On pandas

So what happened to the comma in this process? Well, between the 16th century and the present day, it became a kind of scary grammatical sheepdog. As we shall shortly see, the comma has so many jobs as a "separator" (punctuation marks are traditionally either "separators" or "terminators") that it tears about on the hillside of language, endlessly organizing words into sensible groups and making them stay put: sorting and dividing; circling and herding; and of course darting off with a peremptory "woof" to round up any wayward subordinate clause that makes a futile bolt for semantic freedom.

So the book itself isn't so bad after all.

On games

Without going into excessive explanation, which would surely take far more time and energy than either I or my readers have, I shall say simply that due to unforeseen circumstances, I must request an indefinite leave of absence from the journal games in which I am taking part; and that if the moderators of such games prefer, I shall resign instead.

Addresses!

I'm collecting addresses! I promise that this isn't for a nefarious purpose, and I won't re-sell, give away, or otherwise knowingly distribute anything collected here in any way, shape, or form. In addition, comments on this entry are screened, and I'm not unscreening any of them, period. If you're not comfortable leaving your address, don't worry about it. (If you are comfortable but think I already have your address, please leave it again anyway. I probably do have it... somewhere. fadethecat, you're exempt, since I just got yours five minutes ago.)

What I'm looking for is street addresses. If you live in the US, please use the following format:

<Name>
<Street number> <Street name>[, <Apartment identifier>]
<City>, <State> <ZIP code>

For example,

John Doe
666 Main St., Apt. 111
Anytown, ME 12345

If you live outside the US, I have no idea how addresses are formatted. Please use a format that will allow mail from the US to get to you.