I'm a person who speaks and a person who thinks

[venta]

Someone help me... please.

I've just had one of those moments where you're halfway through describing something, and suddenly realise that all who are listening are looking at you funny, in that "she's lost it" sort of way.

So: a children's TV programme/film, in which hordes of <something> chant "Increase the vat!" to encourage <someone> to add more nasty things to a vat of <substance>.

I thought it might have been Who Framed Roger Rabbit, which does include a vat of nasty goo, and my memory of <someone> (holding a bat to add to the vat) does look a bit like the evil dude in WFRR. Google has not yet been any help, and the blankness of my colleagues on the subject seems to have ruled WFRR out as a likely candidate.

Any ideas, anyone ?

(It came up because there was a conversation about VAT going on, I started chanting "increase the VAT!". Disappointingly, google just turns up lots of dull commentary on VAT-increase if you search for the phrase.)

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_corpse_/]

WFRR has various scenes with a vat, but it's generally referred to as dip rather than 'the vat'.

Other than that, I am, as usual, of no value, whatsoever, other than as a great way of distributing, commas.

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

<twitches>

Speaking as leader of the Grammar Nazi Group Marriage, I must insist that two of those commas are removed, with photographs of the disarmament process, within the next ten days.

I am willing to compromise on a futher one to be removed over the course of the next year.

[wimble.livejournal.com]

Given that they're indicating pauses in speech, what would the correct punctuation be?

Maybe he, just speaks, like, William, Shatner?

[jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com]

I offer this up for derision from, or/and the amusement of, the audience:

Other than that, I am (as usual!) of no value whatsoever, other than as a great way of distributing commas.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Where the pauses in a particular sentence become too complex to convey via commas alone I usually fall back on hyphens first and parentheses second. So:

Other than that I am - as usual - of no value whatsoever, other than as a great way of distributing commas.

[Note that I've also removed the first comma, since it didn't correspond to a pause the way I would speak the sentence !]

[venta.livejournal.com]

Note that I've also removed the first comma, since it didn't correspond to a pause the way I would speak the sentence !

Oh, I thought the whole point of this thread was to find punctuation illustrate the pauses which _Corpse_ had put in in places people wouldn't normally pause :)

If we just want standard punctuation, then surely "Other than that I am, as usual, of no value whatsoever other than as a great way of distributing commas." does fine - although it removes the relevance of the comma remark.

[wimble.livejournal.com]

It's slight thrown by the fact that I didn't read to the end of the original sentence: ... a great way of distributing, commas.
That last comma is clearly just wrong, and it may well be this one that lnfykins was originally referring. The other commas being, although peculiar, not absolutely, 100% out of order.

(Although she did make reference to a second comma she'd like culled. But now I don't know which that is!)

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

Between "value" and "whatsoever", assuming rudimentary non-crapness.

[venta.livejournal.com]

The comma between "that" and "I" is common but, I believe, superfluous and incorrect.

By some arbitrary set of rules someone invented some years ago, of course. Commas are more of an art form than a science in my book :)

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

The reason I don't mind it here is that it removes an ambiguity of syntax that otherwise remains until the end of the sentence. Which is some way off at the time.

Compare: "Other than that I am, as usual, of no value whatsoever other than as a great way of distributing commas, there's nothing wrong with me".

[venta.livejournal.com]

Yup, fair point.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_corpse_/]

Had I not been attempting humour, I might have written:

Other than that I am, as usual, of no value whatsoever; other than as a great way of distributing commas.

I'm old fashioned in that respect.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

Eew.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I remember my mum reading out to me, ages ago, part of an interview with a writer of "romantic fiction". Said writer was attempting to defend herself against the charge that what she was writing was basically porn, but under a polite name.

She claimed that it wasn't porn, because it had semi-colons in. (I hope this was meant humorously, but was never sure). This has, however, become a metric of porn-ness ever since, so I'm pleased to see a ; cropping up here every now and again.

I like semi-colons.