Don't/USG/Pox&Pax.gov

Sometimes there is no other way, but to begin writing a paragraph, or even a sentence, with the word “I” should be avoided when possible. Being a mental drone, I have to keep this in whatever is left of mind. Though likely unconscious, when done repeatedly, starting with "I" is a self-diminishing practice and unfortunate style that turns on a light shading what one says as egocentric drivel. It marks one as childish and ignorant, not unlike indiscriminately sprinkling commas. Which reminds me that when my mother died I handed the undertaker an obituary to transmit to the newspaper. When it showed up on the newsstand and I discovered that it had been edited by an ignorant and uneducated Commacrazy, I resubmitted it with orders that it be reprinted and not one dot, jot, tittle or iota be touched, nor one comma added.

Interesting things open in daily email. NYT and Washington Post are never favorites, never. Necessary but not favored. Two favorites are a daily essay from delanceyplace and Anu Garg’s a.word.a.day, especially the words. Every week Anu has a theme. This week it’s words we use in plural form and for which the singular form has evaporated. So far, auspices, paparazzi, cognoscenti. Datum might be one. Datum is and Data are, but we have said Data is so long that it has become as correct as hopefully. Auspice? My blog is not under my own auspice, but under the auspices of www.blogger.com, whom I appreciate. 

News anyway. Manning convicted of all but the most serious crime of Aiding the Enemy, and embarrassing the government shouldn’t be a crime at all. Snowden faces similar. We can be thankful for our jury system and glad not to be on most of them, although nobody should be able to pick a fight and then kill the other guy when he fights back and starts winning. However, the media seem to have wrung all they profitably can out of Zimmerman, perhaps he will now go the way of old soldiers. The internet has made Everyman an expert jury secondguesser, but at least it provides a public forum that will be handy Comes The Revolution.

Comes The Revolution? People often have unrealistic expectations of The Revolution. Angry comment overheard locally five years ago in the lobby of St. Andrews Towers: “When Obama wins, we’re gonna take over this place.”

Nothing changes but U. S. Government, a slow-moving tsunami, an encroachment of fire ants, a migration of Brazilian killerbees. A.word.a.day for USG is inexorable.

Favorites? Candorville. Doonesbury. Calvin and Hobbes. Allowing myself one chapter at a time of Roger Ebert's Life Itself: A Memoir so as not to use it all up. Next up on Kindle, Reza Aslan's Zealot, then Proof of Heaven by Eban Alexander, MD.

( ) Pox

( ) Pax
( ) .gov

( ) All of the above

( ) None of the above

W