"Klaatu barada nikto".
No, that isn't the Latin translation of a sentence from the
liturgy of the All John All The Time World Church, as performed by your Pope
Guy, John The Tall, leader and head-chef of the AJATTWC, in my quest to spread
the message of the "soothing balm of Johnism"; it's the Roman
Catholics that used to do that Latin thing, although I understand they've
pretty much dropped it now, considering that, well, d'uh, Latin isn't spoken
anywhere in the world these days.
No, that's a phrase from one of the all-time great sci-fi
movies ever, the 1951 classic "The Day The Earth Stood Still" (not to
be confused with "The Day The Fish Came Out", a 1967 comedy about
"a weapon more dangerous than a nuclear weapon", which seems like an
unusual theme for a comedy), starring Michael Rennie as "Klaatu", the
space alien that came to Earth to give us the somber message that if the people
of this world didn't clean up our collective acts (speaking of nuclear
weapons), the planetary alliance to which his planet belonged would blow the
living bejeezus out of us, and that would be that.
They never identified the planet that Klaatu was from, but I
suspect it was Zatox. It's also noteworthy that the movie was released the same year I was born, making us both geriatric cases, which is much evidenced in the movie by the rather primitive music and special effects; I have neither.
We were also deeply invested in the Korean War in '51; President Truman was the initiator of the American foreign policy of involvement in "police actions" in far-away countries that waste vast amounts of treasure and cost thousands of lives unnecessarily, and accomplish nothing. (I remember the first time, as a kid in school, when one of the nuns at St. Jude's mentioned Truman by his full name; I thought she was calling him "Harry Ass" Truman, and I couldn't believe she said it.) Despite Harry's getting us involved in Korea, which I'm not sure he had much of a choice about, and being a Democrat, I have always thought him to be one of the better Presidents this country has ever had.)
But I digest.
Anyway, Klaatu told Helen Benson (played by a very
good-looking Patricia Neal), one of his fellow boarding-house roomies, after
she guessed that he wasn't from Akron OH, that she was to say this to Gort, the
8 foot tall robot that was standing guard outside the spaceship in which Klaatu
came to Earth, in case anything bad happened to him (Klaatu), like say a bunch
of xenophobic Earthlings shot his butt.
Which of course they ultimately did.
I love this movie, but I've always had a problem with that
line. Obviously, given the context, if translated to English it would read,
"Klaatu has bought the farm, now go find his dead butt and save him from
the heathen Earth aliens before they eat him, or worse, turn him into a
Republican."
More or less.
Here's my objection: based on my translation, painstakingly
derived from the original Zatoxian, there should be a comma after
"barada", as in "Klaatu barada, nikto." You could even have
used a semi-colon, which is, according to my Webster's New World Dictionary Of
The American Language, which is not to be confused with English necessarily,
"a mark of punctuation indicating a degree of separation greater than that
marked by a comma and less than that marked by the period".
In American, there should have been a comma at least; in
Zatoxian, hard to say.
(George Bernard Shaw, the Irish playwright, once remarked
that England and America were "two nations divided by a common
language".)
I can't speak for the English, or the French, or the
Belarusians, but Americans tend to screw up punctuation pretty regularly,
assuming they use it at all.
Case in point, from a real CraigsList ad I saw recently on
the Huffington Post, in an article naming the "Eight Strangest Ads Ever On
CraigsList", from a guy trying to sell his pick-up truck (and just ignore
the fact that the reason he's selling the vehicle is because it has become a
four-wheeled bee-hive; that's another issue altogether):
"$1200 obo this has been a good truck for me but i have
to sell it because i cant ever get to it with all of the bees around it they
have been in and around it for almost 2 months now and i havent been able to
get near 5 feet or else i get stung and im sick of it i still have welts from
months ago stingings and i cant even get to work because i cant get to my truck
so i have to sell it test drives at ur own risk i cant go with you too many
bees"
Not bad...a one hundred and four word paragraph with not one
punctuation mark. As in none, nada, zip, bupkis, zilch, close your eyes and how
many do you see, zero, none. (His spelling and use of capitalization leave
something to be desired as well.)
The antithesis to this lack of sentence discernment is the
person who over-uses punctuation, another horror.
(Full disclosure here: I am guilty of being a serial abuser
of commas and semicolons; if you've ever read any of my posts, you'll know from
whence I speak. I tend to beat the crap out of quotation marks and parentheses
as well.)
But to my way of thinking, better too many than that
abomination above. But that's just me, and what do I know?
I have a family member whose punctuation mark of choice is
the exclamation point, as in any sentence that she is trying to express any
enthusiasm or shock or surprise is punctuated thusly:
"The grass was
green!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
I will not reveal the name of this abuser of the
"sudden, vehement utterance" point (thank you again, Websters), other
than to say that it's my lovely daughter. (Oh, that was subtle.)
Apostrophes are another source of frustration for those of
us who believe that written American is rapidly going down the shitter.
Simple rule...if it belongs to someone/thing, use an
apostrophe; if its merely plural, don't.
Geez; what in the world are schools teaching kids today?
My only comment on periods will be that I'm sorry women have
to have them every 28 days or so; I understand they're unpleasant.
Love and !";:(,.'s,
PJTT
copyright 2014 Krissongs Inc.
"Dilbert" cartoon, copyright Scott Adams
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