I’ve done no research on the subject, but my impression is that many a pedant has weighed in on the abominable use of “gift” as a verb. Reader, I too dislike it.
But what really grinds my gears today is that there isn’t an equivalent for the opposite action: taking. Sure (and I’m not going to [...]
Archive for July, 2008
18 Jul
The takft that keeps on taking
17 Jul
On the perils of indexing
The editors of the collection to which I contributed the essay that occasioned my recent Greyhound adventure have evidently been eating their Wheaties, because the proofs came in at the end of last week, and I am girding myself to do my usual half-assed job of indexing. Here’s a secret that no one who knows [...]
14 Jul
Bloodsuckers!
Home again, home again, with, oh, thirty souvenirs from Interesting City: thirty mosquito bites, more or less evenly distributed, on my legs. But one standout stands out from the rest, ruining my uniformly poxy pattern of calamine patches. Yeah, calamine. I’m old school. On my right calf, one welt is so engorged that my leg [...]
10 Jul
Unlike another Jane,
I am neither disconsolate nor implacable, apparently.
In grad school I suffered the misfortune of being required to teach Jane Eyre three semesters in a row, because I had been assigned the intro to the major three semesters in a row, and in my grad program, the intro to the major was standardized to the extent [...]
2 Jul
The One
Nary a week into summer, and already it’s wasting away as I prepare for my one summer conference, a gift from your children and our future selves the Bush XLIII administration. For once, I am not presenting, and I am just about going mad with anticipation at the prospect of listening to what other people [...]
