And also in addition Arschbutz too

Fugitive thoughts caught up with me yesterday when a reference on a cooking show to Pork Butt made my mind jump to Rump Roast, and then I suddenly heard an anonymous but southern-drawled voice in my head saying, "Chicken butt fried in grease - want a piece?"

That led me to ruminate on the myriad names we have for that part of the human anatomy (if not that of fowl) that is medically known as nates (NAY-tees). Not a word common enough for general use. ("He fell on his nates" just does not work.)

For polite society, I suppose buttock and buttocks would come next, but those are laughable words, especially the way some people pronounce them. Then there would be gluteus maximus, too big a mouthful and actually a reference to the three muscles that comprise the nates.

That leaves the door open for so many fine names for it, and there are plenty, viz:

arse - ass - backside - back end - behind - booty - bottom -  breech - bum - buns - butt - caboose - can - cheek(s) - derrière - duff - fanny - fundament - haunches - heinie - hind part - hindquarters  - keister - moon - posterior - rear - rear end - rump - seat - sit-upon - stern - tail - tail end - tuchus - tush - wazoo

I presume that final word makes the list in relation to "up the" rather than "sit on."

Fundament and breech are new to me as euphemisms for the tuchus, for which I am using the Yiddish spelling.

Finally, there is no further point to any of this, or, therefore, none at all. My last random thought on the subject is that, as children, my brother and I thought that Fanny Butts was the funniest name in the universe. Maybe it is.

Okay, it's time to get my nates off this chair and go do something productive.

Once a skeptic, always a skeptic

There are evidently people who do not believe that the New Horizons spacecraft actually flew past Pluto and sent us back pictures. They say NASA made the whole thing up and that the pictures are fake.

They are in league with the folks who think that global warming is not real, the moon landings were faked, and the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was a hoax.

I can almost understand it. When I was in grade school in the (Cold War) 1950's, we were told that the people of Russia were oppressed by a totalitarian government and had none of the fundamental freedoms (speech, press, habeas corpus) that we have; that even though they could vote in elections, there was only one person on the ballot to vote for; that they were lied to all the time about Mother Russia's achievements in every field of human endeavor (which led them to invent television, chewing gum, and the flush toilet, or so they claimed).

There came a time, when I was about 10 or 11 years old, that I began wondering about that. What if my teacher and my school and my government were lying to me? What if we were the oppressed ones, expected to believe whatever we were told? How would I ever know?

As I got older, of course, I was able to accept the view of the world that was revealed to me, taking on faith whatever I did not know or see or experience myself.

It's highly likely that I still take a lot on faith. Like the sun will be rising in the east tomorrow.

Which reminds me of something else I heard in grade school, namely that one day the sun was going to burn out and die, and so would the planet and so would I. That scared the poop out of me, but then I learned that it wasn't going to happen for a few million years, and I felt a lot better.

Beating the Heat

All this recent hot weather got me to thinking about a hot summer day long ago when one of my schoolmates and I decided to open a lemonade stand. His name was Jimmy, and he lived in the next block. We were probably about ten years old.

We set up shop on the sidewalk in front of his house. Instead of the traditional lemonade, however, we were purveying Kool-Aid at two cents per little Dixie Cup.

We had served several customers when a big semi-trailer stopped across the street. The driver hopped down from the cab and came over to us. He must have been very thirsty to stop at a kid's Kool-Aid stand.

He gave us two pennies, and we poured him a cupful, which he swallowed in one gulp. Obviously it didn't slake his thirst. "I'll tell you what," he said.  "I'll give you a nickel for whatever is left in that pitcher."

A nickel? Zowee!

Jimmy accepted the five cents while I poured, but there wasn't enough left to fill the Dixie Cup more than 2/3 full. Jimmy immediately grabbed the pitcher and started off, saying excitedly, "I'll go make some more!"

The truck driver tossed back the contents of the cup and said, "That's okay. Never mind," and went back to his rig, climbed in, and drove off.

Jimmy watched the truck trundle down the street for a few seconds, then  turned to me and said very decidedly, "That guy got gypped."

Yes, he did. Because we kept the nickel.