Infinitive Splitter

This is the kind of thing I normally post to the Quick Hits on the sidebar (and if you haven’t been following them, you’re missing most of the best content on this website), but I couldn’t find an excerpt short and relevant enough.

Elton Beard, “Polite Fiction”:

I got this email a while back promising a nice sum of money if I just helped this Nigerian government official move his inheritance to an American bank and to make a long story short, it hasn’t work out so well for me money-wise. So my neighbor Brett said I told you so, I told you if you believe this guy you’ll be wasting your money. And I said back no way, dude! I did not waste that money! To say the money was wasted is an insult to the money, which had nothing to do with the decision that resulted in its loss! I demand you apologize for denigrating innocent money I said, emphatically.

There’s more; read the rest.

(If you haven’t been following the news recently: there’s a war going on in Iraq; Sen. Barack Obama, a candidate for president, said it has resulted in “over 3,000 lives of the bravest young Americans wasted”; when his political opponents howled, Obama said he regretted his choice of words; several days later Sen. John McCain, a candidate for president, said, “We’ve wasted a lot of our most precious treasure, which is American lives”; when his political opponents howled, McCain said he regretted his choice of words; and today the war continues.)