Old Botswana, Keep on Rolling, African Moon Won't You Keep on Shining on Me

Lately spam message lines have shifted back to random verbage, instead of sentences swiped from news reports. Yesterday I got one that said (I’m adding punctuation), “Don’t feel bad, Botswana.” Yes, we must comfort that nation. "What’s happening to Zimbabwe really isn’t your fault, Botswana.”

Ann has taken to her preschool classes in a big way. “I want to go to school,” she says fairly often. I think it has to do with easy access to clay. We used to have some around the house, of course, but I made it go away after too many of her “scatter the clay around the house” exercises.

Meanwhile, work goes on here at the word factory. Not long ago, I got an article back for some revisions. The lead of the revised article said, “[A certain segment of the real estate industry] is on fire.” In my unedited version, I’d initially written: “[A certain segment of the real estate industry] is on steroids.”

To indicate a sudden surge in activity, of course, something like muscular growth in chemically enhanced athletes. Figurative steroids. Ah, well. Just say no to drug metaphor.