Hrrmph

There was ice on my car windshield this morning. Ice! No wonder Mimi, who is convinced that she'll melt in the rain or its close cousin, wet grass, was reluctant to take that final pee before I left for class. Wet, icy grass must seem to her the ultimate insult to injury.

I'm sitting here wrapped ankles to ears in a lavender fleece robe. I didn't even bother to unpack it when I was in Dhahran. But my throat is scratchy, it's going to be another cold night, it's the end of the first week of classes, and it just felt right to pull the robe out of the closet and put it on.

Because of all of the above, I'm feeling a bit curmudgeonly at the moment. So I think I'll blow off some steam with a rant. They don't come along too often so I ask your forbearance.

If I can smell your Glade Plug-Ins/air freshener/scented candles from the street outside your house, you are doing it wrong. You've managed to destroy the smell receptors in the noses of every creature living in your home; why are you assaulting passers-by as well?

The much-discussed millenials don't seem to have much of a grasp on the concept of planning for the future. This morning before French class, I was talking to one. He seems like a nice enough young man. He's in the Marine Corps reserves. Plans for after college? Try to get into the Marine Corps. But they are dumping nearly 30% of their current numbers. I said, what's your plan B? He said, the Army. You baby boomers have your children, that is, me and my peers, to look after you. My generation? We are fucking doomed.

The pre-vet undergraduate population is dominantly female (sort of like those feral cat colonies), and I mean 75-80% female. They seem to fall into three main types.

Here I must make a small digression. The following observations aren't very nice and purists can certainly accuse me of judging on appearance, etc. My rant. Get your own or leave a comment.

The first type is the cute girl who was in the popular set in her small town high school. She wears a bit too much makeup and likes flashy, cheap jewelry and often colors her hair, which is usually straight. She is usually thin. She may even be sporty at least in dress. This type will glom onto any males present but in the absence of that, as in the pre-vet undergrad community, she will sit next to others of her type, usually in groups of at least 3-4.

The second type is the large (by which I mean obese) girl who may have also been somewhat popular in her small town high school simply by virtue of her being loud and obvious. She rarely wears makeup, may also color her hair in weird shades of red and black (in an attempt to be edgy), and dresses in hoodies and jeans no matter the occasion. This type nearly always flocks together. Some of these women are so large that they can't sit in adjacent seats in the classrooms. That's kind of sad.

As an aside, may I say that overweight women really shouldn't wear low-rise pants? There's no way those pants are comfortable for them.

The third type is the quiet, plain girl. Some of them are smart and some of them are not. They also tend to wear minimal makeup. They dress plainly and usually don't color their hair. They often sit in pairs or by themselves.

The proportions of these three types seems to be about equal.

That's pretty much all I have to offer on that particular topic. There must be some social/cultural factors that cause these three types to select a pre-vet program in equal numbers. I'm sure there is a master's thesis in there somewhere. I have other goals to pursue at the moment.

Moving on, I also must wonder how some undergrads think that taking certain core sciences classes two, three, even FOUR times, in an attempt to pass them is okay. All of those attempts show up on their transcripts. Vet schools have orders of magnitude more applicants than they have slots for. Chances are good that they notice this sort of thing.

Plurals are made by adding an s to the end of the word. That's all, just a simple s. True, English is a language of exceptions (the linguistic offspring of the cultural melting pot). However, if you follow this rule, you'll be okay more often than you will be if you use the construction apostrophe-s ('s) to make a plural. Apostrophe-s is used to denote possession. If you use apostrophe-s to make a plural, you are pretty much always wrong (there are, of course, exceptions).

Fewer and less. Gack. I throw things when I hear these two misused. It's becoming a daily occurrence. Fewer refers to things you can count. "Fewer people were at the mall"--you can count people. Less most often refers to qualities. "It was less hot today than yesterday" (which is weird as you'd probably say "it wasn't as hot today as yesterday" but you get the idea). You can't count "hot"--that doesn't make any sense. However, you also say "ten is less than twenty". Even though ten is a number, in this example it is a general quality. If I said "he has ten fewer books than Uncle Bob" then I'm using ten as an adjective to modify a countable noun, and in that case fewer is the right choice. Can you count the things you are talking about? Use fewer. Please.

I've heard and read a few rants about the overuse and misuse of "literally". I've been trying to purge it from my own vocabulary for some time. But I've noticed that "actually" is taking its place. Listen to any media stream. Count how many times people say "actually". Most of the time it adds nothing to the idea being expressed. "He was actually going to the mall with less people." Jeebus on a cracker. Not to be a grammar nazi but it would be nice if we could all try to keep up a working relationship with our mother tongue. Otherwise, public discourse will end up sounding like the babbling of infants.

Had enough? So have I.