Apparently, Saturday was 'Insult Your Friends Night'.

Not that you'll find this holiday on any calendar, but it certainly seemed so from my point of view. Witness the following dialogue that occurred among several of my friends:


INSULT #1:
"Your blog pic doesn't look like you; it's too pretty."
(And the speaker had to spend the rest of the evening apologizing...)


INSULT #2:
Young Guy: "But gay guys are stupid."
Gay Guy: "Thanks a lot."
Young Guy: "No, no, I meant, you know, gay guys my age are stupid."
Gay Guy: "So now you're calling me old?!"


deal-breakers
That same night, we got into a conversation about everybody's weirdest turn-off. I don't mean the obvious relationship deal-breakers, like infidelity or, say, mass murder, but highly personalized ick-o-meters featuring such quirks as overly abundant pubic hair, excessive girliness (This from the gay contingent, mind you), poor grammar (That was me, of course), and yipping. Yes, yipping-- defined as a sort of high-pitched, staccato utterance during sex. Go "uh uh uh" in your best falsetto tone, and you'll get what I mean. Apparently, while it is fairly desirable for women to emit such noises during intercourse, for men, whether straight or 'complex', it is strictly verboten.


From there, we quite naturally segued into the preferred level of sound during sex: noisy, quiet, or vocal. Opinions differed, but at least a minimum level of verbal response during intimate relations is evidently universally appreciated. Otherwise... well, let's just say the words "cold, dead fish" came up in conversation.

Grammar and Punctuation: the present tense
Obviously, you use the present tense when speaking about the present, duh! However, it's a little more complicated than you may remember from school...


simple present: Nikki writes about grammar.
present progressive: Nikki is writing about grammar.
present perfect: Nikki has written about grammar.
present perfect progressive: Nikki has been writing about grammar.


I'll bet you thought the last two were past tense, didn't you? Nope-- although the present perfect tense often sounds like past tense, it actually discusses a current state of affairs, rather than a past action. In other words: At this point in time, Nikki is a person who has written about grammar. You would only use the past tense if you wanted to express that Nikki once wrote about grammar and no longer does, or that Nikki once wrote about grammar at a specific time in the past. But don't worry; we'll talk about the past tense in an upcoming post.