Mitt Romney debates himself

Yes, the candidates disagree: Mitt Romney debates himself.

Word of the day: apotropaic

A wonderful word from the Greek: apotropaic. It has something to do with turning, yes? But what? Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate has the etymology: “Greek apotropaios, from apotrepein to avert, from apo- + trepein to turn.” That which is apotropaic is “designed to avert evil,” to turn it away. It’s curious and fitting that the thing averted forms no part of the word itself. Speak no evil.

Apotropaic got me thinking about apo-, which has a range of meanings: away from, off; detached, separate; formed from, related to. Thus for instance, apocalypse, to uncover, disclose. And I now see that word in a new way, as I recall that the name Calypso in Homer’s Odyssey is related to the verb kaluptein, to cover. Keeping Odysseus on her island, removed from human culture, Calypso is a concealer, a burier.

Wikipedia has a page on apotropaic magic, with photographs of painted eyes averting evil. I got thinking about apotropaic during a trip to a museum, where I saw the word in a description of an ancient Greek drinking bowl.

Sniffing out word origins

“I found myself wondering recently whether the word odor has negative connotations or not. This led me to write a list of other nouns pertaining to that sense we exercise with our noses”: Daughter Number Three investigates the origins of words that name smells and finds a clear pattern.

An afterthought

If I were Boing Boing, the title of the previous post might’ve read like so: Hardee’s commercial likens young women, virgins to breakfast meat. No reply yet from Hardee’s or the advertising agency responsible for the commercial. (I’ve called them both.)

Hardee’s pigmeat commercial

How strange to hear the guitar and voice of Bo Carter (1892–1964) in a commercial for Hardee’s Bacon Bacon Biscuit (link’s gone). Carter, a member of Mississippi’s ultra-musical Chatmon family, was an exceptionally fleet guitarist, a capable singer, and a composer of what might be called single-entendre blues: “Ants in My Pants,” “Banana In Your Fruit Basket,” “Pin In Your Cushion,” “Please Warm My Weiner,” “Your Biscuits Are Big Enough for Me,” and many, many more. A few fragments of Carter’s 1931 recording “Pig Meat Is What I Crave” serve as the soundtrack for the Hardee’s commercial. But this song is not about bacon. Stephen Calt explains (and in the process, corrects the Oxford English Dictionary):


[Barrelhouse Words: A Blues Dialect Dictionary (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009).]

Does Hardee’s understand what Carter was singing about? Given the company’s history of hyper-sexualized advertising, perhaps they do.

Hardee’s customer-response line: 1-877-799-7827.

[Bacon Bacon Biscuit: yes, we love our freedom.]

Parker T-Ball Jotter, 1963

[Life, September 27, 1963. Click for a larger view.]

The Parker T-Ball Jotter is the first pen I remember using with pleasure, back in childhood. Yes, I was precocious, in some ways if not others.

I have been writing for a month now with another Jotter, one that long stood unused in a cup of pencils and pens near my desk. It’s an excellent ballpoint, and a perfect pen for writing comments on student writing: the T-Ball (T for tungsten) has just enough tooth to slow the pen down a bit and give my hand a measure of control. Neatness counts, especially when more and more students have difficulty reading anybody’s handwriting. What I most like about the pen though is that its design is virtually identical to that of my childhood Jotter.

This 1963 Life advertisement recalls a gone world, when everyone wore a watch and close to half of American adults smoked cigarettes. (The Report of the Surgeon General’s Advisory Committee on Smoking and Health would be published on January 11, 1964.) I’m amused to see that despite the association of the Jotter with grown-up stuff, Parker was also selling to the young. Perhaps my first Jotter come from a Doodle Depot.



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Five pens (Jotter, no-name, Uni-Ball, Mont Blanc, Pelikan)
Last-minute shopping (1964 Jotter ad)

Philip Hensher on handwriting

“I’ve come to the conclusion that handwriting is good for us. It involves us in a relationship with the written word that is sensuous, immediate and individual”: Philip Hensher, Why handwriting matters (Guardian).

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All handwriting posts

Recently updated

Count von Faber-Castell on pencils Now with a link to a short clip of the Count talking about pencils with Martha Stewart. Thanks, Sean.

The Master

Elaine and I saw The Master (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson, 2012) yesterday and were both disappointed. The film’s cinematography (Mihai Malaimare Jr.) is beautiful. As Lancaster Dodd and Freddie Quell, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Joaquin Phoenix give great performances. The former suggests to me Charles Foster Kane; the latter, Neal Cassady.

The Master is worth seeing for its imagery and acting. But on many points — that’s all I’ll say, no spoilers — the film is vague and inchoate. I’m all for mystery and opacity. But vagueness, not so much.

Count von Faber-Castell on pencils

Count Anton Wolfgang von Faber-Castell is one of my three favorite counts. He recently spoke with the Wall Street Journal about pencils:

Q. Will the pencil go the way of the quill pen?

A. May I ask you a question? Have you ever seen a paperless office? People may not be writing things out on legal pads but they like to print out e-mail and make notations. Then pencils and pens disappear and you go grab another.

Yes, there are executive types who have their e-mail printed out for them, but e-mail annotation seems like a dubious basis for resisting extinction. And Faber-Castell pencils are hardly the semi-disposable supply-room products that disappear from desks in a workplace. I wish that the Count had spoken of the pencil as a tool for writing. People are indeed writing things out on legal pads, on music paper, and in notebooks. Why not proclaim the tactile joys of writing on paper?

*

6:54 p.m.: Here’s the Count talking about pencils with, of all people, Martha Stewart. Thanks, Sean.

Related reading
All pencil posts (Pinboard)

[My other favorite counts: Basie and von Count.]