Don't Miss it! A Guest Post by my Friend Kevin (in response to my post yesterday)

Kevin's comment on my blog yesterday was so entertaining I thought I'd share it here, as a guest post. And if you didn't read yesterday's post yet, do that first, as all of this will make a lot more sense. Maybe.
Enjoy.

Well done, Amy. I love the positivity. 

- The Thesaurus is good, but for my money nothing beats The Chicago Manual of Style. That thick brick of grammar rules is a life-saver. 

Not that I've read it, of course (good Lord, the thing weighs like twelve pounds). But then again, neither has anyone else. And, as the person in the office with a writing degree who knows less about grammar than most immigrants but whom others nonetheless turn to with their style questions, its mere presence on my desk allows me to respond confidently to any and all questions. 

Confused by the verb agreement for a compound sentence in which the subject is a parenthetical digression connected with or, nor, or but? Simply add a diphthong to the noun in question. 

Unsure of the proper way to change a prepositional idiom into a past participle? Just invert the dependent clause that comes before it by using a passive direct object. 

Work Colleague (skeptically): 
. . . Really? . . . Because those answers just sound like a bunch of unrelated words loosely strung together. 

Kevin (pointing to his copy of The Chicago Manual of Style): 
Chicago says so. 

Work Colleague (mollified): 
Good enough for me. 

- As for the hot showers: This may be a gender thing. While I don't dislike hot showers, I'm definitely more appreciative of the function rather than the form of that endeavor. 

Hot tubs and jacuzzis, on the other hand, you can keep. How anyone can sit in one of those and not feel like they have just been cast in a low-budget, late-night Cinemax feature is beyond me. 

- The police officer letting you slide, though, is something I also wholeheartedly endorse. I had a similar experience when I was sixteen. The only difference was: 

A.) Eight unopened cases of beer that an older friend of ours had just purchased for us to take on an upcoming spring break trip to Myrtle Beach were stacked in the back-seat of my car. 

& 

B.) My two traveling companions were very, very high. 

Fortunately, I was completely sober. Unfortunately, I was sixteen and incredibly stupid. As in get-out-of-the-car-and-approach-the-police-cruiser stupid (I should also mention that it was nighttime). And, if you know anything about law enforcement, you know that people who get out of their car during a traffic stop are typically beaten about the head and shoulders with a nightstick while simultaneously being tasered multiple times in the throat (as, I might add, they should be). 

Amazingly, the officer simply asked me for my license. Even more amazingly (and actually this part begins to fall a bit into the realm of the unbelievable), he did not seem too overly concerned when, after requesting said license, he watched me drop it, reach down to pick it up, come back up without it (wait, what?), and then reach down again to retrieve it. In fact, if I had to hazard a guess as to his feelings at that exact moment, I'd say they probably fell somewhere between baffled sadness (for the future of this once great land) and abject pity. 

That he let me go with just a warning about driving with my headlights off (along with a strong recommendation that I head directly home) was nothing short of miraculous.

- And finally, although it's a small matter, I think it's important to give a bit of context to the cat video link that I forwarded to you. Because, for whatever reason, people who forward cat video links are often unfairly judged by our society. 

Sure, I own a cat (lots of people do). And occasionally I do write and publish cat-themed poetry for Cat Fancy magazine and its Spanish-language sister publication, Gato de Lujo (it's nothing more than a creative outlet). And yes, if you checked, you'd find that I hold a minority share of stock in a company (Time to Shine, Feline) that designs and manufactures tiny bow ties for male cats (that's just a smart business move). 

But that doesn't make me a "cat person." 

. . . If anything, I'm more of a dog person.