Domestic comedy

“If we had a dog, and if we put our mailbox down by the front step, then the dog could get the mail for us.”

“Those are two pretty big if s.”

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

Neologism of the day

It’s alread :

alread \ˈȯl-ˌred\ or \ȯl-ˈred\ adverb
1 : prior to a specified or implied past, present, or future time : by this time : previously

2 → used as an intensive

I heard what sounded like a newish word in a fragment of conversation: “Mom, twice alread?!” Aha: yet another shortened form? No, the speaker had said “all red.” Her mom had exercised strenuously and, for a second time, was red in the face. But I would still like to make alread happen.

Pronunciation may vary, with stress falling sometimes on the first syllable, sometimes on the second. In the conversation I heard, stress fell on the second syllable: “Mom, twice all-RED?!” Or, for instance:

“The race has ALL-red started!”

“All right all-RED!”

I like alread way more than totes and adorbs put together.

Pronunciations, definitions, and that last exclamation from Merriam-Webster.

More made-up words
Alecry : Fequid : Humormeter : Lane duck : Lane-locked : Misinflame and misinflammation : Oveness : Power-sit : Plutonic : ’Sation : Skeptiphobia

Helen Vendler (1933–2024)

The New York Times obituary begins: “In the poetry marketplace, her praise had reputation-making power, while her disapproval could be withering.” I find it hard to imagine that anyone who spent a lifetime reading and writing about poetry would appreciate such a summary of her work.

[Learning from this obituary about Vendler’s early life lets me understand why she turned down a speaking invitation from what she called a “non-secular” institution.]

Pretty Proustian

Vladimir Nabokov, Glory, trans. Dmitri Nabokov and Vladimir Nabokov (New York: MacGraw-Hill, 1971).

Not just the moment of involuntary memory but also the shifting mountains, reminiscent of the church steeple in Combray.

Venn reading
All OCA Nabokov posts : Nabokov and Proust posts : Proust posts (Pinboard)

Ernie Bushmiller, man of his time

[Nancy, May 28, 1955. Click for a larger view.]

“The Ballad of Davy Crockett” first aired on television on October 27, 1954. Recordings followed in 1955. From late March through most of April of that year, Bill Hayes’s version was the number one song in the United States. The Disney movie Davy Crockett: King of the Wild Frontier was released on May 28, 1955. And Ernie Bushmiller was keeping up a fad.

Wikipedia has an article about the song and the “Crockett craze.” The details in this post are therein.

Yesterday’s Nancy is today’s Nancy.

Related reading
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An improved tube

The narrator characterizes Martin Edelweiss’s mother Sofia as an “Anglomaniac” who discourses on Boy Scouts and Kipling. Thus the house toothpaste.

Vladimir Nabokov, Glory, trans. Dmitri Nabokov and Vladimir Nabokov (New York: MacGraw-Hill, 1971).

And there was such a slogan:

[“We couldn’t Improve the Cream, So we Improved the Tube.” Colgate advertisement, Ladies’ Home Journal, October 1908. Click for a larger view.]

Related reading
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No small step

I think that Hi-Lo was taunting the reader. Trixie was “almost ready” to take a first step yesterday — those words appeared in her thought balloon. But no step today: Hi is at work.

Related reading
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[The F on the boss’s chair is for Foofram, as in Foofram Industries.]

Trixie walks?

I’m not sure if Hi-Lo is toying with us. It could be that Trixie is just standing up.

Related reading
All OCA Hi and Lois posts (Pinboard)

Look, reader, no glasses

I put a new photograph of my unglassed and several-years-older face in the sidebar. RSS readers, you’ll just have to click through.

Cataract and cataracts

John Berger begins his short essay on cataracts with a definition: “Cataract from Greek kataraktes, meaning waterfall or portcullis, an obstruction that descends from above.” And later:

When you open a dictionary and consult it, you refind, or discover for the first time, the precision of a word. Not only the precision of what it denotes, but also the word’s precise place in the diversity of the language.

With both cataracts removed, what I see with my eyes is now like a dictionary which I can consult about the precision of things. The thing in itself, and also its place amongst other things.

John Berger, Cataract. With drawings by Selçuk Demirel (London: Notting Hill Editions, 2011).

I had cataracts removed a week apart earlier this month, and for the first time since elementary school I am looking at the everyday world without glasses. Waiting for the second surgery, I checked my vision one eye at a time to see the difference a cataract can make. The world my right eye showed me looked like someone’s dingy laundry — stains and blurs everywhere. Walking on a sunny morning a couple of weeks ago, with both eyes cataract-free, I began to tear up because everything looked so brilliantly beautiful: the sky, some trees, the pavement. Yes, the pavement.

But it’s hard work: the eyes and brain are intense collaborators, and by the end of the day, my eyes (now 20/20 in tandem) are fried. In the morning everything is sharp and vivid again. And with new eyes and a new Mac, fewer typos!

[My opthalmologist is an ace. As he was doing the surgery, he told me, “I’m being really finicky getting your astigmatism.” Finicky is exactly what you want in a surgeon, isn’t it? Or in any kind of work.]