Reading: Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children. Yes, still. Also Pale Fire and Middlemarch.

Watching: "The Big Sleep," as director Howard Hawks originally cut it. It was filmed before "To Have and Have Not" was released, and audiences loved the spark between Bogart and Bacall so much that new scenes were filmed and added to "Big Sleep" to make it more like their first movie. Or so TCM says.

9July 2002: Traffic

Trying to read a new journal, I came across "[Someone] and myself will do this," and "I was laying down." Immediate turn-offs for me, who never makes a mistake herself, of course. I corrected "a art project" in an entry of mine after it was posted, and flubbed subject-verb agreements seem to be my particular bugbear. I don't edit myself well. I originally wrote "a project" but didn't modify the article when I inserted "art." I hate that. But I don't confuse lie and lay; I don't use reflexive pronouns improperly, and I damn well don't stab the possessive form of "it" with an apostrophe.

(Ha! Apostrophe as dagger, because it cracked me up when an African acquaintance described Gambia as a dagger thrust into the heart of Senegal. And I first wrote "Senegalese acquaintance" but decided that two Senegals would be repetitious and remembered to add an n.)

A thing I don't understand:
The Which Splice. This is the rampant use of "which" as a conjunction, which it's not. The previous sentence means something different than the following sentence: "This is the rampant use of "which" as a conjunction, but it's not."

Instance of Online Journaling as Ineffective Soapbox or Rebuttal Not to Offender But to Only Available Audience:

Today I crossed a street at the crosswalk on a "walk" signal. Two steps into the crosswalk, the pedestrian signal began to flash "don't walk." A few more steps and a big American sedan turned left nearly in my face. Still walking, I glanced disdainfully at the driver. He gesticulated at the pedestrian signal, which was flashing "don't walk."

Let's review the pedestrian signal:

Walk means "walk."

Don't Walk means "don't walk."

Flashing don't walk means "if you're in the crosswalk, finish crossing. Don't enter the crosswalk, but if you're walking in the crosswalk, fuckwit murkan boat drivers don't have the right of way, let alone the right to reprimand you." I'm pretty sure that's verbatim in statute.