WTF

[Click for a larger view.]

About the URL generated by my first attempt to add the image in the previous post: you’d think that Blogger would have an algorithm to prevent that sort of thing.

Thornton Dial in Indianapolis

Don’t Matter How Raggly the Flag, It Still Got to Tie Us Together. 2003. 71 × 114 × 8 inches. Collection of the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Click for a larger view.

At the Indianapolis Museum of Art: “Hard Truths: The Art of Thornton Dial.” Elaine and I went to Indianapolis yesterday just to spend an afternoon at a museum. We ended up spending an afternoon looking at Thornton Dial’s work and almost nothing else. Dial is an extraordinary self-taught artist whose drawings, paintings, and sculpture combine abstraction and allegory and all manner of found materials. This seventy-piece first retrospective of his work will travel to New Orleans, Charlotte, and Atlanta.

Hard Truths: The Art of Thornton Dial (IMA)
Letting His Life’s Work Do the Talking (New York Times)

We Are Wisconsin

We Are Wisconsin, by Finn Ryan and David Nevala. I think we are all Wisconsinites now.

[The Firefox extension Flashblock will prevent this film from playing. Add player.vimeo.com and vimeo.com to your whitelist.]

Howard Armstrong on staying young

[In Daley Plaza, Chicago.]

Wisdom from mandolinist, violinist, singer, storyteller, and visual artist Howard Armstrong (aka Louie Bluie):

“I’m not ashamed to tell anybody my age: I am seventy-five years — not old, but seventy-five years young, because I have most of the attributes that young men should have. I have interest in life, and full of energy, full of pep. Most of all, I’m full of curiosity, because that is one thing that keeps you young.”

Louie Bluie (dir. Terry Zwigoff, 1985) is a portrait of a brilliant musician and remarkable man. Armstrong’s not much for modern art though. Says he about the untitled Picasso work behind him: “If you’re gonna be an artist, paint something that looks like something at least you can relate to. That — I don’t know. It’s just like something that jumped out of The Twilight Zone.”

Louie Bluie is available on DVD from The Criterion Collection. A short clip with the Picasso scene is there for the watching.

[Full of pep: there’s a dowdy expression I’d like to revive.]

Misheard

Waiting at my dentist’s (Look, Mom, no cavities!), I misheard a radio pitch for fast food — a hamburger with bacon and blue cheese, “served on a plastic bun.” Oops — it was a classic bun. I think I know why I misheard: I find it difficult to imagine the inflationary classic as applying to a hamburger bun. A classic bun is a bun.

More misheard
“Buttered crap” : “Her clothes?” : “The Tao”

The plural of Prius, continued

Thinking about Prii prompted me to look at what Garner’s Modern American Usage has to say about the plural forms of borrowed words. From a longer discussion:

Many writers who try to be sophisticated in their use of language make mistakes such as *ignorami and *octopi — unaware that neither is a Latin noun that, when inflected as a plural, becomes -i. The proper plural of the Greek word octopus is octopodes; the proper English plural is octopuses.

Those who affect this sort of sophistication may face embarrassing stumbles — e.g., “A ‘big city’ paper with an editor as eminently qualified as I’m sure you are should know that the plural of campus is *campi (not campuses). Just like the plural of virus is *viri (not viruses), and the plural of stadium is *stadia (not stadiums).” Letter to the Editor, Dallas Morning News, 22 Sept. 2002, at J3 (name withheld for obvious reasons).

Garner’s guideline: “if in doubt, use the native-English plural ending in -s.”

One complication with the Toyota Prius: unlike, say, campus, prius is a Latin adjective and adverb, not a noun. And Prius is not a Latin word; it’s the name of a car. Priuses makes better sense to the eye and ear, at least to my eye and ear. And to my other eye and ear.

My least-favorite sophisticated plural might be fora for forums. Yours?

[The Garner asterisk: “Invariably inferior words and phrases are marked with an asterisk.”]

The plural of Prius

Toyota has announced that the plural of Prius is Prii.

Fake Koch

The real Scott Walker takes a call from a fake David Koch:

“Well, I’ll tell you what, Scott: once you crush these bastards, I’ll fly you out to Cali and really show you a good time.”

“All right, that would be outstanding.”

Here’s an alternate link, if the one above is overwhelmed.

A related post
Boycott Koch

Aaron Draplin on pencils

“Hex pencils, people!” Aaron Draplin talks pencils with Pencil Revolution: Part One, Part Two.

Boycott Koch

The New York Times reports that Charles and David H., the brothers Koch, play a part in Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s union-busting initiative. Thus this reminder to boycott Koch Industries products: Angel Soft Toilet Paper, Brawny Towels, Dacron Fiber, Dixie Products, Georgia-Pacific Paper Products, Lycra Fiber, Mardi Gras Products, Quilted Northern Toilet Paper, Soft ’n Gentle Toilet Paper, Sparkle Paper Napkins, Stainmaster Carpet, Vanity Fair Paper Napkins, Zee Paper Napkins.

[No Dixie, no Vanity Fair, since October 2010.]