MY PET PEEVES AND OTHER OBSERVATIONS

I thought about posting this on Facebook but then decided that everyone would think I am a picky person, which I don't think I am, until it comes to language use.

My long time pet peeve is when people refer to a cap as a hat. In these two photographs, the top photo shows Robert One Man Johnson playing guitar and wearing a HAT.

In the lower photo, both my brother John and I are wearing CAPS. Anybody see the difference between the two? Well, of course, anybody with half a brain can see that a hat has a brim and a cap has a bill. Yet even big time writers will refer to players wearing "baseball hats". Baseball players would look pretty silly wearing ten gallon baseball hats, don't you think?

Yeh, I know it's a small thing, but it bugs the hell out of me because it is not correct nomenclature!

The other very strange misuse of the english language is something that I have begun noticing more recently and that is when a person is telling another person a story and wants to tell that person exactly what a friend of his said. Instead of saying: "So my friend says ..." it appears to be acceptable to say: "So my friend goes ...

What the heck?? People GO places, they SAY things, plain and simple. I think it sounds really ignorant for anybody to say something like this: "So I told him to stay off my lawn" and he goes "Well, excuse me, but there is a puddle on your sidewalk!"

I hear stand up comics use "he goes" on Comedy Central all the time. This morning I read the HuffPost online stories about the movie "Captain Phillips". In the article titled "Captain Phillips On What He Thought of 'Captain Phillips' (go to the following link to read it) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/14/captain-richard-phillips_n_4098947.html

Scroll down to: What did Tom Hanks say to you when you guys met?
Phillips uses "goes" instead of "says" TWICE!

There. I said it. Now I feel better.

Just a couple of days ago I wrote an editorial after reading that the Wisconsin State Senate is about to pass a law which will give the legislature the power to decide where and how much sand mining should be allowed in the State of Wisconsin. Here is my opinion:


The two faces of Wisconsin’s Legislative Tea Party membership continues to come into sharper focus. This week, a reliable source in the Wisconsin legislature informed Ms. Edie Ehlert of the Crawford Stewardship Project that presently a bill is being crafted in said legislature which would give frac sand mining regulation to the state, taking away local regulatory power from towns and counties.

The bill would be a “uniform” nonmetallic mining legislation that would not be as stringent or specific as the regulations that organizations such as the Crawford Stewardship Project and others are putting into place in so many of our communities in an attempt to put a stop to the disfiguring and polluting of the beautiful state of Wisconsin that we know and love.

It would be useful if the state legislature would be setting minimum standards to which local community organizations could add more thorough and stringent standards if they wanted. However, it is quite obvious that this is not the intention of the legislation.

Instead, the current Republican controlled legislature which continually trumpets the rights of the individual over the controlling state and federal governments, clearly intends to usurp the powers that they so vehemently say belongs to the people.

It makes a person suddenly come to the realization that the only time the Tea Party Republicans currently in power in Madison shout “don’t tread on me!” is if they disagree with whatever legislation is put forth on the floor.

If it is legislation that will further fill their pockets with the monies of lobbyists and big money industries such as RGGS Land and Minerals out of Houston, Texas, as well as the Florida based Cline Group, which has secured an option for all mineral rights in the Penokee range, and it is what our Tea Party Governor Walker wants, well, then it’s good enough for them as well.

Where did you put that rubber stamp?

However, I sense that the wind is beginning to blow in a different direction now.

The legislature can only urinate on our collective leg and tell us that its rain for only a short time before we, the people, come to our senses.

There. I said it.

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