Battle Viscosity sounds like a phrase that the unix console would output while compiling

[cimorene]

1. personality so big it seemed impossible for it to be snubbed out,



2. The school had gratuitously allowed the Metalhead to graduate,



3. the singer whaling into the microphone,



4. he had free reign to annoy his friends all day,



5. Steve’s viscous battle

Comments

[princessofgeeks]

No. 1 might almost be a play on words.

[redthedragon]

wait, what's 4? i thought the expression was free reign, like, free rule/no rule of law on them. is it free rein?

[stranger]

I could actually see both 1. and 2. as deliberate comments, one about a personality not susceptible to snubs, and one about how remarkably, um, unexpected Meathead's gratuitous graduation is. "Free reign" however, makes for a long-standing mental sigh, since it's so *almost* reasonable, but not quite; a free rein, and the consequences thereof, is much more concretely understandable, even if one has only a vague idea what a horse is.

There's perhaps more inaccurate-substitute-word comedy now, since spellcheck weeds out the not-a-word strings. Well, sometimes. By the time I've told spellcheck to skip proper names, SF terms, British idioms, non-English phrases, regionalisms and broken-word speech fragments, I'm surprised it bothers to catch any actual mis-spellings.

Then I think about how irregular and generally ridiculous English is, especially about spelling, and wonder why I'm attached to traditionally correct usage instead of progressively welcoming logical re-visioning of the language.

[krait]

#3 immediately made me imagine some kind of concert that involves someone enthusiastically mimicking whalesong into a microphone. No idea what genre that'd be, but I'd probably attend! :D

[ealgylden]

I see #5 and other viscous variations constantly; in a canon that has large amounts of viscosity vis-a-vis tentacles and things, it's frustrating but probably not surprising. The one that grinds my gears is "interdenominational monsters." Repeatedly! If it were one author's tic, okay, but no! I have sometimes chuckled at the "no beta we die like [x]" tags, but seriously, kids, maybe get a beta.