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Dan Carlson
Los Angeles, California

I'm a twentysomething white male with ambitions to be a professional film critic and generally spend my days getting paid to watch movies and write about it. I try not to think too hard about how I want to build my life around talking about other people's creations and not mine. A compulsive reader and stubborn cineaste, I take an often contrary stance to my more fundamentalist peers and upbringing by celebrating the pursuit of the good, and the Good, in life, love, art and film. If you watched enough episodes of a few TV shows ("The Hungry and the Hunted," "The Cut Man Cometh," "The Body," "The Zeppo," "Waiting in the Wings," "Out of Gas," "April is the Cruelest Month," "20 Hours in America," "Colonial Day," "An Echolls Family Christmas," and "Look Who's Stalking," for starters), you would understand me completely, and you'd also realize that much of my worldview and philosophical insights are heavily influenced by fictional works/programs, and many of the good things I've said in my life are just a regurgitation of someone else's imaginings. I guess I was made to be a film critic.

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« Review: 10,000 BC |Main| This Is A Completely Neutral Headline About "Lost" »

March 7, 2008

Everyone Learn This Right Now

By Dan Carlson

The word is definitely.

Do you spell it "definately," or some other such perversion? Congratulations, you need to repeat junior high.

I realize that (obviously) I mostly come across this typo online, where any mouth-breather with a keyboard can just type away, but come on. Let's all get together on this one.

Comments: 11

ryan English

you soell potato
I spell potatoe

Mar 8, 2008 12:05 AM

Kevin Longrie

I'm with you.

Mar 8, 2008 3:13 AM

jkate

Yes.

I think you and I could have a real future together. A beautiful, perfectly-spelled future.

Mar 8, 2008 6:58 AM

Girl With Curious Hair

I realize this isn't a spelling matter (my spelling truly sucks), but can we add irregardless to words that people need to learn? As in, it's not a word and they should stop using it.

Thank you.

Mar 8, 2008 8:08 AM

Josh

i totilly agree

Mar 8, 2008 9:34 AM

Dan

Ryan Dale: You know I love you. Like that.

Kevin: Start recruiting more.

jkate: I live in Sherman Oaks and enjoy movies and concerts.

Girl With Curious Hair: We should, and we will.

Josh: Fyve points for iriny.

Mar 8, 2008 4:28 PM

TL

Misspellings make me loose my mind.

Mar 10, 2008 11:40 AM

Rachael

I think I love you.

Mar 10, 2008 4:42 PM

Melanie Larson

It's helpful to remember that the word "finite" is in definitely...no one would ever spell it "finate." Well. Would they? Anyway, as a poor speller myself, but someone who adores copyediting, this is a tiny trick to help the rest of the world.

Dan, have you seen the bit on homestarrunner that is Strong Bad's rules to grammar?

"Y-O-U-R ... Y-O-U-apostrophe-R-E. They're as different as night and day. Don't you think that night and day are different? What's wrong with you?"

Mar 11, 2008 12:07 PM

Deano

As long as we're doing crabby grammar day, how about learning when to use fewer versus less and among and between?

Mar 11, 2008 2:04 PM

jkate

Hey "Dan"

I don't know where Sherman Oaks is because I was born in Gimli, Manitoba, and now I live in Montreal where I parles the francais.

I would like to outlaw the use of the term "Value-added.

That is all.

Mar 14, 2008 4:52 PM

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"The critic is the only independent source of information. The rest is advertising."
— Pauline Kael

"Film lovers are sick people."
— Francois Truffaut

"I hope I strike a blow for chubby bald men everywhere. I hope they rise like an army."
— Paul Giamatti, quoted in the Los Angeles Times, 12/14/04

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Remembering speechlessly we seek the great forgotten language, the lost lane-end into heaven, a stone, a leaf, an unfound door. Where? When?

O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again.
— Look Homeward, Angel, Thomas Wolfe

Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.
— John Stuart Mill

We are all under the same mental calamity; we have all forgotten our names. We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget.
— G.K. Chesterton

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