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GHOSTLY FATHER'S DAY

Remember Romeo called the priest "ghostly father", ghost meaning spirit (the German for spirit is geist). I was raised on "Father, Son, and Holy Ghost", but now it's Holy Spirit. Apparently now people only think of haints when they hear "ghost".

ALTERNATIVE SPEAK

It's such an alternative way! The speaker was referring to the craft of hand-coloring photographs. It is an alternative to something, but I don't think "alternative" can be modified by "such" in this way. It can't take an intensifier. It just means "different" in this context. (We're not talking about "alternative" culture, newspapers, music, hairstyles, or piercing.) We do, of course, say something is "so different", but "such an alternative way" isn't working for me. It would be like saying, "It's such another way!"

ANOTHER

She had another four children. This referred to a woman who had one child, then later had four more. "Another" would only be correct in this instance if she had four already, then added another four. You can have another (an other, one more) child. You can have another quantity like the first quantity (four, then four again). Likewise, if you're speaking of money, don't say, "The Big Dig is going to take another ten billion dollars to complete" unless ten billion dollars has already been spent. Which perhaps it has.

DROLL

"Droll" is a word not heard every day. According to dict.org, it comes from the same root as "troll" (and "trollop" is a distant relation):

Drol a thick and short person, a droll, Sw. troll a magical appearance, demon, trolla to use magic arts, enchant, Danish trold elf, imp, Icelandic tr["o]ll giant, magician, evil spirit, monster.

But yourdictionary.org gives another origin:

French drôle, buffoon, droll, from Old French drolle, bon vivant, possibly from Middle Dutch drol, goblin.

Why is "droll" different from "funny" or "witty"? It suggests a kind of whimsy, perhaps, sometimes a dry wit. And it sounds ~ droll.

WHERE WE CAME IN

I'm not sure if younger people would really understand this phrase any more, whether or not they use it: "This is where we came in." It means the action or situation is starting to repeat itself. It comes from the movies. Now it seems everyone finds out when the movie starts, and gets to the theater pretty much on time. But when I was a kid, we didn't always do that. We just went to the movies and walked in at random. So we might watch the last half of a movie, then the previews of coming attractions and cartoons (which theaters don't have anymore), then see the beginning of the movie until the point where we could say, "This is where we came in." Was it just my mom who took me to the movies regardless of schedule? I think not, or else this phrase wouldn't exist.

FIBER OPTIC GRASS

I bought a nice little potted plant called "fiber optic grass," a delicate grass with little "tufts of inflorescence" at the end of the fronds. The plant is also called Isolepis cernua or salt marsh bulrush, but recently picked up a new popular term because of its resemblance to fiber optic glass. So it's not a new plant, but one that has a new name. This is why the Latin terminology for plants and animals was established, so that all over the world, people could know what others were talking about.

A Venezuelan lady told me that they call a popular flower "little whore" because it is so easy to grow, it spreads so quickly and easily. Sorry I didn't write that down at the time, because I cannot remember the English name of the flower, or the Spanish name, only the translation. It may have been a small geranium.

CLICHÉ

It would be a bit cliché. Sometimes you hear "cliché" used as an adjective; and I've even heard people stretch to the invented "clichaic", which is not a word. We can use nouns as adjectives sometimes (e.g., lunch bucket), but I think people just don't know what to do about cliché. You may use clichéd, which I think has an awkward sound, or browse about for another adjective, such as banal or trite.

PERMANENT TEMP

The Craftmatic adjustable bed people advertise "a lifetime of temporary relief from back pain" if you sleep in their beds. Fred says it sounds like hell, a lifetime of alternating relief and pain. Of course, life itself is temporary (at least certain aspects of it).

SUMMER READING

Whether you're on vacation or on the beach, you want your reading material to reflect well on you. These books are entertaining without being embarrassing.

The Men Who Stare at Goats is a funny and scary book by Jon Ronson about some peculiar byways of US Army Intelligence/PsyOps operations, from post-Vietnam to Iraq. I hardly know what to say about it, except that our PsyOps (psychological operations) is probably more effective than theirs. Iraqis dropped a batch of leaflets on US troops, "designed to be psychologically devastating. They read, 'Your wives are back at home having sex with Bart Simpson and Burt Reynolds'." Well, maybe if Burt leaves his toupee on; but Bart probably isn't getting any. I'm reminded, however, of the lady who objected to the animated feature Who Framed Roger Rabbit? because she thought it would encourage bestiality.

Another short book for easy, but intellectually respectable while mildly controversial, summer reading is One Nation Under Therapy: How the Helping Culture Is Eroding Self-Reliance by Christina Hoff Sommers and Sally Satel.

I bought a remaindered copy of Son of Web Pages That Suck by Vincent Flanders. This is an entertaining book, and very useful if you have anything to do with a Web site, either personal or business. Check out his Web site, too. Flanders operates on the same principle I do in Parvum Opus: You learn a lot from bad examples.

Link here to look for books on Amazon.com!

NEED A SIMPLE WEB PAGE? WOULD A NEWSLETTER, ELECTRONIC OR PRINT, HELP YOUR BUSINESS? TALK TO ME ABOUT PROFESSIONAL EDITING AND WEB WORK.

I have a contribution in a new anthology about the "center of life", Changing Course: Women's Inspiring Stories of Menopause, Midlife, and Moving Forward, edited by Yitta Halberstam.

Go to Babelfish to translate this page into Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, or Spanish!

Parvum Opus is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services. Back issues may be found at http://www.keithops.us/. You may comment in the Guestbook, linked below the back issue links. Also, feel free to e-mail me with comments or queries.

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