Liam Dynes

A conundrum:

How do you gracefully ask this question (multiple choice, two of five answers are correct, but they do not have to be paired together to be correct)?

“A student may be immediately dismissed from class only if they jeopardize one of which two of the following?”

I’ve spent about an hour today (when I probably have other, more important, or at least bigger, work to do) staring at that single sentence, which I wrote, trying to figure out a more graceful way to say it. To say it’s playing havoc with my mild obsessiveness and affinity for language is understating things a little.

But seeing these sorts of things done incorrectly drives me bonkers, so being the one who gets to make sure it is correct before being plastered all over the world is also the reason I love my job.

P.S. I just discovered the karmic reason why the Old 97s have become my favourite band of all time.

I always knew Rhett Miller (the lead singer/songwriter) was super-literate and a creative writing fiend, but I never knew we shared so many similar obscure loves of beat-down Americana.

On top of the DeLillo references elsewhere, and the overall whiskey-soaked, dust-caked imagery all over their stuff, I just downloaded one of the few songs I was missing from their various albums, titled “What We Talk About.” As is What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, by Raymond Frickin’ Carver. Carver, the generally disliked (by Beth and others in my English classes anyway) minimalist who drank himself to death, and in whose stories not much ever happens, was one of my first literary caches.

It makes absolute perfect sense that he influence the Old 97s, and knowing it for certain now, I can see his soggy fingerprints everywhere.