Originally Posted by James Montgomery

Not to get all William Safire on you, but aside from taking me exactly one hour and 32 minutes to type out, the full list of nominees for the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards (see "MTV VMA Race Is On: Justin Timberlake, Beyonce Lead Nominations") is remarkable primarily because it shatters all previous records for bizarre syntax, unnecessary punctuation and, well, general assaults on our nation's grammatical well-being.

Seriously, this thing makes less sense than Christopher Walken reading e.e. cummings.

It's a motley collection of song titles that either a) show a rather annoying predilection for the parenthetical (for no particular reason), like "Big Girls Don't Cry (Personal)," "Buy U a Drank (Shawty Snappin')" and "Big Things Poppin' (Do It)"; or b) make absolutely no sense whatsoever, like "Thnks Fr Th Mmrs," "The Way I Are" or "Cupid's Chokehold/ Breakfast in America," and it's enough to make me say that the art of naming a tune is totally, completely dead (seriously).

It used to be that only seriously crazy dudes gave their songs certifiably bonkers names, like Sly Stone's "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)" or Frank Zappa's "The Chrome Plated Megaphone of Destiny." Wayne Coyne did his best to carry that mantle for close to a decade, with gems like "Hari-Krishna Stomp Wagon (F--- Led Zeppelin)" and "Pilot Can at the Queer of God." Then there were guys like Beck and Guided by Voices, who tried in vain to keep the crazy vibe alive with stuff like "Whiskeyclone, Hotel City 1997" and "Tractor Rape Chain," respectively.