Grammatical Pet peeves

I try not to be a grammar Nazi, but speaking succinctly is important to me, particularly because (as I like to brag), English is not my mother tongue. While I was born in California, we moved to Italy and I started to speak when my American father and Italian mother spoke Italian in the home. They rushed to make sure I spoke English by the time I returned to the States to start kindergarten.

Recently in the impeachment action against 45, there have been various pundits literally saying that the career diplomats are “incredibly credible.” I thought I could let it pass the first time, but I just heard it again. Are they too lazy to think of a better word like “unimpeachably credible” or “extraordinarily credible” perhaps?

There is so much subtle hatred and partisanship that we need to be above the fray when it comes to these things. It is becoming more apparent that right-wing fascists are using Democrat with a capital D as an adjective, as in “the Democrat party is not playing fairly.” Really? Most media hosts do not correct them, but fortunately, some of them, like Joy Reed, stop the show when they try that shit. I even tweeted Anderson Cooper about letting someone get away with that once, not that he replied.

Jim Visiting in Castro

We went to Hamburger Mary’s and to our surprise, there was a bona fide drag show, which I appreciated the song for this one by Ciarra. Jim visits the Bay Area yearly around this time, so it was nice to see him again, as he is one of my closest friends in New York.

Anticipating Halloween

We went to a few Halloween parties the weekend before (I’m all for the proposed legislation to move it to the last Saturday of every October). It happened to be the night one of the party locations required a power shutoff to avoid possible fires because of PG&E’s negligence and greed over the years. We still managed to have fun because this power outage was at least anticipated.

Iceland Golden Circle

I went to Iceland in 2013, but this was Shando’s first time, so we decided to do the Bears on Ice event with a bunch of bears, almost all of whom turned out to be Americans. This was also my first time at the Blue Lagoon.

Airport Layover

Downtown sites of interest include a church that looks like an upright airplane…

Star Wars theme bathroom in a small cafe…

Seemingly permanent rainbow sidewalk…

Iconic opera house and nearby symbolic Viking ship…

and random murals and art.

Beginning our Golden Circle journey at City Hall.

Continental Divide

Geyser

Waterfall

The countryside we were kind of forced to see when our tour bus broke down!

Blue Lagoon

Hello from Vallejo, California!