Greetings from Toronto’s Billy Bishop airport. I’m writing this post on my latest toy, a T-mobile G2 (also called an HTC Desire), using Android’s Wordpress app.  The keyboard is driving me nuts. But given the hefty investment I made in this beast, I guess I’d better start getting used to it.

Tomorrow I’ll post my traditional new years blog post. (And there’s already a retrospective over at Skiffy.ca.)  But today you get complaining.  As I’ve already tweeted, one of my newer grammar peeves is misuse of the word “momentarily”. It means “lasting but a moment”; however most people use it to mean “in a moment.”

So the announcement I just heard, that my flight will be boarding “momentarily” actually means that passengers will only have a brief instant to rush onto the plane.

In the past I’ve both sung the praises and cursed Porter Airlines.  Today I will do the latter.  Forget the fact security checked everyone’s boarding pass three times over a 3 minute period, the following exchange may shed some light on my frustration:

Me: Hi I’m on the 9:00 flight to Ottawa, one bag to check.
Porter employee: where are you going?
Me: Uh…. Ottawa.
Porter employee: what time is your flight?
Me (sighing): 9:00
Porter employee: And will you be checking any bags?
Me (now visibly pissed): one.

And there you have it.  Time for my free booze.

Update: Okay, they won me over again with excellent in-flight service.

Low Hanging Fruit

So on Facebook this week, I offered up that I was sick of the phrase, “perfect storm”, as in “this past week the stock market fell due to a perfect storm of devalued currencies and raised food prices, blah blah blah”.  Others offered their own annoying phrases:

“The elephant in the room”

“You had me at….”

“That’s what she said”  (oh, I am so in agreement with this one)

Tacking “gate” onto the name of any scandal

“At the end of the day…”

And, of course, “low hanging fruit”.

Feel free to add your own to the comments section below.  (If you’re reading this on Facebook, please try to comment directly on the blog, and not using Facebook’s comment feature.  That way more of the world can read your brilliance.)

P.S. the photo above is in no way meant to be disrespectful to gay people, but rather to specifically mock Mr Simmons, who is the fruitiest person I’ve ever seen –gay, straight or other.

Hey, big shout out to all my students who might be reading this. Hi! Stop reading this blog and go write your papers!

I love my students, I really do. Even the annoying ones. Sometimes they underwhelm me. Sometimes they overwhelm me. Sometimes they disappoint me. Sometimes they surprise me with their excellence. But it’s always a joy to see them. Really.

(And if any of them are still reading this: just because I like you, it doesn’t mean I won’t kick your ass (figuratively) if you piss me off!)

Today one of my older students in my first year class brought her son to sit in on my lecture. The little fellow appeared to be about 11 years old, but I really don’t know. But man, was he ever impressive. In a room of 200, only he knew the answers to two very basic (but obscure) geography questions: where are the nations of San Marrino and Andorra?

After class, I quizzed him briefly on some tougher geography questions: what are the capital(s) of South Africa? How about Iceland? Suriname? He got them all right. He gave me a question in response: What’s the capital city of Tuvalu? I had no idea. (The answer is Funafuti, by the way; I looked it up.)

I tells ya, that young fellow filled me with a great deal of optimism for the intellectual quality of our upcoming generations… despite contrary evidence. I hope he comes back to class!

Meanwhile, a colleague at a different university was kind enough to share with me some tidbits from application essays to his/her programme. Here are some of the best quotes:

“I am also a big fan of billiard. Trick shots require a great amount of thinking and pulling them off provides a great sense of satisfaction.”

“Being taught CPR can always come in handy just in case of emergencies.”

“The teachers kept saying change was good. That change meant new horizons. I didn’t see any change. I’ve only realized how much longer I will remain shackled to the educational system.”

“I took care of homeless dogs in my garage, because in the house I was not allowed. But I did, very rarely, maybe ten time, managed to snick a cat into my room.”

“I have always wanted to succeed. Even when I was a baby I wanted to.”

“I want to maximize my generativity”

“Therefore, I borrowed a couple of books about Einstein. They always surprise me with how little I know.”

“Having a balanced life is more weighty.”

“So I’m celebrating the fact that I’ve moved prisons? It’s like hopping over the fence just to find out there’s another fence with barb wire. This was ridiculous. Free air conditioning? Considering we’re paying for the rental of the place, the damn air conditioning better be free.”

“At school I am one of the leaders of C.I.A “

“In the community I have also volunteered at different events such as ‘Free Hugs’ and Police Picnics.”

“But I bet you can’t tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel.”

“My body slowly burns from the inside. It is disintegrating, disappearing, changing. Energy is what burns the fat slowly into sweat, like the sun melts wax – slowly. There is no more presence of softness or excess curves. Instead my body is toned. My curves are tight now, whereas once they were buried beneath more unpleasant, unwanted flesh. I look into the mirror and see a stranger.”

“It seems the more advanced we become the easier it becomes for people to commit crime.”

“You are repeating something that makes you different but the fact that you are continually repeating proves that fact that you are staying the same in a way.”

“My interests and participation in activities outside the classroom has made me independent and confident because of the expression of my inner beauty.”

“‘Too much of everything is bad,’ a man once said.”

Re: USA. “In spite of their intervention in World War 2 to impede the drastic war for being more dreadful, they are still noted for being one of the most hated countries in the world.”

“In the life’s of Tupac Amaru Shakur, Christopher Wallace you will find true American poets and role models”

“I am also responsible for contacting the photographer who is required for taking snapshots of our graduates during this special night”

“I am also a member of the Biology Club, participating in dissections to receive observational and practical experience dealing with animal parts.”

“I realized that even the very fundamentals of music would cling onto me permanently”

“‘The more things change, the more they stay the same’, the following aphorism can be used to describe society’s need and love for sports.”

“To summarize, even as everything around us changes from our politicians, to our culture, to our technology, our need for sports and the love that we express towards them on a day to day basis stays the same.”

“Also, I enjoy retail therapy and I know that loads of shopping will not relieve me of my stress, but I always comfort myself by saying how by shopping, I am helping the country’s current economic crisis.”

“The major value in participating in extracurricular activities is that you can take your mind off the burden of school”

“… you can intermingle with them, without having to compete with them to attain the highest grade average.”

“Beyond the classroom you will find more people than there are inside it.”

“If we would have given up on improving the 1885 car, than we would not have cars driving us nowadays.”

Now, I would not be an educator if I did not seek to remedy this… um… misfortune. So for those interested in improving their writing abilities, I recommend Purdue College’s online writing resources.

Greetings from scenic Vancouver, BC, where I am attending the Annual General Meeting of the Writers’ Union of Canada. As predicted, I am one of only a handful of attendees under the age of 50, and apparently one of 4 who are not White. Welcome to the Canadian literary industry.

I have a lot to write about, but I am wayyy too tired to do so today. I will say, though, that a weird thing is happening on this blog. My earlier post about being a stickler for grammar, has suddenly been beset with a barrage of comments by erstwhile experts. I can only conclude that the post has been reproduced or linked to from a site with more traffic than Deonandia typically experiences.

The thrust of most of the comments is this: items that I have identified as grammar mistakes are in fact permitted because, to put it bluntly, lots of people -among them famous writers- use them.

Fine. Whatever. As I mentioned earlier, this is a losing battle for me because language is ultimately defined by the bulk of people who use it. If everyone wants to pronounce “kilometre” incorrectly, for example, then the incorrect way will quickly be accepted as the new correct way. I won’t pretend otherwise.

So people, if that’s your only argument, then save your breath and my commenting space. For the record, I will not be responding to any of the comments on that thread… not out of any sort of protest; I just don’t see the point of arguing over some things that are not resolvable.