Insert Nero Joke Here
August 31, 2010
Ancient Rome under Augustus is nearly the same size as Burning Man at Black Rock:
(Dear BBC — subjunctive tense, please. “If Burning Man WERE staged at…”)
Now before you conservatives get too excited, we’ve got a ways to go before you can make your ancient Rome/SF parallels:
27 BC – 14 AD: Augustus
14 AD – 37 AD: Tiberius
37 AD – 41 AD: Caligula
41 AD – 54 AD: Claudius
54 AD – 68 AD: Nero
And we’ve already had our fires (other than 1906 and 1989):
1849: Dec 24
1850: May 4
1850: Jun 14
1850: Sep 17
1851: May 3
1851: Jun 22
(Note to SF, watch out for May and June.)
Telstar Logisitics has more on how these events relate to our city seal:
(At least there’s no fiddle.)
See also: Burning Man Subverts The Mission
Burrito Justice 
Sweetness, thanks. And jeez, Telstar rocks.
Re: “If BM was staged…” vs. “…were…”. Thought that was imperfect? Is this the French translator coming out in me…?
Does the imperfect even exist in English? I used to eat burritos? Je mangeais burritos?
Anyway, I always thought (past) subjunctive is something you imagined happening.
Then there’s that pluperfect subjunctive which I never understood.
Spanish has an imperfect past subjunctive</a. Good god my brain hurts.
OK, this might help:
The past subjunctive is the same in form as the past indicative,
except in the past subjunctive singular of “to be”, which is “were”
instead of “was”.
Used for counterfactual conditionals, counterfactual wishes, and “as it were”.
That _does_ help, thanks! Never been clear on superfine intricacies of English subjunctive, although my EFL teaching experience allowed me to love what I did know. But I swear, if it weren’t my native tongue, I’d be screwed. I never told students that, though. :-) Subjunctive in French, now that’s a beaut! Plus-que-parfait included. (Because only the Frogs would have something _more_ than perfect…) Auxiliaries like “eusse” just makes my heart go pitter-patter. Oh, if they could hear us on the Playa now…
Brits have different views for the plurality of collective nouns. For instance my company was called Tasc. I said Tasc does a great job. My Brit colleagues would say Tasc do a great job. It is really jarring to the American ear. It’s as if Tasc is Mothra, a big lumberer instead of a group of folks trying to get by. But we could argue either way. I do we do they do, he does Tasc does. I do we do Tasc do, he does she does it does. But wtf does I know.
Yeah, British collective conjugation seriously messes me up. The only way I can really appreciate the jarringness (from their perspective) is to say something like “The Giants is in the playoffs”. (This, of course, drives TK to distraction on multiple levels.)
And while we’re on the subject of British writing conventions, what’s up with the random quotation marks ‘in the middle of headlines’?