I popped by the Dull Men’s Club (UK) this morning and found this post by Dave Walsh with the photo:
Coffee
On way to recycling centre picked up my afternoon hit by drive thru. At the window the server informed me “just a wee second.” Now I’m well aware this is not meant to be taken literally and just means there will be a short delay.
But is this not the worst idiom? 46 seconds later I got my drink. Surely a “wee minute” would be more literally right. The delay was apparently because they had to get a carrier for my single cup (double no less) Despite me not needing a carrier as I use the built-in holder in car. They said legally they had to pass it over in a carrier. This is no doubt mitigating legal risks from hot drink spills. At least I was able to dump the cardboard carrier at the recycling centre.
And I commented: “I’m impressed your car knows your name. Unless it thinks everyone is named Dave.”
That’s what my life is like now. That’s what I do.
At 52D in the puzzle today, the clue was “Metaphor for a bad goalie,” and the answer was SIEVE. Pretty good.
My comment: That SIEVE at 52D reminded me of the poor minor league hockey goalie who gave up eleven goals as his team lost an important playoff game. He was so despondent that on his way home from the arena he threw himself in front of a bus. Luckily, it went through his legs.
That’s my favorite hockey joke. I told it in class several times and it never got a laugh.
While we’re on the topic, did you know that a woman goalie signed a professional ice hockey contract to play with an NHL team (Tampa Bay)? She appeared in exhibition games back in ’92-’93 and played minor league hockey in men’s leagues? It was Manon Rhéaume. Her first husband was a minor league hockey player. She had a son with him who was a goalie for Michigan State. She has a son from her second husband too who plays now for UMich! Go Blue! Playboy invited her to pose for them. She said “No thanks.” I don’t see why they asked her to pose — there’s nothing sexier than those hockey uniforms.
From The Onion:
Man Hopes Nicely Dug Grave Will Get Him Back In Captors’ Good Graces
Here’s something for our Math Dept (Hi Judy!), I think. The clue at 15A was “Like the number ‘i’” and the answer was NONREAL.
Commenter SJ posted: I enjoyed the way they clued “i” as a NONREAL number. I always get a kick out of the nomenclature there as “i” is no more or less REAL than any other number. To further complicate matters, “i” is also referred to as an “imaginary” number when, again, it is no more or less “imaginary” than any other number.
And tht came back with:
“Hey, proud of you for saying that about the number i! Of course those are technical terms, real and NONREAL, and they are terms used by mathematicians, but I think you’d be very hard-pressed to find a mathematician who assigned a higher ontological priority to real numbers than to (nonreal) complex numbers.”
“A more subtle sort of misconception can arise when people speak of ‘the’ square root of -1. There are two square roots of -1, notated as i and -i, but it would be a severe error to think that one is the ‘positive’ square root of -1 and the other the ‘negative’ square root. There is no property or characteristic of i that cannot be equally asserted of -i. (This recognition is a point of entry for what is known as Galois theory.) So you could say that i and -i are distinct but indiscernible. Metaphorically, if one of them walked into a room, you would never be able to identify which one of them it was by the way they look or act.”
OK, thanks, but now my brain hurts. Not about a number walking into a room. That part’s okay.
The puzzle’s theme today was COLORTV. The four theme answers were INDIGO GIRLS, GREENHOUSE, BLACK SUITS, and WHITE CASTLE. Each has a color followed by the name of a TV show. A little blah if you ask me. Word of the Indigo Girls reached me under my rock, but I am not familiar with their work. This song’s nice.
Rex said when he saw them perform back in 1990, he was dating the sister of one of them. They are Amy Ray and Emily Saliers, both in their early 60s now. They met in elementary school in Atlanta and have been performing together since high school. Hey, don’t look at me in that tone of voice!!
Caity asked us to take Robin to urgent care a while back, I think for strep throat. Robin is pretty wild in terms of how she dresses and on that day part of her outfit was a pair of gloves from which her fingers protruded and which showed (skeletal) bones on the nonprotrudive parts. (You may have to read that twice for coherence. Sorry.) The doc or RN who was doing the examination took a swab of her throat and asked her a bunch of questions. Then I asked: “Is it normal for us to be able to see the bones of her hands like that?” And she said: “No, it is not,” pretty emphatically.
I spoke with someone from Verizon today, who was very helpful with a problem on my phone. Then he found me a new $15 a month discount I qualified for! Two for two. Then he tried to sell me on some security package for $10 a month. He went over the benefits it offered, like if my TVs or devices go bad, they will fix them for me, or help me install certain things in the house. I thanked him and said I’ll pass it up. He seemed incredulous and asked me “Why?” I said because it costs $120 a year, why else would it be? In fact, he really didn’t know me. I’d have turned it down if it just cost $1 a year. A dollar is a dollar. Damn right it is.
Hard to imagine a song more well-known than “When A Man Loves A Woman,” by Percy Sledge, amirite? Well, Donna Jean Godchaux sang backup on it, as she did on a #1 hit by Elvis, “Suspicious Minds.” That was before she was introduced to the Grateful Dead and sang with them from 1972 to 1979. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll HOF with them in 1994.
Sadly, Donna passed away Sunday, at the age of 78.
Let’s hear it again.
So if Percy Sledge married MC Hammer, would he be Percy Sledge Hammer? Asking for a friend.
Rest in peace, Donna.
I watch the news less than I used to because I’m not an idiot. And besides sports I often watch a food show. To show you how low I have sunk, I recently watched an episode of Man vs. Food that I had seen before. (It’s the one where he eats an enormous slice of pizza with thick levels of increasing hotness.) Anyway, I had it on some “best food ever” show and was surprised to learn from the discussion that a pork “butt” comes from the pig’s shoulder, not the rear! Did you know that? How can that be? Looks like the rear is the “ham.”
Okay, Barbra Streisand, Paris Hilton, and . . . Tom Brady??? What in the world could be the connection? Woof, woof! TB just revealed that his beloved dog Junie was cloned from his former dog Lua who died two years ago. Creeped out? Streisand and Hilton also had their dogs cloned. Colossal Biosciences is the company Brady used and he’s also an investor in it, not just a customer. It’s a noninvasive procedure: A blood sample from Lua was used to “produce” Junie. The company gained some fame for “de-extinction” efforts, i.e., it brought back “dire wolves” via cloning.
Now the Patriots, Brady’s old team, are suddenly winning again with a new QB who seems to have emerged from nowhere. Could it be Brady himself was . . . ? Nah.
Here’s Paris. Phil — how many phones does she use?
Let’s close today with this poem by Avia Tadmor, called “Nothing Promised.” It was the poem of the day from poets.org last Friday.
You drag the boat across the tallgrass, shake out
the black snakes that made a provisional home under the bow
through the length of winter. The rope undone
for the first time in months, it slews behind you
through dirt, then shallow water, a thin trail
that follows you deeper into the afternoon, submits to the pull
of you, or perhaps the pull of the other shore. So sure you are
in your solitude, and I am startled to sit here, witness it.
How smooth is your sailing away, this measured
but steady drifting under pink, penumbral light. When we first met
you portioned your stories, or they came brash, a light tower’s
unpredictable beam. Resolving to muteness the year your father
could no longer hear you, then woodwork, then a decade
of travel. Tulum. The Mont Blanc where the five-foot two French guide
hauled you out of a crevasse. The Norwegian girl you met at a bar
in Cambodia who followed you back, wanting
to show you the ring on her labia. Her Janis Joplin tattoo. I follow you now
with my late summer eyes. Why do I love watching you like that,
cruising away from me? As if you are teaching me something
about love and distance. Two red-tailed hawks surrender
their shadows to the thicket of spruces. You stare up,
then past your left shoulder. I think, at me. The wind tugs at every
boat in our world. A hushed push and pull, a measure of faith
travels the distance between us. Buoyant as day, thin as light.
See you tomorrow!
The Wellington Files 