According to one of my previous articles, whenever a Southerner says "Y'all watch this," get out of way because those are probably last words he will ever say.

Well, I am a Southerner. I used to live in southern US, but I moved to south China. And, I'm about to say magic words:

Y'all watch this.

The word is "week." If I want to talk about more than one week, like I did near end of previous article, I'll use weeks. No apostrophe. If I want to talk about something belonging to a week, such as "last week's newsletter," I'll use an apostrophe.

That's rule. If it's a noun, s makes it plural and apostrophe-s makes it possessive. It's just that simple.

If I were still in US, and I wanted one of those fancy carved signs that are so common on southern lawns, it would not read "The LaRocca's." The LaRocca's what? His lawn? His sign? That apostrophe makes it singular possessive, so The LaRocca is surely claiming ownership of something. If that was not his intent, and he whacked in an apostrophe anyway, he's an idiot.

What about plural possessive? Is it "the LaRoccas' house" or "the LaRoccas's house?" Well, it's neither, since my wife isn't a LaRocca and we don't own a house. But for sake of this article, pretend she is and we do.

Here's a question I ask as an avid reader. It's rhetorical, which means you don't have to answer it. Which is convenient when you think about it, since I won't hear you. I'm not talking to you, I'm writing. The floor is all mine.

Why is it that when someone's in a fight, and someone hits them hard enough, bright lights always explode behind their eyes?

I've been clocked a time or two. Sows, boars, horses, falling objects, falling Michael, a baseball bat, a nightstick, footballs, basketballs, baseballs, kickballs, kung fu cousin, a bad neighbor, jaws of a leaping dog. And, never has light exploded behind my eyes.

What usually happens to me at that point of impact is sensory overload. I don't feel it when a hunk of metal pops me in mouth hard enough to split my lip and break my dentures and send them across room. (The dentures, not lips.) Sensory overload. Then a couple seconds later I see damage and think, "Dang, what happened?" But in books, it's always those darn bright lights exploding behind people's eyes.

My advice to authors, then, is this. Before you write a lot of fight scenes, ask someone to punch you a few times. No, I'm kidding. No lawsuits, please.

My real advice is, avoid cliches. Don't say "a snowball's chance in hell," say "a broccoli's chance in Bush One's White House." It's original, see? And if you're going to write about something you know nothing about, please do a bit of research.