I am nominating Sunday the most awesome ever start of Autumn.

And it just keeps coming.

Is this weather not positively stunning? It's like being tasered again and again with contentment. If they could just pack a jolt of undiluted bliss into one of those tasers, it would feel like the last four or five days.

If this weather were a car it would be an Aston Martin DB4 GT Zagato. If it were a song it would be Bohemian Rhapsody. If it were a perfume it would be Chanel No.5.

It's The Little Black Dress of weather. The Calvin Klein white briefs of weather. The Berluti Rapiécés Reprisés of weather.

If it were a bridge it would be The Golden Gate. If it were a steak it would be the "103" Wagyu rib eye at Craftsteak New York.

If it were a Symphony it would be The Ninth. A movie, Citizen Kane. A work of art, The Ecstasy of St. Theresa. If it were a death it would be Romeo and Juliet's.

If it were a porn star it would be Pavel Novotný.

I mean, wow.

Especially since I've been watching the History Channel, and know how unlikely a day like today really is. And how unlikely it is that we're here to enjoy it. Why, just this morning I was reading the letters to the editor in the Globe and came across this gem: "To paraphrase ... evolutionary theorist Stephen J. Gould: If time were rewound millions of years and the 'tape' of evolutionary history were allowed to start over, it is unlikely that humans would evolve at all."

The whole thing's a fluke! Enjoy it before the next giant asteroid hits, or gamma rays traveling faster than the speed of light fry the planet to a crisp, or Krakatoa explodes again with the force of a bajillion-megaton atom bomb, or somebody figures out a way to rewind "the 'tape' of evolutionary history."

This ship is going down, people! What are you saving up for? Retirement? Party like it's 1999, already!

That's the thing. When I'm out and about on a day like today I still see people who, you look at them, and you just know they're out only because they feel obligated to be. I mean, you feel like an ingrate when you spend a day like today indoors, don't you? I know I do. Because the odds are so utterly against it.  The odds of a day like today happening and you being around to enjoy it are not good.  Like a zillion-to-one not good.  I wouldn't bet on 'em, I can tell you that much.

But before your guilt forces you to take to the streets, ask yourself: is assuaging the guilt of wasting a beautiful day really a good enough reason to be out clogging up the bike paths and sidewalks, the highways and parks and plazas? If we gave you permission to just stay holed up in your house playing Halo-3 all day, and never even open the shades, would that make a difference?

That's why a weekday like today beats an equally wonderful weekend, weatherwise, especially for the indigent and under-employed like myself. Because the insiders have an excuse to stay inside, where they arguably belong, leaving the gorgeousness to those who know what to do with it, and aren't just forcing themselves not to watch TV for two hours so they won't feel guilty for wasting their lives, thus interfering with ours.

For example, I went to the garden Sunday as I do several days a week, but since it was a weekend, people felt obligated to take their inside business outside so that they would not waste such wonderful weather sitting inside, out of it. We're lucky these days, because we can take the indoors with us everywhere!  Except for some reason we always leave our indoor voices at home.

So there I was in my garden, watering my newly-planted ferns and hostas (gifts from you-know-who) when a large middle-aged woman in a purple sweat suit came ambling down the path, gabbing into her cell phone. It would not have bothered me a bit had she not stopped about six feet from where I was standing in plain view watering my garden.

She had the whole Fens. None of my neighbors was home—all of Row E was empty. And she chose to stop six feet from me—without acknowledging my presence, mind you—leaned on the gate of the garden across from mine, and commenced yakking away.

I was thinking, I should spray her with the hose. Then she'd acknowledge me. And I'd be like, "Oops! Did I getcha? Hee hee hee."

But then another thought occurred to me. Forget the hose.  Why not fight fire with fire? So I took out my flip phone, flipped it open and pressed it to my ear.

"OH MY GOD!!!" I screamed into it. "YOU HAVE GOT TO BE JOKING! SHE DID WHAT? NO SHE DID NOT!!! NO! SHE! DID! NOT! THE WHOLE THING?!! THAT HORNY LITTLE BITCH!!!"

All the sudden the old broad was struck dumb and gaping at me. I flashed her a confidential little smile, and rolled my eyes at my imaginary caller.

"YEAH, I'M JUST HERE IN THE GARDEN!!!" I hollered. "ENJOYING THE QUIET AND SOLITUDE!!!"

She ambled her ass on down the path pretty quicklike.

I didn't get much time to bask in my victory, though.  A few minutes later, I'm minding my own business like before, reading in the shade in a sort of hidden cranny in the back corner of my plot, when these two older professorial-looking types come down the path wearing their bicycle helmets, their bikes in tow, checking out all the awards placards on the fences.

They're reading them out to one another.

"Best Summer Color," says the one to the other, surveying Tony's garden.

"Mmm," the other one says, appreciatively. "This one over here got Best Butterfly Garden."

"Oh. How nice!"

Then they came to mine.

"Best Designed Beds..." the one said. It sounded like he'd be scratching his head if he didn't have that helmet on.

And the other one says "This one???" All taken-aback-like.

"Bwa-ha-ha!" they both burst out laughing.

"OK, FELLAS!" I shouted from behind my Rose of Sharon. "MOVE IT ALONG! NOTHIN' TO SEE HERE! KEEP IT MOVIN'!"

And I had been in such a good mood earlier. How could you not be, with the weather? But I'd also discovered that my local Star Market has the Bavarian Cream donuts my Dunkin Donuts doesn't. The Dunkin in Dot had them, but the one in Davis Square doesn't, for some reason. I mean, I think the Bavarian population is about the same in both places.

I refuse to go to Dunkin Donuts in Davis Square because of this. I was so shocked when I discovered it, and the kid behind the counter wasn't at all contrite. I vowed never to go back, and haven't.

Instead I trek several more blocks—all the way to Porter Square. Even when they're out of Bavarian Creams, all the other kinds they have at Star Market are just as good as Dunkin's, the same size, and half to almost a third of the cost with your little rewards card!

So I had snatched up half a dozen of these suckers Sunday morning and stuffed what I could not immediately stuff in my face into my backpack before pedaling off to the garden. And then I would forget about them, and then remember them again, and each remembering was like a little Christmas in the Bavaria of my youth...


It had started out as such a magical day.

Before those two blockheads in their bicycle helmets came up, my Sunday was still salvageable. I was sitting in the shade, dreaming of the hammock I've decided to install next spring, and enjoying the paper. In particular, a wonderfully scathing edition of Jan Freeman's "The Word," which appears every Sunday in the Ideas section of the paper, and is worth quoting here at length:

"Are you as tired as I am of the suffix 'gate' as a label for any and all scandals?" asked a reader last week.

Another was "very disappointed" that I'd used the informal snuck in a recent column. And a third said the phrase graduated college, instead of graduated from college, was "an outrage."

What if there were a simple remedy for such chronic irritants?

Science fiction writers have long employed the convention of the universal translator, a device or faculty that allows humans and aliens to communicate without months of sweaty lexicography. Unless the plot turns on translation - "the Altairians have no word for hate," or "Stop, Captain! Sweet and poisonous are synonyms here!" - nobody wants the story delayed by a language barrier.

In "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," for instance, Douglas Adams's translator was the Babel Fish, a tiny ear-dwelling organism that beamed a translation into the wearer's brain.

Now suppose you could have a similar thingy - call it the Babel Minnow - to use for English only. The Minnow would translate usage you don't like into the words you prefer. And as long as we're imagining, let's give it a visual circuit too, so it works on writing.

With the Babel Minnow in place, your peeves can't get to you. If a waiter says "no problem," you'll hear "you're welcome." If the newscaster says "went missing," you'll hear "disappeared." If a sign says "Pick your own apple's," you won't see the apostrophe. No more "fingernails on a blackboard," no more blood pressure spikes, no more futile fretting about the decline of literacy.

The Minnow is a distant relative of the "experience machine" that philosopher Robert Nozick imagined: A simulator that lets you enjoy a blissful but illusory existence, rather than take your chances on reality. Once plugged in, you would know only that wonderful life.

Similarly, with the Minnow in your ear, you would hear only your ideal English. When your boss said "incent," you'd hear "motivate." When the sports commentator showing the replay said, "If he makes this catch, we lose," you wouldn't grind your teeth; you'd hear "If he'd made this catch, we would have lost."

So here's the question: If the Babel Minnow existed, would you wear it?

If you're annoyed, enraged, or appalled by other people's usage, don't you want to tune out the torment? Or do the pleasures of nitpicking - being right, brandishing arcane knowledge, feeling superior - outweigh the pain that errors bring? (If so, the folks who break your rules are doing you a favor.)

But if you'd like to suffer less, you can create your own Minnow and program it to whisper these reminders in your ear: Relax and enjoy the infinite variety of usage. Abandon the age-old delusion that English is on its deathbed. Remember that yesterday's barbarisms are often today's standard English.

If you're reading this column, you already know there's more to usage than right vs. wrong. Mastering the rules is satisfying, yes, but the rules are mere fleas on the shaggy, bounding body of language. Forget the parasites and observe the animal: You'll have more fun - and better reasons than ever to feel superior.

All I can add is: You. Go. Girl.

Jan was obviously sick of cruising the Pleasure Gardens of Grammar and always getting stalked by the trolls.  But did she let them ruin her day? No. She turned the old tables on 'em, didn't she? 

Will it matter in the long run? Of course not.

And that's the lesson here, my peeps.  Kick against the pricks. It won't do you any good in the end, but at least you'll go down fighting.

And for heaven's sake, enjoy this weather.  Preferably from in front of your big screen TV, playing Halo-3.  Yes, it's a terrible waste of a gorgeous day, but think how much you'll have improved your hand-eye coordination after twelve or fifteen hours. 

We'll try to get along without you on the outside.