Fall Peanuts

[Peanuts, October 8, 1970. Click for a larger view.]

I’ve had the October 7, 2004 reprint of this strip taped to the side of a reading carrel since, well, uh, 2004.

Other Peanuts posts
Milk bottles
Schulz’s Beethoven

Red Rose Irish Breakfast

An excellent tea with a deep, strong flavor and not a trace of bitterness. Better than Twinings Irish Breakfast, and cheap.

All tea posts (Pinboard)

Bicycles, streetcars, annular systems

Justin Hollander cautions against ditching “good old paper,” pointing out that the merits of such once-passé technologies as bicycles and streetcars have of late been recognized anew. I’m reminded of the trope of the “annular system” in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. One example from the novel: telephone users who take to videophones return at last to “good old voice-only telephoning.”

And about words on paper: when Elaine and I were browsing in an excellent used-book store a couple of weeks ago, we noticed that every other customer — and there were many — was a young (or younger) adult, digging the pages.

Related reading
All paper posts (Pinboard)

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.



Related posts
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).

Related reading
All handwriting posts