Tag Archives: newspapers

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Mirror, Mirror, On The Wall

 

HELP, I NEED SOMEBODY
HELP, I NEED EVERYBODY

A problem-solver seminar teacher once told a class of us that, generally, a group approach to a problem offers a better chance at a better solution, because no one person can think of all the angles to the puzzle.  That’s why sites like Quora have become so popular.  Now it’s my turn.

There’s a weekly column in my newspaper, titled “Television Q & A.”  The writer gives answers to widely assorted entertainment questions – from who played Aunt Bessie, in The Maltese Falcon, to when the new Jack Reacher series will debut.

His name is Rich Heldenfels.  He syndicates with Tribune News Services, which is part of the Chicago Tribune, but actually works for/with the Boston Herald.  I want to ask a strange (Quelle surprise) television-related question.

Neither the daughter, who is FAR more internet-savvy, nor I, have been able to find a web-page for either of the papers, to submit my question.  If any of my readers know of a way to contact them, I would greatly appreciate a comment with a link.

I want to ask why many movie and television clips on YouTube, are shown photo-reversed.  It is amusing, but distracting, to see the likes of the two guys from the Big Bang Theory, apparently exit Penny’s apartment, and go down the stairs on the wrong side of the elevator shaft, wearing tee-shirts printed in Russian, or two left-handed, old-west gunfighters dueling.

The son thinks that it might have to do with copyright, but I’ve seen a few pairs of clips from different submitters – one right-hand, the other left-hand.  One shows Clint Eastwood, as the High Plains Drifter, enter the saloon from the right, and draw and fire right-handed.  Then the other shows him enter from the left, and shoot left.  I even saw an Idiots In Cars video from Russia.  It begins normally, but halfway through, for 30 seconds, the vehicles change sides, then, suddenly, back where they belong.

It’s difficult to know just how pervasive this is, unless there’s opening credits on the screen in Polish, or the American ECILOP car is driving on the left.  Has anyone else noticed this??  Does anyone know how I can find out why??  C’mon guys – help me out here.  I know at least two bloggers from Chicago, but only one who is even close to Boston.

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Christian Privilege Run Amok

The Good Christian™ love and tolerance fairly flows from the following advice-column letter.
Through 40 years of marriage, my mother-in-law regularly wrote my husband critiques of me.  She always started with a prayer, then insulted and belittled me to become more like her daughters and daughters-in-law, who pray with her at their church, and have never worked because they ‘put their husbands and children first.’  Hardly judgmental or insulting at all!

The Canadian Armed Forces have issued a change in procedure to their chaplains.  Two local Op-Ed letters were published.  An ex-mayor said;
It is time for every serious-thinking Canadian to lament the latest directive by the government that military chaplains should no longer engage in ‘prayer’ or use the word ‘God,” but rather engage in ‘reflection.’

Does the Trudeau government know that in a 2019 national survey, 68% of Canadians reported having a religious affiliation?  To whom will Prime Minister Trudeau be “reflecting” at the National War Memorial on Remembrance Day, when he bows his head – The Tooth Fairy, Mickey Mouse, or The Easter Bunny?

I will be praying to God for the safety of those in uniform, thanking God for those who gave their lives in wars and disasters, and seeking comfort from my God for the Canada which no longer exists.

Mister Christie, you make good cookies – but truly shitty arguments.  Your “God” is not my “God”.   68% may have religious affiliation, but not all of them to your Christian faith.  Trudeau was reflecting to his Catholic God on Nov. 11, but those around him mentally sought Yahweh, Allah, Buddha, and others.  Your reference to cartoon and fairy-tale characters was insulting and disingenuous.  As a politician, the very mention of the 68% figure, means that you don’t give a shit about the other 32%.  Perhaps that’s why you’re an ex-mayor.

A local doctor of Polish descent insulted the Polish army, and our intelligence, when he said;
Military chaplains have been instructed by the Canadian government to remove words like “God,” and “Heavenly Father” at official events, under the pretext of inclusion, to avoid offending Atheists.

This shows that our Liberal government would rather offend God, pierce His heart with a dagger and remove His providential armor, as described in the book of Isaiah.  The Catholic Church urged Poles to beg for God’s protection from the Russian Communist Bolsheviks.

At the Battle of Warsaw in 1920, called the miracle over Wisla River, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared, and the Bolsheviks fled in fear.  Christ’s directive to us is simple.  “Give unto Caesar what is Caesars, and unto God what is God’s.”

The ‘Miracle at Wisla River’ was that the tiny Polish army repulsed the far larger Russian force.  They did it with dedication, grit, and home court advantage.  The official historical accounts make no mention of the appearance of the Virgin Mary.  The Poles won the day with patriotism, force of arms, better training and shorter supply lines – not with delusion and hallucinations.

The good doctor has both his dictionary and his prayer book in a knot.  The word ‘pretext’ means something that is put forward to conceal a true purpose or object.  There is no pretext that this was done for inclusion, and to prevent giving offence.  Neither the Prime Minister’s office, nor the Armed Forces, issued any statement naming Atheists.  Those not offended now include Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Shintoists, and others.

It is disturbing, but ironically amusing , that he offers the ‘give unto Caesar’ quote to justify his whine, when that is exactly what is being done.  The Christian God is not being removed from the Canadian Armed Forces, only the insistence of its monopolistic application to groups which include many non-Christians.

Oh, these poor oppressed majority Christians, they have had undue, unwarranted, unlimited, unquestioned privilege for so long, that the mere attempt by another individual or group to achieve some equality, just sends them into a religious tizzy.  They practice social martyrism.  They try to convince themselves that, the more hard-done-by they are, the more correct their stance, and the closer to salvation.   😮

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Getting To Nosy Neighbors

Does your property have a garden?
If so, do you prefer a lawn or paving slabs, hedges or walls?
If not, do you wish it had one?

I have mowed so many lawns, so many times – when I finally ended up owning one of my own, I was willing to just pave it over and paint it green.  However…. it’s a little tough on the grandkids and, She Who Must Be Obeyed has always been a gardener.  She has always been pleased with all the pretty plants and flowers – after I work my ass off to prepare for them.

When we moved in, 20+ years ago, there were small gardens on either side of the back deck.  They had been ignored by the previous owners for three years.  It took us two years to strip out all the weeds and dead plants.  I dug, and turned over, and mixed with compost and fertilizer – and she planted flowers.

She wanted a shade-garden beneath the rear-facing living-room window.  I built a concrete-slab retaining wall, added several bags of topsoil, turned it….  You’ve heard this song before!  🙄  She planted flowers.  Recently she I planted a Japanese maple there.
It’s a tree, dear.  It will grow, and block the window.
Oh, it’ll stay small.
It’s not a bonsai, dear.  It has grown to block the window.

Beyond the front walk, beside the end of the garage, I prepared another garden.  (All together now – I dug, I turned….)  She planted flowers and a twig that turned into a magnolia bush, which has flourished and sun-starved the grass beneath it, as well as all the flowers.

We have eight-foot wooden fences between us and our neighbors.  I dug in a garden beside the front walk.  I dug in a narrow garden beside the house.  I stripped sod, dug down two feet to remove heavy clay, added topsoil, etc. etc. etc. for 200 square feet beside one fence.  I laid waterproof wooden beams for a 4’ X 16’ garden beside the other fence – Second verse – I dug, turned, composted….

When I was a youth delivering newspapers, I visited properties which were overgrown like a Jurassic Park set.  This was because the owners got too old, too weak, too tired, to maintain their land.  Forty years ago – thirty years ago – even twenty years ago, we both had the strength and stamina to do all this manual labor.  Now our place is beginning to look wild.

People – passers-by – deliver drivers, can’t see our house from the street.  Soon, we will not be able to see our back yard.  That may be a blessing.  All these gardens are abandoned now.  All that digging, and turning, and top-soiling, and composting, and fertilizing, has produced the most fertile homes for weeds.

Where Echinacea and bee-balm once flourished, we now have four-foot tall goldenrod.  Where tulips and Hosta daisies once blessed us with their bright colors, now stand six-foot tall Scottish thistles.  Last year I grew a Guinness Record, nine-foot tall dandelion.  It used a monkey-plant on the wooden fence for support, and topped the wall.

They were pretty and rewarding when we could take care of them.  Now, the resale price of our home diminishes by the day.  😦

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’23 A To Z Challenge – J

Why, you young whipper-snapper….  When I was your age, we didn’t even have electrons, much less electronic communication and entertainment.

I learned to read – and dead-tree reading – from my parents.  My Father read the newspaper, but not books.  My Mother read books, but never the newspaper.  Our home-town newspaper was a little, weekly, 8-page, fly-swatter, full of local gossip.  We subscribed to a little, Mon./Sat, 10-page paper from the county-seat of the next county over, twenty-five miles away.  Without local softball, hockey and curling, it might have shrunk to eight.

I soon found that the most interesting and educational section of it were the comic strips.  This was just after World War II, and just as the Korean War was beginning.  We needed all the humor and smiles that we could get.  I followed the Katzenjammer Kids, Dagwood and Blondie, Bringing Up Father, Gasoline Alley, Joe Palooka, Mandrake the Magician, Little Orphan Annie, and Major Hoople’s Boarding House.  “Mary Worth” was, and 65 years later still is, the print equivalent of later TV soap operas.  Will that woman never die??!

The strip that taught me the most about the World, about society, about politics, about culture, and about religion, was Al Capp’s ‘L’il Abner.  Capp used satire to point out failings.  He mocked the powerful, to the delight of the common people, but he made fun of the common folk through the actions of the hillbillies in his strip.

While much of the action occurred in the unstated metropolis of Dogpatch, Capp sometimes changed things up by having L’il Abner read His favorite comic strip – a big-city, Dick Tracy-like cop named Fearless Fosdick.  He also invented an eastern European country where strange things happened that influenced his characters.  He called it Inner Slobovia.  It, and its residents, were the predecessors of Scott Adams’ Dilbert strip’s Elbonia.

Some of Capp’s ideas and concepts have entered American culture.  The most well-known is “Sadie Hawkins Day,” when it is socially acceptable for females to pursue the males.  Capp had it as Leap Day – Feb. 29th – once every four years.  It has become so popular that some places celebrate it at the end of every February.  Some towns and/or high schools even have Sadie Hawkins Month.

Capp conceived a race of bowling-pin like creatures that he named Shmoos.  They were friendly, lovable, helpful things like kittens.  The wants and needs of Dogpatch residents were fairly simple, but if someone needed something…. Somehow, the shmoos would just provide it.  They were also willing – anxious – to be cooked and eaten.  They were tasty and filling – the ancestors of Star Trek’s food replicators and holodecks.

Capp had fun playing with words and names.  A couple of times, Mammy Yokum had to explain the difference between an apple pie, and her a napple pie.  One story arc told of an oily Yankee carpet-bagger-type, who was pursuing one of the virtuous local gals.  The strip named him as Poole.  She shunned his advances and sent him on his way, telling neighbors that there’s nothing lower than a Poole.

Even as an 8 or 9-year-old, I knew that there was something wrong with that.  Years later I read an article which revealed that Capp had originally named him Sesspoole, but the Comic Strip Governing Board felt that it was too racy, and demanded that it be shortened, ruining the joke.

We’ve already been to the Poole in Slobovia.  ‘Mammy’ Yokum’s real name was Pansy.  ‘Pappy’ was Lucifer Ornamental Yokum.  ‘Fearless’ Fosdick = fuzz-dick = police detective.  His nemesis was Evil-Eye Fleagle.  The famous flyer/aviator, Captain Eddie Rickenbacker visited the strip as Eddie Ricketyback, and the well-known lawyer, F. Lee Bailey became F Lea Bagg.

I close out this post with the J name, made famous by actor/singer ‘Stubby’ Kaye, in the 1959 movie – the beloved Confederate founder of Dogpatch

JUBILATION T. CORNPONE

Old tattered and torn-pone
Old toot your own horn-pone
He’s shattered and shorn-pone

 

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Call Screening One-Liners

Can I call you back….
….in a few beers?

There are two ingredients in trail mix….
….M&Ms – and disappointment.

I’m getting WAYYY too comfortable….
….looking this ugly all the time.

Follows diet.  Diet doesn’t follow back….
….Unfollow diet.

Vegans, if you’re trying to save the animals….
….stop eating their food.

I’m dreaming of a white Christmas, but….
….if it runs out, I’ll drink the red.

Your debt will stay with you….
….if you can’t budge it.

My new stair-lift….
….is driving me up the wall.

I prefer my kale….
….with a silent K.

If the world didn’t suck….
….we’d all fall off.

He who laughs last….
….didn’t get it.

Forklift operators hate my puns….
….They find them unpalletable.

Procrastination is a dish….
….served eventually

When I get a headache, I take two aspirins….
….and keep away from children, just like the bottle says.

Your call is important to us….
….so here’s a 40 minute flute solo

I heard the word “icy” is easy to spell….
….Looking at it now, I see why.

I just can’t handle….
….automatic doors.

I once worked in a cheap pizza joint to get by….
….I kneaded the dough.

If you don’t read the newspaper, you are uninformed….
….If you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed.

Why don’t you ever see the headline….
….Psychic wins lottery?

Reading can seriously damage….
….your ignorance.

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A Christmas Rescue

Published without the authorized permission of the Waterloo Region Record – but with the best of intentions.  Credit Record staff – Robert Williams

The snow is piling up, burying our car deeper and deeper into the snowbank.

Deb Dooling-Westover pulls out her crackers, cream cheese, and roasted red pepper jelly, and offers some to her husband, Mark Westover.  In the back seat, a hitchhiker takes a few for himself.  He’s on his way to Listowel for his daughter’s first Christmas, with a bagful of toys and a few spare clothes, but his taxi ha long turned around and left him on Line 86, just outside Wallenstein.  The back seat of the Westovers’ car is his only chance at warmth for the night.

The car is not moving.  The snowbank has made sure of that, and the trio are settling in for a long, cold night.  Snowplows can’t get to them, and there’s no way in or out of this country road. The Westovers – Deb, 63, and Mark, 71 – and their hitchhiker – a young man of about 30, are trapped.

They’re talking, but their eyes dart nervously at the fuel gauge, that’s slowly ticking lower.  The snow is piling up the windows, and they’re equally worried that someone may come piling in behind them.  It’s Christmas Eve, and a winter storm bringing heavy snow and wind gusts of 100 km/h has shut down much of the Province on one of the busiest travel days of the year.

On this rural road, 30 kilometres north of Kitchener, it feels as if nothing and nobody is around you.  It’s a vast rural area. Dotted with Mennonite farms and sprawling fields.  The Westovers are on their way from Ayr, to spend Christmas with friends in Wingham.

They spent the morning checking the weather, to make sure that the roads were still open when they left, just before noon.  The farther they drove, the worse the conditions got.  Eventually, on a long stretch of farmland between Wallenstein and Macton, there is no going any further.

There are a few other cars stuck in this area.  As the winds pick up and blow the snow in blankets across the farm fields and over the road, it gets harder to make them out.  Each car is an island, and the snow is gobbling them up.

After a few hours sitting inside the car, Deb looks out of the snow-covered window and rubs her eyes to make sure she’s not hallucinating.  A man with a pair of snowshoes has emerged from the snowbank.  He knocks on the side of the car, and she opens it up to him.

“Do you have food and water?” he asks.
“Well, we don’t have a lot of food, but we have some water and Diet Coke in the cooler.” she tells him.  “My car is behind my husband’s.  I only have a quarter tank of gas.”

The Westovers had filled their two cars with presents, and they were hoping to do some work on Deb’s fuel tank, once they got to their friends’ house.  She had been following Mark the whole drive, but both of their cars were now stuck in the huge snowdrift.
“Don’t worry.” he says. “I have lots of gas.  I’ll come back for you later.”

An hour goes by.  It’s dark now.  With the wind-chill, it feels like -27 C.  The snow continues to fall, and the wind is howling.  A roar starts up behind them, and Deb jumps out of the car to see approaching blue and red lights.  Their man in the snowshoes has returned, this time with a tractor.

He gets Deb back into her car, pulls it out, and then pulls out Mark and the hitchhiker.  By this point he has already pulled out some of the other cars as well.  Once they’re all safely back on the road, he asks the occupants of all the cars – about six in total – to follow him about a kilometer down the road, and up a long driveway, where they all stop at a farmhouse.

The group walks into the house to find the man’s wife peeling carrots in the kitchen, with two young boys bouncing around the house.  They are a modern Mennonite family, and the farmhouse is equipped with power, heating, and a functioning telephone.

“I’ve never spent any time with a Mennonite family, or been inside a (Mennonite) house before.” Deb said later.  “And I have to tell you, these are the most beautiful people I’ve ever met.”  Deb joins the woman in the kitchen, helping to peel carrots.  Then she watches as she puts potatoes through a food processor, throws them into boiling water, and mixes them with cream and butter to make mashed potatoes.  Then she begins cooking summer sausage, as more people start piling into the farmhouse – there’s about a dozen of them now.

The family has some table extensions, and by the time dinner is served, it’s a feast for nearly 16 people, each with a spot around the ‘harvest table.’  They say a silent prayer, and dinner begins.
“I was literally crying.” says Deb.  “It was the most unbelievable thing I had ever seen in my life.  There we were, thinking that we were going to freeze to death.  We really thought we were going to die.  And now we were all seated around this table, warm, and having dinner at this farmhouse.”

Around the table, the different groups recount their stories.  Each talk about watching the weather advisories, checking to make sure the roads were open, and eventually finding themselves stuck in the snowdrift with no way out.  But something still doesn’t add up.  How did this man know to come and get them?

One of the women at the table speaks up.  While she was waiting in her car, she noticed a name on a nearby mailbox.  She called her son in Listowel, and he started calling every number in the area with that last name.  Eventually he got through to their rescuer, who threw on his snowshoes and headed into the storm to see if he could find them.

Not wanting any unnecessary attention, the family has asked to keep their name private.  “I don’t want any honors or glory.” the man told The Record.  “It’s just the Lord’s glory and we did our Christian duty.”  After dinner is over, the family leads Deb and Mark to a spare bedroom to hunker down for the night.  It’s cold in the room, but thick blankets keep them warm.  The rest of the travellers are spread out around the house, sleeping on makeshift beds and couches.

In the morning, Deb runs out to the car to grab some peameal bacon she had purchased on Christmas morning.  Many of the others do the same, bringing in what food they can contribute to the feast.  Like the night before, they cook up a big meal, each sitting around the table to enjoy a Christmas breakfast.  When the meal is finished, they clean up together, and start getting back in their cars, each bound to family and friends.

None of them know each other.  After they say their goodbyes and wish each other luck for the journeys ahead, all they’re left with is a handful of first names and memories of faces, warmth and a reminder of good people when tragedy strikes.

The Westovers’ Wingham friend said that they did their final checks, but I guess they were just in for an adventure.  They eventually reached their final destination.  The gifts that they had piled in their cars made it to the friends and family they had planned to see.  As they sat around the Christmas dinner table, they told the story of a snowy country road, and a man on snowshoes who appeared out of nowhere, and took them to safety in a farmhouse with his family.

Deb said, “I have to tell you, it was the most beautiful Christmas ever.”

😀  😀

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Dum Crinimals

I’ve stopped asking, “How stupid can you be?”
There is no upper limit!  Some people are taking it as a challenge.

Even more proof that crime doesn’t pay.

Next time, take off the blinders
Derek Pierson tried to rob a convenience store.  He walked in, looked directly at the clerk and told her to ‘give the money up.’  What he didn’t notice was that a member of an armed robbery task force – wearing a shirt marked ‘Shreveport Police’ on the front and back, as well as ‘Police’ on the sleeves – was standing in an aisle ten feet away.

The agent, who had stopped by on a routine security check, pulled his gun and arrested Pierson without incident.  The officer described him as looking ‘like a deer caught in the headlights.’  I guess I picked the wrong place Pierson told police.

Talking trash
Minutes after getting a report of two men trying to break into parking meters, police began looking for suspects.  It wasn’t hard.  Witnesses said one wore an all-black outfit, while the other was dressed in a bathrobe.  Police located one likely suspect near the scene of the crime.

They began searching the neighborhood for the second suspect, when they were attracted to a garbage dumpster by the sound of a ringing cell phone.  When they lifted the lid of the bin, they found the second man inside.

Ignoring the rule of thumb
A robbery at a Git-N-Go Convenience Store in Des Moines was called off for lack of convincing theatrics.  ‘Well, I could tell he didn’t have a gun.’ said the clerk at the store.  ‘I knew it was his finger.  I could see his thumb sticking out of his coat pocket.’  The would-be robber, who acted tough and even inserted a harsh expletive in his demand for cash, wanted to argue.

‘It is a gun,’ he told the clerk.  ‘No it isn’t,’ the clerk replied.  The frustrated suspect left the store, but paused a moment in the parking lot, perhaps to go over in his mind the argument he’d just lost.

Thief tracking made easier
Kurt Husfeldt and two others were arrested in Lindenhurst, NY in possession of 14 stolen electronic devices that they apparently assumed were cell phones.  However, they were actually global positioning devices from a nearby municipal facility, and police just followed their signals to Husfeldt’s house.

Googled
A man was arrested in connection with a 2005 bank robbery, after leaving a trail of cyber-clues.  Police said that he was staying with a woman at the time of the robbery, and spent a great deal of time on her computer.  He borrowed her car the day of the robbery, and returned with a lot of cash, claiming he’d won it at a casino.

Police say that he walked into a Liberty Bank branch and handed the teller a note demanding money.  A week later, his woman friend contacted police, saying she recognized him from a surveillance photo on a newspaper website.  A police search of the computer revealed numerous searches concerning bank robberies, including one for the branch he hit, and another for ’How To Rob A Bank.’

Banks for telling me
A would-be robber in Austria, was arrested after he tried to hold up his local town hall, mistaking it for a bank.  Wearing a mask, and waving a toy gun the unemployed man burst into the town hall, and shouted, ‘Hold-up!  Hold-up!’  The building has a sign indicating that it has an ATM, on the outside wall.

He realized his mistake when a town employee explained to him where he was, and he then fled into the nearby woods.  He was arrested when he came back to pick up his motorbike, which he had parked outside the town hall.

😳   😆

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TILWROT II

Take me out of the ball game.

In the early 1960’s, before I arrived in this burgh, interest in, and support for, Junior, City-League Baseball was waning.  One local team felt that they needed $10,000, a considerable sum, to pay for a year’s uniforms, equipment and transportation costs, and no sponsors were coming forward.

One 16-year-old, baseball-crazy boy had an idea.  He would sit on a 6’ X 6’ platform on top of a 50 foot flagpole in the ball park, until the amount was raised.  He lasted three days, until unexplained stomach pains caused the same fire crew and ladder truck that put him up, to lower him down again.  His almost-feat was recently recounted in the ‘Flash From The Past’ history column in a Saturday newspaper.  His name was Ken Fryfogel.

Things I Learned While Researching Other Things – Act 2 – Fryfogel

The name Fryfogel is very uncommon.  Ancestry.com only has 298 listed in North America.  The unnumbered few in Canada are all in Ontario, and I suspect, most right here in Southwestern Ontario.  I decided to research.

Fryfogel appears to be a Germanic name, like Vogel – which is a bird, or Logel – who was a cooper.  Surname-meaning websites just shrugged.  I tried a translation website, but got nothing.  I tried changing the spelling from ‘el’ to ‘le.’  I tried pulling it apart, into Fry, and fogel – nothing.  I tried entering ‘fogel’ into a dictionary site.  I got, No listing for ‘fogel.’  Did you mean fodgel?’

I don’t know.  Do I??!  I’ve never run into the word.  What does it mean?   Yorkshire/Scottish dialect – a short, fat person-by extension, a fat hen.  So, a Fryfogel is someone who cooks up a big fat chicken.  Twenty miles from here, at the intersection of a concession road and the highway, halfway to Justin Bieber’s ex-home, stands the historic, 200-year-old Fryfogel Inn.  😎  What better name for an innkeeper than one that says that he’ll serve you up some fried chicken along with your ale?

I’ll be serving up some more interesting drivel in a couple of days.  Hope to see you then.  😀

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Smitty’s Loose Change #15

There are many people in this country today who, through no fault of their own, are sane.  Most of them are Atheists.

***

And God created the universe it expanded exponentially. Then god divided this sky from the sea that then created life and he told it to multiply. After this he added man and subtracted his only son.

Standing back he looked on in confusion and wondered why this equation didn’t work… At this point a mathematics teacher came over and said, “You forgot the brackets ( ).”  And that was the last time God worked with BEDMAS.

***

I recently got within touching distance of two original Volkswagen Beetles, within hours of each other.  I found the first at a French fry wagon.   (Don’t tell the wife! She thinks I’m still on my diet.) It was greenish-yellow, in decent shape, with a little rust, mostly in the rain-gutters above the doors.  The owner said that it was a ’75 model, and it had custom license plates that read KAFER VW.  That’s a deficiency of the License Bureau.  Kafer, translated from German, means ‘coffee(maker).’  What it should have read, was KӒFER VW.  The addition of the umlaut over the A, changes the meaning to ‘beetle.’

The next one I saw was Fire-Engine Red, and in pristine shape.  I saw no rust.  Even Beetles had year-to-year (tiny) model changes.  Slightly smaller and different-shaped tail-lights told me that it was pre-’73.  It had Historic license plates, and its owner said that it was a ’68 version.

FUN WITH NAMES

The service tech at my Kia dealership is named Faucher.  It’s a French verb that means to mow (grass) the lawn.  His Father worked for, then purchased and ran, a landscaping company, all his working life.

A farm boy that the school bus picked up on one side of my town, was/is named Coulter.  I recently discovered that a ‘coulter’ is a plowshare, a cutting wheel or bar, in front of an actual plow.

A farm girl that the school bus picked up on the other side of town, was/is named Collard.  Back then, I did not know of the cultivation and, mostly Southern culinary, use of collard greens.

***

To err is human, but to really fuck up, you need a computer – with a bureaucrat running it.  Locally, we have been blackmailed into recycling green waste.  Garbage pickup has dropped to every two weeks, but blue-bin and green-bin waste is collected every week.

The region has issued every dwelling two green bins – a small one to put kitchen scraps in, and a larger ‘garage’ one to repeatedly dump the smaller one into.  Compostable-plastic-lined paper bags to hold wet waste are available at all local stores.

The larger bin is 12” X 13 ½”.  The Region-approved bags are 8 ½” X 12 ½”.  No wonder it must be dragged to the curb each week – the bag isn’t big enough to fill!  The smaller one, which I use for cat-shit – (it’s compostable) – is 6” X 7”.  The bureaucrat-authorized bags for it are 3 ¾” X 7 ½“– so long that they partly collapse when inserted, causing loss of volume, and barely half wide enough, causing more lost space.  I sense two different departments, each too self-important to communicate with the other, (You change!  No, You change!) involved in this, and Dilbert in the middle, shaking his head.

***

We’ve all seen the movies, or TV shows…. The CSI forensic technician enters the crime scene.  He/she plucks one dust mote from the air, and a couple of tension-filled moments later, gives the age, sex, name, address, phone number, and shoe color of the culprit.  What then to think of this newspaper story??!

A body was pulled from a lake.  She (at least they got the sex) was 28 to 50 years of age.  28??!  Why not 25?  Or 30??  How in Hell did anyone come up with 28?  Was someone converting from metric??  She was between 4’ 5”, and 5’ 1”.  😯  😳  Put her on an autopsy slab and measure her!!

They didn’t give her weight, but did publish a nice photo of a bead bracelet she was wearing…. Oh, and she might have been Asian, based on the keen observation of her yellow complexion, and lycanthropic epicanthic fold at the eyes.

Remind me, if I die of suspicious causes, I should do it in the big city, not in West Hickstowne, where an exciting day for police is one that has a moose fall into someone’s pool.

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N.B.

In the above VW story, I downloaded a capital A with an umlaut over it, and put it in my post.  For some reason, WordPress separated the A and the two dots, into two adjacent spaces, and I don’t know how to get them back together.  Just try to visualize it correctly.   😳

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Things I Learned While Researching Other Things

I give all credit for the idea of this post to the late journalist Sydney J. Harris, who would occasionally include something he called “Things I Learned While Looking Up Other Things” in his syndicated column.

This is a post about words and phrases. These are my building blocks, so they’re something I’m always interested in.  You understand the sometimes frustrating task of trying to find the correct word or phrase.

Occasionally, I’ll read or type words that I may understand in the context in which I’m seeing or using them, but will suddenly realize that I’m not certain where the words or phrases originated.

In this amazing Computer Age, I can afford a few minutes of distraction to investigate them further.

Right off the bat — As expected, the phrase “right off the bat,” meaning “immediately; at once; without delay” is a sports metaphor that has been traced back to the late 1880s with that usage. I just made the assumption that the sport was baseball—and it probably is—but some suggest that it may have originated with cricket (as baseball did).

Nitpicker — The word nitpicker means someone who finds faults, however small or unimportant, everywhere they look. We all know someone like that. If we don’t, it’s probably us. The word itself is relatively new, from about 1950 or so. It comes from the idea of picking nits (or lice eggs) out of someone’s hair. A nitpicker is as meticulous about finding faults as a literal nitpicker should be at finding each louse egg. Yes, it’s kind of a disgusting word origin, which is why nitpicker has negative connotations.

Top-notch — We know that top-notch means “excellent” or “of the highest quality.” But, what are its origins? It seems that no one really knows. It first appeared suddenly in its current usage in the mid-19th century. It has been suggested that it originated from one of several tossing games imported from Scotland that required a player to throw a weighted object over a horizontal bar. The best score would be when the bar was in the “top notch,” naturally. This sounds reasonable, but it’s really just a guess. Other guesses have it relating to logging, with the best lumberjacks able to cut from the highest notches, or some such thing. Another had something to do with candles and courting, but that’s been mostly debunked. Bottom line: we don’t know.

Since Hector was a pup* — Meaning “for a long time.” I can’t say this is exactly a regional colloquialism, although I heard it the first (and only) time from some guy in South Carolina. He said that it was something his dad always said, and, in the context it was used, the meaning was obvious.  Best guess, according to Internet sources, is that it is referring to the Trojan War hero Hector, since the phrase originated during a time when people were more well-versed in the classics. And that was, indeed, a long time ago.

Hemming and hawing — The phrase means to hesitate to give a definite answer. It dates back to the 1400s and is echoic in nature. A more modern interpretation would be “um-ing and er-ing” probably, with “um” and “er” being common filler sounds in hesitant speech. I always assumed it had something to do with either sewing or sailing. I was mistaken.

Gamut — I used the word “gamut,” knowing that its definition meant the complete range or scope of something. My actual sentence began “our entertainment choices run the gamut from …” But, where did the word “gamut” come from? It turns out that gamut originally meant “lowest note in the medieval musical scale” and it was a contraction of Medieval Latin gamma ut, from gamma, the Greek letter indicating a note below A, plus ut (later called do (as in “do re mi”), the low note on the six-note musical scale. So the word gamut was originally all about music, but later morphed into meaning “the whole musical scale,” or, figuratively, “the entire range or scale” of anything. Its first usage in this manner can be traced to the 1620s.

Honeymoon — The word and concept of the honeymoon owes more than a little to alcohol (as do some weddings: but, I digress—). The medieval tradition of drinking honeyed wine for a full moon cycle after a wedding was supposed to ensure a fruitful union between the new bride and groom. I guess Champagne is a modern-day analogue to honey wine.

Throwback — It means a person or thing that is similar to something of an earlier type or time. It was already in use with more or less the current definition in the mid-19th century. It is a combination of the verb “throw” and the adverb “back.” I can’t find a more pithy origin story for the word, even apocryphal stories that have been debunked. I was sure it would have its origin in the sport of fishing.

Venting your spleen — This particular idiom means “to express your anger.” From medieval times until the 19th century, the spleen—an organ in the body near the stomach—was thought to be the source of the “humors” that caused the emotion of anger. This is a colorful and archaic phrase. I contracted hepatitis as a 12-year-old.  (My mother called it jaundice, because I turned a lovely yellow/orange color from all the excess bile in my system.  I couldn’t keep food or drink down for two weeks, and lost 20 pounds – not a good thing on a skinny, stick-thin kid.)  But, I digress— anyway, my spleen was swollen while I had jaundice. I don’t recall being angry, but I did throw up a lot.

One to grow on — I thought an origin for this idiom would be easy to find, but it remains mostly a mystery.  When you had a birthday, it was a tradition to receive your birthday spanking by your friends or family, with the flat of the hand or with a paddle or belt. One person on-line said the birthday person would be “lightly paddled.” They didn’t live anywhere near me. Anyway, you’d get one swat for each year of your age, and then one extra swat, called the “one to grow on.” It’s like the baker’s dozen of birthday-themed beatings. I still don’t know the origins. Here’s one guess: you say something “grows on” you to mean that you become accustomed to it. Is the birthday punishment tradition meant for you to get used to pain because that’s all adulthood has to offer you in the future? That’s a little bleak, but it will serve as a placeholder until someone can offer me a better explanation.

* * * * *

Things I Learned While Researching Other Things = TILWROT
Remember that!  As a lover of words, I know I’ll keep collecting these. Plus, I’ll keep posting them, I’m sure.

*Actually…. My Mother used to say, “Since ‘Towser’ was a pup.”  Now I’m off to research ‘Towser.’  Lord knows what I’ll find.