Saturday

 Well, I went on the other day about the things that I was thankful for. Today, I am back to normal, not understanding the world or my fellow humans. Some things really irritate me ... and they shouldn't realistically. I am not well educated, tout de même I am not dumb. Here I sit in the pre-dawn hours, reading and attempting to keep up with happenings locally and in the world at large. I mean ... important, earth-shaking things. LOL ! I mean who doesn't worry that B.H.O., the world's most articulate human and leader (?) of the free world got stitches because of an errant elbow in a basketball game or that 77 year old Willie Nelson got caught with 6 ounces of pot (again) or that Wesley Snipes or Lindsey Lohan may actually get jail time. These are events that shall go down in history ... or not. Sometimes I think that I should give up on the news as it is. But, where was I? Oh yeah, things that irritate me.

Item #1: I cannot, for the life of me, understand why people use YOUR when they mean YOU'RE. I have seen it on all sorts of announcements, both hand printed and computer generated ... "YOUR invited" / "YOUR welcome" ... and no one seems to notice or to care. Well, now I have even seen it in the newspaper ... in our very liberal Arizona Daily (Red) Star. And it was not just lapsus linguae, it appeared once in the news and once on the sports page. These are college educated writers and they have editors. This is not the only language malfunction extant but it is one of the most common. If a redneck hillbilly like me can see the difference, then what is the problem? Are the apostrophe and the E just too much trouble to add? Enough though.

Item #2: Drivers who are distracted or brought to incompetence by their inability to NOT BE ON THE PHONE! I cannot believe that all these conversations are THAT important. People do not talk about important things on their cell phones normally ... they just talk because they have a cell phone and it is a way to keep busy. I saw a car yesterday with three people in it ... all of whom were on their cellphones. Maybe they were talking to each other? Or maybe they didn't like each other? No one under the age of 50 seems to have face-to-face conversations anymore. They text and twitter and whatever that new thing is, all in a code that passes for language these days. OMG,LOL, Gr8, ad nauseam.
    An observation - I have to say that there are very few people that I know or see who have the ability to "Do Nothing". That is a great sorrow to me. Everyone should, at one time or another (I do it regularly) ... just sit/stand/lean and "Do Nothing". I sit on our little porch for a half hour and don't do anything ... it revitalizes the juices and rests our little grey cells (as Hercule Poirot calls them). But folks in this day and time have to stay busy every waking moment, not with anything important, just busy.

Item #3: While we are on the subject of driving / drivers ... my favorite peeve ... are people ignorant of laws and/or common courtesy or just ignorant? They make right hand turns from the left lane and/or left hand turns from the right lane. They cut over three lanes ... a mere 5 car lengths from the intersection. Did they just remember where they were going? Did they just wake up? Or did that person on the phone tell them ... "TURN HERE!"?

   I think that I will leave the news, as it is, alone and make some breakfast. Have a good weekend. Oh, by the way ... my sports update: U of A lost to the #1 team in the nation in football and won in basketball, but they have a real test in roundball today ... Kansas. My three NFL picks for Turkey Day didn't turn out so well I was 1-2. But one game I gave 3 1/2 points and my team only won by 3. I lost by a half point ... that sucks. Oh well! But,again, have a great weekend.