Local lunacy

A localite persists in adding COVID disinformation to the posts from our county health department. The department eventually removes her comments. But there they are, until they’re removed.

Her latest: coughing up mucus and taking cough medicine are defenses against COVID. You can cough in your backyard or in the shower, she explains. And she closes with what she must think is a witty turn: “Some of us refuse to live in fear. Pass me the Robitussin DM, please.”

If it doesn’t go without saying: she won’t get vaccinated.

A king on the bus

I was on a long-distance bus trip from ____ to ____. The bus was packed. I stood up to stretch in the aisle and saw the Imperial Margarine king several rows back. He too was standing up to stretch. The king was wearing a red-velvet crown and a dark T-shirt and slacks. He had two tiny scabs on the side of his nose, near his left eye. He looked like Norman Fell.

“You look just like the Imperial Margarine king,” I said. “Are you him?”

“Yes, I am.”

I asked him if I could take a picture. He nodded yes. But when I tried to use the camera on my phone, all I could see were maps of Bristol, England, and streaming video of soccer hooligans. No camera.

The bus stopped for a short break. The king walked across the street and through an open garage door into an enormous produce store. I waited beside the bus and tried restarting my phone. No improvement. I noticed my daughter standing nearby and asked if she had any idea what was wrong. No, she didn’t. I waited for the king’s return.

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[Possible sources: thinking yesterday about Nabokov’s Pale Fire and its king or pseudo-king, and later making a U-turn in front of a huge garage door for a heating and air-conditioning company. I haven’t seen anything to suggest that Norman Fell appeared in an Imperial commercial. But here’s one with Charles Kimbrough.]

Rewrite that sentence, PBS

From the PBS NewsHour:

Designer Ed Welburn’s passion developed early, as a small child.

The problem is the dangling modifier “as a small child.” I think of the passion sitting quietly in a corner, reading or drawing. Better:

Ed Welburn has been passionate about design since early childhood.

But I’m not crazy about passion or passionate. My preference:

Ed Welburn has been interested in design since early childhood.

Or more simply:

Ed Welburn became interested in design in early childhood.

From at least the age of eight.

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[This post is no. 94 in a series dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]

Word of the day: tittuppy

Mr. Thorpe, do you really think that Mr. Morland’s gig will break down? From Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey (1818):

"Break down! Oh! Lord! Did you ever see such a little tittuppy thing in your life? There is not a sound piece of iron about it.”

And he goes on and on about the danger it presents. “Good heavens!” cries James Morland’s sister Catherine. And I am already imagining a Clueless-style adaptation, with James Morland driving a “ricketty” old compact, and John Thorpe, a shiny new SUV. “Ricketty” is another of Thorpe’s disses.

But the word of the day is the adjective tittuppy, also spelled tituppy and tittupy. The meaning is easy to guess: “characterized by bouncing movement; unsteady, shaky, rickety.”

The word’s origin is likely impossible to guess. Tittuppy comes from the noun or verb tittup. The noun first meant “a canter,” then “a cantering horse,” then “a woman or girl, spec. one who is bold or impudent.” The earliest meaning is now rare; the others, obsolete. As for the verb:

To walk or move with an up-and-down or jerky movement; to move in an exaggerated or affected manner. Also (of a horse, etc.) to move with short up-and-down strides in a prancing fashion; (of a rider) to guide a horse in this way. Usually with adverbial of direction.”

The verb is still in use. The Oxford English Dictionary has a 2003 citation: “A bizarre figure — is it a man or a woman? — tittups towards them.” Tittup also had life as an adverb — “with a tittup; at a canter” — also obsolete.

The dictionary’s first citation for tittuppy? Northanger Abbey! And the adjective is still in use; the most recent citation is from 1995.

Northanger Abbey is a wonderful novel. I’d describe it thusly: Catherine Morland, a reader of Gothic novels, finds herself a character in a Jane Austen novel. She must adapt.

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[All citations from the Oxford English Dictionary.]

Hi and Lois watch

[Hi and Lois, September 2, 2021.]

Wrong-way swodniw are a fact of life in Hi and Lois. Though that’s not necessarily a wrong-way window. Lois and Trixie could be dining al fresco in today’s Hi and Lois. But it sure don’t look it.

More troubling than the window: the menu has a picture of a juice box. Jeez.

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[Yes, swodniw is a plural.]

Misspelling in the news

An Illinois woman has been arrested for entering Hawaii with a fake COVID-19 vaccination card. It showed her as having received the Maderna vaccine.

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Lives of the fakes

In The New York Times, the lives of fake works of art:

Works declared to be fake often enjoy diverse afterlives, according to law enforcement officials, academic scholars and art market veterans. Some are retained by universities as study instruments, some as the legacies of well-intentioned donors who lacked an expert eye. Some were used in a sting by an undercover agent who hoped the sense of wealth created by fancy paintings on a yacht would be a persuasive part of his pose.

But many of the works, experts say, have second lives that very much resemble their first: as fakes recycled to unsuspecting buyers.

[See also the great documentary Art and Craft (dir. Sam Cullman, Jennifer Grausman, and Mark Becker, 2014).]

Burying the lede

An odd headline in The Washington Post: “Four conservative radio talk-show hosts bashed coronavirus vaccines. Then they got sick.”

More accurately: “Four conservative radio talk-show hosts bashed coronavirus vaccines. Then they got sick and died.”

“Aloha, Mabel!”

From “How Well Do You Know Your Neighbors?,” the third episode of the new Hulu series Only Murders in the Building. Charles-Haden Savage (Steve Martin) is conferring with Oliver Putnam (Martin Short) on how best to get in touch with their neighbor Mabel Mora (Selena Gomez).

“Let’s see if Mabel's free. I’ll call her. Or should I text?”

“Calls bother them for some reason.”

“Yeah. I think it’s a text. What sounds more casual? ‘Dear Mabel,’ or ‘Greetings, Mabel’?”

And then: “Hey, I figured out the perfect greeting for the text.”

[Click any image for a larger view.]

Mabel’s pencil

[Mabel Mora (Selena Gomez) and pencil. Click either image for a larger view.]

That’s a screenshot from “True Crime,” the first episode of the new Hulu series Only Murders in the Building. Mabel is probably making notes on the podcast she — and at least two of her neighbors — are listening to, All Is Not OK in Oklahoma.

Her pencil: I’m pretty sure it’s a Tombow Mono-R. The gold band at the top is the clue. For those who believe in fanatical attention to detail, here are some more pencils in film and on TV.