canal thoughts

1) Terrain + Water

That's seems to describe all the places I like. I love lower Michigan for being my hometown, and it certainly has the water part covered, but it is a little lacking on terrain. I love cities built around impossible and crazy terrain on major bodies of water. See Pittsburg, Cinncinati, San Francisco, and yes, even Houghton-Hancock, MI. There's something about the combo that is just fun to be around for me. And it definitely describes my annoyance with Indiana, Kansas, Ohio, and Iowa, which have very little of either. From my short trip this week, Nashville comes close with a very nice river downtown and interesting terrain just short of the craziness of the Cumberland plateau area of Kentucky/West Viriginia.

2) More cars

Got a pretty nice trip this week. Road trip in a Cadillac XLR which is an lovely car. I'd still rather have the Corvette, but mighty fine nonetheless. Not a lot of time for sightseeing or enjoyment, with long days and 1200 miles covered in three days. But its was nice to be out of the office and somewhere new for a change.

3) Radio Radio

Well, what the hell else are you going to do with 30 hours in a car? First, Miranda Lambert. More on that later. Second, listening to the connection on my way back into town I heard Avishai Cohen. Wow. He's an Israeli bass player (as in the double bass) I'm not typically much for the mania of turning pop songs into jazz or classical arrangements, but when its done just right its trancendant. And that's what you'll hear when you get to Avishai's Beatle's cover (start around 35 minutes).

4) Andy is still wrong

Officially and in type, this whole debate over nauseous / nauseated is grammatical (technically etymological I guess) snobbery at its worst. And the usage history shows that Nauseous was used to mean "affected by nausea" when the word was first written and used at the beginnings of modern English. Not that I really care. Language is dynamic and is only useful when we understand each other. Language is democratic. If usage is obeyed in the same way by 90% of its speakers, that *is* the correct usage, by definition. Trying to enforce strict limits on a living language is counterproductive, not to mention nauseating.

And what's the problem? Is anyone genuinely confused about the meaning of the word when used in a sentence? Never, or else they wouldn't be able to correct it smugly. So why does it matter?