Guess I’m dumb

....Knowing all of this, is anybody dumb enough to believe that I would say something inappropriate with a foreign leader while on such a potentially “heavily populated” call. I would only do what is right anyway, and only do good for the USA!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 19, 2019

I am reminded of the student who asked, “Do you think I’d be dumb enough to plagiarize from someone in the same class?” As it turned out, the student had done just that. X wrote a paper and gave it to Y, who used it as the basis for his paper. Then Y gave his paper to Z, who used it as the basis for his paper. I was able to put together the sequence by seeing how the writing worsened from X to Y to Z. You can change words here and there only so many times before things stop making sense.

But notice how Trump projects: not “Do you think I’d be dumb enough to” but “Is anybody dumb enough to.” I’m not dumb. You must be dumb. No puppet, no puppet. You’re the puppet.

Here is a thoughtful Twitter thread from Ned Shugerman, professor at Fordham Law School, on the sequence of events surrounding the whistleblower’s complaint.

My admittedly extreme guess as to “the promise”: “I will argue very strongly for the G8. And if not, they’ll be looking at the G6, that I can tell you.” Other perhaps more likely possibilities, suggested by journalists: a promise to turn over the recently extracted Russian spy, a promise to reopen Russian diplomatic compounds that were used for spying, a promise of better U.S.–Ukraine relations if only Ukraine would reopen its investigation of Hunter Biden.

*

2:30 p.m.: And now The New York Times reports that the complaint is about more than a single call:

A potentially explosive complaint by a whistle-blower in the intelligence community said to involve President Trump was related to a series of actions that goes beyond any single discussion with a foreign leader, according to interviews on Thursday.

*

7:21 p.m.: And now The Washington Post has more:

A whistleblower complaint about President Trump made by an intelligence official centers on Ukraine, according to two people familiar with the matter, which has set off a struggle between Congress and the executive branch.

[Post title with apologies to Glen Campbell and Brian Wilson.]

Weevils and hyphens

[3 1/2″ × 1 1/2″. Click for a larger view.]

I found this ticket in the supermarket, nestled among the sweet potatoes. The sickly green color caught my eye.

The area of Arkansas where these “Sweet Potatoes” were grown and stored appears to be not only “weevil free” but hyphen-free as well. Maybe the weevils ate the hyphens before moving on. Capital Letters were left undisturbed.

Yes, I still say “supermarket,” which here stands for Aldi.

Related posts
Bad hyphens, unhelpful abbreviations : “Every generation hyphenates the way it wants to” : “Fellow-billionaires” : Got hyphens? : The Hammacher Schlemmer crazy making hyphen shortage problem : Living on hyphens : Mr. Hyphen and e-mail : Mr. Hyphen and Mr. Faulkner : One more from Mr. Hyphen : The opposite of user-friendly : Phrasal-adjective punctuation

Gerber Dime on sale

If your Ace Hardware is anything like mine, the Gerber Dime multi-tool is on clearance there, selling for $10.93 — less than half its list price of $24. The Dime is no longer listed on the Ace website, which makes me think that the clearance is more than local.

I’m a fool, or at least a semi-fool, for a multi-tool. Because you never know when you might be called on to cut a wire or tighten a screw. Be prepared!

Agitated?

Donald Trump has issued thirty-one tweets and retweets in less than three hours this morning, beginning at 4:08 PDT. A record?

Bandy X. Lee’s “translations” of Trump’s tweets are a helpful corrective. Nothing yet for this morning.

From Rock Crystal

Adalbert Stifter. Rock Crystal. 1845. Trans. from the German by Elizabeth Mayer and Marianne Moore (New York: New York Review Books, 2008).

After reading Stifter’s The Bachelors, I suggested Rock Crystal [Bergkristall ] as a candidate for our household’s two-person reading club. All I knew about this novella: the 1945 translation is by a distinguished translator and a great poet, with an introduction by another great poet, reissued by New York Review Books. Sold.

Rock Crystal is an extraordinary piece of storytelling: cozy, eerie, dream-like, fairy-tale-ish. Early on in our reading, Elaine and I came to the same conclusion: the setting is a lot like Schladming. That’s the name of the Austrian town where Elaine taught music in 1980 and 1981. I’ve never been, but Elaine, like Adalbert Stifter, is a good describer.

And lo: it turns out Stifter had a strong connection to Schladming and environs, and that those environs are indeed the setting for Rock Crystal. Schladming even has a street named for the writer: Adalbert-Stifter-Weg. Elaine explains it all in this post.

Early holiday shopping: Rock Crystal would make an excellent Christmas present.

Also from Stifter
An excerpt from The Bachelors

Not to forget

As the shitshow begins, let’s not forget: Donald Trump told Corey Lewandowski — who was not a member of his administration — to direct Jeff Sessions to limit the scope of the Mueller investigation to interference in future elections and to prohibit inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Got obstruction?

“Coming in hot”

I was getting blood drawn (the yearly doctor’s visit) and the nurse used this expression with reference to an upcoming birthday: “It’s coming in hot!”

I had to ask: is that a midwesternism? A downstate Illinoism? I had never heard it before.

Obligatory sequel: You’ve never heard that before? No. And how long have you lived here? Thirty-four years. And you’ve never? No, never. And where are you from originally? The garden spot of the world, Brooklyn, USA. But really, I just said “Brooklyn, New York.”

The nurse understood “coming in hot” to mean “coming up quickly,” “coming up soon.” She didn’t know where the expression comes from. But she mentioned that she and her co-workers use the expression in a different way when there’s a urine sample waiting to be picked up. You know how there’s a little shelf when you? Yes, I do.

Unlike a birthday, that sample would literally be coming in hot.

[A Quora page suggests that “coming in hot” has a military origin. “The garden spot of the world, Brooklyn, USA”: as per Ed Norton, The Honeymooners. But that expression goes far back.]

Milton’s Shakespeare

From The Guardian : “Almost 400 years after the first folio of Shakespeare was published in 1623, scholars believe they have identified the early owner of one copy of the text, who made hundreds of insightful annotations throughout: John Milton.”

Adventures in hyphenation

Stan Carey poses a question: What would serve as an apt compound modifier for the opposite of user-friendly ?

*

October 5: From a television commercial for Paycom: “My HR app is user-unfriendly.”

Related posts
Bad hyphens, unhelpful abbreviations : “Every generation hyphenates the way it wants to” : “Fellow-billionaires” : Got hyphens? : The Hammacher Schlemmer crazy making hyphen shortage problem : Living on hyphens : Mr. Hyphen and e-mail : Mr. Hyphen and Mr. Faulkner : One more from Mr. Hyphen : Phrasal-adjective punctuation

[As I wrote in a comment on Stan’s post, user-unfriendly sounds best to my ear. I hear in it a touch of wit, a quick negation of the more familiar term.]

Ticonderoga sighting

[Since You Went Away (dir. John Cromwell, 1944). Click for a larger view.]

No, Brig Hilton (Shirley Temple) is not gasping at the conductor’s Dixon Ticonderogas, even if they are sporting nifty clips. The conductor is played by Harry Hayden, who also turns up as the counterman in the opening scene of The Killers (dir. Robert Siodmak, 1946). I know that I’m supposed to be thinking about pencils, not diners. But the setting here is a railroad dining car. Speaking of which, the Railroad Dining Car Archives are a wonder to browse. Though they’re short on pencils.

Other Ticonderoga sightings
The Dick Van Dyke Show : Force of Evil : The House on 92nd Street : Lassie : Lassie, again : Perry Mason