I am chuckling at a line in a newspaper article: "Some [animals], like the opossum, vividly feign death."
Wow! Nobody caught that before it went to press?!!
Many thanks for the responses above! As some might remember, I have not been able to visit GMG very much recently because of the purchase of our so-called "retirement house," which STILL after 5 months of repairing and cleaning and fixing and arranging and repairing and fixing and repairing...is not finished to my satisfaction, so I now understand Mick Jagger's frustration from many years ago! On top of that we have been dealing with my brother-in-law, who has been in a coma twice and in the hospital or a rehabilitation center 4 times since the beginning of September with pneumonia! A month ago, the (cowardly and/or incompetent) doctors, pressured by insurance bureaucrats proclaimed him cured and sent him forth into the world. He spent precisely one day in our house and collapsed: the diagnosis three hours later at the hospital was "SEVERE PNEUMONIA, INFLUENZA, and (my favorite - drum roll, please) DEHYDRATION."
Yes, the medical establishment never really checked his lungs to see if the pneumonia had actually been cured ("Well, he was on those antibiotics for the allowed time and seemed better"). And how exactly do doctors and nurses
never check on a patient's fluid intake and output?!
Right now, after more than two weeks of treatments, and back in the rehabilitation center, he does indeed seem "cured."
Perhaps I should start a new topic:
Cato's Medical Malpractice Mantras! 
Anyway, I cannot tell you how many grammar items, ranging from curiosities to monstrosities, I have seen in the past months and thought: "That would be of interest to the good people on GMG!" But then a new crisis like the above would erupt!
So, right now, here are some I do recall.
On the sign of a Burger King fast-food restaurant the management was begging for workers:
"GET PAID WEAKLY!"
Is it possible the Burger King Corporation is brutally honest about their oppression of proletariat?
And then came English via Ancient Hebrew
:
"FLXBL SCHDL - TXT ....."
If they had used their Hebraicized English for the first line, they might have more applicants!
On a similar note,
Mrs. Cato noticed a curious phrase in an employment notice in the newspaper for a local government position in Criminal Justice:
"Applicant must be able to speak and write English
in a formal register."
Cato is always happy, of course, to support formal English!
The use of the word "register" in such a context is rare, but not unknown. The word has about 10 definitions, depending on the dictionary consulted, and "style of language" is on the list, albeit not near the top.
I have grumbled about this before: on television we are hearing the slurring of the word "important" more and more. In two recent interviews with government bureaucrats we heard how it was "really impor-
ăăă" to do blah-blah-blah..." Where did that goose come from?"
The "T's" in the last part of "important" are sledgehammered into an unpleasant, nasal honk!
Time's up! To quote
Patrick McGoohan: "Be seeing you!"
