Trivia of the day
First snow of the winter, in my current home of location. Not much of a snow, but enough to identify as such. Far as I’m concerned, that will do fine till spring.
I’m finding myself really liking Once Upon a Time. TV series based on fairy tales don’t have a particularly good track record, either in overall viewership or in my own preferences, but this one is working for me. Putting Rumpelstiltskin (“Mr Gold”) at the center of so much adds one of several unifying threads; watching the Evil Queen show the same characteristics in both her pre- and post-transfiguration personae makes an interesting contrast with the differences in the pre- and post-transfiguration Snow White. (Also, the outlaw years of the pre-marriage Snow White form a nice internal touch.) Picking out in-jokes is continuing fun - Ruby the waitress is my favorite - and I enjoy watching to see how the different plot-lines gradually come together.
There’s a video circulating on Facebook (from a news program, I think; in fact, it’s here, with the story here) regarding the oldest currently-serving U.S. soldier, who wants to deploy one last time before his mandatory retirement. That’s me, folks. Well, not literally me, they’re profiling someone else, but I’m in almost exactly the same position. I have feelers out in half a dozen different places, trying to squeeze in one more tour before I return permanently to civilian life. I may manage to pull it off, I may not. But I really do - genuinely, not just making noise in that direction - want to put my little remaining time to the most potent use.
Grammar/language peeve of the day: loathe/loath. These days, even published writers all too frequently lose the distinction between the two. “I loathe bad grammar, and find it loathsome; I am loath to perpetrate such an offense myelf.”
Also, I ran into a problem myself the other day that highlights the difficulty with one particular peeve. The use of “ ’s” to indicate a plural is horribly offensive to me … but sometimes, it’s almost impossible to avoid. What’s the plural of M-16, for instance? If you say M-16s, it looks like the ‘s’ is just part of the overall designation. (My own difficulty was with the Class A uniform; you just about have to say Class A’s.) We really need an alphabet character specifically designated to indicate non-possessive plural. M-16ŝ? M-16š? M-16ș? M-16ṡ? We need something like that.
Enough for now.