Two updates, one rant

Let's see, the house really did sell, and the money really did get transferred into my account, and we really did wire-transfer a little over half of it to our account here in Germany, so we are ready for the signing tomorrow - the notary fee should be something like €3500, and there are taxes and taxes and taxes to pay. Oook. But it's all going forward, and I'm excited.

I just got the tickets for my trip to the States - a week in Seattle and a week in Denver. I wish both weeks could be longer, but I learned something last October, when I was in Port Townsend for a month: two weeks is as long as I can be away from my husband and sons. After that I get really jittery and strange and can't think about anything else. There's also the moving and the kids in school and the starting my freelance webdev business and DrBob going to Spain in mid-December, so two weeks is about as long as my life can spare me. I'm still fairly excited about seeing my people.

I'm not too excited about the new security measures resulting from the terror plot that was conveniently foiled right when both Bush and Blair needed something new for people to talk about. I hope by the time I have to fly they will at least allow books on board.

Oh, also? Pardon me for getting all Language-Nerd AND left-wing AND academic on your ass, but according to the BBC, British Home Secretary John Reid said:

had the attack gone ahead it would have caused a loss of life of "unprecedented scale".

And, from the same source:

Metropolitan Police Deputy Commissioner Paul Stephenson said the alleged plotters had intended "mass murder on an unimaginable scale".

Why are these idiots holding public office? "Unprecedented"? Maybe so far this month, fuckwit. "Unimaginable"? Excuse me, it wasn't just imagined, it was done, a lot of it in your lifetime, asshole.

The English language has more words than most comparable world languages - it's an incredibly rich resource, and the reason we have so many words is so that you can find the right one for the occasion. Yes, it would have been tragic and horrible for 3-10 airplanes to crash, but using words like unprecedented and unimaginable is, quite simply, telling lies. Pretty fucking insensitive lies, too. These nitwits didn't "mean" to say that 2,996 people were not killed on 9/11, that a million or so Tutsis did not die in Rwanda in 1994, that 9-15 million people were not systematically murdered by the Nazi regime. But that is what they said.

And lest you think I'm nitpicking on some basically decent guys, let's just look at what they really meant: "Biggest hugest scariest-ever deal, ohmigod everybody PANIC!" Which is exactly, exactly the wrong approach to take with a situation like this. So, nice try, but no: two stupids do not make a right.

And nobody called them on it, except zefrank - am I the last person to find out about this guy? He's fab. And cute. I may like him even better than Ask a Ninja.

Song du jour of the day: Janine, by Soul Coughing.