Two little words - lost!

Whatever became of the two little words, "as if"?

Oh, they're still used in a new way - to express a negative response to a suggestion - "Don't you want to go out with him?" "As if!"

But I'm talking about the old-fashioned words used to express a comparison: "It looks as if it will rain" - not "It looks like it will rain."

The word "like" goes between two noun comparisons:

• "He looks just like his father."
• "In that red suit, she looks like a hot air balloon."

"As if" is used between verbal ideas:

• "It looks as if it will rain."
• "It looks as if he will take after his father."

I don't know if I can do anything to remedy locutions such as, "He was like, 'What are you doing here?'"or "I was like, 'This can't be happening to me!'"

Some sensible word should be substituted for "like" in these examples, e.g., "He said, 'What are you doing here?'" or "I thought, 'This can't be happening to me!'"

I'm afraid these improper uses of "like" are past remedying, but I thought I'd give it a whirl in case someone out there is listening.

Please don't "gild the lily"!

I often wonder who first started saying "gild the lily;" and why, like sheep, all the world followed the originator?

I'm not going to go through Shakespeare's King John to get the exact words, because I did that once before, but in essence, these two courtiers - the Earl of Somewhere-or-Other and the Earl-of-Somewhere Else - are decrying the idea of the King having another, bigger wedding to his Queen (apparently the first one didn't take or wasn't good enough).

To make a long story short, the first Earl says, "Would you PAINT the lily, GILD refinded gold, or throw a PERFUME on the violet?" These are all examples of foolish excess (like bringing coals to Newcastle!).

As my father said when he told me about this 75 years ago, why would you gild a lily anyway?

When I was a child, we used to make pretty winter bouquets out of milkweed stems and pods, which we gilded and combined with alder stems with the berries on them. But we never gilded a lily!

IT'S NU-CLEE-AR, STUPID!

Hello Folks! Nice to hear from my "old" friends, and Drew--thanks for your tip about "Grammar Girl."

This is going to be a departure from grammar to pronunciation.

What is the grossest mispronunciation we hear all too often? You're right--NUCULAR! I hear that Laura has tried to get George to say it right, but as she would probably ask, "Have you ever tried to tell 'The Decider' what to do?"

Maybe sterner measures are needed. Some suggestions:

1. Smack him on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper every time he says "nucular"(but not in front of the audience--we don't want our leader to look bad to the rest of the world!)
2. Take away desserts for a week.
3. Make him recite "I will not say "nucular" 100 times.
4. Make him write this 100 times.
5. On every written speech or on the teleprompter write out NU-CLEE-AR every time the word occurs.
6. If all else fails, have someone lip-sync the word whenever it appears...

Good luck, Laura--you go, girl!