Grunts from the Wordgrump (9)

•It saddens me that we have a mandatory policy to castrate adopted male dogs.  I think it speaks to a lack of innovative thinking.  Why can’t we train them to use condoms?  Isn’t there an app for that yet? 

•Protect your time from being wasted by refusing to watch “news” that is not news, viz., reporters and commentators who speculate about what may, could, will or possibly might take place.  They’re paid to  blather.

•The voice that sings the notes placed on the page, that strikes the tone and holds it; the voice that trusts itself to the music, that eschews the showy vibrato, the splayed hands, the puckered grimace; the voice that would rather merge with the melody than flaunt and preen itself . . . is very hard to find. 

•A hardback academic tome distributed by an established publisher contains a major error that creates a grammatical train wreck.  No excuse suffices here.  Not a “misprint.”  Not a “typo.”  If your copy editing is so lax that you print a verb as a noun, you have failed in your fundamental responsibility to the author and the reader. You deserve to be vilified and flayed.

•In 2012, I long for an election as close and rancorous as 2000.   But this time the Democrats win.  I want the Republicans to take it in the teeth so that I can watch them go bat-shit crazy.  And then I want Obama to find his inner meanie and rub it in.   

•Arragh!  Pearls Before Swine.  You can think it of a small group, a class, or an audience but you can’t say it.  If you voice it you will sound like a supercilious, arrogant asshole.  Even if you’re right.

•We all have a constitutional right to free speech but there is no corresponding constitutional obligation to listen.  Thank God for that.