A Setback for the English Language

So, Mike has been home for 10 days, and overall, he is doing very well. The shedding of hair has slowed down, and I’m starting to think he may not lose all of his hair after all. Time will tell. I will keep you posted on all developments.

The big local news is the changing of the Home of the Atlanta Braves from Sun Trust Park to Truist Park. When the Braves moved to Cobb County and built a new stadium,  Sun Trust Bank bought the naming rights for a lot of money. Last year they merged with another big bank, BB & T, and renamed their company Truist. I’m sure they paid a PR company a lot of money to come up with that name, but they clearly overspent, as the name is just pain dumb. Steve Hummer, a sportswriter for the Atlanta newspaper said it was a “setback for the English language.” I have tried to apply logic to how this ridiculousness happened, and it occurred to me that in trying to inspire confidence that the merger is a good thing they started with the word “Trust.” They then, for reasons not immediately clear, tried to modify or improve on it by adding a letter. They could have added an “h” and come up with “Thrust.” Or added a “y” to produce “Trusty.” Or they could have changed the “u” to a “y” and they would have had “Tryst.” Or they could have made an anagram of trust and called themselves “Strut.” If they were stuck on adding an “i” they had other options on where they could put it, to wit, “I Trust,” “Tirust,” “Triust,” “Trusit,” or my favorite, “Trusti.” Considering the amount of money it will cost to do all the name changing, including all the signage at the ball park, it doesn’t inspire confidence in the company, if for no other reason that the name is so stupid. But nobody asked me.

In other big news, Spoiled Donald is getting himself ready for his impeachment trial. I’m no expert on all of this, but I do know that he has gone out of his way to piss people off ever since the campaign, and what I do know is what goes around, comes around. I don’t see any winners in all of this.

We have had an unusually warm winter. Our camellias are already blooming, 6 weeks ahead of schedule. And after a year of below average rainfall, it has been raining cats and dogs, so to speak. I have heard competing theories about this odd idiom. One is that the drainage of English streets was so poor in Victorian times that the outdoor cats and dogs would drown in the flood after a heavy rain. I hope this isn’t true, and I doubt if it is. Another theory, also from Victorian England, is that cats and dogs often slept outside on the roofs at night, and would be washed off in a heavy downpour. Better, but I’m not convinced. It’s funny how many idioms there are that make no sense if you think about them.

The Fowl Party here in Happy Meadows is having some internal friction about what issues they want to run on. They could break up before they ever really get started. Waldo, their spokesgoose, promised to hold a news conference in the next few days. I can hardly wait.

This coming Monday is Dr. Martin Luther King Day. It is a good time to reflect on what values you would be willing to die for. Give it some thought. I’m sure Dr. King did.

Well, that’s what’s happening now in Happy Meadows. Thanks to all of you for the love and prayers, without which we would not be doing nearly as well, I am certain. We love and pray for all of you as well. Bye, bye.

 

 

 

Author: Black Magic

Black Magic is a handsome, charming, and self-absorbed cat who lives with Mike and Judy Gordon in Marietta, Georgia. He is about 7 years old, and he will remind you at every opportunity that his grandfather was Black Jack, that famous cat who wrote his own autobiography. Black Magic has a great many opinions, and despite his natural feline arrogance, he seems to be genuinely spiritual. But the reader can decide for him/herself.

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