exsanguinated."

Whatever the actual rule is, the real rule is the CSI rule.

I don't do this for a living. THis is all, like, new to me.

"See, so the object here is "myself," and the subject is "I." You agree with me too!"

LOL!

"Real" and "actual" are synonyms... okay, okay, I'll stop. (g)

Brewfan wrote:

Please stop before I exsanguinate myself.

See, so the object here is "myself," and the subject is "I." You agree with me too!

(snark.)

Ace agrees with you, too, but he's backed himself into a corner again. Smitty and Hoke will be along to clean up the mess shortly.

Or is it just a plot to sell more shirts? Hmmm...

Megan,

I appreciate your corrections, but I have to tell you, if you don't stop right now I will hunt you down and skin you like an animal.

What are you, the female JeffB.?

And yes, I know "the female JeffB." is a redundancy.

Look, I just gave you some real ammo for your lame WEEEEED! WEEEEEED! WEEEEEEEEEEEEED! joke, and all you can do is grouse about my grammar corrections?! What the hell is wrong with you? Who else is going to do this for you?

It took me almost 20 minutes to find that quote, goddamnit! Someone had better find it funny. Y'all have any idea how I organize quotes from third-party losers in Senate debates no one watched from a state with 4 people in Congress a full electoral cycle and a half ago?

THAT'S FUCKING RIGHT, I DON'T.

I've just spent all this time on my feet looking through my notes, all for you! I do it all for you, Ace! I haven't eaten since six o'clock this morning and all that was was half a cream cheese bagel and it wasn't even real cream cheese, it was light cream cheese! I do it all for you!

Ooh! Megan exsanguinates like a f'n hammer!!

Stop talking about exsanguination, damn it! The important thing is to make Ace appreciate me. And if a Blevens quote as obscure and entertaining as it's telling of the very point he wanted to make won't do it, what will? What will?!

all i've got to say, is this post was funny as hell, and the comments made it even better

Have you ever thought of loaning him your vagina?

From his comments about cloakrooms, I don't think Ace swings that way.

The subject of exsanguination has been exsanguinated by this discussion of the grammar of exsanguination. So in this case, the subject is the direct object.

There, you're both right.

Puns will not be tolerated in the cause of grammatical purity, comrade. Curb your counter-revolutionary remarks, or they shall be curbed for you.

In any case, Megan, this unsavory incident happened in Vermont, not New Hampshire. So you and Ace are wrong to hold the Libertarians responsible for the activities of this freelance craniotomist. I blame Howard Dean.

Shall we kick around "craniotomist" for a while?

Jeez, people! A dead man's brainbox has been removed and used as a bong, and all you people can talk about is grammar?

For shame!

You can blame anything, anything at all, on a party that wants to privatize roads.

Craniotomist, pfft. You want a real challenge, try this link.

My scores so far: 7/10, 4/10, 9/10, 5/10, 10/10. Averages out to a low C, and I'm smarter than 99.999% of you drivelling morons, as Ace would say.

10/10.

I'm good at guessing. It's the only thing that kept me getting booted out of every school I went to.

7/10, then 10/10; decided to quit while I was ahead.

Wimps. :)

Meh, it's starting to repeat questions already.
Another 7 for me and two 9s. Can't count the others because they repeated questions I'd already got wrong. Some fascinating stuff in there, though. I mean, "Lord Cardigan?" Seriously?

Neat test. Handy too - your score doubles as a reliable indicator of the chance you were 'pantsed' daily in secondary school.

Amen, Ray. Still, I figure it could have been worse. Some of us were on the audiovisual squad, and some were kneeling before them.

This might not be the weirdest story of the day.

"The important thing is to make Ace appreciate me. "

Megan, it has been my experience that a man NEVER appreciates getting corrected by a woman, even on a subject as cissy as grammar.

Later,
bbeck

Ace:

You got it right. Do you want to sound like a grammarian? Or, do you want to sound like a ER doc, EMT, cop, or detective?

Are you drunk again, Megan?

Not anymore. :D No hangover either.