MSNBC, sheesh

A reporter, this afternoon: “They’ve already casted ballots....”

Garner’s Modern English Usage : “*Casted is incorrect as a past-tense or past-participial form.”

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All OCA sheesh posts (Pinboard)

Needle & Thread Grill

[34 White Street, Manhattan, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

Last week I chanced upon a surprising moment at nos. 36, 38, and 40 White Street. So I thought I should look at the corner, no. 34. And lookit: in the heart of the mercantile district (now Tribeca), right next to the Crown Textiles Corp., is the Needle & Thread Grill.

[Click for a larger view, and notice the spindles, spinning wheel, Rheingold Beer placard, and loom (?) in the window.]

[Listing from the 1940 Manhattan directory.]

Today no. 34 houses Petrarca Cucina e Vino. (Molto costoso!) Google Maps shows a bit of the ghostly sign still on the side of no. 36.

Needle & Thread had a payphone (note the Bell Telephone sign) and its own matchbooks. I bet Petrarca can’t say that.

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More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives (Pinboard)

Block that analogy

Alex Witt on MSNBC a little while ago:

“It is like an SAT question: North Carolina is to Democrats as Lucy is to Charlie Brown’s football. But is a strategy by the Harris campaign going to change all of that?”

I hope so. But first we need to fix the analogy. If North Carolina is what was within reach but then taken away, a proper analogy would go like so:

NC : Democrats :: the football : Charlie Brown

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All OCA analogy posts (Pinboard)

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is Brad Wilber’s first Stumper since December 2023. I began with 43-D, six letters, “Georgia state wildflower,” which intersected with 51-A, four letters, “Loser.” Those two answers gave me most of the southeast corner. And then the puzzle became much more difficult.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

1-A, eight letters, “IPO in the dot-com vanguard.” A clue that’s been run before, and an answer that’s a real throwback.

3-D, six letters, “Boat-deck application.” Oh, yes, of course.

9-A, six letters, “CIA director under Ford.” Another throwback, and a sneaky one. But I don’t think the answer is accurate.

9-D, four letters, “Regular fellow.” Sneaky, and this answer is accurate.

14-D, seven letters, “Poetic form used by Chaucer.” Adding an unexpected rhyme to the proceedings.

24-D, eight letters, “Pitch at a high level.” Yeesh.

27-D, four letters, “Rival of Chris and Yvonne.” I know the names Evert and Goolagong, but I don’t know tennis well enough to know if this clue feels dated.

33-A, eleven letters, “Spotted housecat.” Wha?

36-A, thirteen letters, “Anti-establishment symbol.” Like 1-A, the answer feels a bit dated.

41-A, four letters, “Middle management protocol, for short.” Stumper-y.

55-A, six letters, “‘Ah-oooo-ga!’” So that’s how you spell ah-oooo-gaa. I didn’t know that I knew how to spell the answer.

My favorite in this puzzle: 17-A, eight letters, “‘Your library is your ______’: Erasmus.” He at least said something close, though he didn’t mean it as something wonderful.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

No, John McWhorter, he’s dementing

I disagree with John McWhorter about all sorts of things — apostrophes and object pronouns, for instance. And I disagree with him about Donald Trump’s state of mind: McWhorter sees in Trump’s recent performances not dementia and disinhibition but boredom. Trump, says McWhorter, is “turning up the volume to keep himself entertained.”

Please notice that McWhorter’s New York Times column appeared before Trump’s most recent Arizona, Michigan, and Wisconsin performances, in which he fantasized about guns trained on Liz Cheney’s face, boasted about his “beautiful white skin,” hit a microphone mount with the microphone, and mimed oral sex.

Trump is dementing and disinhibiting. Stop the sanewashing.

The blue dot and us

On the PBS News Hour tonight, “How Nebraska’s ‘blue dot’ could be the deciding factor on Election Day.”

Our household wrote out, addressed, stamped, and mailed 200 postcards to voters in the blue dot as part of the Postcards to Swing States initiative. The swing states were already covered, so the effort turned to additional areas. The text we followed:

Dear _______,

Thank you for being a voter! How you vote is private, but whether you vote is public record. Please vote in the Tuesday, November 5 election! [First name only.]

Given the recent discussion about women keeping their vote secret from their male partners, I understand “how you vote is private” in a new light.

We will be keeping our eye on the blue dot come Tuesday.

[Addressing and writing out 100 postcards was more difficult than I had imagined. The only effort to which I can compare it: taking several all-essay final exams.]

Adventures in dining

News from the fair city of Champaign, Illinois:

A local restaurant is hoping to reopen soon after closing last week due to numerous health department violations, including using mortar mixers and power drills to “mix up batter and beat eggs.”

One more choice detail:

Additionally, five-gallon buckets from Home Depot were used to store waffle and crêpe batter.

And there’s much more. Read at your own risk.

Is it dementia yet?

About Donald Trump’s fantasy of nine rifles trained on Liz Cheney’s face (a firing squad?): disinhibition is one of the many markers of dementia. See also Trump’s increasing vulgarity in public (“a shit vice president”).

Disinhibition can also take the form of public nakedness. I recall a neighbor with dementia, standing in his backyard one day, naked, immobile — one of the eeriest sights I’ve ever seen. I called his family.

Where’s Donald Trump’s family?

Hi and Lois watch

[Hi and Lois, November 1, 2024. Click for a larger view.]

Lois is serving up baloney this morning: “If you give your candy to the tooth fairy,” she begins.

The small size of comic strips sometimes creates problems with legibility. Ditto’s pirate eyepatch would be easier to recognize as an eyepatch if it were covering his eye. I thought at first that it was blob of digital ink. And yes, that’s a mustache above his mouth.

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All OCA Hi and Lois posts (Pinboard)

[This screenshot is a bit larger than the panel as it appears online.]

Halloween recap

We had many trick-or-treaters last night, shattering previous records. We kept track of costumes: bear, turtle, vet, Joy (from Inside Out ), just a kid (no costume), lizard, princess, T. Rex skeleton, witch, cheerleader. And then a group of ten teenagers arrived, by which point Elaine was off playing in a pit (orchestra, not snake) and I wasn’t about to inventory ten costumes in the dark.

Number of trick-or-treaters, number of treats, number of leftovers:

2022: 9, 18, 22 (Reese’s Cups)
2023: 6, 14, 22 (Milky Way)
2024: 20, 31, 19 (Milky Way, Three Musketeers)

Some of the younger visitors this year took just one item from the plastic pumpkin. Maybe they were following orders that had been given in advance.