English is one phucked up langwige.

K's phone message "ding" went off this morning at O-dark thirty.  It was an automated text from a weather app letting us know that today would be a high pollen day.  Sure enough, after I'd been up for just a few minutes I could feel something percolating in my sinuses.   A runny nose, a couple of sneezes, then the flowing mucous made it to my throat and I began coughing.  

I hate that stuff....flim.  That got me to thinking.  If it was spelled as it sounds it would be "flim", right?  But it isn't.  It's spelled "phlegm".  Really?

Are we really the bad spellers, or is it "them"?

What word butcher could have ever taken a word that sounds like "flim" and turned it into "phlegm"?  What kind of phucked up langwige is English anyway?

How many people do you know, native born Americanos....er....Americans, who have been speaking English all their lives and still can't spell "believe" or "cantaloupe" or "maneuver"?  English spelling is just bizarre!  I have no idea how someone could learn English as a second langwige....I mean language.

I remember when I was a kid in school and I was stumped with a word my teacher would tell me to look it up in a dictionary.  That made no sense to me.  If I knew how to spell it in order to look it up in a dictionary, I wouldn't need to look it up in a dictionary.  DUH!

Is it too late to scrap the English language spellings we have now and make up new ones....ones that are more "user friendly"?  Or should I say more "user frendle"?

Ya think I might have too much time on my hands to think about stuff like this?  Does anybody besides me think about stuff like this?  No?  I'll bet George Carlin would have.  

Dang, I miss him.

S

Another day, another dollar

This is a home we built last year for a prominent local attorney and his family.  He's called us back to build a 2500-3000 square foot addition....the final plans are at the architect's now.  Looks like I'll be doing the structural parts soon, then turning it over to bro for the pretty parts.  While I am "retired", the extra coins are appreciated.   Still going in late and leaving early, though.

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The storms we had around here last week have really stirred up the pollen....I spent the holiday sneezing. I mean hundreds of times, one right after another.  And when I sneeze, I rattle windows.  There's nothing discreet about my sneezes.  How do people make those little tiny "ah choo's"?  

I think my poor dog is shell shocked.  He'd get nice and comfy on my ottoman right next to me, then I'd get hit by a dozen or so sneezes, and he'd jump straight up and run under the coffee table.  I imagine this is how school kids looked back in the '50's and '60's during those atomic bomb drills when we ducked under our desks.  All better today, though.

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I heard on the news the Commie Chinese have gotten into the computers at our major defense contractors and stolen all the good stuff....plans of our newest defense hardware.  Grrr!  

I wanna know why we haven't gotten into THEIR computer systems and just scrambled the hell out of 'em?  Or how about leaving them with nothing besides Windows?  They'll spend all their time rebooting and calling the Geek Squad.  Haha!

Hope you had a nice holiday, or if you're outside the US, a nice weekend.  :)

S

How come they get to have all the fun?

How come all the good stuff happens overseas?  This ^ was a fight that broke out in the Ukrainian Parliament yesterday over...who knows.  Probably one guy said his goat was better looking than the other guy's goat, I dunno.  Anyway, they picked up some fat guy and threw him in the middle and the fight was on.

We need some of that here.  All they do in Washington is talk.  Talk, talk, talk.  Why don't they throw Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell together and let 'em duke it out?  I don't know if it would really accomplish anything, but it would spawn a whole new genre of reality TV.

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It was just announced that apparel maker Lululemon is recalling a popular line of yoga pants because it turns out they're so light weight they're "see thru".  They say yoga practitioners tie themselves in knots, spread, bent, etc, baring all in the process.  

Now I'm about the most un-limber person in the world.  K does yoga every day and has urged me to give it a try.  Had men known the pants all the women were wearing were see-thru they just might have swamped all the yoga studios with new members.  It would have made a pretty convincing sales pitch for sure!

Ummm....just thinking this through....these pants were for women only, right?  I really wouldn't want to see a bunch of other guy's junk first thing every morning.  Noooo.

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And finally....

Spring time in Dallas.   Yea.

S

Stay healthy....get dirty

A big "BREAKING NEWS" sign flashed across my morning news  TV screen just now so I sat up straight and paid attention:  It seems the US Postal Service will be ceasing Saturday mail delivery beginning in August due to their continuing financial problems.

OMG....you mean they're still delivering mail?  I thought they went broke months ago.  I guess I should go clean all the accumulated junk mail from my mailbox.  (Shows you how relevant they are to my life.)

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At the risk of jinxing myself I'll share this recent observation:  K came home yesterday and said everyone in her office was sick.  Many called in sick, and the ones still there were coughing, sneezing, and hocking stuff up.  Someone asked her why she never got sick?  For that matter, she and I are both rarely sick.

Here's my theory....we're acclimated to many of the germs and bacteria floating around the environment, just as doctors who see sick people all day long rarely get sick.  We pet our dog who walks around on sidewalks and in the yard and sniffs other dogs.  We hold on to the handrail on escalators.  I'm outdoors a lot exposed to pollen and dust and pollutants.  

Yes, we wash our hands, but we don't use those antibacterial gels 20 times a day like some do.  Those are the types who run to the doctor at every sniffle and demand prescriptions for antibiotics, then find their systems are so sterile they can't take exposure to anything.

So here's my medical tip of the day:  get dirty.

(Doesn't he look healthy?  :)

S