With its infiltration now into movie dialogue and newscasts, the ‘second D’, as I call it, has taken such a solid foothold in the pronunciation of the contractions couldn’t/shouldn’t/wouldn’t (could-dent/should-dent/would-dent) that we are apparently stuck with them.  People always pronounced those words that way?  No they did-dent…

Next. For some while, I have been advocating for a long retirement of the word ‘amazing’ (“That’s aMAzing!” “She’s aMAzing!”) for its having been driven into meaninglessness, but now I say we need to remove ‘amazing’ permanently from the English language.  Having made such a statement, it’s far easier to move forward with my next bit.

Remember my post from five years ago (of course you do…) called The Tattoo Pandemic?  Deadly as Item #3 declares, I think I no longer apologize for it.

My friend Andy recently very calmly characterized tattoos as “self-mutilation”.

I feel SO much better…