The common practice of using fake brand names is to avoid claims of trademark infringement. Production companies will go to great lengths to create fictional products to show on-screen because they fear a lawsuit from the trademark holder. This is because trademark holders will go to great lengths to sue every unapproved appearance of their logo on anything because they fear losing their trademark. Trademark law requires holders to maintain control over their marks, which generally results in them go completely overboard about it.

This cycle of fear results in the censorship of reality. Part of what we’re trying to do with Your Face is a Saxophone is to vehemently point out how pervasive branding, commercialization, and consumerism actually are in our world. We casually refer to “drinking a Coke”, “buying an iPhone”, and “checking Facebook” in everyday conversation. We’re surrounded by our electronics from Audiovox, LG, Sony, and Antec; our office supplies from Scotch, 3M, Bic, and Sharpie; our Kraft macaroni, our Heineken beer, our Hershey’s candy, and our Mott’s fruit. This is what the real world looks like, people.

But the moment we start populating our real-world settings with bizarro-world brands, the impact is gone. We’re no longer satirizing the real world, we’re escaping from it. Perhaps we’re vaguely commenting on the concept of hyper-commercialization in general, but the unreality of drinking a Doke while using a Pineapple uPhone to check on Friendbook neuters it entirely.

I’m chiefly referring to the incidental use of brands there. There are certainly examples of fictional brand names being used to great effect in satire, without lessening the impact very much at all.
So, in Your Face is a Saxophone, I suppose we could structure our plots not around Pepsi, but around Schwepsi; not around Miller Lite beer, but around Schmiller Lite. But it’s those little things in the background — the Apple computers, the Lay’s potato chips on the receptionist’s head, the Motorola/Verizon logos on Leora’s phone — that we can’t ignore. We’re not going to let fear of a trademark claim (which we’d have a very strong fair use argument against) stop us from pointing out that in the real world, real brands and real logos surround us everywhere we go.

Perhaps it’s jarring that all of the characters are decidedly bizarro-world — nobody in the real world has a light bulb for a head — but the brands and logos aren’t. Good. We want you to notice the brands. That’s the point.

In Your Face is a Saxophone, we refuse to make up fake companies* to make fun of. If we want to make fun of Pepsi, then dammit, we’re going to make fun of Pepsi.

*Yes, there was Sqwoogy in the first episode. Sqwoogy was not a parody of Twitter, it was a parody of Silicon Valley startup culture and all of the dumbassery that stems from it.

It’s been over a year since our friend MG has committed an act of textual assault (or at least since I’ve noticed). I’d begun to think he’d been reformed, and that perhaps he’d turned over a few new leaves, as opposed to “leafs”. But now, in writing Fast Break: As Of Last Week, Many At Sprint Thought They Were Merging With T-Mobile, MG Siegler has begun to slip back into his old, dark ways — the man he once was coming back to haunt him, reclaiming his soul.

I’m talking, of course, about this atrocity of a first paragraph:

This morning’s bombshell news that AT&T would be buying T-Mobile USA from Deutsche Telekom for $39 billion has left a lot of questions. T-Mobile customers want to know what it means for them? AT&T customers want to know what it means for them? Would-be iPhone buyers want to know what it means for them? T-Mobile and AT&T have started addressing those already. One thing not addressed yet: what does this mean for Sprint, the nation’s third-largest carrier?

No, MG, this morning’s news doesn’t leave a lot of questions. You do, starting with your second sentence.

“T-Mobile customers want to know what it means for them?”

I’m not sure, MG, do T-Mobile customers want to know what it means for them? You’re the one writing the article, not me.

“AT&T customers want to know what it means for them?”

Or, are these rhetorical questions, MG? Are you expressing shock and disbelief at the fact that AT&T customers want to know what this merger means for them?

“Would-be iPhone buyers want to know what it means for them?”

Oh, no, I get it, MG; it’s not that at all. You just don’t know how to use a question mark.

Really, MG? A question mark? I can understand a semicolon or an em dash — they’re not usually taught in second grade or anything — but a question mark? You don’t know that it’s supposed to be used on questions that you, the writer, are asking, as opposed to simple sentences that are about questions? If you’re making a statement that “T-Mobile customers want to know what it means for them,” then shouldn’t you be using a period? Why do I have to explain this to you? Is it really that difficult to understand? Do you just like using question marks? If that’s the case, there are all sorts of ways to write a sentence which calls for a question mark at the end, so why waste the opportunity on something horribly, horribly wrong?

MG quickly recovers, using a colon properly in the final sentence of the paragraph, and continuing for the rest of the article with no readability-compromising errors. But the resurgence of his former tendencies concern and frighten me, and I recommend that we keep a close eye on him. MG is our friend, and I think I speak for all of us when I say that I hate seeing him like this.

Why, if such a remarkable thing were to exist, I could send Aunt Agnes a telegram from anywhere in the world simply by retrieving the machine from my jacket, keying in the message, and sending it on its way via radio broadcast. Perhaps she might even carry a similar machine of her own with which to receive my telegrams wherever she might be, whether seated in her parlor, or out in the country on a velocipede.

In fact, while we’re imagining such splendid ideas, perhaps this telegraph machine could be constructed in the shape of miniature typewriter, which I could operate with my thumbs. After all, this Morse code business is frightfully difficult to familiarize oneself with, and is furthermore rather slow, even once one has mastered it. I’m quite sure many gentlemen have already mused about composing and subsequently transmitting a telegram using a typewriter, so, Wilfred, just imagine, if you will, combining such a fantasy with mine of a miniature, pocket-sized telegraph.

Now that I’m considering it, the aforementioned difficulty with Morse code certainly extends to the interpretation of it. Those tones of varying length are endearingly droll, but they’re quite an ordeal to properly understand. Perhaps this miniature telegraph machine could interpret the Morse code all by itself, and write out the letters for me to read. Oh, but that might use an exorbitant amount of stationery over time. Hmm…eureka, Wilfred, I’ve got it! Perhaps a system could be devised to produce the letters with light, much in the same way those Lumière fellows from France display moving pictures of trains! I say, if such a machine could project letters onto a small portion of itself, the Morse code problem would be solved entirely!

Why, Wilfred, I reckon that before the passing of a century, some extraordinarily clever gentleman shall create such a machine! Of course, I’d surmise he might attempt to construct a radio-broadcasting telephone first; admittedly, the transmission of voice is quite a bit more impressive than doing the same with writing. By Jove, I do hope that he’d apply the resulting knowledge to building a mobile telegraph as well! There are several situations in which I would imagine the instant transmission of a short telegram to another person would be far more convenient than striking up a vocal conversation. But I do suppose that the capacity to either send a telegram or converse on the telephone from one single machine no larger than a pocketwatch would be a magnificent thing indeed. Perhaps it could even have a pocketwatch built into it, thus eliminating the need for one to carry multiple pieces of machinery to perform different tasks.

I say, Wilfred, such a machine would be rather sensational. Alas, it remains but a fanciful notion. Oh, good heavens; I’ve dropped my monocle in my tea.

How inspiring. I’ve been wanting to do more of these. Thus, without further ado:

Yesterday, MG published an article called “An iPhone Lover’s Take On The Nexus One“, because apparently there aren’t enough reviews which compare the Nexus One to the iPhone. Actually, there’s no shortage of them, just like how there’s no shortage of MG Siegler’s use of the phrase “no shortage of”. Speaking of MG Siegler’s predictable writing, let’s see what he’s predictably done wrong this time:

Last week, I attended the Google Android “Nexus One” event. As you may have heard, they gave many of us in the audience the device to try out. I decided that before I wrote anything about it (other than saying on television that it’s a “nice little device“), I would give it a real shot. So here I am, a week later, with my thoughts on it. To be clear, this isn’t meant to be a full review or overview, for that, see our review here. Instead, I’m going to come at this from the perspective of a pretty hardcore iPhone user of the past two-plus years.

A quick skim of this first paragraph may lead you to believe that MG has miraculously managed to finish a single paragraph without screwing anything up. Unfortunately, the second-to-last sentence falls apart if you’re the sort of person who actually reads things. MG is trying to make the sentence read like this, but read it aloud:

To be clear, this isn’t meant to be a full review or overview, for that, see our review here.

It sounds like this.

MG, have I frightened you into using commas instead of semicolons or em dashes? It’s not that you should always use a comma instead of a more “sophisticated” punctuation mark, it’s that you should use each one correctly. Those bold words were the chance you’d been waiting for to flourish a semicolon or em dash — in fact, either could have worked there. But you missed it. Fear overcame you, and you cowered behind the perceived safety of a comma, huddling for warmth and whimpering like a puppy. Alas, the comma was not safe this time, and now nobody will adopt you from the animal shelter and give you a loving home, where you can frolic and chase frisbees and get Siegly treats when you’re a good boy.

You’ve been very bad this time, MG. Stop chewing my shoes and get your muddy paws off the couch.

Moving on:

And to start off, I’ll come right out and say what everyone will want to know: Do I think the Nexus One is better than the iPhone?

I don’t care what you think, because you’re not supposed to capitalize the next word after a colon. It’s not two periods on top of each other, it’s a mid-sentence indicator of logical consequence. I’m not going to waste time explaining the big words to you, so concentrate on the mid-sentence part: colons don’t end the sentence. The only time you should send a big hulking capital letter barreling into the reader’s visual cortex is, other than proper nouns or names, at the beginning of a sentence. Otherwise you might cause people’s perceptions of reality to break down and turn their lives into the plot of Vanilla Sky. You are transforming millions of innocent TechCrunch readers into Tom Cruise, MG. Is that something you’d wish on anybody? Do you want that on your conscience? I thought not. Now fix it.

As the article continues, MG’s performance is remarkably passable. There are moments like this:

It’s hard to describe just how great Google Voice is on Android. When I set it up, I had to confirm maybe three or four things, and I was all ready to go. In two minutes, my Google Voice number completely took over my Nexus One. This included getting not only all Google Voice incoming calls and voicemails, but doing outbound calls with my Google Voice number as well. This is absolutely the future of number portability, and that no doubt has the carriers — and likely even Apple – spooked.

The end of this paragraph nearly brought a tear to my eye. It doesn’t really matter to me that the preceding sentences are choppy and mediocre; MG used em dashes to convey an emphatic pause, just like I taught him. He’s all grown up now!

Maps offers a number of features on the Nexus One that aren’t on the iPhone native version. This includes Latitude (which can run in the background), and Navigation. Other Google apps, like Google Sky Map and Google Goggles are also pretty cool, and useful to varying degrees, and again, only available for Android.

Or maybe not.

I’m aware that the Oxford comma is a matter of preference. Whether you choose to use it, or choose not to use it, there’s usually no problem. But for god’s sake, be consistent from one sentence to the other!

Now, there is, of course, a difference: the first sentence, in which MG did use the comma, had those pesky parentheses to make matters confusing. The problem with that is that no, there’s no difference at all, because you don’t just randomly insert a comma after a closing parenthesis for no reason. “Latitude (which can run in the background)” is the first item, “Navigation” is the other, and if you’re going to put a comma before the separating “and,” then you should also do that in the very next fucking sentence where you do the very same fucking thing.

Obviously, this issue (background apps) has been talked about in the past ad-naseum, so I won’t dwell on it here.

First of all, there’s no hyphen. Second of all, it’s “ad nauseam.” Christ, MG, you’re destroying Latin too.

Fortunately, MG continues the article for about 1200 more words without breaking things ad nauseam, no longer distracting the reader from his rather well-thought out arguments with slippery linguistic banana peels. In fact he manages to finish the whole article without another punctuation debac— oh, wait…

And it’s good to have two companies that can play off each other and push innovation — while at the same time, changing the industry.

I didn’t tell you to use em dashes instead of commas all the time, MG! Ugh, this is going to turn into an endless back-and-forth whack-a-mole game with you, I know it.

Why is it that we must tell everyone on the Internet that things are only our opinion?

Of course “I think” what I’m about to say. Why else would I be saying it? Of course it’s “in my opinion,” because I’m saying it. Anything said by anyone is, when you get down to it, inherently related to what they think, which is consequently their opinion. But now that they’ve been so kind as to emphasize that fact, it hurts their argument.

Here are two different statements a person can make:

A: I think that jumping off the George Washington Bridge can cause severe bodily harm. That could be fatal, in my opinion.

B: Nobody can get hurt from jumping off the George Washington Bridge. It’s actually very healthy and promotes long-life.

Now, assuming you didn’t know anything about the effects of jumping off a bridge, which of these two arguments would be more convincing to you? At first glance, without Wikipediing anything? Most of you will say statement B.

Adding language like, “I think” or “In my opinion” (or IMO or IMHO) to your arguments weakens them. You will sound less sure of yourself, or at the very least like you don’t care as much. This applies to actual speech as well as online discussion.

Some might argue that such disclaimers are common courtesy, but to the audience you’re addressing, they’re common sense. It’s not impolite to omit needless words, and doing so makes the remaining words stronger.

As the web matures, it’s also getting more complex. Yet much of it is still fundamentally based on things like HTML which are 30 years old. A new startup, FasterWeb, aims to bring these old technologies up to speed — as it were — making the web faster, by optimizing the old standards for doing new things. [Emphasis added]

The second sentence (red) reads like it was said in one breath, with no pauses at all. Read that sentence out loud without pausing. Does it sound right? No, not really. Any normal human being would say it as if there was a comma between “HTML” and “which,” so MG is either a space alien or a sloppy writer. The former can get him a well-paid role in a Hulu commercial, while the latter merits endless shame. Meanwhile, MG’s em dash mishap (blue) isn’t as egregious as his previous one, to be fair, but it makes the sentence read like it’s being said by William Shatner. The appropriate pause length would be indicated by commas.

If you click through to the article, you’ll notice MG wields the em dash slightly more proficiently one sentence later. While he should have used a colon instead, and a comma could have worked better as well, the em dash doesn’t completely mangle the sentence this time. I’ll chalk that up to luck on MG’s part.

Moving on, MG almost manages to complete a paragraph without any glaring mistakes, but botches it in the last three words:

And that’s why his firm had no hesitation in pouring an undisclosed amount of money into the Israeli-based venture.

I did bring this up in the article’s comments section, but since I’m covering the whole thing now, I might as well take the opportunity to mock it even further. The company MG is referring to in this sentence is based in Israel, and it is run by Israelis. MG disagrees, though, asserting that the company is headquartered inside the body of an Israeli person and staffed by blood cells or bacteria or nanobots or something. TechCrunch’s own database, however, describes the company as “Israel-based,” which makes quite a bit more sense. It’s possible that MG is a rabid Osmosis Jones fanboy, thus distorting his fact-checking, or he just doesn’t know how to use adjectives.

On second thought, owing to the fact that the last sentence of the article does call the company “Israel-based,” MG is either making an avant-garde artistic statement against the bourgeois prison that is consistency, or he knows how to copy and paste something from a press release.

After this, MG goes an astonishing three paragraphs without breaking something. He does begin a few sentences with the word “and,” which might cause a few amateur, wannabe grammar Nazis to cringe, but that’s just a stylistic choice and doesn’t compromise the article’s readability. That’s how many people talk (including me), after all. But two words into the sixth paragraph, he screws up yet again:

Obviously, a two to ten fold increase in speed is a big difference, but Leitersdorf notes that the more complex a page is, the higher the magnitude of optimization will be.

It may seem nitpicky and genuinely fascist of me to point this out, as it makes the article only minimally more awkward to read; I congratulate MG for his restraint in fucking things up. Nonetheless, “tenfold” is one word, as is “twofold,” thus the bold text would be written “two-to-tenfold” by an individual without a prehensile tail and less fond of bananas.

MG’s next two paragraphs both start in a way that indicates TechCrunch pays him per sentence:

The business model for the project seems sound as well. FasterWeb has a multi-pronged approach depending on the situation of the website or ISP.
[...]
He also notes that in their research, YL only found two companies even come close to doing what these guys are doing. But Leitersdorf declined to name them.

Both pairs of sentences were meant to be together, but were torn apart by the iron fist of MG Siegler’s ineptitude. Their forbidden love lives on in the hope that someday, a hero on a white horse will ride into the realm of TechCrunch and copy edit this chimpanzee’s work.

The former pair of sentences should be joined with a colon. Nothing fancy, just replace the period with one. A semicolon might work as well, but MG has already proved that he has no idea what to do with one of those. As they are now, these two sentences aren’t astronomically bad, but the latter pair absolutely requires a comma instead of the first period. Separated, they cause the reader’s IQ to go down by several clichéd insults.

From that point on, MG doesn’t screw things up anymore, closing his article with a grammatically sound, if unremarkable, set of six sentences. But alas, the damage has already been done, and not a soul with access to the article’s “Edit” button gives enough of a crap to take thirty seconds out of their day to fix any of it.

I hope that someday MG Siegler learns the error of his, well, errors and commits to writing articles that aren’t confusing and read like an actual person talking. But in a way, I also hope he never changes, because he’s certainly a great source of material for me.

Celebrities get impersonated on the web. They’re famous — everyone is anonymous — it happens. Most celebrities just ignore it; but some get pissed off.

Three sentences in, and writer MG Siegler — a man featured in the New York Times at one point, according to his bio — has already misused both the em dash and the semicolon. Perhaps this is an attempt by Siegler to sound intelligent through the use of esoteric punctuation; both sentences call for the use of boring, everyday commas.

Yes, I know, I’m being a grammar Nazi, and relatively few people care about this kind of thing. The problem, however, is that punctuation communicates ideas that words alone cannot. Letters represent the sounds we make when speaking; punctuation represents the pauses we make in between.

If you think it’s limiting to have only 140 characters to express a thought, try eliminating 90% of the English language. If people stop caring about proper use of punctuation, it will lose its meaning entirely. This will destroy a writer’s ability to communicate voice; without the range of punctuation we have available to us, it’s impossible to read anything as if an actual person might be speaking it. It’s not eliminating 90% of the English dictionary, but it’s certainly eliminating 90% of the spoken language.

Of course, this may be a by-product of the questionable literacy of Internet users. Perhaps very few people still know the difference between a comma, em dash, semicolon, or paragraph break, and thus it no longer matters; every writer is the same to people who don’t know how to read for voice.

To be fair, none of my English classes ever mentioned proper use of the em dash or semicolon; if I recall correctly, I learned both through a combination of my father and Wikipedia. So, yes, this is a complex, deep-rooted problem with all sorts of causes and effects. That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be fixed.

Okay, now I’m going to finish reading that TechCrunch article.

>From: reQall
>Date: Thu, 7 May 2009 11:53:24 +0000
>To: <Withheld so you won't spam my mom>
>Subject: Added: Look at Joe's gold in the Swiss Bank....
>
>Added to reQall:
>Look at Joe's gold in the Swiss Bank.

That’s not exactly what I said. I said ‘look at Joe’s goals in the system.’ Whatever…

The botched transcription touches on the suspicious. If you decide to hop on reQall, make sure you don’t slur your words reminding yourself to “show up at” your son’s football game. An innocent mistake by the system could cause a suicide bomber panic at Giants stadium.