Well, it has been. . .

. . .a demanding couple of days.  And just now my friggin'/frickin' blog was trying to deny me entrance.  Hey, bloggie, I know my own password, after all.

           You know how the Chinese name their years like the year of the rat.  Well, I believe I am living the year of the complication.  First, I had my gall bladder out and had all the possible complications the doctors ever heard of.  Now, I go innocently up to school to sell John Kentch a Lions Club Calendar (Anybody want one?  $20/365 chances to win!) and find out that, regardless of the fact that I reserved it in February, the auditorium would not be available for our use this summer.  Why?  Renovations.  Will they ever stop?  Lucky that I believe life is too short for anger.

         ARTHUR auditions were great, but we came up 2 people short of a cast, one of each sex.  That has never happened before.  Complications.  

          I am happy to report that both complications have been beaten to pulps and left by the side of the road to whine.  We will be doing the play at the community center at CrossRoads Community Church.  (The library is also available if we need it.)  Buck LeMessurier, a great guy and experienced thespian, is going to do the male role.  Either Mariel Keppler or Jackie Owens will do the female role.  SUMMERPLAY will be better than ever, and once I get through the busy-ness of OZ weekend (I'm driving my new car in the parade with Oz-celebs in back, and hosting the writing awards ceremony), I will get around to figuring out who is going to play who and post the cast list.

            Enough about complications, let's get back to commas.   No, Scott, commas are not a "high falutin'" waste of time.  They serve definite purposes, but can be overused.   For example, I can imagine a sentence punctuated improperly like this.  "Last Saturday, on our way, to the beach, we were pulled over, by a policeman, on a motorcycle."  That is comma overuse.  The only necessary comma in the bunch is the one after "beach," and it would be better to be comma-less than overwelmed by them.

            There is one rule I love, though.  It's the one that says an adjectival or adverbial clause should be separated from a sentence unless it is absolutely essential to the meaning.  Most times, this kind of error wouldn't be noticed, but check out my favorite example.  "All men who commit murder should be executed."  If you separated the adjective clause "who commit murder" with commas, you are saying that the removal of those words has no real effect on the sentence.  And only a true misanthrope would believe that to be the case.