Last year, during Preppy Week, we examined some of the spoofs created by opportunistic cash-ins thanks to the success of “The Official Preppy Handbook.”
But the preppy cash-grab went beyond mere words and drawings. To wit, a video game for the Atari console that allowed hoi polloi to sit in front of its TV sets and imagine a Lacoste-clad private school twit getting his comeuppance be being eaten alive by alligators.
Preppie, released in 1982 by Adventure International, is not only a Preppy Handbook cash-in, it’s a Frogger rip-off. It also gives a whole new meaning to the term “gatoring.” The description on the back of the game reads:
Teeing off on the course may be delightfully fashionable, but it can be pretty dangerous on this crazy green! Preppie is a graphics tour de force that dares your preppie to cross an alligator-filled river and recover his wayward golf ball. Dangers lurk everywhere — from speeding golf cards to monster frogs. Only a true Ivy Leaguer could face up to this kind of punishment!
The game extols various features “mummy would most certainly approve of,” and notes that it showcases 28 Atari colors “that will delight and thrill the most fashion-conscious gamester.
“So why go slumming with lesser simulations?” it concludes. “You’ll be the toast of the country club with Preppie.”
There’s truth in advertising. As you can see, Preppie was definitely a graphics tour de force:
Video games may not be prep, but that doesn’t stop some games from including prep characters. In the contemporary video game Bully, one of the gangs is known as the Preppies. They’re led by a rich kid named Derby Harrington, and have haircuts described as “Ivy League.”
I believe that the “people” en masse, i.e., the shiny fabriced, could be considered a collective noun and therefore take the singular possessive. Of course my Anglophilia in these and other matters is tempered by being a first cousin of John Hancock and the great-great-great-great grandson of a Captain (later Major) Goodwin of the Massachusetts Militia.
Writing is a lot like driving… The typical driver cannot go more than three miles without making some minor infraction. A state trooper told me that as a child. Now, as an English teacher, I can say that we all fall short of the glory and you’d be hard pressed to write a single paragraph that nobody could find fault with.
The purpose of driving is to get to a point, without killing anyone. The purpose of writing is to be understood. In these endeavours, any other objective is secondary.
With all that said, you are sitting at a computer, and you can look-up “highbrow” terms. There’s no need to fear them anymore. Besides, a punk rock band is called “Oi! Polloi”, so I question how “highbrow” and esoteric the term is.
I might have been exasperated, but I don’t think I was irate; and I fail to see what is obsessive about making a point once and just once. But for what it is worth: “hoi polloi” is a Greek expression, and it is plural. I have always seen it used as a plural, and anyway, if it meant “the masses”, that would still be a plural, would it not?
And ScoobyDubious: because I know who/what you are talking about, I will not take your cancer swipe personally. But, Christ, it is a truly disgusting remark to make, no two ways about it.
Well… just have no idea what you are talking about. (wink) It was just an “innocent” comparison to emphasize your OTT reaction compared to things in life that really matter.
But seriously, i have read some of the outright nastiest personal attacks from the individual in question. Not vague allusions, but direct real-name, online, vicious, non-stop obsessive attacks.
If for no other reason than to appeal to his self-centeredness, he could be informed that his nastiness is turning people away from HIS own site. People like me who came there only for talk about clothes and don’t want to constantly read his obsessive nastiness.
Readers don’t think he is clever. It doesn’t elevate him to constantly bring others down. He just comes across as sad, bitter, nasty, obsessive, miserable and frankly bat**** crazy.
And for the last time, I am not CC’s alter-ego, or “sock puppet”. We have never even met. Watch how this gets spun in his alternative reality.
Ending sentences with prepositions is the sort of nonsense up with which I will not put!
But seriously, many sentences that appear to end with a preposition aren’t ending with a preposition at all: they’re ending with a phrasal verb.
In English, a phrasal verb is a verb that consists of two or more words. The first word is also found as an independent verb, and the second and following words are, when used in other contexts, prepositions. What makes phrasal verbs different from verb plus preposition combinations is that the meaning of phrasal verbs is different from the meaning of the verb alone, and these meanings cannot be predicted from the component parts.
For example, we have the verb throw, ‘to propel or cast (something).’ We can throw at, in which case throw still means ‘propel,’ and at indicates a position or location. Then we have phrasal verbs such as throw out or throw away, both meaning ‘to dispose of (something).’ Similarly, we also have throw up, ‘to vomit.’ Notice that the meanings of the phrasal verbs are not predictable based on the parts.
Phrasal verbs are notoriously difficult for non-native speakers to master, especially because we often put an object in between the parts of a phrasal verb, e.g., throw it away. Many times, putting the object after the phrasal verb is just wrong, e.g., “throw away it” [sic], something no self-respecting native speaker of English would ever say, but something that non-natives have been known to utter.
Having said that, I would like to share a joke.
An 18-year-old from a rural Texas town got accepted by Yale, and is exploring the campus in the week before classes. He asks a passerby, a Boston Brahmin upperclassman, “‘scuse me, but where’s th’ lahbrary at?” The upperclassman looks down his nose at the bumpkin and sneers, “at Yale, we do not end our sentences with prepositions.” The young Texan says, “OK. Where’s the lahbrary at, a-hole?”
I think we all know that the English invented “bullying”. Americans just copied it.
An ancestor of mine fired (what some say was) the first shot of the American Revolution during The Gaspee Affair of 1772. I kid you not.
You can Google or Wikipedia it, but he shot Lieutenant William Dudingston of the British ship HMS Gaspee. Then they torched his ship.
I believe that the “people” en masse, i.e., the shiny fabriced, could be considered a collective noun and therefore take the singular possessive. Of course my Anglophilia in these and other matters is tempered by being a first cousin of John Hancock and the great-great-great-great grandson of a Captain (later Major) Goodwin of the Massachusetts Militia.
Writing is a lot like driving… The typical driver cannot go more than three miles without making some minor infraction. A state trooper told me that as a child. Now, as an English teacher, I can say that we all fall short of the glory and you’d be hard pressed to write a single paragraph that nobody could find fault with.
The purpose of driving is to get to a point, without killing anyone. The purpose of writing is to be understood. In these endeavours, any other objective is secondary.
With all that said, you are sitting at a computer, and you can look-up “highbrow” terms. There’s no need to fear them anymore. Besides, a punk rock band is called “Oi! Polloi”, so I question how “highbrow” and esoteric the term is.
I might have been exasperated, but I don’t think I was irate; and I fail to see what is obsessive about making a point once and just once. But for what it is worth: “hoi polloi” is a Greek expression, and it is plural. I have always seen it used as a plural, and anyway, if it meant “the masses”, that would still be a plural, would it not?
And ScoobyDubious: because I know who/what you are talking about, I will not take your cancer swipe personally. But, Christ, it is a truly disgusting remark to make, no two ways about it.
@j.
Well… just have no idea what you are talking about. (wink) It was just an “innocent” comparison to emphasize your OTT reaction compared to things in life that really matter.
But seriously, i have read some of the outright nastiest personal attacks from the individual in question. Not vague allusions, but direct real-name, online, vicious, non-stop obsessive attacks.
If for no other reason than to appeal to his self-centeredness, he could be informed that his nastiness is turning people away from HIS own site. People like me who came there only for talk about clothes and don’t want to constantly read his obsessive nastiness.
Readers don’t think he is clever. It doesn’t elevate him to constantly bring others down. He just comes across as sad, bitter, nasty, obsessive, miserable and frankly bat**** crazy.
And for the last time, I am not CC’s alter-ego, or “sock puppet”. We have never even met. Watch how this gets spun in his alternative reality.
@N.d’L
I guess you’re right, because a preposition is a lousy thing to end a sentence with 🙂
Ending sentences with prepositions is the sort of nonsense up with which I will not put!
But seriously, many sentences that appear to end with a preposition aren’t ending with a preposition at all: they’re ending with a phrasal verb.
In English, a phrasal verb is a verb that consists of two or more words. The first word is also found as an independent verb, and the second and following words are, when used in other contexts, prepositions. What makes phrasal verbs different from verb plus preposition combinations is that the meaning of phrasal verbs is different from the meaning of the verb alone, and these meanings cannot be predicted from the component parts.
For example, we have the verb throw, ‘to propel or cast (something).’ We can throw at, in which case throw still means ‘propel,’ and at indicates a position or location. Then we have phrasal verbs such as throw out or throw away, both meaning ‘to dispose of (something).’ Similarly, we also have throw up, ‘to vomit.’ Notice that the meanings of the phrasal verbs are not predictable based on the parts.
Phrasal verbs are notoriously difficult for non-native speakers to master, especially because we often put an object in between the parts of a phrasal verb, e.g., throw it away. Many times, putting the object after the phrasal verb is just wrong, e.g., “throw away it” [sic], something no self-respecting native speaker of English would ever say, but something that non-natives have been known to utter.
Having said that, I would like to share a joke.
An 18-year-old from a rural Texas town got accepted by Yale, and is exploring the campus in the week before classes. He asks a passerby, a Boston Brahmin upperclassman, “‘scuse me, but where’s th’ lahbrary at?” The upperclassman looks down his nose at the bumpkin and sneers, “at Yale, we do not end our sentences with prepositions.” The young Texan says, “OK. Where’s the lahbrary at, a-hole?”