Thursday, January 8, 2009

Buy Nothing Day? Bank Nothing Day!


When I had an income I used to buy Adbusters magazine. Adbusters is a good magazine, albeit in a oxymoronic fashion. They're anti-corporate, anti-consumerist, and are the chief proponents of 'Buy Nothing Day'. Me, I took this sentiment to heart and made every day Buy Nothing Day, Adbusters included. Do they still exist Adbusters? You'd have to wonder about a product that urges you not to buy any products, theirs included. Perhaps they should have called it 'Buy Nothing Except This Magazine Day', ha ha. But then Adbusters never did have a sense of humour.

Self contradictions aside, their broad point was perfectly valid. Corporations are soulless inhuman entities that will only ever view people in terms of dollars. In many ways, they're just the old company-store gag writ large, and with a marketing division. Fuck the lot of them. If somebody took corporations out the back and shot them, I'd bring the beers.

But corporations aren't intrinsically wicked. There's no reason a corporation couldn't be as good as their marketing says they are. Conceivably they could make good and useful products that make the world a better place; they could make all their staff into shareholders and pay them a decent wage; they could also pay decent prices for any raw materials purchased in the third world; they could... hell I could go on and on describing some fantasy corporation that will never exist. Not in this world. If such a creature did exist, the other corporations would have to kill it if for no other reason than it makes them look bad.

Daydreaming aside, the point I'm getting at is that corporations are not intrinsically wicked in the way that (apropos the last piece) banks are. By banks I mean the banks that we're all forced to use, those based on a system of usury. Usury is their operating system and every aspect of them is built on it. On top of usury's intrinsic wickedness, there's also its undeniable no-future pyramid scam idiocy. Truth be known the former is derived from the latter. It's like how pork is considered wicked on account of its propensity, if stored without refrigeration, to kill people.

So if we object to corporations and can withdraw our custom by way of a Buy Nothing Day, why can't we do the same for banks? Why can't we have a Bank Nothing Day? Well, I'll tell you, because it's actually very simple. It's because this option is a non-option. Or to put it another way, an abject impossibility. When it comes to banks, you can either use them or you can fuck off and die. Banks, which should be merely just another service provider, ain't. They are utterly singular. They are the only service provider that your own government demands you must be a customer of.


Take me for example. I actually did this. I took all my money out of the bank, shut down my accounts, and cut up my credit cards. If you wanted to tell me I'm nuts, I'm not going to argue with you. Hell, I'll agree, I am nuts. It all seemed like a good idea at the time what with me imagining that I'd be spending the rest of my life in a Zen temple. But that didn't work out and here I am back in the white man's world, a mad bastard who refuses to go back to the bank.

Mind you, it's all very well for me, what with being single with no kids. People who do have kids don't have this option open to them. But that's somewhat short-sighted - I don't actually have this option open to me either. My life is precisely as impossible as yours would be. Not having a bank account bars me from just about everything. Working, or more exactly working legally, is impossible. Not only are there very few employers willing to pay cash but the only way to deal with the tax department is via a bank account. Likewise no government monies can be paid or received without a bank account. I have several reasons for refusing to take the government's money but not least amongst them is the fact that they demand I be a bank customer.

It's not just things monetary that one is barred from. I cannot get a driver's license either because I don't have enough ID's. One needs three pieces of identification to get a driver's license and the one that I'm missing is a bank account. They've got it stitched up these fucking banks don't they? My own government acts as their stand-over man insisting I give them my money.

So what's to be done? Apart from following me into oblivion? There's Islamic banking, sure. Good luck with that one. Can a punter walk into an Islamic bank and open an account? Not where I live. What of those non-money exchange systems that one hears of people in country areas using? They have various names - hours, echoes, etc. These are a perfectly brilliant idea and are the living embodiment of non-usurious money. Invariably there is no 'money' as such. They are often merely a 'credit' in a public central register. If one works an hour (say, mowing Mrs. Farquhar's lawn) one is credited with an 'hour'. It's debt free and functions on a simple labour-equals-credit basis. The richest person in town, rather than being an object of envy, would be admired by all on account of the fact that he/she has done the most for the most people.


Otherwise, perhaps people could get together and just make their own bank. Is there any reason why this can't be done? Find a building, renovate it with a big fuck-off safe, and declare yourselves a no-interest, 100% reserve, non-fractional bank. Hell, run it on Islamic principles. The appeal to customers is that unlike every other bank, it cannot collapse and will never have a bank run. The sales pitch to new customers would function as a quick lesson in the history of banking.

Mind you, it occurs to me that the regular bullshit cartel banks would view such a creature as the anti-christ and would do whatever it took to kill it. Perhaps it would be best to keep it low-key, very low-key. Before I ran off to the Zen monastery, I attempted to talk all of my friends into quitting the city and running off to the country to form some variation of commune (not that I care for the word). I failed obviously but had that succeeded a simple let's-keep-it-to-ourselves version of the above private bank would have made a lot of sense. It would have been a variation of 'keeping your money under the bed' albeit with some crazy big bed with a dozen families in it. Don't worry, it's just a metaphor. Actually it would just be a well-hidden safe in which everyone kept their money, and all administered by, I don't know, several senior trustworthy people. Individuals could know how much money they had, and otherwise keep an eye on things, by checking a public computer kept in the lavanderia/meeting house. Well that was my plan anyway. (BTW - the name of this place, had it come off, would have been selflessness. Sigh)

The key to each of the above is people acting in concert. The word 'commonwealth' just popped into my head. It's been abused to the point of death now, but in principle it's a worthy idea. It's meaning now, as in 'The Commonwealth of Australia', is so far departed from its roots that it's laughable. The state owns it, and the state, such as it is, belongs to the bankers. The bankers, sure enough, don't view the word 'common' as meaning 'shared'. They view it as meaning 'of, or belonging to, serfs'. And for them, the punchline to the 'commonwealth' gag is 'all flows to us', ha ha. Well, fuck them. We can steal it back. But only if we can act in concert. Easier said than done, sure enough. The success of the banks and their corporate whores in turning Western society into an atomised, centrifugal collection of self-obsessed greedheads has been almost total.

Without any mechanism by which we can act in concert, we're fucked. We're just a bunch of John Connors hoping we don't fall afoul of Arnie or any of the other terminators. Well not quite. John Connor didn't have the internet (Hollywood hates the internet, doncha know). We have it, but what does that mean? We can communicate sure, but can we act in concert? Nup. We don't have the numbers to do anything global. We could do something if we were local, but we ain't. Never mind, we've found a quiet corner and we can all swap ideas. So enough of me and mine, you tell me yours. Buy Nothing Day is a doddle. How do we do Bank Nothing Day? Over to you...

35 comments:

nobody said...

It's my habit here to post a given piece and then edit in-situ. It's almost impossible to edit yourself. Since I know what I intended to write, when I re-read it my eye slides straight over whatever it was I actually wrote, if you can dig it. The only effective way to edit your own stuff is to put it in the bottom drawer for a couple of months until you can no longer remember what it was you intended to say. That's not going to happen obviously.

So the next best thing is to view it in a different typeface on a different background. Subsequently I post it and then re-write it. Some pieces change very little and some change a lot. This was one of the latter and the whole back end got completely re-written.

Editing like this was fine back when I got twenty hits a day and the likelihood of someone reading the raw version was slim. Now with the hits in the hundreds, sometimes a dozen people will read something really quite different to the final piece. Which is precisely what happened today.

Anyway I apologise to those people. And cringe that they read such shit, ha ha. There's no point urging people to wait before they read it. That'd never work. Anyway I'll sort something out and attempt to make sure it doesn't happen in the future. Yoroshiku.

the Silverfish said...

Too tired to comment much, just got back from the city, agree with most of what you have said. will reply later. God I hate Narclolepsy.I mean I really do.

nobody said...

Not as much fun as narcotics, that's for sure.

Franz said...

Nobody,

I have a similar situation to your. Nuts, but similar.

The wife started taking care of the banking in the 80s (Bush #1) and she just cashed my stuff. They asked her for the first few times who it was. She said "It's the name I use at my other job."

It was just a convenience for me till after I "retired" (ie, got a teeny-weeny pension after the last downsize, but another real job of course) then I realized she'd taken me OFF THE SCREEN.

Orwell would be proud of me! It was an accident but so far as I know, to the Fed and the global plantation I'm an Unperson. I do not exist, hurrah!

But the wife worries me. Since I've become her alias, she might be up for some shit if some screw does some checking. So far so good.

But this is America, becoming the place Orwell described too well. Worried about her. As a phantom I can only help her so much. Maybe not enough.

Anonymous said...

The status quo is the hurdle Nobody so long as any remnant of our current civilisation exists.
Tony

Anonymous said...

I know exactly what you mean about editing your own work Mr. N, as a mercenary editorial type (read: "freelancer") for the last decade or so, I am more often than not required to edit and proof my own material before submitting the final product to a client/editor.

The most effective technique I've found involves reading the text aloud -- it must be aloud -- as if I was reading it to a group like a speech/story or pitching the copy directly to the client/editor. You'll find well over 90% of the misspellings, typos and clunky syntax with this simple act. Trust me.

As for Bank Nothing Day, it's a noble idea which my head and heart wholly support in principle -- but we're not quite there yet. We're working our way into the local food networks and trading a little more there every year, and as you so accurately state: without the bank account there's just no "funk" in the bureaucratic function...

Anonymous said...

Adbusters is still around.

I've never liked banks, have never borrowed any money from them and have never had a credit card though I do have a bank account as it is impossible to get wages without one.

I often have buy nothing days although money is still spent even if I sit still and look out the window all day, it is spent in the form of council taxes, rent, electric, water and gas bills etc.

Buy nothing is easy once you have lost the desire for new material possessions, I only buy things when I have to and the only reason I go in most shops is to keep warm and read the magazines for free.

When the bank bailouts happened my first thought was why give money to the banking scum so that they can carry on as they have and give themselves huge "bonuses". This huge pile of money which has disappeared without a trace could have been used to set up new banks and the old rubbish banks could have gone out of business like they should have. These new banks could have been run as not for profit organisations with a small interest charge to cover operating costs. For some reason this idea was never mentioned though I expect that I was not the only person to think of it. My only practical advice to shaft the banks is to take all your wages out of the bank as soon as they are paid in and keep your money in cash. If enough people did this it could do some good.

Penny said...

isn't what you are thinking of along the lines of a credit union, you know those cooperative kind?

I think we have one left locally here, if I am not mistaken.
It sprang out of a big employer that used to be here, but is long gone now, but there credit union lives on..

There were more, but they were swallowed up by the big banks.
They must be quite a catch for the big banks.

Have you ever heard of Catherine Austin Fitts?
In some ways it is like you are channeling her.

here's an addy to a piece

http://www.gata.org/node/6257

Penny said...

isn't what you are thinking of along the lines of a credit union, you know those cooperative kind?

I think we have one left locally here, if I am not mistaken.
It sprang out of a big employer that used to be here, but is long gone now, but there credit union lives on..

There were more, but they were swallowed up by the big banks.
They must be quite a catch for the big banks.

Have you ever heard of Catherine Austin Fitts?
In some ways it is like you are channeling her.

here's an addy to a piece

http://www.gata.org/node/6257

Penny said...

btw: google blogger is being tempermental this am

notamobster said...

Nobes - I would have this brief addendum. If one were to start the "1st Usury-free Bank of America" they would not be able to use the Federal Reserve Note (US$). This being the case, they could also, not use a currency of their own creation. That is considered counterfeiting, and will probably gain one a death sentence, soon...

You don't even have to attempt to make it look like "real" money(ha!), just the fact that you are using it as a medium for transacting, makes you a counterfeiter. Barter is actually illegal in this country, as I imagine it is in all privately-owned-central-bank countries.

The only legal tender which may of law, be used for debts, "public and private" (in the US, and I imagine it is likewise in Oz; elsewhere) is the US Federal Reserve Note (or your regional variation of the same).

Anonymous said...

I love your idea of a no-interest non fractional reserve bank, actually I thought of it myself a while ago. Since most everyone who has a bank account isn't trying to earn interest but rather to cash checks and keep their money in a safe place, they don't need this fractional reserve crap ; just a simple, safe place to keep their funds. Call it a money-cooperative.

nobody said...

Thanks folks.

Frank! Let's make a club. The Unperson Club. C'mon everyone! If you hate joining things, join up! If you don't want to be part of a herd, run with us! If you hate doing thing on the grounds that 'everyone's doing it' come and join us and we'll all do it together! Hee hee, this a thousand other idiotic advertising oxymorons...

Thanks Mir, that sounds pretty sensible. I'll give it a burl but I suspect I'll drive the neighbours mad. I'll have to get me one of them Cones of Silence.

Hey John. For singletons, I think your option is just about all there is. I function like Frank but by way of my father. But I've talked him into keeping as little as possible in the bank. Aside from not wishing to give money to arseholes there's the very real possibility of coming bank collapses. And Kevin Rudd's deposit guarantees or no, I could still imagine a speech outlining how 'Yes, we did guarantee everyone's deposits but with the new and unforeseen collapse in the global economy we've no choice but to...' blah blah blah. Rudd of course will say whatever he's told to. And Brown. And Harper. And Obama too.

Thanks Pen. Yeah I have a buddy who lives up in the hills and her town has something like that. But they still run on a principle of usury.

Actually I should clarify things. It's not just the usury. Having a bank account (that's not yours to control) is a means by which you can be controlled. You might roll your eyes at this but I could posit an not-so-unlikely scenario where this is precisely what happens. Remember that scene in Blow where Johnny Depp races off to Panama, lobs in at the bank where he has bazillions, and they all just laugh at him? And there he was, absolutely and completely helpless. Hmm...

Hey NaM. Barter is illegal? These motherfuckers have things stitched up don't they. I'll bet throwing molotov cocktails at the Fed is illegal too. Oh well, I guess we'll just have to be slaves. We wouldn't want anyone breaking the law would we NaM? Ha ha ha, just tugging on your leg there mate.

Thanks anon. It seems the sensible thing amongst all of this is a sort of hodge-podge arrangement of 'all of the above' kind of thing. Thus -

- Have a bank account, but with as little money in it as possible.
- Have as few bank accounts as necessary ie. a family simple uses one. Really, one is all they need.
- Join with others to have an alternative safe place to keep the majority of everyone's cash. A safe, kept somewhere um, safe, that can only be opened by more than one key. Who owns what is kept in a central semi-public register.
- No interest, no nothing, just security.
- Keep it quiet. Only those involved know and it's not discussed outside the circle.

Meanwhile a loud public discussion on how fucked up usurious banking is.

PS I happen to live in a part of the world that's so white, it hurts my eyes. But if I was in Sydney, say, it would be interesting to meet with someone from the Muslim community and ask if banking with them isn't a possibility. Even if nothing came from it I expect you'd be treated to a cup of tea and a piece of baclava. Marvellously hospitable people, Muslims. And me, I reckon good baclava is better than chocolate.

nobody said...

Ha! It's been a while but look who just popped in -

pnxuser1.tsa.dhs.gov (Ibm) [Label IP Address]

District Of Columbia, Washington, United States, 0 returning visit

Date Time WebPage
9th January 2009 07:20:40

search.yahoo.com/search?p=%22bad draftees%22&fr=yfp-t-815&toggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8

churchofnobody.blogspot.com/2008/05/in-pondering-draft-sudden-thought.html

'bad draftees' eh? I wonder why homeland security would be searching for that?

the Silverfish said...

You did Google the ID my friend remember . I wrote the book on being Nobody.

nobody said...

You sure did, Silv. You were waaay ahead of me. I didn't twig until too late. Subsequently my name exists in a place or two. Mind you, it's as common as muck, so I doubt even I'd be able to find me now.

Otherwise I'll have to get me a copy of that book. Fingers crossed you'll be kind enough to continue emailing it to me in installments.

Sorry folks, bit of an in-joke there. There's a lot more to Silv than merely being attacked by assorted wild animals, ha ha.

Anonymous said...

Wow, fantastic story about the "deer hunt" by silverfish. It becomes clearer why wolves pick a sick/old one! It reminds me of something I read about some kind of herd animal in Africa, that when a predator approaches young males warn the herd by doing these huge springing leaps as they run, as if to say to the lions, " I've got so much extra energy and strength to burn I don't even have to focus on getting away from you."

Another twist on buying nothing is what heroic Tim DeChristopher did recently...Crashed an auction where oil and gas drilling companies were preparing to quickly carve up some choice lands before Bush gets out of office. Tim registered as a bidder and bid on and won 1.8 million dollars worth of land, 10 parcels, without having any money to pay it, entangling the land legally until at least Bush is out of office and maybe foiling the sale completely!

Anonymous said...

Then there is buying something, but having no money, like Tim DeChristopher did recently as civil disobediance environmental protection activism.

Anonymous said...

From Belgium,

Congrats Mr N. You have made the TCC link. I have just discovered your blog which is now bookmarked and put up a link to your site – in the comments at least.

http://troutclancampfire.blogspot.com/search?q=

Keep up the good work.

Anonymous said...

"Thanks Mir, that sounds pretty sensible. I'll give it a burl but I suspect I'll drive the neighbours mad. I'll have to get me one of them Cones of Silence."

When I say aloud, I simply mean speaking the words loud enough that the "audience of one" between your ears could directly access the words floating there, immanent and fading fast, to evaluate them while they're still in their most vibrant state. No mega- or microphone required.

It's the act of lifting them off the page and putting traction to them that's crucial, puffing them full of hot air and proper magic so as to gauge their overall beauty and effectivity -- or lack thereof.

Think of it as a sort of temporal painting with words, or the casting of a spell, for that is what it truly is. Only in this state can you separate yourself from them by enough physical distance so as to render them independent be capable of making the necessary adjustments.

Kevenj said...

"'bad draftees' eh? I wonder why.."

Perhaps it's one of those 'no-kid-left-behind' English subs that were fired and decided to take a part time gig at HS to make sure *nobody* posts a bad first draft?

That or they just want to be friends.

Hee Hee.

Anonymous said...

NoM: Barter and alternative local currencies are illegal? Really? I actually didn't know that they were formally against the law. Strongly discouraged by color-of-law practices, sure (just like the way they make kids take vaccines), but I'm not sure if there's actual laws on the books against swapping an iPod for a roast pig.

nobs, I think the answer here is voluntary simplicity. You ever check out cryptogon? He talks a lot about that: getting off the grid, reducing one's dependence on (and contribution to) the system. The less of your energy you're using within it, the less They can siphon off, and the more you have available to do what you really want. Complete independence is impossible at this stage in the game - one way or another interdependence is unavoidable, after all - but you can deny the Machine your talent, your creativity, your imagination, holding back from it those qualities and efforts that it most desires to coopt. I like this solution because it works more or less immediately at the individual scale (unlike the commune idea, where like you said you have to convince a dozen mates to go along with you), while if being adopted as a mass movement would essentially bring the Machine crashing to the ground.

All that said, so far as I can tell you're already doing that, as are most of the other commenters. So steady as she goes! Hold the course, and damn the torpedoes.

nobody said...

Ya gotta love you folks. What with living with a senile old man mumbling inanities, this keeps me sane.

And Mir, I gave it a burl already and figured it out. Thanks mate. Mind you, I'm a visual fellow (I don't know about other people but I see words in my head as written text. Is that normal? I've no idea.) where was I? Oh yeah, visual fellow, so I still like to see the text in situ. Anyway I'm going to do both. And Mir, can you drop us a comment (which I won't publish) with your email in it? No particular reason, it'd just be nice to have a chat.

And hats off to that DeChristopher fellow. My kind of subversive.

And Brian, I think they may be Springboks. Susana would know for sure. Mind you, for rugby fans the word 'springboks' conjures up a whole other image, ha ha. But on the subject of predators and the predated, it's never quite as simple as most of the nature shows make out. If a predator catches a hoof and breaks a bone, he's fucked.

Here's a thought, imagine (somewhat madly sure) if all the springboks, or gazelles, or whatever, decided 'Fuck it. We've had it with these lions. We will not cease until they're all dead', the lions, believe it or not, wouldn't stand a chance. They'd be wiped out. Like I said, it's a thought...

Anonymous said...

Regarding I.D., banking, banksters, etc. there was something very interesting on WRH a while back: www.freedomfiles.org/mary-book.pdf
This was a very creative and gutsy woman's active approach to freeing herself from the de facto slavery that more and more people are starting to help each other to notice/understand.
She has an approach to fighting fire with fire by understanding how to use fractional reserve against itself based on her understanding of the UCC- universal commercial code-which she says underlies/rules the entire system. I think her tactic is brilliant. Her writing is not completely clear but it bears study. She claims that , logically, HER SIGNATURE on a loan document is what is actually "creating" the "VALUE" of the fiat currency BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT THE BANK NEEDS IN ORDER TO GENERATE THE LOAN and therefore she says that HER SIGNATURE is worth the money that she is borrowing and that her act of signing discharges the debt. She says her signature is worth billions as it could potentially create billions in debt and that she is really being quite generous in selling it to the bank in satisfaction of a loan for, say, a mere 15,000 "dollars." She describes her actual experiences making this argument in court successfully.

Anonymous said...

Re; "had it with these lions," see on youtube the crocodile vs. buffalo video. Intense.

I've heard, Susanna may know, that arguments between lions and hyenas on the savannah can go either way, and usually settle according to which team happens to have the most biomass that day. Yes, a sprained ankle can be "curtains" for a predator or a grass eater.

su said...

Well the bank gave me a friendly reminder call about the account and the necessary steps to save it.

And while most of me realises that I really need to get off my arse and deal with it, there is a tiny part in me (which is by the far the strongest) that is just incapable of playing the game.
So watch this space.

I was once witness to something quite remarkable. At a waterhole at sunset there was an assortment of animals. The lions moved in and the buck, buffalo, giraffes moved out except for a somewhat decrepit buffalo.
Four lionesses surrounded him and it looked like he was about to have an interview with Saint Peter.
But then (very rare) three buffalo(less victims then predators) returned and charged the lionesses who vanished over the horizon.
It is the kind of image I hold onto in life.
That those of us lower in the food chain do stand a chance, if we stand together.

Penny said...

nobody: i know this is not the place, but, I wanted to mention if you can, see the movie "Blindness"
Julianne Moore is in it.

It is really interesting.
well done, good acting, story and all, based on a book, so my kiddo tells me, a book she read.

All I saw in it, metaphor for "the camps" the blind people being those that could not see.

Or were they the ones, that did see, and ended up in the camps, only to survive in the end??

It just could go alot of ways, but if you get a chance see it

kikz said...

hey y'all,

just chkn' in b4 dinner.. sun evenin. all is well. kid is up walking, feeding herself, and wiping her own bum:) still lots of getting used to's, and mental meltdowns due to raging teen horRoRmoAns, the drugs and the situation.. but she's a trooper!
little badass>:)

anyway, i'm beyond tired.. cafeteria opens in a min or two.. and i can't miss dinner again.. miss'd lunch today.. they hav crazy hrs for meals...

send us good thoughts, and many thanks.. she may come home this wed.. dunno...

all for now..
k*

the Silverfish said...

Just a short note, I think that you already have a pretty good take on my position on banking. You'd be amazed at how well dead people balance a check book.(snigger)

nobody said...

Thanks folks,

I should have said earlier - thanks Belgium. I'm checking that blog out. Those who aren't jammed in a tiny apartment in a bullshit tourist town might want to go there and check it out. It's a discussion of living on the land and growing your own food. And all with the big picture understood. Best I could make out anyway. And onya KJ, good one.

Kikz, you carry on trooper. But do eat something and do get some sleep. We don't want to be directing our prayers to you as well. Prayer fatigue! Thanks Brian, I do like pdf's. They're on my hard-drive, there when I need them. And thanks Pen, I'll keep an eye out. And thanks Susana, that was cool.

I think in many ways Africa is a lot like Australia. Certainly in terms of vastness. But in many ways, it's nothing like Australia. We have no land-based predators here. Raptors are small potatoes, and the only things to worry about are in the water. Which is to say crocs.

Okay, so there are dingoes but they're cowardly critters and not so different to raptors in terms of what they eat. Mostly rabbits I expect. And here, the more dead rabbits, the better.

Off to finish the next piece. God knows what people will make of it. Hell, I don't know what to make of it.

Oh and Silv - shhhh! On the other hand, as ideas go, that's one to die for, ha ha.

Anonymous said...

In spite of what notamobster said, barter is NOT illegal and it is perfectly legal to create and trade in your own currency. Here's a MSM story from the Chicago Tribune about a community in Illinois that is doing exactly that:http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-talk_moneydec03,0,2902061.story

(I tried to hyperlink it, but I've apparently lost my html skillz during my hiatus.)

nobody said...

Thanks Melisande,

NaM, did you cop a scrute at that? Interesting huh? Mind you, I checked out the comments and it was the usual wall-to-wall stupidness...

Anonymous said...

"It's" is a contraction of "it is." The possessive "its" meaning "it owns" does not have an apostrophe. Please don't say "it's" when you mean "its."

I love your blog, you rock!

nobody said...

How honoured I am to have received my very own visit from the anonymous 'its' pedant. So you found an error did you? Out of curiosity, I just now searched my own front page (which only has five articles on it - the blog in total has 105) for instances of both 'its' and 'it's' and found 58 results in all. And you found a single error, did you?



Bully for you. But did it not occur to you that between that single error and 57 correct usages, that perhaps I'm perfectly well aware of the rules governing 'its' as a contraction and as a possessive? It seems not.



Spookily enough, in this very comments page (it's right there at the top, perhaps you missed it in your rush to correct me), I discuss the near-impossibility of editing one's own work.



But whatever! Score one to the pedant! How clever you are! What with your mastery of the English language, your tireless avidity at pointing out the errors of others, and of course, your fulsome praise, you are a treat to have around. I'm sure you won't take it amiss if I say that you are precisely as great as you think you are. All hail thee!

baz recon said...

Been having some trouble trying to post a comment over on trout-clan-campfire, 1st-time and after now trying for several days unsuccessfully thought I'd try commenting here (frustration showing)! Unsure wtf I'm doing wrong? Perseverance--find it somewhat easier facing down a wild sow!