My, My, My

Well, thank you, Scarlett! (The lovely Miss Johansson - sorry, Mrs. Reynolds - gave me a shoutout on The Daily Beast). And hello there to all my new readers (whose blogs I'm getting to, slowly but surely)...I tell you, this celebrity recommendation stuff is great. Of course, I've only known the kid since she was nine or so...

I'm amazed. I went to yoga yesterday, and my body is barely shrieking at me at all, except for my shoulders and arms. Three hundred and seventy eight downward dogs will do that to you. On the other hand, if I keep it up, I may actually end up being able to go sleeveless this summer! Which means, of course, that I have to keep going to yoga. I knew there was a downside...to the downward dog (aw, come on - how could I resist that?).

I went to the grocery store today (in the incessant damn rain, natch, but the freezer was just about empty). Please tell me you're utterly fascinated with this news, and if you're not, toughies, because that's basically ALL I did today. Except for fielding calls from my trustee, foaming at the mouth and insisting I get Joshua out of the house "right away!"

I cannot imagine what on earth I'm supposed to do about it. I can hardly bodily throw out a 6 foot 200 pound man, and besides, that would leave the problem of his piles and piles of belongings. And then I'D have to pay to put all that junk in storage. I don't personally care if Joshua stays in the den while the renovations are going on, for heaven's sake - it's his damn belongings that are holding things up. I mean, I'd much rather be without him, but I can't see that much of a problem in his being there when people are painting and whatever else they're doing...such as mending the bit of the upstairs wall where my insane cat insists that the kitty litter box is. The cat uses the box for its intended purpose (except for the occasional miss, but after all, he's 17), but when it comes to scratching and covering up, he jumps out of the box and scratches at the wall. I can't figure this out and have no intention of spending any time trying to do so...life is WAY too short for learning how to read a cat's mind.

Actually, what I've had on my mind most of the day is ways and means to kill the suits at a television station. I am absolutely horrified at the Sci Fi station. They are changing their name to...are you ready?...the SyFy station.

What on earth has possessed them? Sci Fi has been the accepted short form of Science Fiction for as long as I can remember, which is a good long way. The phrase states firmly what it is, can be read and understood by anyone who is interested, and just sits there perfectly innocently doing what it's supposed to do.

The obvious answer to this (as I know from some time spent in the advertising business) is that some up and coming Young Turk at the station decided that the name wasn't - oh, let's say - "punchy" enough. It looked "old." And since any form of spelling has long since gone out the window, why not replace SciFi with SyFy! After all, it looks a lot like the gibberish used in text messages and IMs and (I presume) Twitters. And everyone can remember it because it's the same pronunciation as Sci Fi! Wow! What a concept!

What a crock. Oh, my beloved English, what on earth are they doing to you? For God's sake, it took me years to recover from "Lite" salad dressing...which is nonsense, by the by, because the calorie saving isn't all that great and anyway it tastes lousy. Make a nice vinaigrette...takes about ten seconds. Not to mention "Nite." And all the rest of that idiocy.

And here is an example. In reading this over (yes, I proofread), I realized that there are those of you out there who may think that when I say "Young Turk" I'm intending a slur upon those of Turkish descent. I'm not. It's an old-fashioned phrase (which in fact came out of the Ottoman Empire) that means a type who wishes to shake up the establishment. You can look it up. The point being, of course, that because I read actual English with properly spelled words in it, I know this sort of thing. Nyaa, nyaa, nyaa. (It also turns up a lot in British books - I recommend a short course of Evelyn Waugh - of course, I recommend Evelyn Waugh on general principles anyway because he's howlingly hilarious.) And remember, my darlings...I have warned you all along that I am a perfectly ghastly intellectual snob.

I am going to go and sulk in a corner...one stuffed with my Louis Untermeyer British and American Poetry collection and my complete works of Shakespeare. If I don't feel better after that, I'll go to bed with two aspirin and my complete W.H. Auden. I suggest you all do the same.

SyFy. Honestly.

Love, Wendy