The product is less dangerous than the accompanying manual.

       I got the new toaster at Bed, Bath, and Beyond.  It said, "SAVE THESE INSTRUCTIONS"  in the booklet that came with it; so I've saved them.

       It says, "Before Using for the First Time," I should do seven things, by the number.  Number 7 mentions running the toaster once or twice without bread "to burn off any manufacturing residue."  Then these words immediately follow:

"You may notice a light amount of smoke; this is normal and will stop as the heating elements continue to heat. bowl first.  Start with the lowest setting and gradually increase as the cream begins to thicken."

       I'm glad I've saved these instructions.  They're useful to me.   Just maybe not the way the manufacturer imagined.

       

Incorrigible Cartooning Punster

 The website for this comic can be found here.

"A wave comes into shore"

"This Way to the Egress"

       Yesterday's < and  > symbols reminded me of Barnum and Bailey.  As I recall it, they had trouble getting people to leave their great animal show and circus and had the bright idea to put up a sign "This Way to the Egress," with an arrow pointing.  They rightly suspected that most people wouldn't know the word and would imagine finding another exotic animal they'd never seen before.

       The words and arrow led people through a door, and before they knew it, they were outside.

       "Egress" is in the same Latin-sourced basket as "progress"--"go forward" and "regress"--"go backward," and "congress"--"come together" or "go together."  So why not "egress"--"go out"?

        Not so incidentally, on this very day, the U.S. Congress is on the point of "coming together" for the first time in a very long time indeed to pass a bi-partisan bill to keep the country solvent and able to conduct its business!  "Congress" living up to its name?

       Oh, and for Speaker John Boehner, finally a moment of triumph and . . . "This Way to the Egress."   
       

< > ???

       I've been unable to remember . . . until now . . . the meaning of two mathematical symbols I did not grow up with but which are commonly used, especially in my medical lab reports from Kaiser:

                                              >  and  <

The two mean "less than" and "more than," but I can never remember which, and end up confused, not knowing whether my numbers are within or outside of a healthy range for a given test.

       I asked for assistance online, and one mnemonic device worked best for me, maybe because it had to do with letters rather than numbers:  one of the two symbols easily reshapes into the letter "L" for "less than," and the other doesn't!  Instant communication as far as I am concerned.

       I'm not sure, but I think the person who came up with that was a grade schooler.  Naturally.

       Math is a language too, of course, just not the one I'm most comfortable with.
  

Mis-hearing is an Art

       A friend and relation who is a psychological therapist has a message on his home cell phone.  His voice asks patients to call his office phone number, but that isn't the way I heard it when I first tried to reach him.  This is the way the message started to my ears:


              "If you're QUIET (some emphasis), call the office phone at . . . "


This took me aback, and I almost hung up, figuring, yes, I can be quiet enough to leave my message, but then thought again, let it go on and realized I could leave my personal message here.  I did.

       And then I re-called this same number just to check the actual word; it wasn't "quiet," it was "a client."

Take this with "interest"

       Again Life's Little Instruction Calendar Volume XIX provides me a daily "instruction" that resonates:

               "Become more interesting to others by becoming more interested in them."

       A good thing to remember, and I showed how the thought is embedded in the word "interest" itself when I did this blog entry.

Words Answer Sights

       Coming home from the beach late afternoon, driving through Malibu Canyon, the stark mountains rendering awesomeness to my eyes, we drop to roads with fields on either side, the lower mountains beyond now dark against slowly fading but still bright light.

       Suddenly a surprising symmetry:

                Pointed mountain peak
                Poking holes in the sky

Room in the Inn

       Connie saw a wonderful saying on a T-shirt:

                  "Sometimes when I open my mouth, my mother comes out."

      

A Romantic Beach Poem

From One "Cowlick" to Another

       Standing behind Connie as she registered to get an x-ray at Kaiser Permanente, I kissed the back of her neck.  I said, "You have a cowlick."  "I know, nothing'll make it stay down."  "What does 'cowlick' come from?"  She didn't know.  Nor I.

       I have it on good authority (means it sounds good to me) that "it's British in origin.   It almost certainly comes from a comparison with the projecting ridge of hairs on a cow's hide, licked into shape by the animal.  The word is first recorded in 1598."   (QPB Word and Phrase Origins, Fourth Edition 2008, by Robert Hendrickson)

       In any case, I like the sound of the word, and that we share some wispy, pesky out-of-place hair with our fellow bovine breed.

Puns: they catch you like a fish

       My son was talking about volcanoes he'd enjoyed going over on his way to Seattle in an airplane.

       And he said, "You know, there's a whole series of them," and he said "which you'd expect--they'd be in a row--they're a fissure in the earth."

       And I said, "I thought fish're in the sea."

       He-he.  Caught him unawares, and he said, "Ooooh," and laughed, and of course I did, and my wife's face went all sour because we'd made a lousy pun.

       But we liked it, and it was a good one.

How the columnist may soften from online to newsprint

       From the online column headline at midnight "Chase Utley's slide was late, high and arguably dirty" to the morning headline when the L.A. Times was delivered at home "Utley's hard slide at second base is borderline legal, but it might be a season saver" is an alteration of tone to match the piece's changes themselves in Bill Plaschke's sports column. 

       Overnight worries about arousing New York City readers before Monday's third game of the National League Divisional Series by an L.A. paper admitting that dirty work had been afoot?    Maybe editorial or columnist concern that L.A. fans would think the piece "too" honest and judgmental on what the fans wanted to celebrate, a gutsy play that led to a victory.

       Possibly also, just a reconsideration of the piece after a first blush of rapid columnizing.  Plaschke is not afraid to make ethical judgments and has often been a conscience for sports in L.A., but he may have seen his piece as a little unbalanced or unfair to the home team, especially after 27 years without a World Series appearance.

       "It was awful, it was ugly, but the Dodgers scored the tying run on the play" appears online at night but is absent in morning at home.

       An added print ending that wasn't online summoned Tommy Lasorda's shouted admonition to the fans after tossing out the first pitch, "We gotta win tonight" and reminded morning readers that the Dodgers won "in a style that the tough Lasorda surely loved."

"Right as Rain"

       Standing outside my car I'd just locked, I noticed I hadn't put the the window all the way up.  Since I was in a hurry, I quickly decided I didn't need to unlock and roll--it wasn't going to rain.

       Next day got to the car, smiled and said, "I was right as rain."

       Which surprised and delighted me and led me to wonder the phrase's origin.  Nothing notable I can find, but the frisky, single-syllabled alliteration is catchy.

Not the the worst misspelling ever

       Local high school sign in front of school:

                    "Volleyball tryouts have been susspended"

       You know, it's not altogether wrong because the second extended "s" is an enactment of what the word means--it's an extension of expected time.  Maybe they will pick up again, those tryouts, and maybe they won't.

       For the moment they're off, they're done.  Is it temporarily?  I don't know, but it is, the event is. . .
                             
                        suss pended 

       The Latin roots of the word mean "hung up."
 

Something ELSE to atone for?!

       The concluding Day of Atonement service was coming to an end; most in attendance were surely hungry and perhaps a little weak from fasting; two weeks of trying to mend one's ways and plan and promise for better behavior in the year ahead lay behind.

       The rabbi's voice was still strong and urgent in final penitence and ready to ask God to accept our prayers and write us in the book of life for the coming year before the gate was closed.

       We read along with him in the book or tried to track the hurried Hebrew if we could, but at last I simply listened as the rabbi read from The Gates of Repentance.

       What I could not believe but most assuredly heard in stentorian tones was:

                    "Now send forth Your hidden light and open to Your servants the gates of Hell."

        WHAT?

        Trying to restrain my incredulity and then my fervent impulse to laughter, I finally fumbled and found the place in the text.  The word was "help."  Little closing sounds can get lost to the ear.  BUT SOMEONE SHOULD NEVER HAVE WRITTEN THAT WORD AT ALL, knowing what it might sound like! 

       I did restrain my mirth from others hearing and made my way from the synagogue, smiling, a little faint and confused, and figured it's all part of the emotions of the day that one seeks restitution with God.

Carl Sandburg, Weather Forecaster

       In an antic mood after looking up the weather on my localconditions.com website, I decided to send something to them since they allow for a forecast from their customers about our own neighborhood weather.

       This popped into my mind almost unbidden but instantaneously:  "The fog comes on little cat feet."  I smiled and sent it.   

       Last time, they let my "prediction" stay published ; so we'll see if this time they think it's neither "abusive" nor "disrespectful." 

       The Carl Sandburg poem the line came from in toto:

                                       FOG

                              The fog comes
                              on little cat feet.

                              It sits looking
                              over harbor and city
                              on silent haunches
                              and then moves on.
 

(My "forecast" was published here.  Scroll down to bottom of page.  The report or prediction is retained only for a few days.  I'm glad they've                                               got a sense of humor.)

Why MDs study Greek and Latin Roots

       We need Greek and Latin, if for no other reason than to sound impressive, arcane, important, mysterious.  I'm thinking of medical terms.

       Connie saw an endocrinologist the same day that she saw a urologist.  A week later it was an orthopedist, to be followed next week by an internist.

       God, they must be taking good care of her.

      

WHIPPED: Unable to Keep Up with Baseball's Statistical Refinements

       Baseball statistics have gone out of their mind.  A recent one is the WHIP.   But I was unable to remember its meaning.  A newspaper article today pegged it down.  A pitcher had a 1.58 WHIP:  in other words, a little over 1 1/2 "walks and hits per innings pitched."

       So it's how many blokes are getting on base one way or another due to your failed pitching.  It has a point; you certainly want a good WHIP whether it's something on your fastball or in your stats.

       But the main reason I have to give it a pass as the seventy-fifth-thousand-and-third kind of statistic in baseball is there's some small virtue in the near rhyme and ALterNAting RHYTHm in the WHIP:

          WALKS and HITS
          per INNings PITCHED

       I can roll with that.  Plus the snappy acronym.

Hello Again.

       Last night, I cut into a lime from my back yard, worried that it might be moving toward overripe. I tasted it and found it was nicely acidic, then heard a word I doubt would have had anything to do with the matter--"Hasidic."

       A Hasid might be quite sour about my comparison.