Hit Me With Your Best Shot

Hello World,

Happy August! I hope that you have been enjoying all the pleasures that summer has to offer, and good weather besides. Although it's true that it is about 6 weeks too late to buy a swimsuit, and the Back-to-School displays have been in stores since Independence Day, there's actually still plenty of time left for hammocks and lemonade, ice cream and watermelon, swimming pools and corn on the cob. The season is short, but packed with opportunities that don't come along at other times of the year (unlike our friends at the car dealers and retailers touting their "Annual Summer Sale" as if they would be having it more than once a year) so get out there and grab it by the lapels with both hands while you can. While you're at it, book an expensive vacation, trade in your old clunker for a brand new model, and take a chance on the home of your dreams. The President's economic advisers will thank you, I'm sure.

Just in case anyone thought that things were getting just a little too quiet and complacent in the local area, along comes this startling headline from last week's newspaper:

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No evidence of shots

fired at school

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Now, I hate to be the kind of old fogey who's always complaining about the sorry state of modern life, and bemoaning the fact that things were so much better back in the good old days, so that even our old friends the dinosaurs are tired of hearing about it, much less the young whipper-snappers of this day and age. But I do have to say that this headline is a textbook example of what us old-timers would describe as a "non-story" and one that begs more questions than it answers. I can understand that if shots are fired at a school, it certainly deserves a mention in the local press, except perhaps in some wild and woolly far-flung outpost of post-apocalyptic wasteland, where anything goes and usually does. But when there are in fact NO shots fired at a school, in the heart of the bucolic and circumspect suburbs, I wouldn't expect to find that newsworthy in any way, and in fact, I would like to consider it more the rule than the exception on a regular basis. I tell you, you just can't make this stuff up.

Speaking of things that get your attention, it was in June that I noticed this curious tidbit in the TV listings for WNJN, a public broadcasting station in New Jersey:

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Primary Election Night Coverage 2010

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I can assure you that there is nobody more enthusiastic about getting out there and exercising our French fries - I mean, franchise - than yours truly, but even I would have to draw the line at sitting through 3 hours of election coverage in prime time, of primary races from over nine months ago. I mean, many of those candidates have probably already had to resign from office in disgrace by now, the way things are going in politics nowadays, and that's not just the old fogeys and dinosaurs talking, believe me. The political scene fared no better in this review of ABC's "The Killing:"

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Richmond's campaign hopes rise along

with his popularity in the poles

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Either this is another case of homophone trouble again, or this gentleman has limited his efforts to the denizens of the North and South Poles, and frankly, I don't know what it would take to appeal to the elves and reindeers of the North, and the penguins of the South, and I probably wouldn't want to know either. Obviously the spell-checker was no help at the polls, or perhaps they made the mistake of asking Santa Claus instead. They seem to have called out the highway department on this next synopsis of TNT's "Franklin and Bash:"

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Franklin and Bash take on a difficult

case that requires them to use their

unique style of courtroom flare

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I will have you know that I am not a legal professional, and I don't even play one on television, but even I know that they don't want people to take flares into court, for heaven's sake, and that's really not just the old fogeys and dinosaurs talking this time. The networks may love a flamboyant lawyer's flair, but for everyone's safety, they'd better leave their flares at home. There's no sense making the litigation system even more incendiary, I'm thinking.

I can't close without this perplexing notice that we received from our neighborhood association, about a couple of long-term residents who are relocating out of the area. Except for the fact that I personally know the individual who prepared the notice, I would think this was a recent arrival at our shores, whose grasp of the English language was painfully tenuous:

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Friends are organizing a farewell cocktail party to cheer joyfully to their new life in Connecticut.

You are cordially invited to share cocktails, appetizers and good time.

RSVP by email, phone or in person (walking dog times are great!)

As usual, the wheelbarrel will be on duty for support as needed.

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Cheer joyfully? Good time? Walking dog times? And what the heck is a wheelbarrel? (That last one sounds particularly objectionable, like something you would go over Niagara Falls in.) Frankly, it sounds to me like the hosts got a little bit of an early start on the cocktails before they ever started working on this notice, and apparently dragged the spell-checker right along with them, because anybody can tell you that wheelbarrel is not even a word. In any case, I had to tell them that I would be unable to joy cheerfully at the good time, because the dinosaurs and I would be busy watching election coverage from the late Mesozoic Era, when the incumbent Yog of the Dirt Party, was narrowly defeated by the Cold Front's challenger Thak, on a platform of "A Fire in Every Cave." Of course, this was eons before the invention of paper ballots, so the eligible voters had to cast their lots with rocks, and for those of us on the Election Board, dragging those votes around in wheelbarrels was no fun, I can tell you that.

Elle