I Can't Take It Any More

I’ve been undercover too long to keep up this ruse any longer. Today I come clean, out of the shadows, to expose my real identity.


And you thought I was Leah Rubin, mild-mannered blogger, wife, mother and grandmother, keeper of the family archives and some-time tap dancer. Harumph, I say. That is my cover, not unlike the Clark Kent persona employed by Superman.

My superpower is not one widely known. I am, after sweeping into a coat closet (go find a phone booth these days!) transformed into Battle-Scarred Grammatica!

So because I cannot see a misspelled or misused word without cringing, biting my lip, or bursting out with some manner of stringed-together expletives, I have saved a few from recent days to share with you. Perhaps by venting my spleen herein, I can avoid an aneurysm.

Now people misuse words all the time, and in everyday speech I probably do, too. I have no more desire to sound like a stilted, repressed philosophy professor than I do to mud wrestle a kangaroo. But that’s not important right now.

So I’m mostly inclined to point out these errors of syntax or grammar when used by a professional in a setting that afforded him or her the opportunity to get it right.

For example, on the PBS Newshour Tuesday evening, the financial correspondent, Paul Solman mentioned “loaning the money”. See the problem? Loan is a noun, not a verb. Sure, lots of people do this, but Paul should be better than that. Paul, next time say “lending the money.” I’m just saying.

Then there’s the sign in front of a local church here, pimping the U.S. census. (This photo was on the front page of our daily newspaper a few months ago. I saved it because it stuck in my craw. Of course if I saved all of the items that stuck in my craw, I’d need to build an addition to the house. And I’d probably have to have my craw looked at.) The sign reads, “US CENSUS 2010/IT’S IN OUR HAND’S”. Yikes! Okay, they correctly used an apostrophe in the word ‘it’s’, but why did that make them think there was one needed in ‘hands’??? Just shoot me. It’s really not that difficult, friends.

Just a week ago the same paper ran a headline over the story of Helen Thomas’ retirement. If you missed it, Thomas was a White House correspondent who (according to this New York Times copyrighted story) created an uproar with some harsh remarks about a sensitive subject.

The (big!) headline read, “One too many blunt remark”. Um, ‘remarks’, guys. Really.

And finally (at least for this edition of ‘You’re Killing Me With This Crap’) there’s the subheadline (yes, I made that word up just for this occasion) under the “DARE officer leaves a lasting impression” headline. (FYI, DARE is a program our local police department runs in the schools. It’s an acronym for Drug Abuse Resistance Education.) It reads, “For 17 years, students have clinged to the words of Tom Forgue.”

Clinged? Come on, even now my spell-check is fighting me tooth and nail over that one. You people at the newspaper don’t have spell-check? Or editors? What the what?

All I’m asking is for a little respect, as Aretha would say. And yes, it should be “All I’m asking for is a little respect,” but you have to give poetic license when it comes to music and the arts. But the rest of the time, I say we should keep the language alive and well. Sometimes I think it’s on life support, and I’m worried about some overzealous nutcase pulling the plug.

Are you with me on this, people? Let’s save the language AND the whales!

The Nose Knows

Today I’m going under the knife, as they say, to correct my severely deviated septum. This should fix my breathing problems, after the swelling subsides and the pain ebbs. If I live that long. Whatever. (The septum is a wall inside your nose that separates the nasal passages.  In cases like mine, instead of being straight, the septum veer to one side and screws up your breathing, partially blocking air flow.) By the way, this is not to be confused with a 'nose job', and there will be no changing of my outward appearance.  Damn! 

There are lots of photos of 'septoplasty' on the web, and even lots of videos of the actual surgery, but I'll spare you.


I’m just saying, why didn’t someone fix this twenty years ago, when I was younger and healing was so much easier? Plus I would have had twenty more years of decent breathing. Breathing is not optional, I like to say. Although in this case it appears to be pretty much elective.

I’m going to see whether CoTU wants to bring his camera to the hospital and document the experience…Not the gory surgery stuff-- just the ugly swollen and bandaged me post-op.  It might make a good blog post later on. To paraphrase the great Gail Collins of the New York Times, I am not one of those people who believe everything happens for a reason, but I do believe that everything happens so I can blog about it.

Anyhoo, if I’m AWOL for a few days, I’m just wallowing in the pain. Or the drugs. Or the pain. You really won’t know which. Unless CoTU invades the blog and starts begging for a merciful end to MY suffering.

See you on the other side! --no, I’m not going to die, I mean the other side of the blogosphere. If I can find it. (And this is before the drugs.)