Annoying Words & Phrases

Channel98 said:
This week there have been several huge fires in the Los Angeles area. The largest are the Eaton Canyon fire and the Pacific Palisades fire. There is also the Kenneth fire, Creek fire, Archer fire, Hurst fire, Sunset fire and Lidia fire. I have been listening to news reports on our local NPR station and I've heard four people, including a sheriff and a fire chief, say "It's an all-hands-on-deck situation." Huh? Are they in the Navy now?

And one reporter discussing the Hurst fire announced that "a ton of cops are directing traffic." How does she know? Did she weigh them?
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Maybe there was a doughnut shop near by and it was a good guess.
 
scotchandcigar said:
I figured you either had to evacuate, or you were hunkering-down.
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Residents in parts of Glendale, such as Chevy Chase Canyon and northern La Crescenta, were told to evacuate but I was not among them. And we have fires and earthquakes here, not hurricanes, tornadoes and blizzards, so I have never had to hunker down. To be honest, I don't even know how to hunker down.
 
I think it just involves staying put. Of course, before you hunker down, you have to join the masses and stock-up on milk and bread - two things most people don't normally need - unless you're hunkering down.
 
Channel98 said:
Residents in parts of Glendale, such as Chevy Chase Canyon and northern La Crescenta, were told to evacuate but I was not among them. And we have fires and earthquakes here, not hurricanes, tornadoes and blizzards, so I have never had to hunker down. To be honest, I don't even know how to hunker down.
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You are not the hunker-downer you once were ...
 
I just got an email from SoCal Edison. Here is how it begins:

Dear Customer,

We are fully aware that many customers are going on day four without power, prolonging a significant hardship. The ongoing severe weather and active wildfires continue to cause many challenges to our restoration efforts. As of this afternoon, 172,000 customers are without power and we have restored service to over 400,000 customers since the start of the wind event."

It isn't just wind. No, it's a wind event. Does that mean the wind was planned and scheduled by someone?
 
Channel98 said:
I just got an email from SoCal Edison. Here is how it begins:

Dear Customer,

We are fully aware that many customers are going on day four without power, prolonging a significant hardship. The ongoing severe weather and active wildfires continue to cause many challenges to our restoration efforts. As of this afternoon, 172,000 customers are without power and we have restored service to over 400,000 customers since the start of the wind event."

It isn't just wind. No, it's a wind event. Does that mean the wind was planned and scheduled by someone?
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The scheduling kind of depends on your faith does it not?
 
Channel98 said:
This week there have been several huge fires in the Los Angeles area. The largest are the Eaton Canyon fire and the Pacific Palisades fire. There is also the Kenneth fire, Creek fire, Archer fire, Hurst fire, Sunset fire and Lidia fire. I have been listening to news reports on our local NPR station and I've heard four people, including a sheriff and a fire chief, say "It's an all-hands-on-deck situation." Huh? Are they in the Navy now?

And one reporter discussing the Hurst fire announced that "a ton of cops are directing traffic." How does she know? Did she weigh them?
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Well, the portly ones...
 
Channel98 said:
I just got an email from SoCal Edison. Here is how it begins:

Dear Customer,

We are fully aware that many customers are going on day four without power, prolonging a significant hardship. The ongoing severe weather and active wildfires continue to cause many challenges to our restoration efforts. As of this afternoon, 172,000 customers are without power and we have restored service to over 400,000 customers since the start of the wind event."

It isn't just wind. No, it's a wind event. Does that mean the wind was planned and scheduled by someone?
Click to expand...

That will certainly fuel the conspiracy theories...

But you should call them up:

"I HAVE NO EFFIN POWER GOD EFFIN DAMMIT!! I feel like blowing my mind up!! Somebody rape for for cryin out loud! GOD EFFIN DAMMIT!!"

(Don't...but if there's some humor in a power outage, it's always Wendy.)

In all seriousness, it sucks and we all send our love.
 
I have been listening to a lot of radio coverage and watching a lot of television coverage of the huge wildfires in the Los Angeles area. Reporters, news anchors, sheriffs, fire chiefs and other officials seldom use the words "going to." Most of them say "gonna," which is not a word. "They're gonna evacuate." "Part of the highway is gonna be closed." "The shelter is gonna be opening." "Food and water are gonna be available." "Helicopters are gonna be dropping water."

Speak proper English, people!
 
If I had listened to more newscasts, I'm sure I would have heard someone say "people are gonna be impacted by the fires." The verb "impact" did not originally mean "to have an impact on." This is from the Online Etymology Dictionary:

impact (v.) c. 1600, "press closely into something," from Latin impactus, past participle of impingere "to push into, drive into, strike against," from assimilated form of in- "into, in, on, upon" + pangere "to fix, fasten." Original sense is preserved in "impacted teeth." Sense of "strike forcefully against something" first recorded in 1916. Figurative sense of "have a forceful effect on" is from 1935.
 
Here is another stupid "pre-" word. I hadn't heard it before but the Oxford English Dictionary says it dates from the 1990s. It means "(in politics) a response formulated in anticipation of a criticism; a preemptive rebuttal." This is from today's Los Angeles Times:

"Biden used his farewell speech Wednesday for a prebuttal to Trump's inevitable attempts to usurp credit for good times – assuming they remain good."

Another stupid expression is this one from political strategist Karl Rove: "He [the new President] will find he can get more from both parties in Congress with honey than with vinegar." An old English proverb says "You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar." Are we to believe there are professional fly catchers who have tested that theory and found it to be true?
 
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