The National Penultimate Day℠ campaign, launched recently by Postcards from the Pug Bus, took a giant step toward gravitas yesterday when Postcards’ editor in briefs Phil Maggitti applied for service mark registration for the name National Penultimate Day℠. “Good service marks make good movements,” chortled Mr. Maggitti, noting that soon the Pug Bus will be able to call itself “southeastern Pennsylvania’s most influential service-marked satire site.”
In applying for service mark status (full disclosure, there was a fee involved here), Mr. Maggitti noted that the services associated with National Penultimate Day℠ are these: assisting writers and speakers, by means of published articles and social media communication, in avoiding the growing misuse of penultimate to mean “the greatest” when it really means “the next to last.” Observing National Penultimate Day on December 30 each year “would go a long way toward preserving, protecting, and defending the original and logical use of penultimate.“
A subsidiary reason for designating December 30 as National Penultimate Day℠, Mr. Maggitti noted, is its redheaded-stepchild status among days.
“Everybody and his autistic cousin makes a fuss over December 31–parties, crazy hats, New Year’s resolutions, and such–but who spares a thought for the penultimate day of the year, December 30? By tasking Penultimate Day with preserving an important grammatical distinction, we can skeet two birds with one shoot.”
Mr. Maggitti also hinted that the Pug Bus could begin awarding National Penultimate Badges to “persons, places, things, or ideas that were the last but one in line when something stupendous happened.” Examples include Pete Best, the Beatles penultimate drummer; Tony Dungy, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ penultimate coach before they won the Supe; and Hillary Clinton, the penultimate presidential candidate.
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