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This & That

I miss sank.  And shrank and drank and all their kin.  Now it's all sunk, shrunk, drunk.  I blame that stupid movie, the one that Shrunk the kids.  I know languages are constantly evolving and tend to go from more complex to more simple, but still, I miss sank and cringe a little inside every time she's replaced by her otherwise useful cousin, sunk.

I miss aitches.  I like that they happen in hurricanes in Hampshire.  Hairy without its aitch is just airy, no substance at all.  A capital aitch is so nicely angular that I can crochet it into an afghan if I feel like it.  But no, someone somewhere decided that certain aitches had to go.  The one I particularly miss is the one that makes us Human.  Now we're all yoomans, and our inhumanity isn't nearly so inhumane, it's just inyooman, which sounds a little like someone trying to be insulting while their mother is listening. 

I miss actual human editors instead of spellcheck.  A little while back, I passed an otherwise lovely retirement center that had a grocer's apostrophe in its carved sign out front.  Not just painted, but carved.  Someone slowly, carefully, deliberately, put that apostrophe in that sign and then someone or someones put that big sign up in front of that retirement center anyway.   That's got to be bad for residents' blood pressure.

I miss the S that makes a plural a possessive, too.  Stephen's truck is not the same as Stephens' truck, but they're pronounced the same now.  One of my cousins has a given name that ends in S and when people made it possessive and didn't say the second S, just left it implied after the apostrophe, she got annoyed.  I miss that extra clarification.  It's keeping up with the Joneses, not keeping up with the Jones.  The Jones is what you get when a junkie needs her heroin, or this blogger needs her Esses pronounced.

I've been having so much fun watching the flap over Representative Anthony Weiner and his sexting habit.  I just happen to be reading right now Stephen Ambrose's "Nixon: 1973 to 1990," and keep thinking to myself, have the politicians all forgotten the message of Watergate?  "It's not the crime, stupid, it's the cover-up!"

My favorite headline regarding the issue is the one that read, "George Clooney Did NOT Date Anthony Weiner's Wife!"  In the spirit of complete openness, I'll add to that, "George Clooney Did NOT Date This Blogger!"

And that I can say with certitude.




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Oh, I'm with you, Susan! I

Oh, I'm with you, Susan!
I miss dreamt and burnt also. I cringe at misplaced apostrophes.
Those poor senior citizens. How that sign must irk them!