“O.K.,” “K,” “kk”

In The New York Times, a Q & A column about workplaces covers “kk,” which some younger people apparently prefer to “OK” or “K” in e-mail and texts.

The Q A-er, Caity Weaver, endorses kk:

You reply to an email with “O.K.”: For the briefest twinkling, I think “Rude.”

You reply to an email with “K”: For one terrible millisecond, I think (sobbing and feeling attacked), “He’s acting like he’s the only one who’s stressed out!”

You reply to an email with “kk”: I think “O.K.”

“Kk” is an ice-cold glass of blood: mostly neutral, slightly basic.

“An ice-cold glass of blood”? That’s a good thing? A MetaFilter thread is devoted to figuring out this brand-new metaphor. Someone there discovered Weaver’s tweeted explanation:

It’s ice cold because that’s my preferred drink temperature and when I wrote that down I thought it was funny — no other reason 🤪 And it’s blood because I wanted a glass of something that was slightly basic on the pH scale

I'm amused that a writer who appears so attuned to the damaging effects of one- and two-letter abbreviations is willing to use a metaphor that is, well, baffling — and blood-chilling!

“A nice hot cup of tea” or “a warm cup of cocoa” might be a better metaphor. (It would certainly taste better.) And the problems (or non-problems, I’d say) of “O.K.” and “K” could be avoided by making a keyboard shortcut to turn “OK” into the friendly, dowdy “Okeydoke.”

Capische?

One practical reason to avoid “kk”: the danger, especially on a phone, of accidentally adding a third “k.”

James Brown and Mutts

Today’s Mutts lets us know that Patrick McDonnell is a fan. The title panel for today’s strip is a bonus. Look here and here.

My dad turned me on to Mutts some years back. Thanks, Dad.

Related reading
More Mutts posts

Stooges as amigos

[The Stooges as Sondland, Perry, and Volker. Click for a larger view.]

The Three Stooges — Larry Fine, Moe Howard, Curly Howard — will star as Gordon Sondland, Rick Perry, and Kurt Volker in the forthcoming release The Three Amigos. Talk about straight out of Central Casting.

Gosh, I’d love it if this post were to become celebrated.

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper, by Brad Wilber, reminded me of what it was (sometimes) like to take a final exam: sit down; feel a bit 40-D, seven letters, “Put off”; dig in; and find everything falling into place.

I noticed suggestions of domestic life in today’s puzzle: 1-D, five letters, “Potpourri quality” and 18-A, eight letters, “What potpourri is meant to be” paired nicely. Note: meant to be. I suspect that Wilber is not a fan of that smelly stuff.

Another nice domestic touch: 34-D, nine letters, “Starting points in crocheting” and 35-D, nine letters, “Thick as thieves.”

Some clues I especially liked: 2-D, “Telenovela ‘Yikes,’” which started my solving. 21-D, five letters, “Bach-era dance,” whose answer I wouldn’t have known B.E. And 60-A, six letters, “Place for an ace” SLEEVE? No.

My favorite clue in today’s puzzle: 11-D, five letters, “Rattling adders.” Again and again, Newsday strikes the right note in its trickier clueing for common words, preferring concision to overly elaborate, farfetched cuteness. Yes, New York Times crossword, I’m looking at you.

One question: is 38-D, five letters, really a “Bogart foe in five films”? No.

No spoilers: the answers are in the comments.

[B.E.: Before Elaine.]

“Hello? Is this 1973?”

In today’s Zippy, pay phones, postcards, and letters. The post title is Zippy speaking into a broken pay phone.

Related reading
All OCA Zippy posts (Pinboard)

Gahan Wilson (1930–2019)

The cartoonist Gahan Wilson has died at the age of eighty-nine. The New York Times has an obituary and a sampler of his work. The New Yorker has a reminiscence from fellow cartoonist Michael Maslin, with more Wilson cartoons.

“I love a good calendar graphic”

On the PBS NewsHour last night, in a report on what happens next in the impeachment inquiry:

Judy Woodruff: What does the calendar look like, as far as we know?

Lisa Desjardins: Ah. You know I love a good calendar graphic. Our producer Jess helped put this together.

I love a good calendar graphic too, and these are really nice work, with the month of December followed by a series of week-by-week closeups:




[Click for bigger days.]

Reading the staff roster, I’m guessing that “Jess” is Jessica Yarvin, production assistant. Kudos to her.

Recently updated

Words of the year Now with climate emergency.

Joe Biden’s stutter

Worth reading: John Hendrickson’s “Joe Biden’s Stutter, and Mine” (The Atlantic ). I knew, vaguely, that Biden stuttered as a child. I didn’t know that his stuttering persists. Reading this article helped me to think about his “gaffes” with far greater compassion.

[An aside: A recent CNN broadcast had Biden on a stage answering questions from an audience. What a difference from his debate performances: he was blazingly fluent.]

William Taylor’s notebook

My heart leaped up when I read this passage in a short piece about William Taylor, ambassador to Ukraine:

Throughout his career, Taylor was rarely seen without a little green notebook, friends and colleagues recall. In it, he took meticulous notes of meetings, discussions, ideas.

A green notebook! Could it be this Memorandum notebook? It seems a good fit: well-made, durable, inexpensive, and with something of a military provenance. (Taylor served for six years in the United States Army.)

And then I saw this excerpt from Taylor’s October 22 deposition:

“Handwritten notes that I take on a small, little spiral notebook in my office of phone calls that take place in my office.”

Spiral. Drat.

But then I went to the deposition itself to look at that passage in context. Taylor is describing three sources he used in putting together an opening statement. One: WhatsApp messages.

“Number two. I’ve always kept careful notes, and I keep a little notebook where I take notes on conversations, in particular when I’m not in the office. So, in meetings with Ukrainian officials or when I’m out and I get a phone call and I can — I keep notes.

“The third documents are handwritten notes that I take on a small, little spiral notebook in my office of phone calls that take place in my office.”

So perhaps his traveling notebooks are, after all, of the Memorandum variety.

You can see the the top-opening version of the Memorandum notebook at work in the 2016 film 20th Century Women.

Related reading
All OCA notebook posts (Pinboard)