From Jack Benny

On The Dick Cavett Show, February 21, 1973: “I’ll tell you what kind of life insurance I got: when I go, they go!”

Word of the day: nut job

The Oxford English Dictionary has it:

slang (orig. U.S.).

A mad or crazy person; (also, occas.) a violent person. Cf. NUTCASE n.

The first citation is from 1975: “He was led and followed by nut jobs, him the biggest of all for being there.” The OED also notes a dictionary of slang that records a New York University student using the term in 1972. Was it Donald Trump? No. Trump graduated from the Wharton School in 1968. Trump did not invent nut job.

This post is prompted by an extraordinary New York Times headline: “Trump Told Russians That Firing ‘Nut Job’ Comey Eased Pressure From Investigation.” Let’s see how that logic works out. Perhaps nut job will be the 2017 word of the year. And it won’t be applying to Comey.

[The OED spells it as two words: nut job. Merriam-Webster spells it as one. Google’s Ngram Viewer shows nut job outnumbering nutjob 2.8:1 (2008). Nut job is an open compound word; nutjob, a closed compound.]

Modern times

A book on interlibrary loan was due today, and the lending library would not allow a renewal. So I photographed the pages still to go and will read them on my phone.

That last sentence is one I couldn’t have imagined not so long ago.

Overheard

[A caffeinated blowhard.]

“It’s really loosey-goosey, and it probably wouldn’t hold up in court, but —”

Related reading
All OCA “overheard” posts (Pinboard)

Shelley’s Jerry’s

A local pizza parlor was torn down, and all that remains on its large lot is a sign. I thought of lines from Shelley in which a traveler recounts what he read on the pedestal of a broken statue in the desert:

“‘My name is Jerry’s Pizza, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

My friend Rob Zseleczky would have gotten a kick out of this post.

[I follow many modern printings of “Ozymandias” by adding quotation marks around lines 10–11 for clarity.]

Berlin poster

[Poster for Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (dir. Walter Ruttmann, 1927). Georgii Augustovich Stenberg and Vladimir Augustovich Stenberg. Russian, 1928. 42 x 27 3/4 in. Click for a larger view.]

I am a camera — and other things. This film poster is a Cooper Hewitt Object of the Day. I wrote briefly about Berlin: Symphony of a Great City in this post. The film is available (without a musical score) at the Internet Archive.

Mongol Profile

[Disclaimer: This is not an advertisement.]

I had to do it. The 1988 Dewar’s advertisement I’ve spoofed appears in this post.

Related reading
All OCA Henry Threadgill posts
All OCA Mongol posts (Pinboard)

[Don’t miss the revised text, bottom right column.]

Dust storm

We drove back in heavy wind from the butcher’s this afternoon, on two rural routes, and found ourselves in a terrific dust storm, a wall of light brown, with just a few feet of road visible. I’ve seen photographs and film footage from the Dust Bowl years, and I know that what we experienced today was nothing comparable: no black clouds, and long stretches of clear air. But what we drove through was bad enough in itself, and we had never seen anything like it. We wondered how children coming home from school would fare in that wind.

What didn’t the president know and when didn’t he know it

National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster: “The president wasn’t even aware of where this information came from. He wasn’t briefed on the source or method of the information either.”

Ignorance is strength.

Baby’s First Resist-Story

Fresca and bink have created an alphabet book with wash-away illustrations: Baby’s First Resist-Story.

A is for alternative facts. Look, look, look. The clock will soon be striking thirteen!

*

Later that same day: There’s now a key to the illustrations.