“Full of soap, radio frequencies”

Hermine Tuzzi, also known as Ermelinda, also known as Diotima, has discovered in herself “the well-known suffering caused by that familiar malady of contemporary man known as civilization”:


Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities. 1930–1943. Trans. Sophie Wilkins (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995).

Related reading
All OCA Robert Musil posts (Pinboard)

The limits of simile

Watching Donald Trump respond to reporters’ questions earlier today, I thought, “This is like watching a train wreck.” Except that train wrecks are over quickly and don’t lie. (“No collision.”) They’re honest about the damage they inflict.

Code Red

A downstate-Illinois meteorologist is off the air after criticizing the Sinclair Broadcasting Group’s melodramatic “Code Red Day” weather alerts.

Weather is for taking seriously. But overdramatizing it is a way of life in these parts. Anyone remember this bit? And here’s the full commercial.

Return of the Jed

[Citizen Kane (dir. Orson Welles, 1941).]


[The Magnificent Ambersons (dir. Orson Welles, 1942). Click either image for a larger view.]

If Jedediah “Jed” “Broadway Jed” Leland (Joseph Cotten) is the theater critic, the Indianapolis Daily Inquirer must be a Kane paper. Nicely meta to have Leland’s column appear in The Magnificent Ambersons, in which Joseph Cotten stars as automobile developer Eugene Morgan.

If you click the page of Susan Alexander reportage for a larger view, you’ll see that the Leland/Kane review and the first paragraph of “Many Plaudits” are, indeed, about Susan Alexander’s debut.

[Leland/Kane: Recall that Kane finishes writing the review after firing Leland.]

More red and blue

At Lexikaliker, Gunther has added more red and blue, in the form of a display card holding a dozen Venus Postal pencils. Here is Google Translate’s version. See also an earlier Lexikaliker post about the uses of red and blue pencils, also available in a Google Translate version.

The Old Farmer’s Almanac says that back in the day “mail was coded with red or blue for routing purposes.” And which color meant what? I wish I knew.

All this red and blue makes me think of a origin story I wrote about a pencil with an unlikely name: National’s “Fuse-Tex” Skytint 516 Red & Blue. Yes, really.

“Research has shown”

Diana Senechal raised a question at a training session for teachers of English language learners:

“There must be other factors —”

“Research has shown,” the session leader said.

“But how can it be if —”

“Research has shown.”

Before that day, I had thought of research as investigation of uncertainties; now it seemed to put an end to all questions. If research showed something, well, there was nothing you could say; you had to go along with it. “Research has shown” — the phrase struck me with its vagueness, its exaltation of research (regardless of quality), and its use as a mallet to quash discussion.

Diana Senechal, Mind Over Memes: Passive Listening, Toxic Talk, and Other Modern Language Follies (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2018).

I just got this book from the library and went straight to the chapter about “research has shown,” thinking of a friend who has long been skeptical about that mantra. In English studies, “research has shown” might preface a wildly general claim about writing instruction based on a researcher’s (i.e., a teacher’s) experiment with one semester’s classes. Research has shown: end of discussion.

A few passages from Senechal’s Republic of Noise
“A little out of date” : Buzzwords and education : Fighting distraction : Literature and reverence : “Greater seriousness”

“A particular genius”

Ulrich’s friend Walter:


Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities. 1930–1943. Trans. Sophie Wilkins (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995).

Also from this novel
“At least nine characters” : “Constructed like the early stages of the automobile”

Chrissie Hynde plays Mingus

Chrissie Hynde offers an interpretation of Charles Mingus’s “Meditation on a Pair of Wire Cutters” (aka “Meditations on Integration” and “Meditations”). Hynde nicely reimagines one of the piece’s themes, highlighting the element of exotica. But there’s an awful lot missing.

Here’s a 1964 recording from Mingus at Cornell, with Johnny Coles (trumpet), Eric Dolphy (bass clarinet, flute), Clifford Jordan (tenor sax), Jaki Byard (piano), Charles Mingus (bass), and Dannie Richmond (drums).

Three Lives & Co. on the sidewalk

Three Lives & Company is selling books from the sidewalk while awaiting approval to reopen after structural repairs.

Three Lives is a great bookstore. Elaine and I are happy to spend big bucks there whenever we visit New York. Well, modestly sized bucks.

Phalanges and phalanxes

The question came into my head when we were walking: are the words phalanges and phalanx related? Because a phalanx is like a whole bunch of phalanges, isn’t it? From Merriam-Webster:

The original sense of “phalanx” refers to a military formation that was used in ancient warfare and consisted of a tight block of soldiers standing shoulder to shoulder, several rows deep, often with shields joined. The word phalanx comes from the Greeks, though they were not the only ones who used this formation. The Greek term literally means “log” and was used for both this line of battle and for a bone in a finger or toe. The word and its senses passed into Latin and then were adopted into English in the 16th century. These days, a “phalanx” can be any arranged mass, whether of persons, animals, or things, or a body of people organized in a particular effort.

The plural form for the arranged mass is usually phalanxes. For bones, phalanges. And if you’re wondering, neither word is related to phallus. M-W has that word covered, so to speak.

Thanks, dictionary.