I haven’t been doing a very good job of following the news lately. No, seriously, I didn’t even know about a coal train that derailed within three miles of my house a few weeks ago.

But eventually I do hear about things, and the recent peanut butter recall was one that had me sending Matt to the pantry to dig out all his granola bars, because he always gets peanut-buttery ones. So he pulls out a CLIF bar and I read him off the dates that are supposedly contaminated, and he says oh, yeah, this is one of them.

And then he looks again in the pantry and says “That’s all we have.”

“Didn’t we buy a whole bunch a little while ago?”

“Yeah. I already ate them.”

I’m not sure if I can describe why, but this has me laughing so hard my eyes are tearing up. He ate them. No salmonella here, or at least none that affected him.

He ate them. *snorfle*

Good night to all, and may your accidental peanut butter eatings be as uneventful as Matt’s.

Last week was a strange one, full of anxiety and uncertainty, or at least irregular work hours, which really messes with my productivity. As far as I know, this week should be much more promising, and I will soon be back to my regularly scheduled bloggery.

Today I’d like to discuss a phenomenon I’ve noticed more and more recently, and it falls into the category of mangling the English language. There seems to be an idea that “nother” is a real word. It is generally used in the following manner:

“Since he confessed to his bad behavior and owned up to it when he apologized, I’m willing to forgive him, but if it continues that will be a whole nother thing.”

I think it happens because people mean to say it will be ‘another thing’, but they want to emphasize that it will be ‘a whole nother thing.’ Apparently no one realizes that the appropriate way to say this is ‘a whole other thing’, since “another” is just a merging of “other” with its appropriate article, “an.”

It bothers me. Especially when people who are supposed to be professional speaking-types (like radio DJs and news anchors) do it.

“Nother” is not a word. Neither is “expresso”, but that’s a whole other thing.