Taco Shack is not a taco.* It certainly is a shack, however. To try to claim with a straight face that it's not (as you did here) is possibly one of the dumbe

Taco Shack is not a taco.* It certainly is a shack, however. To try to claim with a straight face that it's not (as you did here) is possibly one of the dumbest arguments I've seen someone make on HN, ever. Likewise, your defense that it's fine to arbitrarily omit "a"/"an" or "the" is what's truly unconvincing. To say, "I took a bus here" is acceptable. To say, "I took the bus here" would also be acceptable. Saying, "I took bus here", however, is definitely not a reasonable way to construct a sentence, despite your unsupported claims to the contrary. At best, it's a forgivable mistake that you might encounter from a non-native speaker, but in no way is it standard English. To argue otherwise (again, as you have done here) is bonkers and, like the Taco Shack example, suggests a commitment to never admitting to being wrong and a prioritization of that commitment over the truth. * I suppose if we were operating under the rules that you insist exist, this could have been worded as "Taco Shack is not taco"