Smile Not

I have decided I do not like smiley faces in written communication.  I think my biggest complaint is that it is the equivalent of saying "Ha Ha!" which I have always considered a rather juvenile practice. 

The smiley face is the original emoticon, those emotion icons that are meant to convey to the reader the mood of the writer.  It came out of IT and has become a staple of electronic communication.

It all started in 1982 when a dude named Scott Fahlman at Carnegie Melon University proposed to the computer science department that they use :-) (colon-hyphen-right parenthesis, read sideways) as a "joke marker" in their postings to electronic message boards.  He then went on to suggest that perhaps it would be better to use the left parenthesis instead to indicate when something was not a joke.  The practice spread and was picked up by computer nerds everywhere, eventually finding its way to the incipient Internet, and the rest is history.

Although emoticons can still be created with the symbols available on the standard keyboard, there are many programs that allow the insertion of actual images, and some applications will even automatically change :-) to J .

I do not use smiley faces myself, or haven't in a long time, as far as I remember.  I admit, however, that I do occasionally poke fun at something or somebody by putting [smiley face] at the end of the sentence instead of the image, just to be cute.

The real point here is that if you can't tell when I'm kidding, then I am not communicating very well, or you do not know me very well, or you are really stupid.  Ha ha!  Just kidding. 

Save the Grape Nuts

I bought a box of Grape Nuts over the weekend and had some for breakfast yesterday and again this morning, something I hadn't done in years.  I love Grape Nuts, but evidently not a lot of people share my enthusiasm.  There is talk about the brand being in trouble, and I, for one, would be sad if it was removed from the market.

Grape Nuts Cereal was created by Charles W. Post around 1896 after he had been a patient at the Kellogg Sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan, where corn flakes were under development.  Although detractors like to point out that it contains neither grapes nor nuts, Mr. Post thought that the concoction had a fruity, grape-like scent while baking, and the hard crunch reminded him of nuts, hence the name.  As far as I can tell from superficial research, the FTC considers the name "fanciful" rather than "deceitful," so it has never been challenged.

As processed food goes, Grape Nuts is a miracle of simplicity.  There are only four ingredients:  whole grain wheat flour, malted barley flour, salt, and dried yeast.  Apparently the dry ingredients are wetted with water, baked, and then ground up into the familiar little kernels.

I don't care about saving whales, I just want there to be Grape Nuts in the cereal aisle when I want it.  I guess I'm pretty simple myself.

Thinking About Shoes

There's a dude in Norway who is on trial for killing 77 people last year.  In the courtroom today, a relative of one of the victims stood up and threw his shoe at the guy.

It didn't say what nationality the shoe-thrower was.  In various places in the Middle East, it is considered a serious insult to throw a shoe at all, much less at somebody.  Remember that Iraqi journalist who threw his shoe at George W. Bush in Baghdad?

As a make-shift weapon or projectile, a shoe is handy, I guess.  It's heavy enough not only to fly through the air but also inflict a little bit of damage too, I suppose.  At least, a substantial shoe is.  I don't think you'd get much result by tossing fuzzy house slippers at anybody.

Nikita Khrushchev was said to have banged his shoe like a gavel (or maybe a hammer) on the lectern at the United Nations in 1960, although there are conflicting reports as to whether that actually happened or not.  Apparently the only photograph of the incident has been proven a fake.  Still, if you wanted to pound on something, your shoe is immediately to hand.

Some shoes figure prominently in literature, such as Dorothy's ruby slippers and the glass one Cinderella lost. 

One of the most important and storied battles of the American Civil War involved shoes.  The nearly barefoot Confederate army had heard there was a shoe factory in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and drove into Union territory in order to help themselves to its wares.

We can wait for the other shoe to drop, walk in somebody else's shoes, put the shoe on the other foot, and, if the shoe fits, wear it.

Shoes have long been excellent hiding places, for money, secret maps, knives, drugs, you name it. And then there was Richard Reid back in 2001 who got caught with a bomb in his shoe on an airplane.


I wouldn't have wanted to be in that guy's shoes.

Faster and Vaster

On this date in 1961, a dude named Newton Minnow, who was chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, gave a speech to the National Association of Broadcasters in which he said that television was a "vast wasteland." It caused quite a stir and, although I was only 14 at the time, I am sure I did not agree with him.

After all, there were sitcoms starring Dick Van Dyke, Danny Thomas, Andy Griffith, and Donna Reed, plus The Real McCoys, My Three Sons, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, The Flintstones, Leave It To Beaver, and The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. Garry Moore, Ed Sullivan, Red Skelton, Steve Allen, Jack Benny and Dinah Shore had variety programs, not to mention a musical hour with Lawrence Welk. The cowboys were there with Bonanza, Cheyenne, Have Gun Will Travel, and Gunsmoke, and there were lawyers, cops and intrigue on The Defenders, Checkmate, The Detectives, The Untouchables, and The Naked City. There were doctors too, like Ben Casey and Dr. Kildare, and as if that were not enough, we also had To Tell The Truth, I've Got a Secret, and What's My Line?

And that was what appeared on three television networks. Nowadays, thanks to cable and dish and satellite, we have scores of channels showing programs that give us an inside look at tattoo parlors, automobile repossessionists, bounty hunters, pawn shops, people with more children than is morally responsible, midgets, and women with nothing to recommend them except that they are married and live in New Jersey.

I wonder what words Mr. Minnow could find today to describe this vastness of waste.

Could I be a vegetarian?

I just saw a picture on Facebook of my three-year-old great-nephew encountering a baby chick, and it brought back this awful experience I had over the weekend.  I watched a show on some cable channel -- it was kind of like "How It's Made," but it wasn't that one -- that was all about the process of raising chickens, commercially.

The beginning was all right.  There were a gazillion eggs, which were suction-cupped into an incubator, and after a while the baby chicks finally started poking out of the shells.  Once they dried off and were just as cute and fuzzy and cuddly as they could be, the teeny tiny little chickies were sent on a horrifying journey through the chicken factory, dragged along on conveyor belts, dropped down chutes and just generally bounced around on moving and separating machinery as if they were just little round wads of soft yellow lint.

I had to turn it off, I was so appalled.  Poor little baby critters.  I may never eat chicken again.

English Time

In a British movie I saw last night, somebody said something about the time being "half eleven." I wasn't sure what that meant, because I do know that the exact equivalent in German, halb elf, means 10:30, half before eleven.  To the Brits, however, it apparently means 11:30, "half eleven" being short for "half past eleven." 

I've encountered other British vagaries regarding time.  While in London once long ago, I was talking to a woman on the telephone about an event I wanted to attend, and when I asked her about the starting time, she said, "Try to be here by quarter to eight."  Then she immediately added, "Oh, that would be seven forty-five in your language."  I've always wondered who told her Americans don't know what "quarter to eight" means.

On a completely unrelated note, there is a horse running in today's Kentucky Derby called El Padrino (Godfather), and since it is Cinco de Mayo, he might be a good bet.  Or not.  The odds are 30 to 1, but it would be a nice payday if he did win.

The race starts this afternoon about half six.

Thoughts for May 1. (May one?)

The tradition of celebrating the first day of May appears to have Celtic roots, but it never reached me in the Chicago burbs post-World War II.  My mother used to talk about the things she did as a child on May Day but neither she nor any of my teachers ever attempted to provide me with an opportunity to mark the day by gathering flowers or dancing around a May Pole.  It's a wonder this deficiency didn't produce a significant sense of social disadvantage in me.

On a semi-related note, I recently learned that the distress cry "mayday" has nothing to do with the first of May.  It is a re-spelling of the French m'aider, "help me."

And, as if that were not enough, today is the birthday of Kate Smith (1907-1986).  The first association most people have when they hear her name is probably "God Bless America," but I always remember the time I asked my mother why Kate Smith wore the same black dress all the time.

Kate's first television show, a daytime variety hour, premiered in 1950, and I believe we must have seen it every day, or at least that's what was tuned in while I played and my mother worked around the house.  Otherwise, I would not have been prompted to ask the question.

In reply, my mother explained that heavy people often wore dark colors which made them appear not so big, but she also pointed out that it was probably not the exact same dress, since we couldn't see the color and all dark colors would appear black.  As to my inability to distinguish differences of cut or style -- well, I was only three or four at the time, not to mention that I was blind as a bat (corrective lenses didn't enter my life until 1952).

I wish I knew why I remember that so well six decades later.  But at least it does show that even as a tiny child I had fashion sense enough to understand that variety is essential.