I find your petty, tireless optimism very tedious.

Nevertheless, I began on a much more modest project this morning. I counted to one. It’s a great project; I can’t start it without completing it.

One.

Simple.

One.

I did it again!

Mr. Rinehart

You are a carbuncle on the face of reality.

Mr. F. Edwards
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

My piss-poor dictionary tells me a carbuncle is either a “painful localized bacterial infection of the skin and subcutaneous tissue that usually has several openings through which pus is discharged” or a “deep-red garnet, unfaceted and convex.”

I wonder how Mr. F. Edwards of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma knew that the garnet is my birthstone?

“Not only was I unable to improvise,” I said, “I couldn’t even sight-read.”

“Did you practice a lot?” Jimmy asked.

“I suppose so,” I replied. “For quite a while, I played my horn four hours a day. I did it for dedication, not love; I rarely practiced without keeping one eye on the clock.”

“I think I see your problem,” Jimmy responded. “I was good at sight-reading because I never practiced.”

“Interesting observation,” I agreed. “I never practice these days, and I’m doing much better aesthetically.”

In general, artistic collaborations lose their chemistry—their vitality—after a while. When I was a boy, I was very disappointed to learn that the members of the Beatles decided to go their separate ways. I now understand that it was the right thing move, especially when I see the Rolling Stones doing a parody of the Rolling Stones.

The reunion of the Dead Kennedys is an especially unfortunate idea. The quartet’s singer, Jello Biafra, wisely chose to let the Dead Kennedys die a natural death. It’s sad to see musicians trying to imitate themselves, and even sadder to see them lampoon themselves with a the help of a bad ventriloquist.

Burlesque is so money.

Christa opined that flying would be much safer if more airplane malfunctions took place on the ground.

I agreed.

I claimed that irregardless wasn’t a legitimate word, then was surprised to learn that I was right. Fortunately, three different dictionaries provided such amusing commentary that Samantha didn’t get too perturbed by my pedantry.

Irregardless is a word that many mistakenly believe to be correct usage in formal style, when in fact it is used chiefly in nonstandard speech or casual writing. Coined in the United States in the early twentieth century, it has met with a blizzard of condemnation for being an improper yoking of irrespective and regardless and for the logical absurdity of combining the negative ir- prefix and -less suffix in a single term. Although one might reasonably argue that it is no different from words with redundant affixes like debone and unravel, it has been considered a blunder for decades and will probably continue to be so.

Irregardless is considered nonstandard because it is redundant: once the negative idea is expressed by the -less ending, it is poor style to add the negative ir prefix to express the same idea. Nonetheless, it does creep into the speech of good English speakers, perhaps as a result of attempting greater emphasis.

The label Non-Standard does only approximate justice to the status of irregardless. More precisely, it is a form that many people mistakenly believe to be a correct usage in formal style but that in fact has no legitimate antecedents in either standard or nonstandard varieties. (The word was likely coined from a blend of irrespective and regardless.) Perhaps this is why critics have sometimes insisted that there is “no such word” as irregardless, a charge they would not think of leveling at a bona fide nonstandard word such as ain’t, which has an ancient genealogy.