Look at this cute guy, giving me the eye from across the room.
A picture is worth a thousand words, yeah? So that’s it. That’s the post. Well, maybe I’ll just add a few words.
You can see the snow for yourself; the temperature is less obvious. It’s cold in Calgary. But not cold enough, I guess, to trigger that Prairie rule of thumb so often offered as consolation, however faint:
At least it doesn’t snow when it’s this cold.
That’s the whole gambit.
From across the room, I throw a slipper at the TV. No, no I don’t. Is this a case of remarkable self-discipline? Of mature emotional control? Of respect for basic norms of civil behaviour?
No. I’m not wearing slippers.
Don’t you have a pump?
I don’t even draw a breath: any pause would spoil the artistry of my slightly but completely justifiably indignant response.
There’s a pump?
My hair-stylist/salon-owner looks at me in the mirror, trying to decide if I’m serious. I look back steadily and, as well as I can from under the cape, give him the hands-opening-up-and-out-shrug: the universal hand signal for Seriously, I did not know there was a pump.
As recently as a month ago, we still had the beauty of colour.
Now we have the beauty of clean lines.
We really can’t have it all. But what we *can* have is fair-to-middling outstanding.
No wonder people find English hard to learn as a second language. We have oddball past tenses. We have weirdly inconsistent plurals, driven mostly by what language gave us the word.
moose/moose
but…
goose/geesemouse/mice
but…
house/houses
We have weird spelling in general.
As we barrel along the highway, the car rocks ever so gently in the not-so-gentle cross-wind. A scatter of sleet reduces visibility as the wipers gradually lose ground against even this unenthusiastic adversary, more smearing than clearing the windshield. Ahead, the sky is a blanket of gray. Behind? Blue gradually giving way to a blanket of gray.
Sigh. In and around our nation’s capital the lovely fall days are now done: We’re into . . . what? The dog days of autumn? I guess so. Biting winds. Precipitation that could turn into snow at any moment. Yup, it’s time to put the sandals away. And the camera.
Bing bing bing
Ack! That’s the interjection, not the abbreviation.
ack interjection
used to express mild alarm or dismay
ack abbreviation
acknowledge, acknowledgement
– Merriam-Webster
Side note: The Collins Dictionary–printed (and presumably thought up) in Glasgow, where they speak an occasionally intelligible variant of British English–identifies ack. as an American-English abbreviation. They present it with a period, which I have never seen in the wild, although I see its rationale.
Mr. Bond, they have a saying in Chicago:
‘Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence.
Three times is enemy action.’
– Oxford Reference
I love this quote. You might have noticed it in these pages (once, twice, thrice and, ahem, frice). I worked it in here today (I mean, it clearly applies here) because this makes the third time that I’ve wished you a happy Martian new year (here we have the once; here the twice). Yes, as of Nov 12 in 2024 (as some Earthlings reckon our own years, sometimes), we will move into Year 38 as Earthlings track Marsling years.
Thanks to John Whitman for this slightly dismayed face from downtown Ottawa.
This space is available for other submissions.
Posted: 2025 Apr 13
