My Sick Mind

"Exclusively and only at Raymour and Flanigan." - Kathy Ireland, from a TV ad. Language and grammar are funny things. I play with them frequently, and I wonder if a lot of it flies over the heads of readers, just as most of my physics classes flew over my head in high school. The advent of the Internet brought about a new mode of communication. No longer did people merely speak to each other. Now, they write down their thoughts and offer them in the written form more than they did in the 1960s. Phone calls were replaced by text messages, and letters and post cards are replaced by blogs and Facebook updates. Once blogs became popular, I wondered how former students who couldn't grasp the simple rules of grammar would acclimate to the Worldwide web and make their ideas palatable to those of us who find the rules of grammar akin to the way Christians view The Bible. We used to have to endure bad speech patterns and pleas of "you know what I mean....

I shouldn't use the salad bar or go to buffet restaurants, but I do anyway. I can't help but think about how infected the buffet spoons and salad tongs are as I pick them up and shovel food onto my plate. We don't give it a second thought, but I think about it when I see the end of the spoon or tong lying in the food in the adjacent container. Sometimes the entire serving device is lying in the food, which makes me think that someone should replace the serving device and, for that matter, the food that the handle has contacted. It's irrational, I know, because our immune system is built on fending off bacteria. That's why I think hand sanitizers are the biggest scam perpetrated on the American public since Lite beer. Part of me relishes the opportunity for my body to fight off bacteria-ridden salad tongs, but I am similarly grossed-out by the idea that someone's recently nose-picked finger has handled a plastic device that I am using to scoop up some c...