Parvum Opus 249 ~ Librivox

PARVUM OPUS

Number 249

October 26, 2007

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LATE

PO is a day late because Fred was up all night on the computer. We’re just a one-computer family. Maybe it’s time to get another one.

LIBRIVOX

More good book stuff on the web: Librivox is amassing recorded out-of-copyright books for download, podcast, and online listening. You can volunteer to contribute to the recordings. I’ve gotten in the habit of listening to a couple of radio broadcasts on the web, so this is a good addition to the listening bank.

Unlike the books online at the Gutenberg site and others, you can’t do a search in the texts, if, for instance, you’re trying to locate a specific passage. Since the search function has taken the place of traditional indexes (or indices, if you prefer), browsing takes on a whole new meaning. You can search for something if it occurs to you or surf from link to link quickly, but you can run your eye down an index the way you’d run your eye across a bookshelf. A good index is a thing of beauty. I’ve enjoyed doing some indexing in the course of my publishing career (yes, that’s the kind of thing I enjoy). The most thoroughly indexed book I’ve ever seen is The Herb Book by John Lust. In print for more than 30 years, this book is a great herbal reference with indexes (not counting the table of contents) that include:

plants applicable to various conditions and body organs

alphabetical list of herbs: proper (primary) English and common or vernacular names

alphabetical list of herbs: Latin botanical names

comprehensive botanical index of plants

general index

index of plants by botanical name

plus

glossary of botanical terms

glossary of medicinal effects and herbs that produce them

and

a bibliography

and

lots of lists. My old paperback copy is 660 pages, about half of which are indexes and other introductory and supplementary material.

WHOSE UNCLE?

Dave DaBee got a technical explanation of some Photoshop operation with a friend, who ended up with, “...and Bob’s your uncle!” Dave hadn’t heard the expression, so his friend explained,

It's sort of akin to "it's a piece of cake." I think it's from Great Britain and probably has its roots in Cockney rhyming slang. There's even a tiny chain of sports bars here in the area called "Bob's Your Uncle." People usually say it at the end of a list of instructions to mean "...and you're done" or "...and you won't have anything to think/worry about."

Dave found more explanations at World Wide Words, as well as the Wikipedia article which adds that “Bob’s your aunty” means the instructions don’t work.

FONTS MATTER

From Found:

I won’t insert the actual image, but it’s a notice from Indiana University headed, “Are you a heavy crack or cocaine user?”, soliciting participants in a psychology study. The headline was set in the Comic Sans, thus the Found title: “Least Appropriate Use of Comic Sans”. You have to follow the link and take a look at the sign. Examine the font (the rest of the flyer looks like some version of Times). Why is this simple sans serif font inappropriate? You can’t feel it even if you can’t analyze it. The font is a familiar one similar to lettering used by cartoonists in dialogue balloons. The lines are not perfectly curved or perfectly straight, giving the letters an informal, playful feel. You wouldn’t use it on a formal wedding announcement, for instance, or a funeral program (if you did, I don’t want to know about it), or in the newspaper headlines.

MIKE’S OED

Regarding “lynch” Mike Sykes wrote, “OED seems fairly confident in saying...” and then attributes “lynch” to Captain William Lynch, with other details. When is the OED not confident in saying anything?

Mike also elaborated on “prejudice”:

"Prejudice" has too many meanings, the most common being "Preconceived opinion not based on reason or actual experience; bias, partiality; (now) spec. unreasoned dislike, hostility, or antagonism towards, or discrimination against, a race, sex, or other class of people." (The first meaning in the OED). I submit that the title was attention-grabbing. No doubt the author intended some other meaning, such as "The action of judging an event beforehand", but the OED has this as obsolete. From what you say, the author seems to be arguing that some degree of authority is necessary in guiding the actions of others, which is fair enough but that's not prejudice as commonly understood.

Dalrymple’s book is a complex discussion of the subject, though no doubt he did mean to attract attention with the title of his book. He invites us to analyze the source of our opinions, whether the authority is a person, institution, or reason based on first premises. I can’t agree with the OED that the meaning “to judge beforehand” is completely obsolete ~ I say with confidence. Even though most people use “prejudice” as defined in the OED, the old meaning cannot be considered obsolete as long as we need a more complete definition of the word in order to be able to understand it as used in books written a century ago or more, which are not obsolete. Neither can we give up the concept of discriminate, meaning to make fine distinctions.

Dilating on “pupil” Mike wrote:

When I was at university, undergraduates were "in stat pup" ~ "in statu pupillari" ~ hence subject to regulations as to where they were allowed to live (college or licensed lodgings) and where they were allowed to be and when (e.g. with the university precincts during full term, unless they had an exeat).

Is an exeat like a pass? Today, of course, at least in the U.S., university students usually have no more such restrictions, what with co-ed dorms and even bathrooms, no curfews at any age, and so on.

A SLANG OF ONE’S OWN

Caleb Stone wrote, regarding my saying “Other ethnic groups have slang?”, that Jews don't have slang. And then he explained he was kidding. I was kidding too. But I will not resort to ;-) . He went on:

This whole debate about what's black and what's not or who's offended and why, strikes me as being a little linguistically naïve. Clinton and all of us humans sound silly doing all kinds of things all the time. Sometimes intentionally, mostly not, but that doesn't take away from the fact that there are linguistic differences that crop up among many different lines and each and every one of us incorporates new styles, words, etc., to at least some degree most of the time.

My hunch (being somewhat trained in psychology) is that social anxiety and awkwardness along with struggles to define identity in a world trying to grab all of our identities are playing larger roles in this than any malicious intent or even simple ignorance. It seems to me that many people are actually so hyper aware of racial/linguistic differences that more problems are created and less discussion occurs. We are still very uncomfortable about race in America and I think spending as much time in diverse situations as possible would only lead to more understanding on a macro level.

Good advice, though I feel sure it’s addressed to white people, not black people. Not all people, in other words.

VITAL COMMUNICATION

Lt. Michael Murphy was posthumously awarded the US Medal of Honor this week. He died in 2005 attempting to get a better communications signal to save his four-man reconnaissance and surveillance team in Afghanistan. He was too low to get a radio signal necessary to call for back-up so he climbed to a more dangerous spot in the open ~ though wounded ~ to make the call, where he was shot again.

______________________________________________

Link here to look for books on Amazon.com!

Or click on underlined book links.

NEW SHOP: Scot Tartans. NEW STUFF AT Parvum Opus CafePress shop:

"Flash in the Pants";

"If you're so smart why aren't you me?";

"If you build it they won't come";

Rage Boy/Bat Boy: Can you spot the difference?;

Akron U. Alma Mater: The Lost Verse;

PWE (Protestant Work Ethic) tote bag;

"I am here" T-shirt;

"Someone went to Heaven and all I got was this lousy T-shirt";

"I eat dead things" doggy shirt and BBQ apron;

new kids’ things, mouse pad, teddy bear, stein, and more!

ELSEWHERE

Parvum Opus now appears http://cafelit.blogspot.com/. It is also carried by the Hur Herald, a web newspaper from Calhoun County, West Virginia. See Editor Bob Weaver's interview with me (February 10, 2007 entry), and the PO every week in Columns.

WHEN SONNY GETS BLUE! Check out the video clips of Sonny Robertson and the Howard Street Blues Band at http://www.sonnyrobertson.com/ and http://www.youtube.com/rondaria, with his new original song, "A Different Shade of Blue".

SEARCH IT OUT ON AMAZON : "It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter." Proverbs 25:2; "Get wisdom! Even if it costs you everything, get understanding!" Proverbs 4:7:

The poet Muriel Rukeyser said the universe is not composed of atoms, but stories. The physicist Werner Heisenberg said the universe is not made of matter, but music.

NEED SOMEONE TO ORGANIZE A MEETING OR CONFERENCE? CALL KEITHOPS.

Go to Babelfish to translate this page into Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, or Spanish!

Parvum Opus is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services. Back issues may be found at http://www.keithops.us/. Feel free to e-mail me with comments or queries. The PO mailing list is private, never given or sold to anyone else. If you don't want to receive Parvum Opus, please reply with "unsubscribe," "quit," "enough," or something like that in the subject line, and I'll take you off the mailing list. Copyright Rhonda Keith 2007. Parvum Opus or part of it may be reproduced only with permission, but you may forward the entire newsletter as long as the copyright remains.

Parvum Opus 248 ~ Meat Puppet on a Mission

PARVUM OPUS

Number 248

October 18, 2007

______________________________________________

WALK THE TALK

Slate.com’s Dear Prudence advice column recently carried this letter:

Dear Prudence,

Many words and phrases that originate in African-American culture in our country, such as sister, bro, hangin' with my homies, and so on, going back in time (think of hep cat) are eventually incorporated into the larger vernacular. Is it inappropriate, or when is it inappropriate, for white people to talk this way? .... But recently I read comments by a black writer implying that behavior like mine is offensive. The writer found it condescending and gratuitous. I realize that one black person does not speak for all black people. And I address my question also to other ethnic groups' slang, as well as that of African-Americans....

—No Offense

Dear Hep,

I asked Slate's Melonyce McAfee to provide one black person's perspective on your question. She says that of course it's natural for colloquialisms from different groups, be it surfer-speak or black culture, to enter the larger society. But what makes her uncomfortable about hearing black slang coming from white people is when the speaker says it while trying to sound black—it's affected and awkward. She warns that by the time such phrases enter popular culture, they've often fallen out of fashion in the community that spawned them (are you still saying hep cat?). So here are a couple of questions to ask yourself: Have the phrases become part of your natural speech, or do you also adopt a pose when saying them? And do you really feel fun and spunky, or hopelessly self-conscious?

—Prudie

My first question is ~ other ethnic groups have slang? Anyway, we’ve heard Hillary R. Clinton attempt a black accent and vernacular in a speech down south (she “don’t feel no ways tired”), and what’s weirder, Barack Obama has done the same thing. Maybe that’s why I heard a couple of black-sounding women on NPR today saying that white people aren’t scared anymore, so it’s time for them to march again. (I was too late to catch their names or the general topic.)

This week I also heard a radio caller say that he objected to the use of “lynching” to refer to anyone but black people ~ only black people can be lynched. He obviously hasn’t watched enough cowboy movies, where vigilante mobs were always lynching people. According to yourdictionary.com, “lynch” comes from Lynch's law, after Capt. William Lynch (1742-1820), member of a vigilance committee in Pittsylvania, Virginia (1780), but Wikipedia offers several other possible histories. Many peoples have shared the honors of lynching.

THE ROVING EDITOR

||| Seen on a business card posted in an ice cream shop: “You’re Art!” I went to the web site, www.youreart.com, to see if this was a tattoo service or something, but it’s just a not very good painter with a BFA and teaching certification advertising her wares. No, you’re art, but not much.

||| Radio caller: “You’re being disingenuine.” Almost makes sense, but it’s wrong. “Disingenuous” is being used a lot more these days than it used to be, though. “Ingenuous” means inborn, ergo, sincere. But if “disingenuine” were a word, it would mean “not not genuine”, ergo, genuine, because of the double negative. The prefix “in” can mean in, or it can mean not, ergo, the confusion.

||| On TV news: “There’s going to be a serious fatality.” As is so often the case.

||| Movie summary: “Police and a deadly pursuer tail an unlawful couple.” An unlawful couple would be like an illegal couple, neither of which makes much sense. At one time it might have meant an unmarried couple having “illicit” relations. But the writer was trying to say the couple were criminals. “Lawless” would work, but “unlawful” doesn’t mean the same thing.

THROUGH THE MILLER

A couple of clever bits of wordplay from Dennis Miller:

||| (From 10/15/07 at 12:00 o’clock): Gore bit off more than he could eschew. Not that Gore wants to eschew any of his factual errors, since he just got the Nobel Peace Prize for them.

||| Noblesse oblique referring to the suggestion (from Dems, I think) that it would be a good national security and health measure to vaccinate large crowds, namely NASCAR fans. Maybe they didn’t really mean that NASCAR fans are diseased; perhaps they think that NASCAR fans are mostly Democrats and would welcome the freebie. But it might have been more tactful to offer to vaccinate the Democratic convention for starters.

PUPPETS

Did you know: A sock puppet is a false online personality created to give the illusion that there are other people besides oneself who agree with your opinion. A meat puppet is a real person who’s corralled to do the same thing for someone.

READING WITH PLEASURE

Bill R. wrote: “I would take issue with Miss Manners in that the formal military usage I learned in the stone age (early 1970s) included such things as "accept with much pleasure" (abbreviated in radio messages as WMP).”

I can’t argue with the military. But there's a difference between accepting with pleasure and announcing a wedding with pleasure. Too much happiness at your daughter's wedding starts to look like relief. I've also read about invitations that say things like "you are graciously invited" (i.e., “I am gracious”). But it’s OK to be happy at receiving and accepting an invitation.

BOOK VIEWS

||| In her introduction to At Home in the World by Joyce Maynard, her memoir covering her year-long affair with J. D. Salinger, Maynard writes:

I published stories and articles about aspects of my experience that some people would have considered shameful or embarrassing. I wanted to tell the story of a real woman with all her flaws. I hoped, by doing that, others might feel less ashamed of their own unmentionable failings and secrets.

So now she’s a social worker. Why don’t I believe her? And she doesn’t seem to want to warn young girls about men three times their age, she just wants to make everything public. Lots of girls would end up hoping they too could snag a famous literary figure, if only for a year. Compare Han Suyin’s remark in the fictionalized story of her love affair, A Many-Splendored Thing: she told her lover she certainly would sell her love story for rice.

||| In Praise of Prejudice: The Necessity of Preconceived Ideas by Theodore Dalrymple points out that pre-judging from a body of knowledge and experience is essential if we are not to reinvent the wheel every day. The words “prejudice” and “discrimination” have become so attached to the idea of racial prejudice that people forget that the ability to discriminate, to make informed judgments, is a high human faculty, though that doesn’t mean we have to figure out every aspect of life for ourselves, e.g., why shouldn’t I murder someone?

In the course of his argument, Dalrymple noted the shift from the use of the word “pupil” to the word “student”.

The two words have very different connotations. A pupil is under the tutelage or direction of someone who knows what the pupil, for his own good, ought to know and to learn; a student has matured to the point at which his own curiosity or ambition permit him to follow his own inclinations, at least to some extent, where his studies are concerned.

Which reminds me of a recent anecdote about candidate John Edwards, who said in regard to sex education in schools that he would not presume to teach his own second-grade children what’s right or wrong: “I don’t want to impose my view. Nobody made me God.” Regarding teaching my own children, I learned early on to impose my prejudices on them: Don’t hit me. Don’t hit him. Don’t litter. Pick up your toys. Because I said so. We did a lot of arguing about my prejudices. Still do.

______________________________________________

Link here to look for books on Amazon.com!

Or click on underlined book links.

NEW SHOP: Scot Tartans. NEW STUFF AT Parvum Opus CafePress shop:

"Flash in the Pants";

"If you're so smart why aren't you me?";

"If you build it they won't come";

Rage Boy/Bat Boy: Can you spot the difference?;

Akron U. Alma Mater: The Lost Verse;

PWE (Protestant Work Ethic) tote bag;

"I am here" T-shirt;

"Someone went to Heaven and all I got was this lousy T-shirt";

"I eat dead things" doggy shirt and BBQ apron;

new kids’ things, mouse pad, teddy bear, stein, and more!

ELSEWHERE

Parvum Opus now appears http://cafelit.blogspot.com/. It is also carried by the Hur Herald, a web newspaper from Calhoun County, West Virginia. See Editor Bob Weaver's interview with me (February 10, 2007 entry), and the PO every week in Columns.

WHEN SONNY GETS BLUE! Check out the video clips of Sonny Robertson and the Howard Street Blues Band at http://www.sonnyrobertson.com/ and http://www.youtube.com/rondaria, with his new original song, "A Different Shade of Blue".

SEARCH IT OUT ON AMAZON : "It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter." Proverbs 25:2; "Get wisdom! Even if it costs you everything, get understanding!" Proverbs 4:7:

The poet Muriel Rukeyser said the universe is not composed of atoms, but stories. The physicist Werner Heisenberg said the universe is not made of matter, but music.

NEED SOMEONE TO ORGANIZE A MEETING OR CONFERENCE? CALL KEITHOPS.

Go to Babelfish to translate this page into Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, or Spanish!

Parvum Opus is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services. Back issues may be found at http://www.keithops.us/. Feel free to e-mail me with comments or queries. The PO mailing list is private, never given or sold to anyone else. If you don't want to receive Parvum Opus, please reply with "unsubscribe," "quit," "enough," or something like that in the subject line, and I'll take you off the mailing list. Copyright Rhonda Keith 2007. Parvum Opus or part of it may be reproduced only with permission, but you may forward the entire newsletter as long as the copyright remains.

Little Read Riding Herd

PARVUM OPUS

Number 247

October 11, 2007

HEARTBREAK KIDS

I haven’t reviewed any movies for quite a while, and there’s no real reason to review The Heartbreak Kid, but it’s interesting to compare remakes with original movies. I went to see the new version of The Heartbreak Kid because I remembered the original movie as being funny, in a peculiar way. I tracked down the 1972 version in a library and watched both movies this week. The basic plot: young man gets married, meets a girl he likes better on his honeymoon, dumps bride. The new version by the puerile Farrelly brothers seems like a different movie altogether. How and why was it changed? I’ll just tick off the differences.

||| The first movie alluded to the shiksa/goddess appeal of the waspy, blonde, spoiled rich girl, compared to the young Jewish bride, who promised to be a loving, if boring, wife and mother. The protagonist, Lenny Cantrow, married her in a traditional Jewish ceremony in New York, surrounded by family. His name was changed to Eddie in the new movie; the setting was San Francisco; the bride was blonde, the new girl was brunette. Maybe this has become a politically incorrect theme. But it’s important in defining the nature of love and desire for emblems of idealized, sunny success, which is not confined to any ethnic group. This idea is missing from the new movie, as is any idea.

||| In the new movie, Eddie gets married because his father and friend pressure him into it. In the original, Lenny gets married the way so many men used to get married, in response to sexual denial, which is so unlikely to happen now that it perhaps had to be changed.

||| Lenny is cold and heartless toward an innocent young woman. Eddie looks justified in turning against his bride, who is not only annoying, but is also an ex-cocaine addict and not gainfully employed.

||| In the original movie, the seductive Cybill Shepard knows Lenny is on his honeymoon, but finds it amusing to play with him. In the new movie, the new girl on the beach does not know he’s married, therefore she is a “good” character.

I could go on, but these are the main points, aside from the exaggerated crudeness of the Farrelly brothers’ movies, crudeness that can be funny but is basically the kind of obscene humor that appeals to 12-year-old boys.

So why these changes? The original movie followed a pattern that Fred noted was typical of the period, the “what’s it all about, Alfie” anomie of movies without a hero. The new movie has a protagonist who is in no way a hero either, but who draws a certain amount of sentimental empathy (who doesn’t like Ben Stiller?). The original comedy left you (or me) feeling a bit bleak. It seems to say that love is merely attraction to the unattainable, which Lenny manages to attain through persistence. Writer Neil Simon (who’s had five marriages) presumably was writing out of his own psychic experience.

The Farrelly brothers’ version has Ben Stiller chasing an idealized blonde girl as in their movie There’s Something About Mary, which also starred Stiller. The message of the new Heartbreak Kid is that the great goal of life is to live as if you’re on vacation year-round. This movie leaves you (or me) feeling disgusted, in the macro and micro.

The 1972 movie is a poor man’s Great Gatsby, where an ambitious young man, rather resentful at former slights against him as an ordinary working stiff (or in this case, perhaps as a Jew in wasp America, though writer Neil Simon does not make that too explicit), gets what he wants, which is an amoral rich girl. The new movie is about a 40-year-old boy who has no idea what he wants, or what’s right or wrong, and eventually suffers a bit (quite improbably crossing the border with illegal Mexican immigrants), and again marries and prepares to dump yet another woman in order to get what he “really” wants. The cultural divide here is between the hip San Franciscan and the borderline ridiculous religious southern whites.

I recommend that you see the first movie, if only for Eddie Albert as the wasp father who sees through Lenny’s attempts to feign sincerity (“There is no deceit in the cauliflower!). Don’t bother with the new one. Neil Simon is no Shakespeare, but the Farrelly brothers, 35 years later, together don’t make up a Neil Simon. The 1972 movie was about a man with no moral compass, whereas the new movie, like Jerry Springer, pretends the characters have one. As Bill R. wrote to me in regard to Overheard in New York, “Remember Virgil to Dante in the Inferno: ‘The wish to hear such baseness is degrading’.”

THE ROVING EDITOR

||| From a local feature about upcoming Dylan concert: “You and your colleagues go to lunch and imbibe in a few martinis.” Imbibe is a transitive verb, you imbibe martinis, not imbibe in martinis (unlike drink, which can be transitive or intransitive: drink martinis, drink in the view). The writer should have felt the im in imbibe, and felt the redundancy of adding in.

||| Overheard in the grocery store: “She likes the whole McCoy.” A mom was speaking about her little girl who likes lipstick, not just colorless lip gloss. A philosophical question: does “the real McCoy” imply wholeness? Is realness wholeness?

MORE EVIDENCE OF DECLINING ACADEMIC STANDARDS

From Overheard in New York:

I Do Not Like War Stories with Contusions/I Do Not Like Myriad Literary Allusions

Chick: Have you ever read Catch 22?

Guy: Was it written by Dr. Seuss?

Chick: No.

Guy: Then no.

Overheard at Pace University

MISS MANNERS RIDES HERD

Adverbial Excess:

Dear Miss Manners:

As a gentle reader of a large newspaper, I have been observing what I think is a fairly new phenomenon, but one that seems to be on the rise. That is the practice of parents announcing a daughter's engagement by prefacing "announce" with such adverbs as joyfully or happily. Another variation is "are pleased to announce."

There was even an engagement acknowledgement where the giddy parents announced their "favorite daughter's" engagement. Guess this does not bode well for any other unmarried daughters. How will their engagements be announced: "Joyfully announce the engagement of our least favorite daughter?"

Will Miss Manners please comment on the appropriateness or lack therof?

Miss Manners didn't even care for the traditional formal announcement, which stated that the parents were honored (or rather, honoured) to make the announcement. The parents' emotions on this occasion, even the conventional and restrained ones of feeling honored, seem, well, a trifle defensive. We assume that they approve of the marriage, or they would have locked their daughter in her room.

Bursting out with their unrestrained joy, especially these days, smacks of relief. One conjures them thanking God that someone finally came along for their daughter, or that the father of their grandchildren finally proposed.

As for the favorite daughter part, Miss Manners can only hope that it was a grammatical error on the part of people who have only one daughter.

NEW (TO ME) SLANG

A beast is now someone who’s very good at something, as well as something hairy and scary. It’s also an adjective and a verb. “She beasted (took) your seat” means she took your seat. “Beast” can mean to dominate.

FONT

From Chuck, a new TV show about a computer geek:

I’m working on the new five-year plan for my life, but I haven’t found the right font.

How I empathize.

Shared Culture

PARVUM OPUS

Number 246

October 4, 2007

______________________________________________

AMISH POWWOW

Somehow I was led to read an old novel, Rosanna of the Amish, written by Joseph W. Yoder to correct what he saw as a negative view of the Amish in some other novels of the early 20th century. The book was really a fictionalized narrative of his parents’ life in Pennsylvania, interesting as history though not notable as literature. Yoder’s mother, Rosanna, wanted to become a teacher but was persuaded not to as the Amish are against much education. But Yoder’s brother Levi, and Joseph Yoder too, did become teachers. I believe they left their strict Amish church to do so, however. Yoder wrote,

When Levi had finished the eighth grade, studying algebra and physics in addition, he took the county examination for teachers, passed, and got a school.

The “education” degree did not exist in the late 19th century, and requirements for teachers seemingly weren’t very strict. Yet the education in those little country schools was pretty good. I’ve written before about the high level of literacy demanded by the McGuffey readers used in thousands of one-room schoolhouses all over the U.S. (PO 22 and PO 23).

Yoder also wrote about Amish powwowing, which I’d never heard of. Usually a powwow means a gathering of an Indian tribe, but the Amish use (or used) the word to mean a kind of healing practice.

Along the way, I found a fascinating web site (The Max Kade Institute (MKI), in partnership with the Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures (CSUMC), The Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE), and the University of Wisconsin Libraries, with from the Institute of Museum and Library Services) that has sound clips of Pennsylvania Dutch and Amish speakers, as well as Americans speaking other dialects.

EVERYTHING’S JAKE, BILL, MIKE, AND DAVE

Bill asked, How does this tie in to "Everything's jake" meaning "everything is okay?" I don’t know, but there’s more about “jake” in the Word Detective.

And regarding oppression, he wrote, Monty Python is clearly applicable. "Help! Help! I'm bein' repressed!" (Classic bit from Monty Python and the Holy Grail ~ check out the violence inherent in the system on YouTube.) (What about the violins inherent in the system?)

Bill and Mike both took issue with my saying that they make steel by burning it, or iron, or something. Hardly a technical explanation, I know. I was thinking about all those documentaries and film strips in school that showed huge vats of molten steel in the factories. I meant that heat will make a steel beam bend, at the very least. If a blacksmith can bend a horseshoe, fire can weaken the integrity of every part of a building. Mike gave me more technical info and sent a link about burning steel at The Rudiments of Wisdom Encyclopedia.

Regarding the chipmunk incident, Bill wrote,

One of the guys at church mentioned that he had had to call in the concrete leveling service because chipmunks had tunneled under his front stoop, causing it to droop. (No, he didn't say droop, but knowing you, a stoop droop would be more interesting than "settling.") He said they had pumped concrete under it to bring it back up to level. I asked how he had gotten the chipmunks out first. He replied, "I didn't."

Just like the workers buried in the Great Wall of China. My particular chipmunk will have a dumpster burial, in his little plastic casket. (Say that fast 3 times.) The health department here says chipmunks are almost never a rabies risk and I couldn’t get any satisfaction from my own doctor’s office. So far so good; I don’t appear to be rabid.

Mike pointed out that we can’t dispense with hyphens, as in pot-bellied. The hyphen is necessary in constructing a compound adjective like this ~ e.g. “pot-bellied stove”, and maybe even “He is pot-bellied.” Further,

...the Online OED still has plenty of hyphens following co, as in co-operative and co-ordinate, but these haven't been revised since about 1989. My 1997 NSOED on disk has cooperative and coordinate, but co-op as the abbreviation, presumably to distinguish from a (chicken-)coop. All a matter of clarity, I suppose.

Clarity is the point of punctuation.

Dave said that Overheard in New York had him in stitches for hours when he first read it, but since then, zilch. Not surprising. It’s not the same joke repeated, but it’s the same kind of thing over and over again, mostly rude, profane, and illiterate. Eventually the laughs turn into pain.

Also, Dave wrote, “That *quote* isn't entrepreneurial, is it?” (referring to an entrepreneur’s plaint, “We haven’t had time for a vacation, let alone a day off”). Strictly speaking (and that’s what we do here) a quote is not an entrepreneur. Loosely speaking, I think it makes sense.

More on Jake from Dave:

Michigan J. Frog is the name of the Warner Brothers dancing frog character. An excellent barbershop quartet took the name, confabulated that the J stood for Jake, and won the international barbershop championship in 2001. We went to see them in Darwin, MN a few years ago.

This is what it means to have a shared culture: I didn’t know the name of that frog but I knew immediately which frog Dave was talking about, and of course found him singing his signature song on YouTube. (There’s a Darwin, Minnesota?)

And he asked,

Is this the Twainage thou shalt never meet?

"An average sentence, in a German newspaper, is a sublime and impressive curiosity; it occupies a quarter of a column; it contains all the ten parts of speech -- not in regular order, but mixed; it is built mainly of compound words constructed by the writer on the spot, and not to be found in any dictionary -- six or seven words compacted into one, without joint or seam -- that is, without hyphens; it treats of fourteen or fifteen different subjects, each inclosed in a parenthesis of its own, with here and there extra parentheses which reinclose three or four of the minor parentheses, making pens within pens: finally, all the parentheses and reparentheses are massed together between a couple of king-parentheses, one of which is placed in the first line of the majestic sentence and the other in the middle of the last line of it -- after which comes the VERB, and you find out for the first time what the man has been talking about; and after the verb -- merely by way of ornament, as far as I can make out -- the writer shovels in "haben sind gewesen gehabt haben geworden sein," or words to that effect, and the monument is finished."

No, that’s not it. Twain wrote something specifically about hyphens being blots on an English sentence, but I include the passage on the German language because it’s so typically Twainishly good. Finally...

Which brings me to this closing item, from Reuters yesterday .....

During his first presidential campaign, Bush -- who promised to be the "education president" -- once asked: "Is our children learning?" On Wednesday, Bush seemed to answer his own question with the same kind of grammatical twist. "As yesterday's positive report card shows, childrens do learn when standards are high and results are measured," he said.

What can one say. I think Bush has a neurological impairment, or a stress-induced verbal tic; I can’t believe that when he’s writing, for instance, he doesn’t know basic grammar, and I’ve heard that in informal conversation, he doesn’t make these kinds of gaffes.

ORNERY

Pat G. wrote, “I have to give you a correction –‘ornry’ is spelled ‘ornery’. How do I know? All 3 of mine were (& are!) Ornery!!!”

I guess I have usually seen it spelled with an E; I’ve also seen it without, but don’t remember where. Since it’s a colloquial version of ordinary, the spelling has to depend on the pronunciation, which I’ve mostly heard in two syllables (though sometimes three). Maybe orn’ry should have an apostrophe. Pat and I were English composition instructors together long ago, but Pat had the good sense to move on and get a real job. We both had ornry kids, though.