jarad on vh1

My nephew Jarad DeRochey makes a cameo in Gotti's Way, episode 4, beginning at about 01:41 -


Hint: visualize my daughter Laurel (below) as a UFC fighter.

wash warm, tumble dry

Some time ago, I became fascinated by the use of sentence fragments and fractional grammar in English. One observes this especially on product packaging in the US.

For example, consider the statement:

shake before opening

WTF!?! Does that indicate that one must tremble prior to unfolding? Just what do all those fragments tell us?

On a related note... My first laptop was a Mac PB180, which I bought new in 1994. What a workhorse! Anywhooo, I used to lug it around everywhere. And when I encountered a new sentence fragment used on a product label, I'd pop open the PB180 and quickly make a note. Had one hell of a list of them going back then, which we used repeatedly in the production of FringeWare Review magazine.

This is the point where I must apologize to some of my friends from that period, for all the times I'd pour through their cabinets and pantries, searching for novel product packaging grammar. In particular, someone I was dating at the time was rightly most embarrassed by this behavior. Sorry, V.

Several years and many disk crashes later, I've lost that original monster list o' sentence fragments. But recently, I started a new one. Hopefully it'll grow over time.

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