HodgePodge

I just finished reading When You Catch an Adjective, Kill It by Ben Yagoda. This book has succeeded in destroying any confidence I had in my writing. Each chapter is devoted to a part of speech (noun, verb, article, conjunction) and how only weak, lazy writers ever use adverbs or adjectives (I guess I’m very weak and lazy). You should be able to find the noun or verb that expresses exactly what you are trying to say. Part of my problem is that I don’t really know what the parts of speech are. I know that a conjunction’s function is “hooking up words and phrases and clauses” (I also know that Three is a Magic Number but that’s beside the point). In a sentence like, “the acrobatic monkey did not blame the portly seal” I know that acrobat and portly are adjectives but if you get more complicated than that I’m lost. I suppose there are two options; try and learn grammar or remain blissfully ignorant of all the ways I’m butchering the language. Tough choice but me ain’t good at learnin’ me stuff.

On a completely different note, Irmgard von Stephani died on October 5th. Irmgard was Germany’s oldest person and died at the age of 112. When the oldest person in a country dies it of course means that a new person takes the crown and all the power and glory that go with it. In this case that person was Elsa Tauser. Elsa waited 111 years before she became Germany’s oldest person. Unfortunately it seems the excitement was too much and Elsa died on October 6th.

I’ve been asked to play Santa Claus at a company Christmas party again this year. I of course said yes because there is nothing more enjoyable than wearing an extremely hot, itchy suit while sticky children sit on your lap, poke your belly and tug your beard. The reason I bring this up is it reminded me of the first time I played Santa at this Christmas party about 3 years ago. The office manager, who I had never met, e-mailed me to confirm that I’d be Santa and ask what my measurements where so she could get an appropriate sized costume. Being a complete jackass I e-mailed back my measurements with a throwaway comment that I can only wear hand woven silk. I thought she may be mildly amused and make a mental note to put itching powder in the suit. What actually happened is she took the comment seriously and almost went insane trying to track down a hand woven Santa suit. I had to go into to damage control mode and confirm for her that I was only kidding and any suit would be fine. When we did meet at the Christmas party she must have been in a particularly festive mood as she was able to refrain from kicking me in the nuts which is what I’m sure any reasonable person would have done after spending half a day looking for an imaginary item.