#45 Wanted for Crimes of ... Drooling?

I went to the county fair (maybe two weeks ago?  I forget exactly when.)  It was kind of  a surprise.  I'm way behind in reading the newspaper again, and I'd been passing the billboard at the end of the bridge for weeks without reading it and then one day I read it, and the fair was already half over.  So I went the next day, a Thursday.  It was ending on Sunday, and I didn't want to go Friday or over the weekend because it would be so crowded.   It was crowded anyway.  Where on Earth did all those people come from?  On a Thursday!     

There was a booth on the midway where you could get a sepia toned photo taken, in costume.  The theme was "Wanted for Crimes of Passion", and you'd be posed with a pistol in one hand and a bottle of Johnny Walker Black in the other, and "NO SMILING!"  After watching a while, I decided I wanted one.  I envisioned me mean and a little sexy - sorta "Come up and see me sometime ... but ya better wear a cup".  They put an off-the-shoulder dress on me, and a big feathered hat, a feathered boa, long gloves, and the required pistol in one hand and the bottle in the other.  I wanted a cigar between my teeth, but they didn't have any.  The photographer kept saying "NO SMILING!", but I was having too much fun, and I couldn't stop smiling, so finally I had to do my relaxation thing, to shake off the giggles.  I let my head fall back, my spine slump, my arms drop, my chin and eyelids droop - and that's when he snapped the picture (of course), before I could pull all the strings to get me back together.   It's awful.  My mouth is practically drooling, my eyes look like I'm about to pass out, my body is a shapeless mound, and the gun is hanging listlessly.  I look drunk out of my gourd!     Sigh.   I really wanted a nice picture. 

----------------------------------------

I've noticed it in my entries and in other AOL journals, too - sometimes this program runs two words together.  Seems to be arbitrary.  Not at the end of a line - in the middle somewhere.  I'll store the entry, then notice the problem, edit the entry and put in a blank, and store again, and they are still schmushed together.  Sometimes if I stick two or three blanks between the words, one blank will stick, but not always.  Very strange.

-------------------------------------------

More peeves:  It annoys me when someone uses a word or phrase when they obviously have no idea what they are saying, or what it means.   Like the woman in the grocery store, commenting that it didn't matter which line she chose, "It's six-half of one, six-half of the other."   Huh?  She apparently either never heard the correct aphorism, or having heard it didn't think about it.  Or maybe she meant "they are one in the same" (huh?), as I read recently.   There was a woman on "Judge Judy" today who spoke of a man who "went to the ER room".  It wasn't nervousness - she said it five times!  She has obviously never wondered what the "R" stood for.  And the young lady rhapsodizing about a new boyfriend, "He's my dream-come-true come true."   Apparently a dream that hasn't come true yet is merely a dream-come-true.  And then there's the handcream, the makers of which claim "It absorbs fast!"  That's downright scary!  If I put it on my hand, will it eat my skin?  What does it absorb?  (Oh, you mean it is absorbed quickly?  That's entirely different.  So why not say that?)  And last (for tonight, anyway) all the people who end a list with "ect".  It's easy to remember how to spell it if   a) you know it's an abbreviation, and   b) you know it's short for "et cetera" - therefore, "etc."  (The period on the end is part of it.  That's the "-etera".)