Hipster look-alikes

An amusing item from The Washington Post: “Hipsters all look the same, man inadvertently confirms.”

I recall my eight-grade science teacher Mr. Fox going off on a tangent one afternoon about conformity: about how no hippie would leave the house without his love beads arranged just so. The hippies too, he said, were conforming. Mr. Fox was onto something. He was rumored to be a former FBI agent.

[Love beads: I swear. I’ve always remembered that detail.]

“Rivalries and antagonisms”

A general speaks:


Kenneth Fearing, Clark Gifford’s Body. 1942. (New York: New York Review Books, 2007).

Clark Gifford’s Body tells the story of an insurrection in an imaginary country of diminished freedoms and perpetual war. The insurrection begins with the seizing of radio stations. The novel ranges backward and forward in time, assembling the accounts of participants and eyewitnesses, court documents, and news reports. NYRB describes the novel as “a pseudo-documentary of a world given over to pseudo-politics and pseudo-events, a prophetic glimpse of the future as a poisonous fog.” Made for these times.

Also from Fearing
“The niece of a department store” : “Me? Dangerous?” : “Nearly everyone was” : “The slightly confidential friend”

Playing to lose

The guitarist and singer Buddy Guy, quoted in David Remnick’s New Yorker profile “Holding the Note” (March 11, 2019):

“Funny thing about the blues — you play ’em cause you got ’em. But, when you play ’em, you lose ’em.”

Related reading
All OCA blues posts (Pinboard)

Mooch, hypercorrecting

[Mutts, March 7, 2019. Click for a larger view.]

Sorry, Mooch: who is correct. (Who told you that?) Whom for who, like between you and I, is a hypercorrection. Garner’s Modern English Usage explains:

Sometimes people [or cats] strive to abide by the strictest etiquette, but in the process behave inappropriately. The very motivations that result in this irony can play havoc with the language: a person [or cat] will strive for a correct linguistic form but instead fall into error. Linguists call this phenomenon “hypercorrection” — a common shortcoming.

Mooch’s gotcha “Ha!” and smug look in the third panel tell me that Patrick McDonnell, the strip’s creator, understands the difference between who and whom.

“Sub-parts”

Watch Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen avoid acknowledging that Customs and Border Protection keeps children in cages:

“Sir, they’re not cages.” What are they then? “As the children are processed through, they are in sub-parts of these facilities.” But not in cages. Children are in “areas of the border facility that are carved out for the safety and protection of those who remain there while they’re being processed.” But not in cages.

Related reading
All OCA Orwell posts (Pinboard)

[Axios has it as “some parts,” but if you listen carefully, it’s “sub-parts.”]

Shorabat addas, or lentil soup

We bought a package of Ziyad red lentils, and Elaine made soup. Did she ever. Here, slightly rewritten, is the recipe that appears on the package:

2 cups red lentils
8 cups water or broth
1/2 t. cumin
1/2 t. turmeric or paprika
1 large onion, diced
1–2 cloves garlic, minced
2 T. olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
juice of one lemon
2 bouillon cubes, your choice of flavor (optional)

And the preparation:

Wash lentils. Combine with broth or water and bring to a boil. Cover and cook for thirty minutes. Stir occasionally.

When lentils are tender, add dry spices and boullion.

Sauté onions and garlic in olive oil until golden, and add them to the soup.

Simmer for five minutes. Turn off heat, add lemon juice, and stir.

Ladle soup into bowls, garnish with parsley and paprika, and serve with lemon wedges on the side.

Elaine chose water, substituted Better Than Bouillon Roasted Chicken Base for cubes, tripled the cumin and paprika, used three cloves of garlic, and sautéed a carrot, diced, with the onion and garlic. And she used an immersion blender on the finished soup. What resulted was spectacular — creamy, spicy, slightly sweet, totally comforting. We were hoping for something like the lentil soup we know from Cedars Mediterranean Kitchen in Chicago. But we ended up with something like a very hearty dal. We will be serving this soup the next time we have friends over for dinner.

More soup
Cabbage : Purée Mongole

[Google Translate tells me that “shorabat addas” is Welsh for “shorabat suitable.” But it seems to be Lebanese for — you guessed it — “lentil soup.” Why is Lebanese missing from Google Translate?]

Johnny Horizon

[Peanuts, March 8, 1972.]

I like it when a comic strip turns into a time capsule. Who was Johnny Horizon? Wikipedia explains. And here, from the Forest History Society, is his story. The naïveté — if we can just pick up enough pieces of litter, we can save the environment.

Peanuts past is Peanuts present. If all Peanuts is eternally present, all time is Peanuts.

Related reading
All OCA Peanuts posts (Pinboard)

Nancy, meta and dowdy

[Nancy, March 5, 2019.]

From today’s Nancy, an Olivia Jaimes panel for the ages. Another kid has been giving Nancy drawing tips: “If you mess up a character’s eyes, just add sunglasses.” “If you mess up their mouth, just make it bigger.” “Worst comes to worst, you can just scribble it all out and add a label.” Thus this fourth panel.

What I really like is the dotted line — très dowdy.

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)

[Just to be clear: “for the ages” is praise, not sarcasm. I like this stuff.]

HTML Scratchpad

HTML Scratchpad is a webpage for messing around with HTML. Before I cottoned to MarsEdit, I used HTML Scratchpad to check whether YouTube videos will play when embedded in Blogger. Not all of them will, and Blogger’s Preview is useless for finding out before posting. But HTML Scratchpad works: copy and paste the code and press Run. Then click to play, or not play.

“After you,” “Go ahead”

Say you’re in line at a grocery checkout and someone comes up behind with just one or two items. Courteous shopper that you are, you want to let that person go first. Is there much difference between saying “After you” and and saying “Go ahead”? Is one more appropriate than the other?

Or say you’re holding a door open for someone entering or leaving the store. Courteous as ever, you want to let that person go first. Again, is there much difference between “After you” and “Go ahead”? Is one more appropriate than the other?

I hear each expression as an invitation: please, feel free to go first. To my ear, “After you” sounds more formal, which might make it less suited for everyday use in the folksy midwest. But I’m curious to know what other people think.