@snailplane I've added a line to the short answer just in case it's misleading :)

did you get blur a wheel yet?

nope

:0)

Haha. They recover quickly.

Does X is alternative to Y sound natural? I was talking to my antipodean friend the other day, and they said I should've used alternative as a noun there (and consequently precede it with an an), but I'm not convinced because I was able to find quite a few results when googling for my phrase. COCA, conversely, only spat out four results for [be] alternative to – whatever that might be indicative of.

I think that both are possible... but you'll find it much more common to use "X is [an/the] alternative to Y".

So I guess you're saying it's not as natural-sounding as I hoped it would be.

::nods::

@snailplane But Colin Fine says here that the fact that "...doing something is equally alternative to dooming yourself." is grammatical is simply impregnable – they might not have used those exact words.

How "natural" it sounds really depends on how fast you say it.

Lol.

I guess it's just a sad discovery, is all.

It seemed so elegant. I don't think I've heard it in my native language either.

Yup, it sounds "formal."

@skullpatrol Yunno, I initially l'dol at that absurd statement, but you might just be right. If you speak fast enough, mistakes such as that one will simply disappear on account of the listener's not being able to pay that much attention, or actually care about that stuff.

Sure, that's one of the advantages of being a naturally fast talker.

Where, naturally=fluently.