Sadly, we've already had our first Frost Warning as well. Yikes.
Anyway, since we've last been together, I've collected a few snapshots to share with you. Let's take a look, shall we?
Here's the Tomato Fence, the one I pass by daily on my walk. To the right of the profusion of foliage you can see a few fronds of the cherry tomato plant peeping out above and below the slats. Just so you can see my Temptor.
Sadly, I walk past this every day now, too. Longtime readers of this blog know that I am no fan of Halloween decor to begin with, but how did this mass-produced, commercially made flag get all the way to stores with NO ONE picking up on the fact that CEMETERY is misspelled? This hurts me so much.
I need to breathe.
And possibly take a pill.
Moving on to photos from our Department Of Redundancy Department:
Oh, may I? I swear; I read this twice, making absolutely certain that Mr. Ajay Mirmira did not also refer to an ATM machine or state that you could walk in at 2 o'clock AM in the morning. I also wondered if he would say something about ink pens or tuna fish or rising up or some other horrific unnecessary doubling of The Language that would make me swear into my coffee mug.
Finally, this. Alert Husband and Reader Rick saw this at nearby Menards, a home improvement store that is, as I told my friend Jackie, a store so enormous that it is like Home Depot and Walmart had a baby and put steroids in its bottle. (A brief aside: Rick said that when he saw this, the first thing he said was, "Damn you, Nance! I never used to notice this shit until I met and married you. Now it irritates the hell out of me." Sigh. Ours is a Unique Love Story.) Hey, Menards! Is it ever, ever possible to "Combine Apart?" No? Pro Tip: Just say Combine. The word itself means "to put together".
So painful.
Welcome to Fall, everyone. It's getting chilly (and a little irksome) out there.
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"Self-service yourself" had me laughing out loud. Picturing someone at 2:00 AM in front of an ATM servicing him or herself made me laugh all the harder.
ReplyDeleteFinally, someone else who doesn't like Halloween! Can you believe how big it's grown in the last decade or two? Creeps me right out that the darker side of Halloween is replacing the cute little pumpkins and fall colors.
Jean--Oh, and not just servicing himself--SELF-SERVICING HIMSELF! All by himself! Holy crap, what a lot of servicing of oneself. Sigh. My head hurts. A lot.
DeleteYes, Halloween has been completely co-opted by stunted adults with a dark juvenile fetish or something. I have no idea what all that is supposedly "celebrating." Death? Torture? Horror? It's right up there with the female costumes that sexualize service workers--I really don't get it.
Kids need to take back Halloween. But they don't have Pinterest accounts or money.
Self-servicing myself sounds like something I SHOULD do at 2:00 a.m., but probably not at the ATM.
ReplyDeleteI've thought of you lately - a house in our neighborhood has an inflated unicorn skeleton. There will most certainly be a picture of it in next week's blog post.
Bug--Whom else would you self-service? It would be impossible to...oh, never mind. CAPS LOCK SIGH. I don't want (or need) any self-servicing details, or pictures of that particular 2 AM activity. ;-)
DeleteThank you for thinking of me, truly. I hope you observed the inflated unicorn skeleton with the appropriate amount of high dudgeon and disdain. Heavens.
OMG - laughing out loud. Can you hear me? I'll join you in taking a pill, please. But, the "Self Service Yourself" has got to be the best ever. So many ideas come to mind.
ReplyDeleteRegarding the flag and the misspelling of Cemetery. Who would buy something like that with a word clearly misspelled? And these folks will be voting?
I may need a drink before I get home from work.
Vera--I thought I heard some mirth on the Eastern breeze as I hauled my recycling to the curb just now! I'm so glad to have tickled you.
DeleteCemetery is one of the most commonly misspelled words ever. I have no doubt that the person who bought and now displays it has zero idea that it is wrong. Or, if he/she does, the philosophy is likely, "Oh, who's going to really stop and look at it that hard?"
THE RETIRED ENGLISH TEACHER DOWN THE STREET. (Actually, there are two of us. I'm sure Carol is dying as well.)
A drink sounds delightful. I'm going to go chill a bottle of Chenin Blanc right now (roast chicken for dinner tonight).
While I take your point, I'd take one of the misspelled Halloween flags over the macabre skeleton stuff that's going on around here. Someone has put up a noose and has a dog skeleton hanging from it. I find that distasteful. I want cute jack-o-lanterns and silly witches-- not creepy stuff like that.
ReplyDeleteAlly Bean--I hear you. We've got a lot of questionable stuff around here, too. Now that the retailers are selling all kinds of skeletons, some people have lost their minds. Again, I'm just not sure what the Message is, what we're Celebrating, or what the overall Point is. It's gotten downright Icky.
DeleteCOMBINE!!! oh please!!! Im a halloweener so Sorry we bug ya. I love your blog. I HATE everything around St Patricks day. So we all have one I Guess! As a Halloweener, I HATE the plastic blow up decorations. Pumpkins are the tradition. Get a gourd folks Carve it. Or just put it on your stoop. IT wont deflate and looks pathetic on your lawn!
ReplyDeletekathy b--I'm glad that you love my blog despite our Halloween differences.
DeleteI dislike all inflatable decorations, mainly because people allow them to be deflated during the day. What? Like we cannot see them in the daylight? All day long, they lie there, looking like huge used holiday condoms. It's ugly and decidedly NOT festive. People have taken Yard and Home Decor for the holidays to an extreme.
It awes me how you find some of this, erm, crap. Genius at work. I drive through a hamlet on my way home from shopping where one of the houses has a huge lawn covered with tombstones, ghouls and flapping white ghosts on every convenient hanging branch and pumpkins everywhere else. After considering driving by with my eyes closed, I compromised on speeding.
ReplyDeleteSalacious, 'service yourself'. Tsk. Your readers are probably the last good spellers standing, except for the over-achieving kids who win the contests.
Sending Canadian Thanksgiving hugs.
Mary G--Happy Thanksgiving! I do hope you had a lovely one. What wine did you serve?
DeleteYes, we have the Halloween Overload homes here too, and two of them are on my walking route. I cringe as I walk past them. I vastly prefer the modest pumpkins and straw bales and pots of mums.
I wish I didn't see these things; I really do. But they leap out at me with a vengeance. It's like an assault.
Dee--Feel free to use it!
ReplyDeleteMy mind went where everyone else's did with Self-Service yourself, I am sorry to say.
ReplyDeleteThose big inflatable decorations used to scare the hell out of poor Mulder, and I would have to drag him along, him straining and yelling and trying his best to convince me how dangerous they are. It's the same if it's a huge Frankenstein or a huge Santa. He seems to have calmed down a bit now, though he still looks at them askance as we walk by.
I'm sorry to say that I am a horrible speller, and would likely misspell cemetery on every single flag that I made. I did not, however, make that one. Ted also does not spell well. Maya is a good speller, so we would run things by her, but we have spellcheck, so we don't need to. I wonder where she got it?
We celebrated Thanksgiving this last Monday, since Ted was born in Canada, and I served a lovely petite sirah with the turkey. I recently (like, last week) learned that petite sirah is a different grape than syrah. I've never paid much attention to either, and based on the lack in my spelling skills, it would never occur to me that they were spelled differently. So I am happy to report that I learned something this week. Well, two things. Perhaps I will remember how to spell cemetery. No promises.
J@jj--Canadian Thanksgiving sneaked right past me this year, but I caught up once I read it mentioned in a few places. Then I immediately thought about you, knowing you'd have celebrated it.
DeleteDo you know the double entendre of self-servicing yourself never once occurred to me, so outraged and disappointed I was at the grammar aspect of it? That just goes to show you how deeply these things pain me and how very much on tenterhooks I am about them.
I used to think that poor spellers were dumb; that they were not readers; that they were simply uncaring, unintellectual people. I was quickly proven wrong about that by my friend and colleague Ken, one of the most avid readers and brilliant history teachers I have ever known. I guess I should call him Dr. Ken, as he has also earned his PhD. In our continuing ed classes, he constantly copied from my paper to make sure he had correct spellings. He often forgot the second N in his own full name, Kenneth.
I'm not a fan of petite sirah, but that could change. I used to dislike petite verdot, but suddenly started liking it. Palates change, as we know.
I am a big Halloween fan and even I can see the complete overload happening. It is everywhere, also so gruesome with all the animal plastic bone displays. I am afraid to leave a comment as I am sure I will say something like combine together!
ReplyDeleteMeredith--Don't, please, ever be afraid to leave a comment here because of grammar or spelling. I take Professionals to task because they are paid to Know Better. I'm also poking a bit of fun at myself because I always notice this stuff (and I often wish I didn't). I'm always happy to have my commenters here chime in and chat with me. Friends don't criticize each other for such things!
DeleteLike Ally and kathy said, I prefer cute pumpkins, but this gruesomeness has gone overboard. I think that is the American Excess--if Some Is Good, More Is Better. Sigh.
I can almost forgive the barely literate people who make store signs. I can smile and smugly and find it amusing. The idiots who work as copy editors for the newspapers drive me nuts. As if the news itself doesn't make me sufficiently angry, the headlines rarely reflect the point of the articles. Words are often spelled incorrectly and verb tense consistency seems to be unknown to them. It appears that "copy editor" has become a job title, no longer a profession. In fairness, I do place part of the blame on the digital age. "I'm sure you love auto-correct as much as I do," she said sarcastically. It has become the enemy of good basic grammar.
ReplyDeleteAa for Halloween decor, I have a neighbor with a six-foot smiley face pumpkin near her mailbox. I drive to the creest of the hill and there it is in all its glory. I have no idea why it irritates me, but it does.
Should have proof-read before hitting "publish." Too much coffee this rainy morning.
DeleteNCmountainwoman--The Plain Dealer now has someone in their sports department who is hell-bent on writing cutesy, alliterative, "creative" headlines full of puns and wordplay. They are truly horrible all the time and irritate me to no end. Now that it is NBA season, I am forced, as a fantasy basketball team owner, to peruse the sports page and encounter them. LIFE IS HARD.
DeleteMay I suggest a book to you? It is called The Grammarians by Cathleen Schine. It's fiction, but it deals with The Language in a wonderful way within its story and contains the best definition of grammar I've ever seen.
Outdoor decor can sometimes irk me because it has become such A Thing. Like these big stars people plaster on the front of their houses. What on earth is that even about? I think a six-foot pumpkin might make me feel a bit snarky, too. Especially if it is still there in November.
Thanks. I will definitely read the book. As for the pumpkin, it is a jack-o-lantern and was still in place in mid-November. We happened to be at a dinner party with the neighbor and I told her the property owner's association had a rule against having seasonal displays in place after the holiday. Since then the pumpkin is put away Novemer 1st.
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