Ambassadors are us

The news that President Obama has nominated major (and majorly unqualified) donors for ambassadorships is disillusioning. It seems to be business as usual, or worse than usual. You can read more about it in this PBS NewsHour report.

Fair is fair: if the Obama administration is rewarding major donors in this way, it should be willing to recognize donors of modest means as well. (I write as one of them.) Time-share ambassadorships, a week per year per donor, are the obvious answer. Each share-holder would bring a fresh perspective to the work and learn in the best of all possible ways — on the job.

To anyone at whitehouse.gov: Se habla español, despacio. And I’ve never been to Argentina.

Thank you, local news

On the television just now: the local news informs me that salt will work to melt ice but only on treated roads. In other words, if there’s no salt applied, the salt won’t work. Thank you, local news.

Also from the local news
Anglers, getting eaten : People, getting older : The sun, setting

Orange soda-label art

Howdy was the brainchild of Charles Leiper Grigg, who went on to create 7 Up. Yes, before there was a Seven-Up Company, there was a Howdy Corporation.

I found this label (dented, discolored, slightly torn) in an antiques “mall.” This label spoke to me. It said “Certified Artificial Color.” And then it said “Howdy.” Or “ ‘Howdy.’ ”

Howdy, reader.

Other posts with orange
Crate art, orange : Orange art, no crate : Orange car art : Orange crate art : Orange crate art (Encyclopedia Brown) : Orange flag art : Orange manual art : Orange mug art : Orange newspaper art : Orange notebook art : Orange notecard art : Orange peel art : Orange pencil art : Orange soda art : Orange stem art : Orange telephone art : Orange timer art : Orange toothbrush art : Orange train art : Orange tree art : Orange tree art : Orange Tweed art

[Or is it orange-soda label art? Your choice.]

Word of the day: nivosity

The Oxford English Dictionary ’s Word of the Day is nivosity. A new way to hate the weather!

*

February 18: Alas, the OED no longer keeps these links active. There’s more about nivosity in the comments.

Henry, television

[Henry, February 15, 2014.]

This is what a television looks like.

I like Henry for its clarity of line, quiet comedy, and bold anachronism. Gum machines line the streets. Shoes get fixed while u wait. Drawers have no slides. People buy liverwurst and Magic Song Restorer. And they get their vacuum cleaners from door-to-door salesmen.

Today’s Henry shows a world that includes television. But the strip must be from the early days of TV, before people (or parents) determined that sitting too close to the set was Bad For Your Eyes. (How often I heard that warning as a kid.) Then again, sitting close may pose no special danger for cartoon children. Linus van Pelt was sitting up close in 1970, with no apparent harm. And it’s a good thing, because cartoon children must sit close to the screen: sitting up close, in profile, establishes the scene with perfect economy, as stylized as ancient Egyptian art. If Henry were to sit farther back, there wouldn’t be much room left for a story. Look:


[Henry revised, February 15, 2014.]

Related reading
All OCA Henry posts (Pinboard)

[I read Henry online via the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.]

Blogger’s fuzzy-image problem

Blogger has an annoying habit of turning images fuzzy. In my experience, the problem is most noticeable with larger images of text.

I found a solution in a comment on a post about the problem: to remove the fuzz, find /s400/ in the code for the image and change it to /s1600/. Smaller images appear to load with two instances of /s1600/; larger images, with one /s1600/ and one /s400/. Look at the difference. First, with /s400/, notice the fuzziness of the letter forms:



With /s1600/ twice, everything’s clear:



It’s disappointing that Google would set a default that degrades images. But I’m happy to have found a way around the problem.

Something odd: the fuzz is much worse when previewing a post:



Odder still: if you click to enlarge a fuzzy image, you get a clear one. Go figure.

A related post
Google, auto-enhancing images

[Clicking to enlarge won’t sharpen the image of Yeats’s name: that’s a screenshot from Preview, permanently fuzzed. Clicking will sharpen the first image of the poem.]

A poem for the day, sort of

Elaine and I went to the store, and on the way home we began talking about the plural forms of beef — beefs and beeves. And then this happened:



As Yeats once wrote, “There is always a phantasmagoria.” Always! Happy Valentine’s Day to all.

Related posts
Breakfast with William B. and Edna St. V.
Meat whats?
Mitt Romney: the soul of a poet

Everything’s Coming Up Profits

[Steve Young and Sport Murphy, Everything’s Coming Up Profits: The Golden Age of Industrial Musicals. New York: Blast Books, 2013.]

The now-vanished industrial musical was a form of capitalist celebration, a show extolling corporate products and services, performed for internal audiences only. O, the titles: Diesel Dazzle. Follow the Road: Highlights from the 1975 Dominion Road Machinery Announcement Meeting. Got to Investigate Silicones. Lucite, You and ’72. My favorite: The Bathrooms Are Coming!

I’ve had a vague acquaintance with industrials via selections from The 365 Days Project. This book, with 425 illustrations, has deepened that acquaintance. If only the songs could play as one turns the pages. But there is a website, with sample recordings. Don’t miss “My Bathroom”: “the only place where I can stay, making faces at my face.” A little Prufrockian, that.

Our daughter Rachel gave us this wonderful book. Thank you, RL.

Sid Caesar (1922–2014)

The New York Times has an obituary.

This sketch is a good destination. Pure delirium.

Meat whats?

I made a snappy joke this afternoon about a miracle involving meat loaves and fishes, and it set off a discussion at our kitchen table: what is the plural of meat loaf?

Garner’s Modern American Usage notes that some nouns ending in -f change to -ves to form their plurals (scarf, scarves), while others add an -s (roof, roofs). Garner gives loaves as the plural of loaf. And when we’re speaking of baked goods, loaves sounds just right. But I’m not at all sure that meat loaves sounds right. It sounds, to my ear, exceedingly odd. But then so does meat loafs, though I’ve tried to hear it as comparable to still lifes:

I painted six still lifes and baked six meat loafs.

Oaf, by the way, becomes oafs.

Reader, which do you prefer? Meat loafs? Meat loaves? Oafs? Chicken?

[The Oxford English Dictionary seems rather British in its definition of meat loaf: “Minced or chopped meat moulded into the shape of a loaf and cooked; generally eaten cold, in slices. Usu. with qualifying word, as beef loaf, ham loaf, meat loaf, veal loaf.” The Dictionary notes that the entry for loaf  “has not yet been fully updated (first published 1903).”]