The simple fact is that if you are ever mentioned on page 1 of a Dan Brown novel you will be mentioned with an anarthrous occupational nominal premodifier ("Renowned linguist Geoff Pullum staggered across the savage splendor of the forsaken Santa Cruz campus, struggling to remove the knife plunged unnaturally into his back by a barbarous millionaire novelist"), and you will have died a painful and horrible death by page 2, along with several curiously ill-chosen cliches and mangled idioms. -- Geoffrey K. Pullum