About that alleged double negative earlier this week: I’m not unaware of it. But there’s nothing (for me, anyway) to say about it. It’s a false claim meant to tie up attention. As I’m typing, I realize that I do have one thing to say: that whoever read the transcript and invented the double-negative explanation will pay a heavy price in grammar karma.
Friday, July 20, 2018
Zen wind
Wait — what?
MASTERFrom the translator’s note (1975): “Taking into account the traditional loyalty of the Japanese to their teachers and masters, it is no wonder that scholars of Zen in Japan and the West were led to believe that there existed no written records of the koans and their answers. The present book must have created a scandalous sensation when first published nearly sixty years ago.”
What is the color of wind?
ANSWER
Taking his kimono, the pupil describes it, saying, “The front is black cotton cloth, the inside is lined in the color of rust.”
The Sound of One Hand: 281 Zen Koans with Answers, ed. and trans. Yoel Hoffman (New York: New York Review Books, 2016).
Domestic comedy
[With friends.]
“I said Caribbean.”
“I thought you said Peruvian.”
“I heard Yanny.”
Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)
Thursday, July 19, 2018
“A Lassie Classic”
[Cartoon of the Day, by Mary Lawton. From The New Yorker, July 19, 2018.]
Hurry, girl.
Related reading
All OCA Lassie posts (Pinboard)
Norman, Norway, Linie, lake
When our friend Norman visited from Norway, he brought us a great gift — the gift of his friendship. And for the second time, he brought us a bottle of aquavit. I can’t remember the name on the first bottle, which is long gone, and was our introduction to aquavit. The new bottle is Linie, an extraordinary Norwegian aquavit. By strange coincidence, we had been drinking aquavit recently (a Danish brand — sorry, Norman), after finding some at a recently opened “beverage depot.” And by stranger coincidence, I had recently heard a passing reference to Linie in a podcast. So Linie was in the air, or on the water: it is aged in sherry casks on ships that cross the equator twice, with changing climate and the motion of the ocean playing their parts in producing a distinctive flavor. The flavor is delightful, with lots of caraway and anise, and an herbal aftertaste that moves around the mouth hitting tastebuds, one after another. (Think pinball.) But aquavit is not to be trifled with: this one is 83 proof. Wonderful after dinner or later in the evening.
Thank you, Norman. Remember the lake!
Soil as a verb
[Henry, July 19, 2018.]
Soil is a verb you don’t hear much these days. It’s one dowdy verb. See also darn.
Related reading
All OCA Henry posts (Pinboard)
Wednesday, July 18, 2018
Information overload
[“Photograph shows a postal worker carrying a bag of mail and a bundle of the magazine The Literary Digest dated May 22, 1920.” From the George Grantham Bain Collection of the Library of Congress. Click for a slightly larger view.]
Related reading
All OCA mail posts (Pinboard)
Tuesday, July 17, 2018
Meddling
A column in The Washington Post says, “Stop calling it ‘meddling.’” I’m there. Or was there and am there. Here’s a post from February 2018: Needed: a word other than meddle.
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