A game-style map

My son Ben made a game-style map of Blue Hills Reservation, Massachusetts. What is Blue Hills Reservation, you may ask? This.

Extra credit: Find the hearth.

A joke in the traditional manner

Did you hear about the new insect hybrid?

The punchline is in the comments.

More jokes in the traditional manner
The Autobahn : Did you hear about the cow coloratura? : Did you hear about the shape-shifting car? : Did you hear about the thieving produce clerk? : Elementary school : A Golden Retriever : How did Bela Lugosi know what to expect? : How did Samuel Clemens do all his long-distance traveling? : How do amoebas communicate? : How do ghosts hide their wrinkles? : How do worms get to the supermarket? : Of all the songs in the Great American Songbook, which is the favorite of pirates? : What did the doctor tell his forgetful patient to do? : What did the plumber do when embarrassed? : What happens when a senior citizen visits a podiatrist? : What is the favorite toy of philosophers’ children? : What’s the name of the Illinois town where dentists want to live? : What’s the worst thing about owning nine houses? : What was the shepherd doing in the garden? : Where do amoebas golf? : Where does Paul Drake keep his hot tips? : Which member of the orchestra was best at handling money? : Why are supervillains good at staying warm in the winter? : Why did the doctor spend his time helping injured squirrels? : Why did Oliver Hardy attempt a solo career in movies? : Why did the ophthalmologist and his wife split up? : Why does Marie Kondo never win at poker? : Why is the Fonz so cool? : Why sharpen your pencil to write a Dad joke? : Why was Santa Claus wandering the East Side of Manhattan?

[“In the traditional manner”: by or à la my dad. He gets credit for the Autobahn, the elementary school, the Golden Retriever, Bela Lugosi, Samuel Clemens, the doctor, the plumber, the senior citizen, Oliver Hardy, and the ophthalmologist. Elaine gets credit for the Illinois town. Ben gets credit for the supervillains in winter. My dad was making such jokes long before anyone called them “dad jokes.” I continue in the traditional manner.]

Boffo?

From a New York Times article about Marjorie Taylor Green:

She’s the latest descendant in a lineage of Republican women who embrace a boffo radicalism, who delight in making trouble and in causing offense.

Boffo ? The word hardly fits. Merriam-Webster : “extremely successful : sensational.” The Oxford English Dictionary: “Of a laugh: uproarious, unrestrained, hearty. Of a joke, act, show, etc.: uproariously or boisterously funny, hilarious.”

I suspect that boffo might have replaced a word an editor deemed less tactful. Perhaps gonzo ? Or bonkers ?

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What it said:

Reading your fortune out loud
  will bring you good luck.

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Failed prophecy : Lucky numbers

−0°

My iPhone tells me that the temperature this morning is −0°F. Not 0°, −0°. I’m getting a kick out of inserting the degree sign (°) — it’s so easy to do so. Just go to Edit, Emoji & Symbols. The degree sign is in Punctuation. It looks like this: °. It’s not to be confused with the masculine ordinal indicator (º), which sounds to me like the name of a strange rare bird.

Wikipedia tells me that signed zero, −0 or +0, is used in computing. And then there’s this detail:

Informally, one may use the notation “−0” for a negative value that was rounded to zero. This notation may be useful when a negative sign is significant; for example, when tabulating Celsius temperatures, where a negative sign means below freezing.

I’m not sure why the Weather app would want to round up. From what, −.75°F? As if that’ll make it feel warmer?

By the way, It feels like −15°F.

$519,328,369

From The Washington Post:

President Donald Trump’s onslaught of falsehoods about the November election misled millions of Americans, undermined faith in the electoral system, sparked a deadly riot — and has now left taxpayers with a large, and growing, bill.

The total so far: $519 million.

Or $519,238,3699, to be exact.

Today’s Newsday Saturday

Today’s Newsday  Saturday crossword, by Greg Johnson, is another themeless puzzle that feels more difficult than it turns out to be. Still a bit tough though. I began with 8-A, seven letters, “Publisher sponsoring the National Spelling Bee,” and solved the puzzle quadrant by quadrant. The one clue that gave me fits, minor ones: 17-A, seven letters, “Put in motion.” Not tricky, but I was sure that my first answer was the right one.

Clue-and-answer pairs I especially liked:

13-D, eight letters, “Alternative to regular drip coffee.” But what does “regular” mean in this sentence? We’ve been making the alternative for years. It’s pretty venerable, even with a new-fangled name.

15-A, seven letters, “Dishes cooked to order.” I don’t think I’ve ever heard the answer. Feels nicely dowdy to me, in a heavy-china-plates-in-a-diner way.

26-A, three letters, “Fields of desserts.” Clever.

32-A, eight letters, “Daughter of Oedipus.” A giveaway, maybe. I like seeing her name, though she could be clued as something more than her father’s daughter, even if she was her father’s daughter.

38-A, five letters, “Prefix for note in ’90s Apple media events.” An unusual way to clue the answer, and a reminder of when Apple products could be said to “just work.”

49-A, eleven letters, “Cold cuts selection.” Pairs interestingly with 15-A: I’m not ashamed to say that this selection could be a dish cooked to order. Anyone with me?

52-D, three letters, “What’s the point?” Tricky, I think, as the first letter of the answer of the answer points in a wrong direction.

Never no spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

Naked City Mongol

[Detective Adam Flint (Paul Burke) interviews hospital employee Grace (Bibi Osterwald). From the Naked City episode “Carrier” (April 24, 1963). Click for a larger view.]

There are eight million Mongols in the Naked City. This has been one of them, and the last one I noticed on our household’s trek back through the series.

“Carrier” is one of my favorite Naked City episodes. Sandy Dennis plays a woman with a rare contagious disease who leaves the isolation of a Welfare Island hospital to see Manhattan for herself. And there she meets someone who lives in isolation for a different reason. The episode, like every other episode of the series, is available at YouTube. It’s really extraordinary television.

Venn reading
All OCA Mongol posts : Mongol and Naked City posts : Naked City posts (Pinboard)

Catch a wave

Yep, that’s Poseidon. I recognize him from a vase.

Thanks, Ben.

Danny Ray (1935–2021)

Danny Ray, for forty-six years James Brown’s emcee and cape man, has died at the age of eighty-five. Says the James Brown Estate: “Mr. Ray was the second hardest working man in show business.”

Here’s a 1968 (?) example of the emcee at work, and another from 1974. And from The T.A.M.I. Show (1964), a celebrated instance of the cape routine. And here — why not? — is James Brown’s complete T.A.M.I Show performance. Holy smokes. The Rolling Stones made the ill-advised choice to go on after Brown.

Our fambly was fortunate to see James Brown and company in 2005, with Danny Ray, Tomi Rae, the Soul Generals, and the Bitter Sweets. A night to remember.

[“1968 (?)”: The video seems to have been misdated to avoid detection and removal for copyright infringement. Shh.]