American Cheese

Once upon a time, before the days of real jobs and bills, I embarked on one of those post-college, self-discovery adventures. I ended up living in a village on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica called Puerto Viejo. Despite having contracted a bizarre mosquito-related disease, it was a wonderful experience; there were beautiful beaches, a laid back vibe, and hot local men. But, since it was a village, the culinary options were quite limited.  When a French woman opened a restaurant, my friend and I were excited by the prospect of eating  something for breakfast besides eggs and gallo pinto (a rice and beans dish).

We were stoked when the owner said she served french toast. And she looked like an angel when she walked towards us holding two plates of what I thought were morsels of sweet, egg-soaked, fried, buttery deliciousness. What she set down in front of us was plain old toast.

If we had taken her to court over it, I’m not sure we would have won our case because she might have had us on a technicality: she was French and she did serve us toast.

I guess we got French toast instead of french toast.

Since that traumatic experience, I don’t like to capitalize foods and drinks that include the names of nationalities, such as french fries, swiss cheese, and irish coffee. It’s not incorrect to capitalize them; it’s more of a stylistic choice. I don’t capitalize them for the same stylistic reasons I choose not to wear Crocs: I think it looks a bit clunky. 

Also, it could be confusing. For example, if I wrote, “I remember a little Danish,” it would be impossible to know whether I was referring to the language or a delicious pastry of yore. And if I wrote, “Have you seen that Irish stew?” I could either mean a soup or a troubled Irish person.

Do You Know Where You're Going To?

Riddle me this:

Why did the first American settlers never capitalize north, south, east, and west?

Contestant #1: Is it because north, south, east and west are never capitalized?

X

Contestant #2: Is it because they were from England and the Brits don’t capitalize north, south, east, and west?

XX

Contestant #3: Does this have anything to do with the fact that the first true American settlers were Native American Indians and they didn’t speak English?

Well, Contestant #3, you have a point but I am talking about the settlers that dressed in black and white, wore buckled shoes and hitched a ride on the Mayflower, so …

XXX

Here is the answer to the riddle, my friends.

The reason the first American settlers would never have capitalized north, south, east, or west is because we only capitalize these words when they are referring to specified regions of the country, and since the settlers had just arrived, they wouldn’t have specified any regions yet.

Duh!

We don’t capitalize north, south, east and west when we’re using them to indicate compass directions, so the settlers would have used the non-capitalized versions:

Hester, I’m going to head north and see if I can find any firewood.

Would you like to settle east or west of the river, Samuel?

Today, it’s different. Now that we’ve settled all over the country, we use the words north, south, east and west to refer to specific regions of the country, not only compass directions.

When I say I am going to head to the South to visit family, I capitalize it because I am referring to this specific region:

(I am also lying because I don’t have any family there.)

I live in Southern California (a region that refers to the Los Angeles and San Diego areas), so if I said that I was going to head south, I would end up in Mexico.

But with my sense of direction, I would probably end up in Canada.

Celebrate Your Celestial Body

Yesterday, a student asked me how I felt about Valentine’s Day.

I realized I’m kind of ambivalent about it. One the one hand, how lovely to dedicate an entire day to celebrating love! On the other hand, shouldn’t every day be Valentine’s Day? Shouldn’t I be showered with jewels and chocolates and flowers and cards and expensive dinners and romance every day of the year?

Do holidays like Valentine’s Day allow us to take our loved ones for granted during the remaining 364 days?

It’s really Earth Day that got me thinking about this. We celebrate Earth Day on April 22, but for the rest of the year, we seem to take our planet for granted.

I say this because we capitalize the word Earth in Earth Day, but we don’t consistently capitalize it otherwise.

Now, I realize that earth should not be capitalized when we use it to refer to dry land or dirt; I’m talking about when we’re referring to our planet.

It's not fair; we capitalize the other planets. Saturn already has those cool rings, Mars houses weird green creatures with three eyes, Uranus is the butt of lots of jokes, AND they get capital letters.

We only capitalize words like earth, moon, and sun when they appear in a context with other capitalized celestial bodies.

Example: The sun heats the earth, and the moon provides the earth with swiss cheese.

Example: I don’t care if Jupiter is big and Venus is sexy; I prefer to live on Earth.

It’s as though we esteem the other planets more than our own.

Shouldn’t we capitalize the word earth even when it’s not in the same sentence as the other planets? Shouldn’t we celebrate our planet? Every day should be Earth Day!

I’m so upset, I am thinking about driving my Escalade straight over to my local congressman’s office. But first I need to calm down; I think I’ll take a long, hot shower.

Can I Buy Me Love?

Look at Oprah up there, welcoming us all into her world of poor capitalization. Thanks to the Oprah Effect, millions of women have probably stopped capitalizing their O’s, their names, or both. It’s probably a good thing that Oprah’s grammatically irresponsible show is over.

Don’t get me wrong; I think it’s great that she so generously shared her favorite things with her audience. It’s just that one of my favorite things is properly capitalized words. It would have been great if she would have done both: given away her favorite things and practiced responsible capitalization.

Well, there’s a famous quote from one of Oprah’s favorite authors, Toni Morrison: “If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.” So I guess I must heed her advice. If I want to experience a properly capitalized favorite things give-away, I’ll have to create it myself.

And here are a few of my favorite things :

1. A Johnny Depp calendar. He's my flavor of every month.

2. A box of Lemon Zest Luna bars. I usually opt for chocolate-flavored, but these lemon-flavored bars are so dang delicious.

3. Nag Champa incense. It just smells so good.



4. The best movie ever. No, I'm not taking crazy pills.

5. I never get sick of listening to PJ Harvey's amazing CD, Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea.

If you want a chance to win one of my favorite things, all you really have to do is "like" me.

In my last post, I mentioned that I was going to try to expand my social media horizons, so I was thinking that maybe I could buy some friends.

You can earn a total of 5 points:

1 point for liking my Missed Periods and Other Grammar Scares Facebook page

1 point for following me on Twitter @missedperiods

1 point for tweeting about this give-away

1 point for posting on Facebook about this give-away

1 point for leaving a comment telling me what one of your favorite things is (Sue me. I'm nosy.)

Then, leave the following information in the comments section:

The number of points you’ve accumulated

Your preferred prize

I will draw a winner a week from today, and if you happen to be that lucky winner, I'll contact you.

Coming up next week: Tom Cruise jumping like a lunatic on my couch. Stay tuned.

But It's Important

If I could be anyone for a day, who would it be?

Gee. I don’t know. That’s a tough one. My gut reaction is to say Vanessa Paradis because for one glorious day I would be the wife of Johnny Depp. But before I commit to that, I need to call my lawyer to make sure that having sex with another man whilst supernaturally inhabiting the body of his wife is not technically considered cheating.

It would also be kind of cool to be a cop for a day. I would relish the power of having everyone slam on their brakes and slow down to the speed limit as soon as they see me.

Wait. No. I’ve got it! I know who I’d be. Kanye West.

I am such a non-confrontational person so it would be thrilling to experience the, I don’t know what to call it- confidence, gall, narcissism- of the man who thought it was totally acceptable to storm on stage and interrupt Taylor Swift’s speech to share his opinion with the world.

I know what you’re thinking. He’s not the same man he was back then. He’s been working on becoming more humble.

Well, maybe he’s working on it, but from his behavior on January 26 of this year, I think he is still quite self-important.

I am basing my opinion about Kanye on a theory I have formulated over the years. My theory is that, although technically we are supposed to capitalize proper nouns- words that represent a unique, specific entity- many of us tend to simply capitalize words that are important to us.

For example, a lot of people incorrectly capitalize the terms bachelor’s degree and master’s degree. Don’t get me wrong, these degrees are very important. I mean, without a bachelor’s, many of us would have no idea how to work a beer bong. But, we don’t capitalize it when we are talking about the degree in general, only when we are referring to the specific name of the degree:

I have a bachelor’s degree vs. I have a Bachelor of Arts degree.

We also capitalize college degrees when we are using the initials:

A.A., B.A, B.S., M.B.A., Ph.D.

We also tend to capitalize the words mom and dad all the time. Now, these are two very important people, but we only capitalize mom and dad when we can substitute the words mom and dad with their names.

My dad’s name is Bruce. In the following sentence, it makes sense when I substitute the word dad with Bruce, so I capitalize the word dad:

I just spoke to Dad.
I just spoke to Bruce.

However, in the following sentence, it doesn’t make sense when I substitute Bruce for dad, so I don’t capitalize dad:

I just spoke to my dad.
I just spoke to my Bruce.

Basically, when my (or any other possessive pronoun) proceeds the words mom and dad, we don’t capitalize them.

Now, back to Kanye:

These are his January 26, 2011 tweets:

NO ALCOHOL BEFORE TATTOOS

WE LIVE THIS SHIT! WE EMBODY THIS SHIT! WE WOULD IDE FOR THIS SHIT SO YOU YOU CAN LIVE FOR THIS SHIT!

HIGH END RAP MUSIC! GHETTO STADIUM SHIT! THEY AIN'T WANT US AT THE FESTIVALS NOW WE WILL RUN THEM!

Every single letter is capitalized! He must believe that, not just every word, but every single letter he writes is important.

I I would ide to know how that feels.

Forever Young

My friend and I are each other’s stylists. Every so often we scrutinize each other’s closets and force each other to get rid of the crap and help each other put together new outfits with what we have.

The other night it was my turn to do her closet, and she stepped out of the closet wearing a dress and asked, “What do you think of this?”

“You look great,” I said, “but it’s too…oh… I don’t know.”

“What!” she insisted.

“It’s kind of too young.”

It was the first time I consciously realized that I am too old to wear certain things. It felt so final; never would I be able to don another really short dress, knee socks, or belly shirt (because, you know, up until that moment, that was my standard outfit).

I don’t want to be one of those women who desperately clings to her youth:

And while we’re on the subject, there are a few common faux pas that make our writing look too immature. To make our writing look more age appropriate, we must do the following:

• Capitalize the word I.
• Add apostrophes in contractions (e.g., I’m, don’t, he’ll).
• Write out numbers one through ten.

Well, I don’t know about you, but I am looking forward to aging gracefully- if gracefully means I can dye my grays, spend my 401K on anti-aging products, and drink the blood of virgins to maintain a youthful glow.

If I Were a Rich Girl

Sometimes I am so grateful I am a teacher. Not because it provides me with the opportunity to make a difference in students’ lives or shape a tiny sliver of America’s future, but because it affords me financial protection: as a teacher, there is no chance in hell I will ever make enough money to allow me to finance my neuroses.

I just read that Lady Gaga’s fear of the supernatural cost her almost fifty grand on a "state of the art" electro-magnetic field meter that can detect ghosts. Fifty grand! With a teacher’s salary, she’d be able to get away with some sage (from Ralphs, not Wholefoods) and maybe a nightlight.

And did you hear what Tim Gunn wrote about Anna Wintour, the Vogue editor? Apparently, she had her bodyguards carry her down a flight of stairs because she was wearing uncomfortable Manolos and didn’t want to take the elevator. I could probably afford a pair of Manolos- if they were the only shoes I bought for the whole year. But, if they got uncomfortable, I couldn’t afford a Bubba to guard me from the impending bunions.

Maybe I am so down-to-earth that no matter how much money I had I would never do such crazy things, but who knows? Money is said to do crazy things to people. Just think- all that money might take my grammar obsession to a whole new level.

I might, for example, hire some minions to capitalize the J's and lowercase the B's on all of jetBlue's planes:

Who do they think they are parading their irresponsible capitalization from LAX to JFK?

I'd probably also hire a team of techies to erase all of Rachel Zoe's misuses of "literally" before I watch the next season of the Rachel Zoe Project. It figuratively drives me crazy.

Or, better yet, I might just hire a troupe to literally act out all of the things that Rachel Zoe says literally occur. For example, it would be kind of cool to experience how one can literally feel like a cow about to moo. Is it similar to the feeling a goat experiences before it's about to bleat? And, I have never seen a person literally pull a dress out of her ass. That should be fun.

I might even try to convince Dave Chappelle to sell me his reversible white panda, bald eagle coat.

What would you do?