A joke in the traditional manner

My dad, who turns eighty-seven today, is still turning out jokes. To wit: What did the doctor tell his forgetful patient to do?

No spoilers. The punchline is in the comments.

More jokes in the traditional manner
The Autobahn : Did you hear about the cow coloratura? : Elementary school : A Golden Retriever : How did Bela Lugosi know what to expect? : How did Samuel Clemens do all his long-distance traveling? : How is cod shipped to a supermarket? : What did the plumber do when embarrassed? : What happens when a senior citizen visits a podiatrist? : Which member of the orchestra was best at handling money? : Why did the doctor spend his time helping injured squirrels? : Why did Oliver Hardy attempt a solo career in movies? : Why did the ophthalmologist and his wife split up? : Why was Santa Claus wandering the East Side of Manhattan?

[“In the traditional manner”: by or à la my dad. He must take credit for all but the cow coloratura, the squirrel-doctor, and Santa Claus.]

Definitely NPR

It was almost eight o’clock. I woke up, walked downstairs, turned on the radio. What did I hear? “Definitely feelin’ the summer vibe. This is Weekend Edition.” You won’t hear this bit in the online broadcast. But it was there in the air in my kitchen, right before the start of the show’s second hour.

Oh NPR. The mock-with-it-ness sounds so hollow. It’s almost enough to make me want to send back my lapel pin.

Complaining about NPR is a tiny OCA sideline. If I had caught the Kim Kardashian interview, the sideline might have grown into a line, at least a short one. And I could have commented on how the interviewer defended the interview by calling its critics crabby, persnickety monks. But I missed that opportunity.

Related posts
At the crib : NPR, sheesh : The Real Housewives of NPR : A yucky Wednesday on NPR

Keeping it reel

[Henry, July 25, 2015.]

In the Henry world, all mowers are reel.

The definition of lawn mower from Webster’s Second :

A machine pushed by hand or drawn by a horse or driven by a motor, and usually with a spiral blade or blades revolving against a tangential horizontal knife, used to clip the grass on lawns.

And from Webster’s Third :

a hand-operated or power-operated machine for cutting grass on lawns.

*

July 26: Earlier this year, Diane Schirf wrote about the reel mower as an American relic.

Related reading
All OCA Henry posts (Pinboard)

“[S]o much sky”

Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927).

Related reading
All OCA Cather posts (Pinboard)

The Three Graces

The New York Times had an article earlier this week about the benefits of walking in nature. Conclusion: walking in nature decreases brooding, aka “morbid rumination.”

Elaine and I went walking in a version of nature recently. Visting the Indianapolis Museum of Art, we ended up, for the first time ever, walking around Oldfields, the twenty-six-acre Lilly family estate, now part of the IMA grounds. I imagined the life of a pharmaceuticals baron. You could say “I shall go for a walk now” and never leave your front yard.

Oldfields felt to us like a modest version of the Huntington Library: gardens, paths, unidentified sculpture. I stopped at the end of an allée to take a picture of the Three Graces. They were neither walking nor morbidly ruminating.


[Artist unknown. Click for a larger view.]

I know the Graces best from James Joyce’s “The Dead”:

— He says we are the Three Graces, Aunt Julia, said Mary Jane.

Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day: mutual

Bryan Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day concerns the word mutual :

It’s possible to refer to a couple’s mutual devotion, but not their mutual devotion to their children. The reason is that whatever is “mutual” is reciprocal — it’s directed by each toward the other. E.g.: “So consider the matter a quid pro quo, a mutual exchange of affection between Zereoue and Mountaineer fandom.” Michael Dobie, “More-Famous Amos,” Newsday (N.Y.), 14 Nov. 1997, at A103.

But when the sense is “shared by two or more,” then the word is “common” — not “mutual.” So “friend in common” is preferable to “mutual friend,” although the latter has stuck because of Dickens’s novel Our Mutual Friend (the title to which, everyone forgets, comes from a sentence said by an illiterate character).

Careful writers continue to use “friend in common.”

Today’s tip is well-timed: Elaine and I just started Our Mutual Friend.

You can subscribe to the Usage Tip of the Day at Oxford University Press.

“[F]orming and moving all day long”

Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927).

Related reading
All OCA Cather posts (Pinboard)

Fresca’s favorite films

Fresca at l’astronave is posting, in installments, a list of one hundred favorite films. It’s Fresca’s blog that led our household’s recent Aki Kaurismäki spree.

Why one should watch the fifty-two-minute dashcam video

I don’t know what to make of anomalies or edits in the dashcam video of Sandra Bland’s arrest. But I think I know what to make of the encounter that precedes the arrest. That encounter can be seen at the start of the fifty-two-minute dashcam video. I would suggest watching before this video disappears.

The start of the video shows the final moments of trooper Brian Encinia’s encounter with another driver, a college student. I have transcribed Encinia’s words:

“You’re gonna need to see if you can get with your dad. He can give that, uh, send you an e-mail or something, you know what I mean? Get that copy of the insurance, okay? You okay? [Laughs.] This here is a warning: there is no fine, there is no penalty, but you just need to follow the posted speed limit, okay? What year are you here at school? Sophomore? You here for summer school, or? Taking a lot of classes? Just two? Okay. Here’s a copy of the warning. There’s no fine, no penalty, okay? And there’s your driver’s license, all right? Be careful, all right?”

Consider: he has stopped a driver for speeding, a driver who turns out to have no proof of insurance. And yet Encinia is a model of tact. He’s even chatty. He lets the driver off with a warning. He repeats, no fine, no penalty — for speeding and no proof of insurance.

Why Encinia takes such a different approach in his encounter with Sandra Bland has to remain a matter for speculation. It would help to know something about that first driver. She (I think it’s a young woman) speaks three audible words — “sophomore,” “just two.” Who is she? Why did she merit such different treatment? I want to ask a simple question: was that first driver white?

The fifty-two-minute video also makes clear that Sandra Bland changed lanes for a reason. A police car was coming up behind her with increasing speed. She did what any driver in that situation would be likely to do: she got out of the way. Or tried to.

Telephone exchange names on screen

From Dick Tracy’s Dilemma (dir. John Rawlins, 1947). A killer, Steve “The Claw” Michel (Jack Lambert), has fled after starting to use a pay phone with his Captain Hook-like hook. Dick Tracy (Ralph Byrd) notices scratches, “brand-new,” on the dial. Back at the office, Tracy schools Pat Patton (Lyle Latell). A model pay phone happens to be there, as if by magic:



Tracy: “I’ll tell you what these scratches give us, Pat. What's the first thing you do when you dial a telephone number?”

Pat: “Why, I, uh, look for a nickel.”

Tracy: “Oh, no, no.”

Pat: “Oh — I dial the exchange.”

Tracy: “That's right. You dial the first two letters of the exchange.”

Tracy: “Now these scratches appear only in the first two holes.”



Pat: “I get it, Dick. The exchange the killer was dialing has got to be here.”



Tracy: “Correct. In checking a list of exchanges, you’ll find there’s only one exchange with the combination of these letters: B-A for BAnning. ”

Pat: “But what about these other two scratches?”



Tracy: “That’s even simpler. Since they appear in the first hole, the killer can only have been dialing the number 1 twice.”



Pat: “Then we know the number the killer started to dial was BAnning-1, 1-something-something .”

And Pat gets the thankless job of checking every number in town to find the something-something . As John Milton said, they also serve who only sit and check telephone numbers.

Bell Telephone’s 1955 list of Recommended Exchange Names has four names that go with 2-2 : ACademy, BAldwin, CApital, and CAstle. The Telephone EXchange Name Project has many, many more. But no BAnning.

More exchange names on screen
The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse : Baby Face : Blast of Silence : Boardwalk Empire : Born Yesterday : The Dark Corner : Deception : Dream House : The Little Giant : The Man Who Cheated Himself : Modern Marvels : Murder, My Sweet : My Week with Marilyn : Naked City (1) : Naked City (2) : Naked City (3) : Naked City (4) : Naked City (5) : Naked City (6) : Naked City (7) : Nightmare Alley : The Public Enemy : Railroaded! : Side Street : Sweet Smell of Success : Tension : This Gun for Hire

[I’m surprised to see Al Bridge and Jimmy Conlin from the Preston Sturges world in this low-budget movie, though I suppose I shouldn’t be. An actor would have called it working .]