“Case Closed!”

[Zippy, August 26, 2018.]

Is Mark “someone”? He doesn’t resemble Mark Newgarden (co-author of How to Read “Nancy”). Whoever Mark may be, he goes on to praise Ernie Bushmiller as “a Zen master! In a class by himself!” By the third panel of today’s strip, the talk turns to Garfield: “a funny animal strip — or the coming of the Antichrist?”

Bill Griffith’s dislike of Garfield is well established. See for instance this strip, or this one. Yes, Garfield appropriated the Zippy koan “Are we having fun yet?”

Venn reading
All OCA Nancy, Nancy and Zippy, and Zippy posts (Pinboard)

John McCain (1936–2018)

John McCain, in a speech upon receiving the National Constitution Center’s Liberty Medal, October 16, 2017:

To fear the world we have organized and led for three-quarters of a century, to abandon the ideals we have advanced around the globe, to refuse the obligations of international leadership and our duty to remain “the last best hope of earth” for the sake of some half-baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems is as unpatriotic as an attachment to any other tired dogma of the past that Americans consigned to the ash heap of history.

We live in a land made of ideals, not blood and soil.

Non-metaphorical sharpening

John Dickerson: “School is starting again and I am sharpening my pencils. That’s not a metaphor. I am actually sharpening pencils.” Read more to find out why.

Related reading
Back-to-school shopping : New year’s resolutions : All OCA pencil posts (Pinboard)

[John Dickerson digs analog.]

From the Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper, by Lester Ruff, is pretty easy. Pretty, pretty easy. It starts with a giveaway, 1-Across, thirteen letters: “Musical set at the Sleep-Tite factory.” I know that one thanks to Elaine and Rachel. A later giveaway, 64-Across, 15 letters: “Bavarian cream desserts.” I know that one from its Brooklyn, not Bavarian, incarnation. I’ve never thought of its plural, which sounds kinda ridic. The plural, that is, not my never having thought of it.

One clue that I especially liked for its mild misdirection: 51-Down, six letters: “Apollo headgear.” HELMET? No. And no spoilers: the answers are in the comments.

“Closing In”

[Barry Blitt, “Closing In.” The New Yorker, September 3, 2018. Click for a larger view.]

This cover-to-come takes its inspiration from The Sopranos. The Washington Post explains.

Commercialese and its discontents

From the essay “Business English and Its Confederates”:

It is easy, far too easy, to write a letter in which occur all the well-worn terms, all the long-winded phrases, all the substitutes for thinking. Only rarely is it possible, for the circumstances usually need to be detailed, to achieve the brevity that a business acquaintance and I, fired by his example, once achieved. He sent a dated statement and the accompanying note:

“Dear Mr Partridge,
    Please!
                ”

By return of post I sent a cheque with a note:

“Dear Mr         ,
    Herewith.
        E         P        ”

By return, he wrote:

“Dear Mr Partridge,
    Thanks!
                ”

That exchange of notes was, I maintain, business-like; my note admittedly a shade less courteous than his. At the time, he was at the head, as he still is, of a very large business.

Translated into commercialese, the correspondence would have gone something like this:

“Dear Sir,
    The enclosed statement will show that this debt was incurred almost three years ago. If it is not paid immediately, we shall be forced to take action.
    Yours faithfully,
        Managing Director.”

“Dear Sir,
    I regret exceedingly that this oversight should have occurred. Herewith please find enclosed my cheque for the amount involved.
    Yours faithfully,
                ”

Some days later, the cheque having been cleared the bank:

“Dear Sir,
    Your favour of the —th received. Please find our receipt enclosed herewith.
    Now that the matter has been satisfactorily settled, we should be glad to do business with you again.
    We are, Sir,
        Yours faithfully,
                    ”

A fitting reply to that letter would be —. But no, perhaps not.

Eric Partridge, A Charm of Words (New York: Macmillan, 1960).

The guys problem

Joe Pinsker writes about the problem with — and without — the word guys:

The problem, for those who want to ditch guys, is that their language doesn’t present them with many versatile replacements; English lacks a standard gender-neutral second-person plural pronoun, like the Spanish ustedes or the German ihr. The alternatives to guys tend to have downsides of their own. Folks — inclusive and warm, but a little affected and forced. Friends — fine in social contexts, strange at work. People — too often pushy and impersonal. Team — its sense of camaraderie wears out with constant use. One might cobble together a mix of pronouns to deploy in different scenarios, but no one term can do it all.

When I was teaching, I defaulted to colleagues and students. In e-mail, for instance: “Hello EN3703 students.”

As for a standard gender-neutral second-person plural pronoun, there certainly was one when I was a kid in Brooklyn: youse.

CNN, sheesh

A couple of minutes ago: “The rails are starting to come off.”

Strange days might require that ordinary idioms go out the window, so to speak. But I think it’s more reasonable (though not safer) to say that the wheels are starting to come off.

Related reading
All OCA sheesh posts (Pinboard)

Recently updated

Mystery actors I don’t think anyone’s going to solve this one. I put the answers in a comment.

Mystery actors

[Click for a larger view.]

Do you recognize one? The other? Both? Leave your best guesses in a comment.

*

12:25 p.m.: I think everyone has given up. The answers are now in the comments.

More mystery actors (Collect them all!)
? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ?