Author: David

Over-educated Curmudgeon, Bit-Bucket Tuner and Budding Brewmeister.
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Memory’s a Funny Thing

In addition to my tinnitus chorusing along with earworms, sometimes those earworms just seem to pop up out of nowhere, or some “Fibber McGee’s Closet” of memories. . .

One occasional source of memories insinuating themselves as earworms is children’s songs learned in early-mid childhood. I recall 4th Grade music class (what, maybe once or twice a week?) which was held in the school library for some reason. The music book was a faded red cloth-covered book, and when one of the songs from that class crops up, I see the page the song was on, the music, and the lyrics, even, from time to time, illustrations accompanying the song. *shrugs* Visual memory always seems to work better for me when it’s associated with music, especially sheet music, etc.

Just one of those things.

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Comparatively Speaking. . .

Glitter is often so horribly misused that, at times, it seems to have been spawned from hell, but any reasonable person would prefer a “whoop” of preschoolers tweaked on a sugar high and given unlimited bags of glitter at a funeral to a drag queen show in kindergarten.

That’s all I’m sayin’ about that.

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Words Do Matter

Just saw a lil pseudo- (fake, phony) “meme” that did contain a wee bit of truth, but the first word — “hay” used in place of “hey” — vitiated (weakened, darned near KILLED) the rest if it. OTOH, maybe it was trying to say that even pinheaded, Dunning-Krugerand illiterates can stumble across a bit of truth now and then. Blind pigs and all that, you know?

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No oven, no stove, just. . .

Reason # 4,967 why I love cooking meals in my pressure air fryer: 1. Sauteed a seasoned roast. 2. Pressure cooked it. 3. Added veggies and slow-cooked it all for a MUCH shorter time than I’d ordinarily need to to have the meat just fall apart the way I wanted (this time — other times? *shrugs* depends on my whimsy).

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October Chores

Today’s “most fun chore” was repotting nearly all our houseplants (almost all brought inside last week from their summer vacation), including a pot full of “outdoor plants” (marigolds and onions – yeh, they like each other). They all enjoyed their summer vacation so much, that the 8 inch pots graduated to 12-inchers, and the lone 4-inch pot graduated to an 8-incher. They’ve been sitting near the French doors and under a couple of grow lights for the past week, and seem to already be happy with their larger “rooms.”

We’ll just see if we can keep from “brown-thumbing” ’em over winter. . . *heh*

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Still Waiting. . .

. . .for the swelling in my fingers to go down enough that I can wear my wedding ring. Wearing a silver substitute that’s larger. . . on the little finger of that hand.

Combo: unstable knee + walking a 10-month-old German Shepherd puppy + avoiding traffic + unseen dip off side of road + avoiding falling ON the puppy = bad fall and hyper-extended fingers on left hand. Bruising and swelling in hand almost entirely gone, but fingers still swollen. Can almost make a fist n ow, though, so progress!

I’ll give it another month before I’m concerned enough to seek more help. Checkup a couple of weeks ago, doctor thought it was doing about as well as could be expected. Chores activity limited by lack of grip in that hand, but am still partially able to work task list.

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Fortunate Son

I was blessed (though some seem to think “cursed”) to be raised in a family of literates, and not just “functionally literate,” but liberally-seeded with formally literate adults, and eventually (sometimes) not-too-shabbily-literate sibs. Combine that with the fact that I am an Odd1 and my life has continually been filled with bafflement when confronted with folks who, quite apart from literacy, aren’t even fluent in English, when it’s their native tongue!

So, yeh2, I spend way more time than is probably healthy listening around some folks’ grammar. But. . . about that word. *sigh* I do really tire of folks misusing it to the point that it has now lost a usefully distinctive meaning. Nowadays, it seems to be used primarily either in a pejorative sense in the phrase “grammar Nazi” to mean someone who is picky and offensive about language and who often corrects others’ misusages. And in that vein, “grammar” is generally misused to be a reference to any correctly spoken or orthographical speech or writing.

Nope. Grammar is “A set of rules and examples dealing with the syntax and word structures of a language. . . “3 Oh, it is more than that, and in common usage nowadays it is. . . much, much less. *sigh*

So, I am bothered not by the pesky gnats of syntax alone, but illiterate word misuses, bafflingly stupid punctuation (in writing, of course, although the way some speak weirdly placed commas can also be heard *heh*), and nonsensical neologisms**. Add to that the creation of subcultures with “lects” that are both independent of regional dialects and that seem to be structured specifically to utter nonsense (LitRPG/gamers for example, though not the only example; there is the “Friends” dialect as another example) and call it English, the popularized illiteracy/subliteracy/pseudo-literacy prevalent in the Mass Media Podpeople Hivemind, bureaucratese, lying liars who illiterately lie (A.K.A. politicians), and English seems to be in dire straits.

Oh, well. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. *heh*

(Oh, and just a wee lil “BTW,” here: “I’m trying really hard not to correct your grammar,” really should read “I’m trying really hard to not correct your grammar,” even though I really don’t try at all. . . )

Better:

2 Yeh, I find “yeh” to be a better representation of the expression than “yeah.” So sue me. It sounds to my ear more like what folks actually say.