No Soup

[From Big City (dir. Frank Borzage, 1937). Click for a larger view.]

The signage is one odd bit in a movie filled with odd bits. Talk about odd: what follows this scene is the cabbie drinking that entire bottle of milk. Why? Because someone thought it funny.

Is “No Soup Served During Radio Concerts” a joke about the pretensions of this lunch stand’s proprietor? Because slurps, like coughs and the crackling of candy wrappers, would interfere with the appreciation of good music? Or perhaps the words are a joke on “No soap, radio.” But that anti-joke didn’t become well-known until the 1950s. I tried to figure this one out, but — that’s right, no soap.

Spontaneous generation

Vladimir Nabokov, Bend Sinister (1947).

Related reading
All OCA Nabokov posts (Pinboard) : On paper clips (An informal essay) : Paper clips (A prose poem)

Orange kiddo list

[Click for a larger list.]

This list, the work of a six-year-old, joins the list of supplies for an imaginary camping trip that my daughter Rachel made at the age of six or seven, many years ago. Two generations of youthful lists on Orange Crate Art.

Related reading
All OCA list posts (Pinboard)

Words of the day: milliner , millinery

Somehow I started thinking about those odd-looking words, milliner , millinery . Were they originally related to textile mills? No.

From the Oxford English Dictionary entry for milliner:

With capital initial. A native or inhabitant of Milan, a city in northern Italy. Obsolete.

The first citation for that meaning is from 1449, in a sentence about every “Venician, Italian, ... and Milener.” And then comes the more familiar meaning:

Originally: a seller of fancy wares, accessories, and articles of (female) apparel, esp. such as were originally made in Milan. Subsequently: spec. a person who designs, makes, or sells women’s hats.

The first citation for that meaning is from 1530, apparently from expense accounts for Henry VIII: “Paied to the Mylloner for certeyne cappes trymmed ... withe botons of golde.”

Millinery came later:

The articles made or sold by milliners. In earlier use frequently attributive .

The first citation is from 1676: “Millinery; disbursements for combs, mittens, gloves, thread, silk.”

And a later meaning:

The trade, business, or craft of a milliner,

with a first citation from Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects (1792): “In the afternoon, the girls should attend a school, where plain-work, mantua-making, millinery, &c., would be their employment.“

The OED entry for the word ends on a hopeful note, with a citation from The Palm Beach Post (January 15, 2000): “Don’t toss millinery onto the scrap heap of dead-end 21st-century careers just yet.”

Hats on!

Recently updated

Local man hits 100-post limit: And now the 100-post monthly limit is gone.

Arts, shmarts

Earlier today I posted a passage from Nabokov’s Bend Sinister on the role of education in a police state. I didn’t expect this New York Times article (gift link) to appear on the same day: “New Federal Guidelines Threaten Almost Half of Graduate Arts Programs.”

Deathtrap Mongols

[Michael Caine as Sidney Bruhl. Mongol pencils as themselves. From Deathtrap (dir. Sidney Lumet, 1982.) Click for a larger view.]

Related reading
All OCA Mongol posts (Pinboard)

“Less books and more commonsense”

In a nameless police state, a grocer explains things to Adam Krug, philosopher:

Vladmir Nabokov, from Bend Sinister (1947).

*

See also this New York Times article (gift link), published today: “New Federal Guidelines Threaten Almost Half of Graduate Arts Programs.”

Related reading
All OCA Nabokov posts (Pinboard)

Turn on your hazard lights (again)

[Now that summer is upon us, at least sort of, I’m repeating advice that I shared in 2011 and again in 2023 and 2024 and 2025. Pass it on.]

If you’re driving on a highway and the traffic suddenly slows or stops, and the vehicles behind you are at some distance:

~ Turn on your hazard lights.

~ Leave significant space between you and the vehicle in front of you.

~ Keep checking your rear-view mirror.

~ After someone has come up behind you, turn your hazard lights off.

If someone is coming up behind you and not paying full attention, your hazard lights might catch their eye and prompt them to slow down or stop in time. If not, the free space in front of your vehicle might lessen the severity of a collision.

I called the Illinois State Police to ask what they thought about using hazard lights in this way. A desk sergeant said it was the right thing to do and added the second and third points. I do those things without thinking and wouldn’t have thought to add them. I’ve added the fourth point for clarity.

Drivers of big rigs appear to make a habit of using their hazard lights in this way. Laypeople, not so much. Thus I’m repeating myself.

See also: the white stripe.

A CUB warning

For Illinoisans, a warning from the Citizens Utility Board:

“We urge Illinois consumers to carefully review any alternative electricity supplier offer pitched to them,” CUB Communications Director Jim Chilsen said. “Customers have lost far too much money to alternative suppliers over the last decade. Even in this market, ComEd or Ameren is probably your best bet for electricity supply.”

Our household almost latched on to one of those offers last year. It came in the mail and appeared to have our town’s imprimatur. But when I called city hall to ask some questions, no one knew what I was asking about. So I e-mailed the CUB and avoided what would likely have been an expensive mistake.

[The CUB is hardly a shill for ComEd or Ameren. Its purpose: “to fight for the rights of customers of investor-owned electric, gas and telecom utilities across Illinois.”]