June 30, 2011

On the Purported Death (and Subsequent Rebirth) of the Oxford Comma

As I am sure you very well realize, dear readers, the rants on this squalid site are no longer what they once were. Part of the explanation, I'd like to think, is that with age has come maturity, but those familiar with my predisposition to irrational and obscure rants will note that this can hardly be the full story (if, in fact, it explains anything at all).

A more plausible explanation for the dearth of rants in recent times might be Twitter. With most of my rants fixated now as before on (a) bums, (b) transit, and (c) more bums, 140 characters on Twitter is usually sufficient (or at the very least, forces me to be succinct, which is certainly no loss). Sometimes, however, a tragedy of epic proportions unveils itself such that no amount of tweeting can ever suffice. Yesterday was such a time (as I observed briefly on, yes, Twitter). And it is to this source of all-consuming darkness to which I turn in this entry.