It's "All Right"

When did "alright" become acceptable English? It didn't! You don't have to be a Prescriptivist to hang your head when incompetence defines the linguistic norm.

Pet Peeve

In keeping with the blog title, i suppose i should occasionally report some actual grievances. Plus, who doesn't love to read about bloggers' utterly banal daily irritations? Commies, that's who.

Pet peeve number one: those effing Nextel-style walkie-talkie "push-to-talk" cell phones. I can only think of two scenarios in which the walkie-talkie mode is appropriate:

• Working in some kind of warehouse or similar environment where for whatever reason you can't hold a phone to your head or strap on an earpiece;
• I can't actually think of another scenario.

To everyone who uses such things on the street, on the train, in a bar, or anywhere other than the prototypical warehouse: i dislike you strongly. (I would have written "i hate you and i wish you were dead", but My Better Half doesn't like it when i talk like that.) I'm sure they've had to excavate a new circle of Hell by now for cell phone sins.