Jonathan Ong's Blog

Like Chinese, some people may know how to speak, but they don’t know how to write certain words. This is true for the terms “should’ve, would’ve, and could’ve”. What makes it more confusing is that through my experience, many spell checks do not take these words as correct. Why is it “should’ve, would’ve, and could’ve”, not “should of, would of, and could of?”

Should’ve, would’ve, and could’ve are contractions for should have, would have, and could have. Look the lyrics from Taylor Swift’s “Should’ve Said No”:

You should’ve said no, you should’ve gone home
You should’ve thought twice before you let it all go

Now lets expand it to see if it makes sense:

You should of said no, you of gone home
You should of thought twice before you let it all go

Does that make any sense to you? It doesn’t to me. None of the sentences have a verb. Of is a preposition, and these propositional phrases do not make any sense. “Of said no”, “of gone home”, “of though twice”. Syntax error, does not compute.

But then you can make things even more complex. How about “should not have?” If you look online, people write it “shouldn’t've”, but that’s a lot of apostrophes. Similarily, “she would have” can be contracted to “she’d've”.

How do you solve this problem? Simply never use contractions when writing to formal audiences.

Posts Facebook and Twitter does not need:

1. What you did today… unless you did something spectacular, which you probably didn’t. If I wanted to know your life story, I’d ask. Or you can write a book, and I might read it… probably not. Example: “off to slo”
2. What you love or hate. There are much better ways to show your affection or disaffection for someone or something than through Facebook. Example: “I hate lab reports…”
3. Lyrics. You have to type it on Facebook because you can’t sing. Example: “I could really use a wish right now, a wish right now”
4. Song of the day/moment. Who actually takes your music advice? Example: “TreySongz-AlreadyTakenMP3. <3
5. Quotes. We didn’t befriend you so you can be our quote book. There’s a quote book for that. Example: “RT @ihatequotes: You can be in love and you can be in a relationship. But they’re not always the same thing. -@iwrotethisforu #ihatequotes“
6. Ambiguous drama. What’s the point of telling the world you have a problem but not giving any details, like with whom? There’s no other reason except that you are an attention whore. Example: “should know better”
7. FML’s. No, there are billions of people whose lives are much worse than yours. And they didn’t mess it up themselves, unlike you did probably. Example: “wow I think my laptop just died…. FML”
8. The weather. http://www.geoipweather.com. Example: “cold monday night”
9. The news. http://newsmap.jp. Example: “first brittany murphy and then her husband….wth happened”
10. Yelling at sports teams and players. No, they can not hear you and no, they probably don’t care what you think or say. Oh, and no, you are not their coach. Example: “dwight howard, just make your free throws and your team will be the first to come back from a 3-0 deficit. oh and guard ray allen, he’s a beast.

Posts Facebook and Twitter needs:

1. Clever, entertaining posts. I DEMAND SATISFACTION! Example: “I miss you like Dwight’s free throws. That’s kind of a lot <3″

I apologize if I used your posts to a derogatory effect… not.

“Your New Moon festivals and your appointed feasts my soul hates. They have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them.” – Isaiah 1:14 (New International Version)

New Moon was probably both the best and worst movie this year. The acting was horrible, the storyline was unimpressive, and the characters were deeply undeveloped and flawed. My main reason in watching both Twilight and New Moon were to understand why American girls loved them so much, and my appreciation for the series stems only from its representation of today’s women. 30 years from now when my son asks me, “How were women back when you were young?” I can simply make him watch the Twilight series and he will engage in a moment of utter disbelief. After being first inspired from this Bible passage which demonstrates that God clearly hates Twilight and The Oatmeal’s How Twilight Works, I decided to write about how Bella is America’s stereotypical girl. Of course, I didn’t actually read the article knowing I was going to write this one, so please read The Oatmeal’s article too. It has funny pictures!

For those of you who don’t know about the series, Twilight is about a girl, Bella, stuck in a rainy town in Washington who falls in love with a vampire, Edward, while a werewolf, Jacob, also falls in love with her. It is purposely written with limit character development so that the audience can place themselves in the movie – a blank slate if you will. Bella is stuck in a small city and longs for a fantastical escape and the audience gets theirs vicariously.

Bella’s pre-Edward environment is stereotypical of a discontent American girl’s. She comes from a broken home and divorced parents. She lives in a small town that offers her no excitement or adventure. She feels alone and longs for a sense of belonging.  She is uninspired, uninteresting, and unambitious. She has no talents and no hobbies other than crying and complaining. She lacks an interesting personality. In the words of Rise Against, she “doesn’t live, she just survives”, and, in a sense, is already dead. The typical woman in American media is discontent mainly because you need conflict to drive a story. However, I’m sure that a majority of women and people in America are discontent and seek an escape from reality.

Edward is the stereotypical American girl’s dream guy. All girls love bad boys, but especially bad boys that are actually good at heart. What better guy than a vampire who refuses to kill humans? He walks like a badass, talks like a badass, looks like a badass (arguable), and, if he wants, kills like a badass. Again, Edward has no ambition. If I were immortal, I’d do something other than repeating high school for the rest of my life. How many times do you want to read Romeo and Juliet? Perhaps he should be like his adopted dad and become a doctor and actually help people. He has no talents or hobbies and no real contribution to society. I’m just surprised he doesn’t smoke pot or explicitly ask Bella for sex.

Girls want someone to love them, and sometimes, love him back. Perhaps the greatest love story is the story of Romeo and Juliet. New Moon is basically this story placed in a setting of these mythical creatures. Bella and Edward have nothing to look forward in life except each other and would do anything to be together forever. The two men who love her are enemies: werewolves and vampires. Before Edward came, Bella’s life was basically dead and becoming a vampire, an undead, makes no difference except the possibility of being with Edward forever. In media, American girls tend to have no focus early in life and simply seek mates.

Jacob is the epitome of the term “intellectual whore^2”. He is someone you can rely on, talk to, and trust. He’s sweet, caring, and always there when you need him… well, at least when he’s not in rage mode. However, the girl never sees him as more than a friend while being more than a friend was his only intention. In media, American girls typically have a best guy friend who loves and genuinely cares for her but she sleeps with everyone except him. He’s the nice guy that the protagonist takes advantage of. It’s interesting to see how most girls who watch New Moon are “Team Jacob” (on Jacob’s side, not Edward’s) when they don’t realize that there are real-life Jacobs they abandon every day.

Remember that Bella is not special other than the fact that vampires’ powers don’t work on her, which the author has yet to define (Up to New Moon. I haven’t watched). She longs to be special, to have a purpose, to be different than the norm, and the only way she knows how is by becoming a vampire. Being a vampire would make her part of a very small and special group of people on Earth in contrast to the insignificant person she is right now.

Special is what every girl longs to be. Almost every girl I know wants to be famous or at least gain recognition for something. They look up towards “stars”, their Jonas Brothers and Zac Efrons, and yearn to become like them and consequently turn to drastic measures to attempt to gain attention through extreme means such as plastic surgery, excessive amounts of make-up, flirtatious gestures, obnoxious noises… the list goes on. These measures don’t even directly lead to success, fame, or recognition as real success requires dedication, hard work, and sometimes talent and skill. They lose track of who they are and instead long to become a fictitious persona, and as they lose track of who they are, the gap between who they are who they’ve become crushes their souls. And what do they do? Sit at home and cry. Bella feels as though Edward is superhuman and needs to rise to his level, and the only way to do so is to become a fellow vampire, a metaphor for what fame has meant to girls these days.

Bella teaches girls that it is okay to do a lot of things that demonstrate weak character. It is not okay to sit at home and cry for half a year. It is not okay to be risky and jump on a random person’s motorcycle or cliff dive by yourself. She teaches girls that it is okay to do whatever they feel like doing, which is obviously not true and instead causes minor disasters. American women in the media tend to act upon their emotions and not consider the consequences it has on others and especially themselves. And what do they do after they’ve figured out the mistake they’ve made? Sit at home and cry. And what do they do while they sit at home and cry? They day dream and think about what happened, what went wrong, whose fault it was, how it could’ve been, and how it should’ve been, and in all their masturbatory glory fantasize a world that went “according to plan”: Twilight.

Though Bella doesn’t represent all of America’s girls, most American girls share some similarities with her. Most girls somehow relate to Bella and feel they understand her and thus feel as though Twilight is the greatest love story ever told. But let me tell you, Bella’s traits are not particularly favorable traits. Women who like Twilight generally do because they live through Bella vicariously, which can only be true if they share some traits with her or are discontent with the environment they are in or put themselves in. Personally, I would not date a girl with any of her personality or character traits since she would be considered dull to me. In fact, I consider girls who hate Twilight rather amazing.

After watching Inglourious Basterds and something else this past weekend, I found myself annoyed with even more common grammar mistakes. This time, it’s the misuse of the words yourself and myself.

WRONG:

I am really tired today. How about yourself?

RIGHT:

I am really tired today. How about you?

For the most part, you only use yourself or myself if the person to whom you are referring is placing an action upon himself. For example:

If you say “hella” one more time, I am going to shoot myself.

Wrong uses of “yourself” and “myself”:

He went with Bob and yourself; Pat, Mike, and myself will attend.

The panel will consist of yourself, Patty and John

Notice that no reflexive action is taken upon “yourself” or “myself” and thus these sentences are incorrect. Let’s all learn correct grammar guys!

Another quite frequent grammar mistake that continues to agitate me is the misuse of question marks. This especially agitates me when I am taking a midterm or a final in Berkeley, whose professors are top scholars in the world who don’t even know correct grammar. Instead of answering the question, I am tempted to write a whole paragraph on how their grammar is incorrect and distracts from the main purpose of the exam.

There are four types of sentences: Declarative (.), Interrogative (?), Exclamatory (!), and Imperative.

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Is District 9 a good movie?

This is an interrogative sentence.

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I wonder if District 9 is a good movie?

This is NOT an interrogative sentence. It is incorrect grammar to put a question mark at the end. This sentence does not directly ask the listener to answer the question and is thus a declarative sentence. You are simply declaring that you are wondering, not asking for an answer to your curiosity. But most annoyingly, the question marks put an awkward tone to the sentence. It sounds as though you’re still in grade school learning how to present a report in front of the class.

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I wonder if District 9 is a good movie.

This IS correct grammar.

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This isn’t Chinese; it isn’t hard to learn tones in English: your speech should be basically monotone except for the end of a direct question.
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