The awesome power of the comma...

Okay, nearly a year ago, I posted this thought. But you see, back then, no one was reading my blog. Today I have, virtually...some...readers.

These are the kinds of things that I spend my brain cells on:

Ask yourself...in the classic, Sheb Wooley song, "The Flying Purple People Eater," is it the monster, or the people that he eats, that are purple?

Is he a one eyed, one horned, flying, purple, people eater? Or a one eyed, one horned, flying, purple people eater? The comma, after the word purple, changes the whole meaning of the sentence. For that matter, he could be a one eyed, one horned, flying purple people eater. 

As it turns out, according to the song, it's the people that are purple, but whether they fly, or not, is still up in the air.

If you are what you eat, does that mean that the People Eater is purple? We just don't know, he could be purple, he could be plaid. And, what about the narrator of the story? We have to assume that he is purple, after all, he begs that tough People Eater not to eat him (actually, I'm just assuming that the narrator is a male, because the song is sung by a man. It's getting deep) and if he had a reasonable expectation that he was going to be eaten, we must conclude that the narrator of the story is, therefore, purple. Hmmm...

Don't think too hard about this.