Semi-active day

Excerpted and adapted from today's entry to my passworded journal:

Today, alone in the new apartment, I moved things around in the bedroom so that I could get my dresser into it, and so that I could get into the closet, and so that I could get my clean clothes into the dresser and the closet. I think what we've got now works, and there was room in the end for the wooden shelf that we thought we'd never fit. At least, I think there's room. We'll see what Michelle thinks.

The kitchen is still a mess. But I also got another box emptied, this one full of puzzle magazines (and random photocopies of puzzles), and I fixed the toilet paper holder in the bathroom so that it doesn't wobble, by pulling out the screw and banging a screw holder into the wall before putting the screw back in. And then, because I knew it would give me a sense of accomplishment, I alphabetized the CDs.

And I played a lot of stupid computer game, but what can you do?

Random language abuse

I'm a descriptivist, not a prescriptivist, which means that I am only interested in describing how people use language and not in telling them that some things are right and others wrong. But.

Two recent misuses so egregious that I can't be the only one who suffers from having seen them:

1. Poking around the Lipton Tea website, looking for their recommendation for sun-brewed tea which I've never tried to make, I find: "Choose among a stunning variety of teas to find one that will suit your palette as well as your mood."

Never mind that I hate advertizing copy and that I'm not stunned by six green teas and twelve black teas. Mostly I'm wondering what artists out there are trying to match teas to the colors they use.

Malapropisms aren't uncommon, particularly when the two words are homophones, but that sort of mistake in the advertizing section of a company's website strikes me as more inexcusable than most.

2. I saw a bumper sticker the other day that told me to "Invest in Jesus: his flock always goes up!" As a pun it's not too bad. The problem I had was not the sentiment, but the fact that the sixth word was, in fact, spelled "alway's". I think this is more or less covered by Rule Three of Bob's Quick Guide to the Apostrophe, You Idiots, which I'm starting to feel tempted to print out and stick under windshield wipers or hand to merchants.