When we staggered off of the plane at 7 am yesterday and into the terminal, these giant letters left no doubt as to our being back home.
A few days ago the puzzle asked us what Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary and Where’s Waldo? have in common, and I was surprised to learn they had both been banned. Can you see why Waldo was banned, below?
Look closer:
Right. When that kid touched his ice cream cone to the sunbathing woman’s back, causing her to jerk upward, it gave readers a side view of her left boob with enough detail to trigger the idiots. You can see her bikini top below her. You’re out Waldo! In fact, Where’s Waldo was one of the Top 100 most challenged books in the 90s. It was reissued with the bikini top covering the offending body part. Whew. We’re safe now.
Rex Commenter DrBB noted how carefully you had to search to come up with the offending image. He added:
Reminds me of the old joke about the lady who calls the cops because her neighbor is walking around naked in front of the windows of his house.
“But madam, the nearest house is almost a mile away.”
“Here, use my binoculars.”
I checked my phone for the outdoor temperature yesterday before heading out to an NJ Symphony concert. The phone said it was 36 degrees, but then, in little letters, it whispered to me “but it really feels like 27 degrees.” What’s that about?? Is it 36 or 27? JUST TELL ME THE GODDAMN TEMPERATURE SO I CAN PICK A JACKET TO WEAR! Feels like to whom? This New Yorker cartoon got to the bottom of it.
“Thirty-two? Feels more like 29 to me. Yeah, let’s go with 29.”
Alright, so it’s not really that guy. The “feels like” temp takes into account wind chill and humidity. BTW, if it’s 33 but “feels like” 31, does water freeze? No it does not! Freezing occurs based on the actual temperature. That is your Owl Chatter science fact for the day. For the year, actually. It will be on the test.
Except here’s another one. It is believed by many, counter-intuitively, that hot water freezes faster than cold water. A young man in Tanzania is reputed to have discovered this when making ice cream. It was even given a name: ”the Mpemba effect.”
But the good folks at MIT don’t buy it. Prakash Govindan, a postdoctoral associate in MIT’s ME department, says it takes more time and/or energy to freeze hot water because it must be brought down further in temperature until it reaches the freezing point. Try it yourself by jumping into a vat of boiling water. No! Try it by taking both hot and cold water and placing them in your freezer. Then keep checking on them until one freezes or you get bored. (I got bored before I finished typing this paragraph.) Last, since you must have been wondering: Prakash Govindan is an anagram of “having soap drank.”
Boy, this water froze quickly.
The Onion recently conducted an exercise in which they gave you quotes, and you had to decide whether they were by Hitler or Trump. Oy.
It was the birthday of John Singer Sargent last week. He was born in 1856. In 1884 he shocked the art world with his erotic portrait of “Madame X.” In the original version, the strap on her right shoulder was slipping. Not very racy by Where’s Waldo? standards, but pretty hot for its day. He later raised the strap. Boo!
This poem called “Poe’s Anvil” is by David Ray. It appeared in The Writer’s Almanac on Jan. 6.
At the drive-in theater where they sell junk
on Sundays we saw a man and his wife standing
by a pick-up truck trying to sell his anvil.
It sat up in the truck’s bed — it was black,
heavy, and elegant like a mammoth’s tusk.
And his name was written on it like a signature,
in iron that once ran like ink. His name was Poe.
I talked with him and he recalled briefly
days when his anvil stood outside a shed,
a workshop like a harbor set in a sea
of green tomato fields, and inside
he had a coal fire and a bellows and he watched
the tractor replace mules and the car
replace wagons. He tired of horse-shoes,
wagon wheels and plows, of hitches, harrows,
and lugs, of axles, crankcases and flywheels,
and he sat somewhat amused (and dying, his wife
told us), presiding over the sale of his own
monument, which he wanted someone to go on
hammering on, and in the midday city sun
the theater’s white screen was blank
like a faded quilt or Moby Dick’s stretched skin.
Our concert yesterday with the NJ Symphony featured Augustin Hadelich, an amazing violinist performing Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. He was dressed in black, and his face, up close, shows the effects of his having been injured seriously in a fire on his family’s farm in Italy in 1999 when he was fifteen. He was airlifted to Germany for treatment . He’s the fire bearer now — the audience melted when he played. You could do worse with your next 4:36 than listen to a piece of the Beethoven concerto. Towards the end the violin and the bassoon have a brief conversation.
His wife’s cute. SuXiao Yang. She’s a professional photographer, so she and Phil had a lot to talk about, although Phil kept keeling over. She is also a violist and has developed a passion for knitting and crocheting, as this photo illustrates.
The following comment by Lewis is a great example of how stuff in a puzzle can open little doors to wonderful things, ideally utter nonsense that finds its way to Owl Chatter. The 7th row in today’s puzzle happened to be the three answers: ON A, TOGA, AURORA. Per Lewis:
“Every time I look at row seven — ONA TOGA AURORA — all my brain hears, because the rhythm is identical, is In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.
“By the way, a bit of background on that song (recorded by Iron Butterfly), per Wikipedia:
“According to drummer Ron Bushy, organist-vocalist Doug Ingle wrote the song one evening while drinking an entire gallon of Red Mountain wine. When the inebriated Ingle then played the song for Bushy, who wrote down the lyrics for him, he was slurring his words so badly that what was supposed to be ‘in the Garden of Eden’ was interpreted by Bushy as ‘In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.’”
Here’s the short (single) version. Turn it up.
The Simpsons were way ahead of us on this:
You may recall my snowman joke from a few days ago: What does a snowman eat for breakfast? Answer: Frosted flakes.
Well, Granddaughter #1 (Lianna) came up with what he has for lunch: Chilly dogs.
Dot Sharp, who is 84 years old, knows how to hold a job, that’s for sure. She retired from the McDonalds in Gibsonia, PA, last Friday after working there for 45 years. Quite a McCareer. When she started, McNuggets weren’t even a gleam in someone’s eye. Her last customer was her granddaughter.
“Her role as cashier involved greeting customers, taking orders and accepting payments but it doesn’t capture the essence of who Dot is,” a McDonald’s spokesperson said.
Ya think? Let’s hope so.
We’re going to let Dot’s sweet smile send us off tonight. See you tomorrow!
The Wellington Files 