Schoolhouse Twerk

It seems today the Internet has decided to take an impromptu English lesson, courtesy of Weird Al Yankovic, who has just released his new album Mandatory Fun (which he claims to be his last full-length album, as going forward he intends to focus on singles to better keep up with a faster pop-culture cycle). Al, as part of the release, is putting out one music video every day for eight days, and today's is 'Word Crimes' a parody of Blurred Lines by Robin Thicke.

And oh, has it ever resonated with the denizens of the Internet. Probably you as well, because how many times have you had to try and get one or more of the following through to someone?



I post the video because, just in case there's something in there you don't know- diagramming a sentence or the Oxford comma, say, which are at least not elementary-level linguistic blunders (I certainly can't diagram)- everything is, in fact, properly grammatically displayed when it's brought up. So there's some Schoolhouse Rock, Weird Al-style, to be had here.

It's not the first time I've seen someone try to make a humorous run at giving the Internet grammar lessons. Years back, the comic Bob The Angry Flower embarked on what it referred to as the Unwelcome Education Project here, here, and also here. Meanwhile, Penny Arcade has its own character, Mr. Period, and his adventures can be found here, here, here, here, here, and here.

To think we have to go through all this to undo the damage Alanis Morissette did to the word 'irony'.