The Phantom Librarian

Huh. I appear to be out of writing steam. I think I'll take a couple of days to regroup, maybe just do some rants or something.

It's a weird feeling, not having anything Shifty going on. Yesterday, I was mostly kind of still in the, "But shouldn't I still have a segment left to do?" mode. Today, I'm kind of, "Whoa... that's it. It's done. I finished. Wait... That's it? It's done? I finished?"

I was going to make up a new meme (first lines for drabbles, done "chain letter" style), but it sounded too complicated, so, feh.

Maybe I'll re-do my journal to celebrate and then I'll feel all finished. Or at least make an icon. Hey, sannalim... mind if I make an icon or two from some of your illustrations?

I know and am aware that "spat" is the absolutely proper past tense of "spit," as far as I know, in American English as well as British English. Silly grammar mistakes drive me crazy.

So why-oh-why do I have to make such an effort to overcome using "spit" as the past tense? It was ubiquitous where I grew up--if a bully spat at one in the schoolyard, one could go to the teacher and say, "He spit on me!" and not worry about having any suspicions cast on one's grammar.

I don't know... is it considered proper American grammar? Or is it just an extremely common regionalism that no one bothered to question where I was growing up? I tried looking it up in Google and found a lot of exasperated people pointing out that it's simply wrong usage. The most common, frustrated response was, "If you can understand that the past tense of 'sit' is 'sat,' why can't you master this?" )To which a number of other people responded, "Yes, but if it were a standard rule, then why isn't the past tense of 'hit', 'hat'?") I couldn't tell by the names if it was an American/Brit debate, and American/American debate, or an American/American-with-inferiority-complex debate.

Does anyone know?