Punk U Nation

Well, since finishing Vicki's book I looked around and realized that my stack had dwindled to one rather large book that I think I'm saving for our upcoming beach trip (I'm at work and can't remember the name–shame, shame.) and so I headed to the book store to pick up a new book.  I grabbed the latest by David Sedaris, When You are Engulfed in Flames, and started the first page in my car.  As it's a grueling 85+ degrees outside, I didn't make it much further than that because I needed to get some air moving in the car, but I am now waiting anxiously to be able to hit the pillow tonight and dive right in.  

While at the bookstore I also perused some of the reference books and found a book that about punctuation that had me laughing out loud.  That's right, laughing about punctuation.  Just crazy.  Lynn Tuss wrote the  book in 2003 (pardon me for being a little late on the draw) and it is called, Eats, Shoots and Leaves and here is what's touted on the back:

"A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and proceeds to fire it at the other patrons.  “Why?” asks the confused, surviving waiter amidst the carnage, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.  “Well, I’m a panda,” he says, at the door. “Look it up.”  The waiter turns to the relevant entry in the manual and, sure enough, finds an explanation. “Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.”

It's a little corny, but it hit home with me because, as I'm sure everyone has noticed, I have a bit of diarrhea of the comma.  I can't help myself (ok, ok, obviously I can stop with the commas!) I use commas like breaths, and apparently I take a lot of breaths while talking.  I notice it on the blog especially because I am generally dashing thoughts off and rarely have a chance to re-read what I write.  Then, months later I'll be looking back and just shaking my head at the rampant punctuation fallacies.  So, I didn't buy the book–yet–but I am thinking more about my grammar, and I will be doing my part to at least think a bit more as I'm typing, if not do something totally crazy like proof read.  As I'm not doing that this time, please feel free to delight in the irony of any of my mistakes this go round, and a very happy reading to you all!