Grammar Moses: On geopolitics and Catholic converters

"This is the police. We have you surrounded!"

You've likely heard this line in a variety of movies right before the antihero does something foolhardy and gets himself shot.

You know there is no way out. He knows there is no way out.

Why? Because the police have told him he is surrounded.

He can't go forward, backward, to the left or the right - because he is surrounded.

Even dumb criminals know what it means to be surrounded: There are no gaps; there is no way out but through.

So why would perfectly sane network news people and politicians talk about Ukraine's being "surrounded by Russian forces on three sides?"

Let's not quibble here about Ukraine's being an odd-shaped country that has no real sides.

England is an island in that it is surrounded by water.

Baja California is a peninsula, rather than an island, because there is water to the east, west and south, but it's connected to California to the north. Same goes for Florida (with the exception of the Keys, which are surrounded by water).

To surround is to enclose on ALL sides.

Russian forces are lined up on much of Ukraine's border.

Of course, by the time this is published, Russian forces likely will be surrounding Ukraine - with the Russian Navy parked in the Black Sea on the southern border of Ukraine.

Catholic conversion

I rarely wade into matters of religion, but this was too good to pass up.

A Facebook friend posted a passalong post that appears to be a Facebook post and response (do I need to draw a diagram to explain?) that I found very funny.

I hasten to say the fourth-hand nature of this alleged exchange makes it nearly impossible for me accept as legitimate. So I went to the Built XTerra/Frontier Facebook page and looked at everything ever posted on it - comments, replies and all - and could find no evidence of the exchange.

It could have been deleted, I suppose, but for the purposes of this column its provenance really makes no difference.

I doubt any of the guys contributing to the Facebook page, who jabber enthusiastically and endlessly about Radflo coilovers, 14-bolt rearends, shock hoops and all the other stuff they buy to turn their Nissan XTerra SUV's into Transformers, would mind. I'd think they'd be kicking themselves for not thinking of the response on their own.

OK, enough warmup.

One person asked another: "Can a bad Altarnator cause the Catholic converter to go bad?"

The response: "I will literally pay for your vasectomy."

Aggressive in tone but subtle in intent. I just love it.

Perhaps terminating the questioner's bloodline prematurely is overkill. And I doubt a change in religion will change anything.

Maybe he just needs to invest in a copy of my book.

Dually

I've managed to live almost 60 years without having heard someone use the word "dually" as a noun.

My new friend Courtney Rackley used it the other day, and given the context I knew what she was talking about right away.

"You'll see him driving around in a white dually just about every day," she told me.

A "dually," for those of you who drive hybrid cars, is a pickup truck with two pairs of tires in the back - the kind of truck you should never try to drive into an automated car wash.

Write carefully!

• Jim Baumann is vice president/executive editor of the Daily Herald. You can buy Jim's book, "Grammar Moses: A humorous guide to grammar and usage," at

grammarmosesthebook.com. Write him at jbaumann@dailyherald.com and put "Grammar Moses" in the subject line. You also can friend or follow Jim at facebook.com/baumannjim.