Another Bermuda Triangle

From Private Life (dir. Tamara Jenkins, 2018). A Thanksgiving guest says that he’s grateful for thirty-one days of sobriety:

“And if I can just make it through today, just today, I will be one-third of the way through the Bermuda Triangle.”

Thinking that “today” marked thirty-one days, I guessed incorrectly that “Bermuda Triangle” is a metaphor for the first three months of sobriety. As the Internets will affirm, “Bermuda Triangle” is an Alcoholics Anonymous metaphor for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve. For obvious reasons.

Good wishes to anyone who just navigated or will be navigating that particular Bermuda Triangle.

Mongols in a penholder holder

[Height: 4 7/8″. Click for a larger view.]

Not a pencil cup, or even a tea tin. What it is is a four-hole holder for penholders, which themselves are the holders for penpoints. (Think dip pens.) A holder for penholders holding pencils: I like that. A holder for penholders holding Mongol pencils: I like that even more. Elaine gave me this penholder holder a few years ago. Thank you, Elaine.

The Mongol is my favorite pencil. Evidence: OCA Mongol posts (Pinboard).

[“What it is is”: I decided that for once in my life, I’d use what Garner’s Modern English Usage calls “this ungainly construction,” just for fun. No comma between the iss.]

Boop, Twinings, jars

[Click for a larger view.]

The pencil cup from Sólo con tu pareja prompted Fresca to photograph pencil cups, which in turn, &c. So here are nine, mine.

Elaine and I carried them downstairs and into the light. Behind Betty Boop and the Twinings tins, please imagine two Bonne Maman jars, an anonymous jar, a china cup, and a plastic cup.

I’ve had the older square Twinings tins since student days. Each is printed with a “4/84” on one side — the date of the tins’ manufacture, I’d assume. The newer Twinings tins make excellent index-card holders. We have six of those scattered around the house for making quick notes.

For more pencil cups, see the Bleistift blog’s Pencil Pot of the Month posts. And reader, if you’d like to post a photograph of your pencil cup(s), leave a link in the comments.

[Elaine gave me the Betty Boop mug many years ago. I have long subscribed to the adage of the Betty Boop & Bimbo Club: “Keep your eyes open and your mouth closed.”]

Still life in red and green

[Sólo con tu pareja (dir. Alfonso Cuarón, 1991). Click for a larger view.]

The red pen must be a Parker T-Ball Jotter. The pencil with the red stripe: almost certainly a Berol Mirado. Placing the thermometer with the writing instruments is a beautiful touch.

Here and everywhere, Emmanuel Lubezki’s cinematography adds an element of deep thoughtfulness to what seems at first glance to be a light sex comedy.

Senecan advice for liberal-arts types

From Seneca the Younger, Natural Questions IV (A, Pref. 14, 18):

When you want to be praised sincerely, why be indebted to someone else for it? Praise yourself. Say: “I devoted myself to the liberal arts. Although my poverty urged me to do otherwise and tempted my talents towards a field where there is an immediate profit from study, I turned aside to unremunerative poetry and dedicated myself to the wholesome study of philosophy. . . .” After this, ask whether the things you said about yourself are true or false. If they are true, you are praised in front of a great witness, yourself. If they are false, no one is a witness to your being made a fool of.

Quoted in Ward Farnsworth’s The Practicing Stoic: A Philosophical User’s Manual (Boston: David R. Godine, 2018). Adapted from an unidentified public-domain translation.

[Please notice that for Seneca there is no question that devotion to the liberal arts is cause for self-praise.]

No rocks

[Mark Trail, March 19, 2019.]

Doc Davis, Cherry Davis Trail’s father, Mark Trail’s father-in-law, is telling a between-Mark-Trail-adventures story. I believe it’s what they call an interpolated tale. Or is it interminable?

Doc, if you were hoping to find some rocks, you’re in the wrong comic strip.



Related reading
All OCA Mark Trail posts (Pinboard) : “Some rocks” posts

D. Bill, “Folk Art”

[D. Bill, “Folk Art.” Wood poles. 1997–1998. As seen at Meadowbrook Park, Urbana, Illinois. “Folk Art,” with quotation marks, is the title. Click for a larger view.]

I like the way the U mirrors the mouth.

In 1993 D. Bill, Darwin Bill (1922–2012), was the subject of a Chicago Tribune story. Here’s a public Facebook page for D. Bill’s art. And here’s an account, with photographs, from someone who went to see him.

Thanks for that

Something I’m thankful for: having taught at a regional state university (as they’re called), I never taught children of high privilege, the kind with parents who buy or cheat their offspring’s way in.

The closest I ever came to such stuff: a telephone call from the parent of a flagrant plagiarizer. I’ve put a lot of money into my kid’s education, and I’m not going to let someone, &c. Yes, but I’m sorry: FERPA prohibits me from talking with you about a student’s work without that student’s permission. And that was that.

A text for the day

It’s fitting that ad canvasser Leopold Bloom, who goes to sleep thinking of “one sole unique advertisement to cause passers to stop in wonder,” should see Saint Patrick as an ad man who came up with a smart way to capture the public’s attention. From “The Lotus Eaters” episode of James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922):



Happy Saint Patrick’s Day to all.

[Saint Patrick is said to have used the shamrock to explain the Trinity to the Irish.]

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper is by one Garrett Estrada. I can’t recall seeing that name before, and searching for garrett estrada crossword turns up nothing. Debut? Pseudonym? Will the real Garrett Estrada please stand up? I hope so, because this constructor has created an exceptionally challenging Saturday Stumper. (Fifty-eight minutes of challenge for me.)

I made an educated guess for 1-Down, five letters, “Bass in Berlioz’s ‘Les Troyens’” (gotta be, right?). Then I saw 4-Down, four letters, “Cousins of mandos,” and thought I was on my way. 32-Across, six letters, “Bayard who organized the March on Washington (1963),” was a giveaway, and 33-Down, four letters, “Titular Morrison nonconformist,” fooled me into thinking that the puzzle was going to fall into place. Uh-uh. Not for some time.

Clues that I greatly admired: 1-Across, six letters, “Fake to the left.” 24-Across, five letters, “Piece of high fashion?” 35-Down, nine letters, “They may scrutinize shelters.”

Grudging admiration goes to 2-Down, nine letters, “Reds coach.” Coach? Well, sort of. But “Reds manager” would be better.

Most fiendish clue of all: 43-Across, four letters, “As in C.”

I hope to see more puzzles from Garrett Estrada, especially on Saturdays. No spoilers: the answers are in the comments.