Time Out

Just a note to loyal readers that I've been ill and out of commission, so my postings here have been suspended for the time being.  Can't predict when I'll be able to get back to it, but I hope it will be sooner than later.

Do they still make Old Milwaukee?

I heard that Stephen Harper, Canada's Prime Minister, and Barack Obama, President of the United States, had a wager on the results of the game between their two countries for the Olympic gold medal in women's ice hockey. The loser was to give the winner a case of beer.

Now that's my kind of bet.

With time running down in the final period and the U.S. ahead 2-0, it looked like Mr. Harper should start shopping for some very fine Canadian beer to send to Washington. But then within the last three minutes of the game, Canada scored two goals, and in the sudden-death over-time period, they scored again to win the game and the gold medal.

I hope Mr. Obama sends Mr. Harper a case of Blatz.

On My Soap Podium

When the summer Olympics were on two years ago, I complained that the commentators had turned "medal" into a verb (as in, "She has a chance to medal in this event"). For the current Winter Games, they have pretty much abandoned that, and almost all of the sportscasters talk continually about the podium -- making it to the podium, missing the podium, hoping for a place on the podium, etc. It's getting to be a bit tedious.

In my retired state, I've been able to see a lot of events during the day, since Sochi, Russia, is nine hours ahead of us. Of course, it also means that the prime-time broadcast has few surprises. I have seen a lot of things that don't make it to prime time, though, like curling and women's ski jump.

This afternoon I purposely did not watch the finals of the ice dancing competition, partly because I wanted to keep some of the suspense for tonight and partly because I wanted to watch the Canada-Switzerland hockey game. Then just a bit ago I went to Facebook to play Farkle, and right there at the top of my News Feed someone had posted a photo of the gold-medal winners. I was annoyed.

I realize that some of you may read this posting before prime time, which is several hours away, so I am very considerately not mentioning who podiumed.

My Gold Medal Pooch

My tiny dog, Soji, a pure-bred Chihuahua, started out in life as a Christmas present, given to a three-year-old girl by her (monumentally stupid) grandmother. The child’s lack of responsibility toward her pet, not to mention her habit of manhandling the little puppy, led her family to insist the dog be surrendered to the local humane society. That’s where I adopted her when she was nine months old, which was nearly 12 years ago.

I have been asked if my tiny dog was named after Sochi, Russia, where the Winter Olympics are currently underway, and, if so, does she like vodka.

The name given to her by her previous owners was pronounced the same way as the Russian town but spelled Sochee. I didn’t much care for that, but I knew someone named Soji, which I did like and which sounded the same to the dog, so I ran with it.

Information about her original name is a bit sketchy, but it is apparently a common girl’s name in Mexico, although it is actually spelled Xochitl, or sometimes Xoche. Sochee is a phonetic spelling and might also not be the only pronunciation. Xochitl is the Aztec word for flower and also the name of an Aztec goddess.

As for Soji, it appears to be a common boy’s name in Japan, although the man I knew named Soji was from India. In Hindi and/or Sanskrit, soji can mean sharp or pointed, and there is also an ingredient in certain Indian dishes called soji, which is sort of like semolina.

So, after all that, God only knows what my tiny dog is named after, but as to the second part of that question – no, she prefers tequila.

On the Lam I Am Not

Loyal Reader Kristin M. of Kansas has sent me an email full of exclamation points and words in capital letters in which she asks me to settle, once and for all, a dispute in which she is currently embroiled with her husband. Evidently he has decided that the word "fugitive" in the title of this here blog thing is a noun, as in "A Fugitive's Thoughts," despite the absence of the possessive apostrophe-S. She counters that I am using it as an adjective to describe my thoughts as fleeting, transitory, elusive. She, of course, is correct.

Apparently Mr. M. refers to me as "The Fugitive," which is moderately amusing until we stop to consider the implications thereof, since the noun can be defined as "a person who has escaped from a place or is in hiding."

From what or whom, Dear Mr. M., do you suppose I am hiding? Surely not from my audience, since these posts are full of ingenuous admissions, confessions, and self-deprecations. Or do you suppose me to be an escapee from reality?

And yes, we all know that he's just yanking your chain, Kristin. Accept it, and move on.

Guarding Toothy Grins

I watched two basketball games on television yesterday -- the men of Indiana beat Michigan (Yesss!) and the Michigan State women beat Purdue (also Yesss!). Later I watched three quarters, which was as much as I could stand, of the Super Bowl.

In all three games, I noticed, not for the first time, how many players remove the appliance that protects their upper teeth whenever there is a break. Some basketball players simply remove and hold their mouth guards, but many put one end in their mouths so that it protrudes like a giant fang. Others enhance that method by chewing on the thing.

Football players generally tuck the mouth guard somewhere on their helmet between plays, unless they have the kind that is tethered to the face mask, in which case they just let it hang there. Some of those are the kind that cover the entire mouth, sort of like wax lips on steroids.

Checking on the Internet, I find that custom-made mouth guards range in price from $50 to $300. (Ready-made ones start at $1.59.) Surely any college or professional sports program ought to be able to afford to provide their players with well-fitting mouth guards that are not so irritating.

But it does remind me of a Chicago Bears game many years ago in which their rookie running back was just about to develop the habit of lining up with his mouth guard dangling unless he was going to be carrying the ball on that play. It took the opposing defense about two plays to figure that out, and at least one tackle in the backfield for a big loss before the Bears coaches noticed and instructed Walter Payton to put the thing in his mouth on every play. Which he did. And the rest is history.

Stone Face

There is a television commercial in which the Geico gecko is at Mt. Rushmore walking along through a tunnel that turns out to be George Washington's eye socket. The last time I saw it a fugitive thought swept through my mind concerning which Presidential faces would be carved into that mountain if it were being done today.

Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln, absolutely, but Teddy Roosevelt? Probably not. For all that he was bigger than life in a lot of ways, he has faded from the American memory, and whatever his accomplishments, he was not in the same class as the other three. Maybe that's why Borglum stuck him back in the corner.

I have been to Mt. Rushmore twice, once with my parents when I was in high school and most recently with my wife and her sister about three years ago. It's an odd kind of thing, as tourist attractions go. There's really nothing to do, so despite paying a bunch of money to park the car and walking a long way, you just sort of stand there and look up at it and then turn to your companions and say, "Well, I've seen it. Shall we go?"

We did manage to have a slightly more interesting experience there on our most recent trip to South Dakota. My wife wanted a souvenir from Mt. Rushmore to add to her little rock collection. She drove around the park until we were more or less behind the carvings, although we could still see George in profile. She pulled over to the side of the road and her sister jumped out of the car and picked up a couple small rocks which, considering our position, probably were not even chiseled from the faces.

At that moment, however, a park ranger in an SUV pulled up across the road from us, rolled down his window and said in stentorian tones, "Madam, all rock resources must remain in the park. Please replace the rocks." She did, and then as we drove away, the ranger turned his vehicle around and followed us until we left the park.

It's really rather exhilarating to be considered dangerous and capable of desecrating a national treasure.

You just never know

Many years ago while I was visiting my brother and family in Minnesota, my five-year-old niece was starting to go stir crazy because it had been raining for two or three days straight. My sister-in-law handed me a Sesame Street things-do-when-it's-raining book and asked me to please find something in it that would amuse the child. My niece immediately opened the book to the Cookie Monster's baking project.

I tried to talk her out of it -- I was sure it would be a complete waste of good butter, sugar and flour -- but she was adamant, so we made the cookies. And they were the best sugar cookies I ever had.

For anyone interested, here's the recipe:

3/4 cup margarine

1 cup sugar

2  eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

2-1/2 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

  

Cream margarine and sugar together.  Add eggs and vanilla and blend well.  Gradually add dry ingredients.  Chill dough at least 1 hour.

Roll to 1/4" thickness and cut out. Place on ungreased cookies sheet.

Bake at 400° for 6 to 8 minutes.

Watch where you park it

While I was cleaning up the kitchen earlier, I dropped a dish towel on the floor. As I bent to pick it up, I said out loud, "I hope this isn't true." Not that I don't like having people stop by, I just didn't want anybody to come today.

I got to wondering where that old saw comes from, that dropping a dish towel means you're getting company. I looked online to see what I could find, and there was one web site that had hundreds of such sayings and superstitions. There were several about company coming if you drop things, such as, if you drop a knife, a man will come, but a fork means a woman, and a spoon means a child.

There were many, many more, all about spilling salt and spilling milk and rocking chairs with nobody in them and opening umbrellas indoors and getting money if your palm itched, but my favorite was this:  It's bad luck to sit on a pair of scissors.

I'm betting that pithy little bit of folklore originated with somebody who found out the hard way.

Unless the point actually is silent...

When I was active in a Toastmasters Club, I would sketch notes whenever I got ideas for possible speech topics. Today I ran across one such document, entitled, “Things People Say Wrong.” It lists a dozen or so words and phrases that are often used incorrectly. I didn't give a  speech about it, but I never pass up an opportunity to complain about the way people talk. Here are a few I jotted down:

“[Some sound] rose to a crescendo.” Wrong. Crescendo means gradually getting louder – the crescendo is the rising, not the resulting final decibel level.

“A myriad of things.” In correct usage, myriad is an adjective, not a noun, and fundamentally (and etymologically) it means “countless,” and you wouldn’t say, “a countless of things,” would you? No, just myriad things is all you need to say.

“Different than.” No, it should be different from, because different is the adjectival form of the verb to differ, and you don’t say, “They differ than each other,” do you? No, you say, “They differ from each other;” therefore, you should say one thing is different from another.

“The reason he fell is because he was drunk.”  No. Reasons are not because. Either, “The reason he fell is that he was drunk,” or “He fell because he was drunk,” but  never, the reason is because.  Reasons are not because of anything. Reasons just are.

The best way to learn correct usage and meanings of words and phrases (not to mention learning new ones) is to read a great deal of well-written prose. I think people do not do anywhere near enough of that these days.

I know a fellow who habitually says, “It’s a mute point.”  I know that if he saw the word moot in print and noted it spelling, he wouldn’t think it rhymed with cute. On the other hand, he’s the same guy who said, “I am anxious to bring this project to frutation."

Maybe people should read a lot of well-written prose with a dictionary at their elbow.

To Diss Service is a Disservice

I saw this morning in the New York Times’ feature “On This Day” that today is the birthday of Robert Service (1874-1958), whom they identified as “Canadian verse writer.”

Verse writer? Not poet? I remember reading some Robert Service in school, and it appeared to be poetry to me.

The word verse has many definitions, but in all of the references I consulted, the definition that was at or near the top was something like “a series of metrical feet forming one line of poetry.” Well, whatever you call what Service wrote, it was longer than one line, so that can’t be it.

Looking further, however, I found a few sources that included a definition of verse as “metrical writing distinguished from poetry because of its inferior quality” and which “lacks depth or artistic merit.” I also found a couple critical discussions that stated Service’s work was considered doggerel by the literary elite.

Obviously, whoever puts together the list of birthday people for the New York Times thinks so too. I did a little more checking and found that the Times even called Rod McKuen a “poet” on his birthday, and if ever there was verse that lacks depth and artistic merit, it’s the junk he writes.

Somebody definitely needs to call attention to the poetic prejudices of the New York Times.

Look Out, Weight Watchers

I have just heard about the Paleo Diet, although it appears to have been around for a few years. It is the invention of some dude named Loren Cordain, who has a Ph.D. in exercise physiology from the University of Utah. The idea is to eat what the people (at least the nearly human ones) ate during the Paleolithic Era, a.k.a. the Stone Age. This was when our human-like ancestors began developing stone tools but before they started cultivating crops. So, on this diet you basically eat only what a hunter-gatherer was able to hunt down and/or gather up.

And what would that be?  Well, you get to have lean meats, poultry, fish, fruit, vegetables, nuts, seeds, eggs, and "healthful" oils (olive, nut). Didn't sound too bad to me until I came to the list of forbidden foods. As soon as I saw I could have absolutely no dairy, no grains and no salt, I said forget it.

Tree bark without salt is simply not palatable.

Hidden in plain sight, as you might say

I made peanut butter cookies yesterday that are excruciatingly yummy and just like my mother used to make. That should come as no surprise since it's her recipe, although, according to the notation on her recipe card, she got it from a bag of Gold Medal flour.

My mother believed it was necessary to have something sweet on hand at all times, for dessert after supper, to have with coffee if somebody dropped in, or just to have when the demands of a sweet tooth could no longer be resisted. To that end, she baked something every couple days -- pies, cakes, coffee cakes, quick breads, and, of course, cookies. In order to maintain acceptable levels of on-hand cookies, she often hid them to keep us kids (and Dad) from gobbling them all up.

My brother and I sometimes made a game of finding the hidden cookies and taking one each (that we knew she'd never miss). One afternoon when she had gone out to the store, we decided to find the cookies we knew she had baked that morning. We looked in all the usual places and came up empty. We broadened our search, looking into every cupboard, every drawer, even the bread box. Nothing.

When she came home, we complained of being absolutely starved and in need of a snack, and she said, "Well, why don't you have a couple cookies?" and we said, "Okay, but where are they?" and she said, "In the cookie jar, of course."

Oh.

WARNING: YOU MIGHT BE STUPID

We had to buy a new toaster recently. Whilst waiting for the browned bread to pop out of it this morning, I happened to see that there were words on it, actually stamped into the metal top: WARNING - HOT SURFACE.

Really? The top of a toaster gets hot? Who knew?

The warning is repeated in French and Spanish, so obviously it's not just English speakers who need to be enlightened.