Clara Bow! Also Dom DeLuise, Barry Manilow and Russell Tyrone Jones, AKA Ol' Dirty Bastard. So you see we Brooklynites have a lot to be proud of, by golly! The thing I don't understand is how any of us manages to live past, say, thirty or thirty-five. At the risk of stating the obvious, the facilities to whom we entrust our lives, i.e. our hospitals, are far from stellar to say the least. Hatzolah EMTs, guys who know a thing or two about the quality of medical facilities in our fine borough, recommend exactly three hospitals: Lutheran, Maimonides and Methodist, not necessarily in that order. If you'll recall, when, in a state of delusion (not to mention ignorance), I asked to be taken to Beth Israel, they looked at me like I had two heads. Wow...four commas in one sentence; I think that's a new personal best. Or worst. No EMT worth his salt* would transport a seriously ill patient to someplace like Kings County, for example. Or Coney Island. Or Brookdale. Or Woodhull. Omigosh, Woodhull! Forget "seriously ill"...you wouldn't take someone with a hangnail to woodhull! So apparently we denizens of the Borough of Kings must indeed be a hearty lot. I bring this all up because the Hatzolah members I happened to draw on Friday took me to Community Hospital. Perhaps they were on drugs. Perhaps they had had lobotomies. Perhaps they simply didn't like me, although, as I'm, sure you're aware, that last scenario is highly unlikely. Who knows? Maybe they were new or tired or just plain stupid. Bottom line is they took me to an alleged hospital that makes my old favorite Beth Israel look like Columbia Presbyterian. Ostensibly the reason was that driving was still quite difficult because the many of the local streets had still not seen a snowplow. Frankly, I would rather have taken my chances slip-sliding my way down the street to Methodist than wind up in Community, a laughable hellhole of a hospital if there ever was one. To be continued even more...
*Just in case you're interested in where the expression "worth his salt" came from...
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/330476/popular_phrases_origin_and_meaning.html?cat=37
when you count four commas in one sentence you may want to look at the possibility (and probability) of a run-on sentence and/or unnecessary commas.
ReplyDeleteI, personally, no matter what you think, feel that in certain situations, a comma, no matter how clumsy it may appear to be, may be exactly the thing, grammatically speaking, that will ultimately save a long sentence, as unwieldy as it might be, from becoming awkward, or, even worse, a run-on.
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