It’s an upper respiratory thing. No antibiotics prescribed, as my un-fever went away. Instead, I have a strong decongestant/expectorant combo prescription.

This thing is making me extremely stupid. When I got to the drugstore, I got out of my car, and walked past the front of the Jeep and said, “Huh. It sounds like the motor’s still on.” Then I looked for my keys, and realized that the reason the car sounded like the motor was still on is because it was. With the keys in the ignition.

I’ve had to correct a dozen typos while writing this post.

I don’t think I’ll be blogging any more for a while.

At least the medicine is working. I can almost hear out of my left ear now. And I could smell the cat food when I gave Gracie her lunch.

Think I liked it better when I couldn’t smell it.

Guess those peace talks in Syria didn’t amount to the paper they’re written on. Four dead terrorists in the latest clashes.

The number of combatants dead in Wednesday’s clashes between Fatah and Hamas loyalists in Beit Hanoun has risen to four, Israel Radio reported.

And once again, I hope they both lose.

A Holocaust survivor celebrated his Bar Mitzvah on Monday, 64 years after he should have.

The Jewish community in Rome celebrated on Monday with 77-year-old Samuel Modiano on the occasion of his Bar-Mitzvah.

Modiano, a member of the community, was born in Rhodes. Sixty-four years ago, at the age of 13, he was a prisoner in the Auschwitz concentration camp and was unable to celebrate his Bar-Mitzvah. Modiano lost 60 family members in the Holocaust.

On Monday, in the Great Synagogue of Rome and in the presence of hundreds of community members, he completed what he had missed as a result of the terrible events that he endured in his youth.

You know what line leaps out at me? This one:

Modiano lost 60 family members in the Holocaust.

When the anti-Israel schmucks liken what Israel’s policies in the terrortories[sic] with the policies of Nazi Germany, I remember facts like the above. And I remember that many, many more survivors can tell us similar things. Most of them lost dozens of family members.

Mazel tov to Samuel Modiano.

Mark Twain said that the difference between the almost right word and the right word is the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.

Here is a perfect example of using the wrong word to make your point. In a story about whether or not feeding someone ground glass will kill them, the author chooses to lead with these examples:

We humans have been making glass for over 3,500 years. The Ancient Egyptians were making and exporting glass from their factories to their neighbours in Arabia, Mesopotamia, Syria, Cyprus and Crete. About 500 years ago, it was believed that if you ground up some valuable glass and fed it to an enemy, it would kill them. A few centuries later, the slave chronicles of pre-Civil War America refer to disgruntled black slaves who “poisoned masters and mistresses with arsenic, ground glass and ‘spiders beaten up in buttermilk’ ”. A popular device in Victorian literature had fictional characters using ground glass to surreptitiously kill off unwanted relatives. The “ground glass death” myth persists to this day. For example, it is claimed that unscrupulous manufacturers of ecstasy cut it with ground glass. But, as it says in Porgy and Bess, it ain’t necessarily so.

My jaw dropped as I read the bolded words. “Disgruntled”? Disgruntled? This “disgruntled”?

to put into a state of sulky dissatisfaction; make discontent.

This disgruntled?

displeased and discontented; sulky; peevish: Her disgruntled husband refused to join us.

This disgruntled?

in a state of sulky dissatisfaction

I’m sorry, but this author is an ass. And his editors are also asses. This is on the science website of the Australian Broadcasting Network, which supposedly has more editors and layers of proofreaders and fact-checkers than the entire blogosphere—and yet, they use an asinine word like “disgruntled” to describe African slaves who, gee, let’s think—didn’t like being slaves.

Here’s a link that cites the source “Dr. Karl” used in his quote. And here’s the main site about the many rebellions against slavery.

The mind simply reels at the ignorance of this author.

Disgruntled.

Moron.