Greetings, Friends, and welcome to the post-Christmas, pre-New Year's edition of The Corner. Well, it certainly has been a wild time for yours truly. The wife and I traveled to South Florida to spend Christmas with the 'rents and visit as many friends as we could. Mrs. Marius had to come home sooner than I did so she could go to work at a wretched lingerie store, one that claims to be from a California town that makes movies. When she was hired she was promised at least 20 hours a week, and maybe lots more during the holidays. What has really happened is that she has been getting, on a good week, 10 hours, and they keep hiring other people while claiming they don't have enough hours to go around. Next week she isn't even on the schedule, so today will be her last day there. I earnestly hope, in the spirit of the holidays, that the store burns down in the night, leaving the rest of the mall untouched, save for a smoking hole where the store used to be. Her sporadic work schedule is also why we couldn't do a lot of pre-planning for our trip home. So to those of you I missed this time, please forgive me. I am going to do my best to get down there a bit more often. And those of you I got to see thanks for dealing with the sudden 'hey, I'm here, can I come over?'. It was great seeing y'all. Unfortunately the trip had a consequence...I'm sick as hell right now. Yesterday I was running a high fever and felt like I'd been run over by a herd of apatasaurs. Today the fever is gone, so I merely feel like shit.
On to some random thoughts.
Is it my imagination, or are the Christian fundamentalists stepping up their assault on freedom in this country? First there were the ridiculous Intelligent Design vs. Evolution battles in public schools, then Pat Robertson's damning of an entire Pennsylvania town for voting ID out of their science classes, and then Bill O'Reilly's ludicrous assertion that anyone who says 'happy holidays' is anti-Christmas. I thought Conservatives were all about the American way? Well, isn't freedom of religion pretty much the most fundamental American tenet? Or is it just that people are starting to take too close a look at the activities of the current administration, and the Right needs a new smoke screen? History will, I suppose, make that judgment.
This next point was to be part of the ongoing series, Let's Purge the Lexicon, but this is not something that needs to be gotten rid of, but rather needs fixing. The word etcetera, usually abbreviated etc., has more and more come to be mispronounced eKcetera. When average people say that I tend to not worry about it, but when I hear news commentators and other people who speak for a living mispronounce it I get annoyed. No one would tolerate a bulldozer driver who couldn't drive the machine, or an author who didn't know grammar, so if you speak for a living, use the language correctly. The same goes for the word escape. It is not eKscape.
Last month I brought my laser pointer home to see how the kitten would react to it. I was worried that it would be kind of cruel, but he loves it! He even asks for it. So if you have a playful cat or kitten, a laser pointer is a great way to entertain them without having to run all over the house with a string or some such.
Ok, that's it for today. Y'all have a safe and happy New Year's celebration. I'll be back in 2006.
Love to all,
Marius
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