So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

[Trenchfriend]

Has anyone an idea, why rail operators don't do the railcar's ticket machines redundant?

 

[GHT]

Bungling incompetence! Yesterday I went to the restaurant where we have reserved a table for Christmas Day lunch. Reason being I had to select our choice from the menu and pay a deposit. The restaurant had somehow double booked a number of people, us included. Our reservation was cancelled. Thanks.

But today, Tina had a phone call from friends, who, like us, dine out on Christmas Day, telling her that there's a couple of seats available at their table, in fact there will be quite a party going on. Sounds good to me, how life can turn around in just a day!

 

[KILO NOVEMBER]

"gift" ... this is a noun
"give" ... this is a verb

Sometime in the past few years, someone has been trying to replace "give" with "gift". It sounds pretentious and I don't like it.

 

[Trenchfriend]

I need an advise, my loungers!

Can anyone tell me, if average fake leather jackets (polyurethane coated) can be too sensitive for scratches?

Thank you, friends!!

 

[tonyb]

"gift" ... this is a noun
"give" ... this is a verb

Sometime in the past few years, someone has been trying to replace "give" with "gift". It sounds pretentious and I don't like it.

But then, there’s the unpretentious use of “eats” as a noun, of which I approve, or used to, anyway. Way back in the middle of the last century, when I was young, a down-scale eatery might display a sign reading “Good Eats.”

Alas, I fear that these days it would be used ironically, an affected vernacular the speaker never came to naturally.

 

[Edward]

I need an advise, my loungers!

Can anyone tell me, if average fake leather jackets (polyurethane coated) can be too sensitive for scratches?

Thank you, friends!!

Really depends on the piece itself. I've seen one or two "vegetarian leather" jackets in my time that didn't feel nasty, and which I believe would have proven reasonably durable. Notably, though, these were a similar price to an expensive, real leather jacket. For the most part, however, PU leather-substitute jackets are by intent designed to sell as a 'looks like leather, but at a fraction of the price', fast-fashion option that will be rarely worn before being dumped/ passed on, so the quality tends to be inherently compromised. When this stuff does scuff, the surface lifts and it can't be redyed / recoated/ polished or any of the tricks you can do on decent leather. If I wanted something very cheap for a fancy dress costume, I might consider pleather, but really, unless you're a vegetarian / vegan and real leather is out of the question as a result [and you can turn a blind eye to the environmental implications of such a plastic derivative], I've yet to handle a pleather that has anything much going for it.


This company - https://www.elvisandkresse.com/collections/fire-hose-bags - make bags and accessories out of use London firehose, which is probably the only leather-substitute I've seen I'd have much faith in. It would be tricky to design a jacket out of the used firehoses their business model uses, but if you could get it in a sheet, it might be interesting. Could make for an effective raincoat, anyhow.....

 

[Tiki Tom]

Alas, I fear that these days it would be used ironically, an affected vernacular the speaker never came to naturally.

When did irony become everyone’s favorite defense mechanism? These days it seems like you have to dig through layers of irony to get to what a person genuinely thinks.

 

[KILO NOVEMBER]

But then, there’s the unpretentious use of “eats” as a noun, of which I approve, or used to, anyway. Way back in the middle of the last century, when I was young, a down-scale eatery might display a sign reading “Good Eats.”

Alas, I fear that these days it would be used ironically, an affected vernacular the speaker never came to naturally.

Using "gift" instead of "give" is the kind of locution that a person who says, "Please contact myself or one of my associates ..." would use. Such a person would know better by junior high school if he or she had paid even a little attention in class instead of goofing off. Now these people want to sound like they hadn't been goofing off and want you to take them seriously.

 

[GHT]

Using "gift" instead of "give" is the kind of locution that a person who says, "Please contact myself or one of my associates ..." would use. Such a person would know better by junior high school if he or she had paid even a little attention in class instead of goofing off. Now these people want to sound like they hadn't been goofing off and want you to take them seriously.

Have you ever read, George Bernard Shaw's: "Pygmalion?" You might have seen the musical that is loosely based on the book, called: "My Fair Lady."

Higgins' quip that Americans haven't spoken English in years. It's one thing to say that the play was set in 1912, remember that the original Pygmalion version was written at that time as well. If Americans weren't speaking proper English a hundred years ago, what would Higgins say to our speech today?
(All tongue in cheek of course.)

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

Shaw pales against Gilbert K. in my view. R.S. called Sir K a lawyer today. To the heart of it, bested Dickens.

 

[tonyb]

Using "gift" instead of "give" is the kind of locution that a person who says, "Please contact myself or one of my associates ..." would use. Such a person would know better by junior high school if he or she had paid even a little attention in class instead of goofing off. Now these people want to sound like they hadn't been goofing off and want you to take them seriously.

That’s assuming the matter was covered in the earlier grades, or even the later grades, for that matter. And that the teacher him- or herself was boned up on it.

Had a similar discussion recently. A university level lecturer was bemoaning how little command of standard grammar and punctuation so many of his students had. Here they are at university, and they shouldn’t have advanced to such a level without already knowing this stuff, he said. He put much of the blame on the public K-12 education system.

I’m older than this fellow by a couple decades. The schools I attended, why back when, didn’t put much emphasis on it, either.

 

[tonyb]

When did irony become everyone’s favorite defense mechanism? These days it seems like you have to dig through layers of irony to get to what a person genuinely thinks.

Young people, young males especially, are more given to being smart assess, to thinking they’re more clever, smarter, more sophisticated, than they actually are. That was too often true of me, and of many of my friends and associates. Some never outgrew it.

 

[tonyb]

I suppose it isn’t trivial, and it doesn’t tick me off so much as pique my curiosity, that I’ve heard very little mention of what occurred on this date 81 years ago.

Only a small segment of the population has any firsthand memory of it, and the overwhelming majority of that small cohort were children then.

Time flies.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Our last local Pearl Harbor vet died two years ago. For most people it might as well be as remote as the Civil War.

 

[tonyb]

A few years back I had a pleasant exchange with a man who was at the airfield adjacent to Pearl Harbor on that Sunday morning. He was in his 90s when our paths crossed.

A conversation with a Pearl Harbor attack survivor would be about the last thing a person would expect when he does his grocery shopping. I was glad I met the fellow.

 

[Trenchfriend]

And whatever any movie fans say, The Final Countdown (1980) will always be a very remarkable film, leaving you in the imagination of how you would decide, if you got the chance to grab into history, in times of WORLD war!

 

[KILO NOVEMBER]

That’s assuming the matter was covered in the earlier grades, or even the later grades, for that matter. And that the teacher him- or herself was boned up on it.

Had a similar discussion recently. A university level lecturer was bemoaning how little command of standard grammar and punctuation so many of his students had. Here they are at university, and they shouldn’t have advanced to such a level without already knowing this stuff, he said. He put much of the blame on the public K-12 education system.

I’m older than this fellow by a couple decades. The schools I attended, why back when, didn’t put much emphasis on it, either.

I grew up in a small town with its own school system. There were perhaps 10,000 residents at its peak. The main employer was a steel mill specializing in railroad car wheels and other ring fabrication. My father worked there as machinist. All this by way of background to establish that it wasn't some sort of posh private school or the sort of school system with a huge budget.

I see that I was lucky to find myself in a situation where the teachers knew their stuff and wanted us to know it too.

Well, there was the football coach/history teacher with a penchant for nicknames. I vividly recall one day when he asked a tall, very thin classmate, "What were the Egyptians shootin' for in the afterlife, Stick?"

Continuing in trivial pet peeve mode, how about people confusing "less" with "fewer"? If you weren't fortunate enough to attend a school where the teachers were capable and dedicated, use "less" with non-countable quantities (e.g., "Put less salt in it next time."), and "fewer" with countable quantities (e.g., "Fewer than 20 people attended the rally.")

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

American English colloquialism with its reckless abandon usage is salt for blood replenish for liberty's tree
and mother tongue both. Excellent copy read above.
I've a Deborah Kerr set and last eve watched her From Here to Eternity to honour the date and heroic loss.
Miss Kerr is buried in Surrey. With honour respectful observe all fallen at Pearl Harbor 7 Dec 1941.

 

[tonyb]

Some (mis)usages become more widely used than the “correct” ones. At that point, we have little choice but to accept that popular usage trumps.

I hear “hone in” more often than the “correct” “home in” that I’m left to acknowledge that that battle is lost.

I haven’t yet given up on correcting “hair brained” (it’s “hare brained”) or “baited breath” (it’s “bated breath”) even if it seems that the incorrect usages are more prevalent than the correct ones.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Never cared much for the way "the carrot or the stick", implying work extracted by means of a choice between an incentive or a punishment is confused with "carrot AND stick," which describes being deceived into doing work on the promise of a reward you will never receive -- the imagery being that of a farmer tricking a donkey into pulling his cart by dangling a carrot just out of his reach. It's two different phrases with two very different meanings.