Shout out; Call out

       "Shout out" and "Call out" sound alike, but they're just about the opposite of each other..  If you "shout out" to somebody, you want to recognize or acknowledge, call attention to, praise in some fashion, somebody whom you want to name; you "shout out" to them and usually in front of an audience.

       To "call out" in front of an audience or in print or electronically is to point out somebody who needs reproval and needs attention called to them because of something disturbing or not good about them.  That's "calling out" somebody.  It's really the opposite of "shouting out."
 

The NAGgy adVOCATE

       We have a friend who recommends things that she loves and believes that we will love too:  TV programs, documentaries, movies, etc.  She's a real booster for what she admires.  We appreciate that because she has good and elegant taste.

       More than that, she's insistent, so if you haven't watched her recommendations by the next time she sees you, she'll keep after you!

       I mention this because I love the name she came up with for what she does and who she is when she does this:  our friend Gena Bleier is a NAGVOCATE!

       That is a great portmanteau word.  It has something of the Yiddish word "yenta" in it too for my money; that word, like this, carries both highborn, genteel echoes AND the slightly coarser resonance of a busybody.

       She's coined it!  

                               

"100 % Recycled . . ."

I don't like seeing the phrase
"100 percent Recycled"
on toilet paper!

Somehow it gives me the creeps.
My imagery gets working.

And I don't want to give this paper
any access
to my . . . (posterior).

Does Trump Have his Wits about him--Oh, Maybe it's his Jester's.

       On the "Reliable Sources" program Sunday, March 24th, over CNN,  I heard the redoubtable journalist Carl Bernstein of Watergate coverage fame use some words that had my head snapping to attention.

       Bernstein  speaks with a good degree of objectivity when he comments on "the week in Trump news and coverage."  He's learned the hard way and earned the capacity to observe with fairly cool and detached eyes the behavior of wayward presidents.

       I've tested my memory and come up with close to the exact words Carl used, especially the three crucial ones that had my head snapping.  Bernstein said that when we're listening to President Trump talk, we have to decide "whether he's being sharp-witted, dim-witted, or half-witted."  He kept a pretty even tone while saying this.
 

Songs Attach Themselves to You: "send in the clowns"

Tone? Fox Circling its Prey

       My wife likes to scratch and get rid of things on the skin.  It doesn't limit itself to her.

       Last night she asked me,"What's that little thing on the side of your face?"

       I said, "It's a thing the dermatologist is going to take off at the end of March, don't come near it."

       "I wasn't going to come near it."

       I left the room in a huff, but I spoke through the doorway again, "Then why did you sound so greedy!'

"Upmost"; "Utmost"

Photo taken November 26th, 2018 in a local grocery store

       Seems to me it's an easy thing to do.  You hear it that slightly different way, and you can tell it means about what we know as "utmost."    The notice is worded appropriately, you'd spell it the way you heard it, and would rightly think you'd conveyed its meaning.

       Similar to the person who I heard pronounce the word "awry" [uh-RYE] as [AW-ree], and from the context it was clear he knew what it meant.  He probably had read it silently, hadn't heard anyone say it, and figured he knew the pronunciation.

       So probably the reverse situation of the person who wrote "upmost."  That "upmost" person heard the word, understood it, but had never seen it in writing.  The [AW-ree] person read the word, understood it, but had never heard it spoken!
   
       

Large Finger; Small Cellphone

       A call came from my son while I was talking to a doctor during an office visit.  Among the suggested quick text responses, I touched "I can't talk right now." The phone stopped ringing as soon as I did that.

       David texted me back, and I didn't know why at the time, "To the phone?"

       Yes, iPhone 5 is small; my finger, while not large, was big enough to miss the intended message and hit one of the five others which are in pretty small print.  Only when I talked to David later did I learn that I had hit

                                        "I'm on my way!"

"Have To"; "To Have"

       I recently had occasion to recall an essay I wrote about the expression "have to."  Typically we think of the words as implying obligation, responsibility.  Something impels us because of family, job, friendship, etc.  "I have to go to work."

       When the wave of existentialism left Europe's shores and splashed down post-World War II in America, suddenly, it seemed, the words could have different meaning.  Just change the word order:  "I have work to go to."  Now the obligation from outside oneself is reduced and the sense is of something one possesses; it's a part of one's own life, an option one has chosen.

      Sometimes changing word order can change your whole philosophy.
    

"Apocalipstick"

        I learned about this rock album on the radio a couple years ago.  I never heard any of the music or words on it, but the title amuses and provokes me.

       The interviewer told Cherry Glazerr, the female singer and band leader on the recording, "I like the word play, but any other particular significance?"  She said "No."  "OK," he said, "Fine."

       But that perfect binding of the two words "apocalypse" and "lipstick" says it all, or at least suggests plenty!  The end of the world yoked to something specific, personal, intimate, feminine, the opposite of horrendous world-ending images.  Or maybe not?  Who will bring about the apocalypse?  Hmm, hmm, hmm, hmmm!   Some say after that cataclysm, evil will be defeated, good triumphant.  Possibilities?  Nice.  Challenging.  "Apocalipstick."    

Straining for a Metaphor

        Sometimes they speak of a close political competition as a horse race.  But when the race is very close, twice I've seen reporters in print calling the race "neck in neck."

       There's a disconnect there.   Maybe the reporters have never been to a horse race or seen one on TV or film.  Maybe they've only heard the expression, not actually seen it in print before.  But that's where the expression originated:  Two horses fighting it out down to the wire, necks straining in synchronous forward motion.  Only a photo-finish can decide the victor!

       Since the metaphor is a horse race, the journalist today in the L.A. Times should have had it that Benjamin Netanyahu and Benny Gantz in Israel were "neck and neck"; how else will the expression make sense?

Is Time Circular, Linear, or Cubic?

     I have two black cube radio clocks; I got them cheap.  All the language on them explaining the many buttons and switches is imprinted into the plastic itself and therefore also in black.

     It's hard to read black on black, especially when it's on all 6 sides.  One of the cubes thankfully changed to DST by itself.  The other in another room didn't budge; the next morning inscrutable symbols and words occasionally came into view as I twisted my Rubik's Cube.  I manually entered correct time.

      Connie exclaimed, "What time is it!" today as her head swiveled between a third clock and this one.  The cube had finally caught up with the signal, thus making time wrong again in the other direction.  Another clumsy resetting with Rubik. 

     The two illegible clocks serve their master, reluctantly.
 

The Duke and the Duck

     I do get mixed up on the titles in English royal families.

     The American actress married the English prince and became what I heard as "The Duke and Duck of Suchex."  Drum rolls please for Their Royal Highnesses.

     Of course, when I sorted it all out, I found their actual monikers were "The Duke and Duchess of Sussex."   Unless that was "The Duke and Duchess of Suffix."  The last word is something of a caboose to the title, isn't it, just appended to it like a suffix?

     No?  Well, all right then.

     May they live happily ever after!           

    

Should Such a Threat Be Prohibited Public Utterance?

     Writing about swastikas and Nazi salutes yesterday reminded me that gestures, symbols, words can be predictive forerunnrs of violent acts.

     And that in turn reminded me of what Stephen Smith, the executive director of the USC Shoah Foundation, wrote in the Jewish Journal of November 2-8, 2018, something that shocked me.  Speaking of those who proclaim publicly that the Holocaust never happened, Smith said:

                       "[S]peech denying the Holocaust carries with it
                        the inherent threat of the original crime itself."

"Normalizing Hate"

     That's a recent pair of words.

     Last weekend about a dozen high school kids made a large swastika out of Solo party cups,  gathered around it and gave the Nazi salute.   A photo went out on social media.

     It happened not in Nazi Gemany but "right down the street" in Costa Mesa, California, United States of America, and maybe near whereever you are too.

     Peter Levi,  regional director of the Anti-Defamation League of Orange County,  says in yesterday's L.A. Times he hasn't seen any evidence the students in the photos were Nazis or Nazi sympathizers, but said their actions "normalize hate." 

     "They normalized swastikas.  They normalized Nazi Salutes."

     "What starts as jokes then becomes discrimination," Levi said, "No hate crime murder started that day.  That person started years ago peddling in jokes and stereotypes."

    
    

Looking Askance at a TV Host's Squint

     Watching Chris Matthews on MSNBC, I noticed the eyes of the "Hardball" host narrow as he introduces a video, wanting to see the video himself and thinking he'll see it better if he squints.

     Then it occurred to me, the utterance of the word "squint" has its own squint within it.  

     The mouth is imitating the eye movements of a squint as one utters the word "squint."  Just as the eyes narrowing help bring the screen into sharper focus for the near-sighted, the lips tighten into a smaller, tense pursing as one utters the sounds of [skwihnt]. 

     I only wish Matthews would wait when he says, "Let's watch this," until the camera is off him and onto the video before he begins his squint.   Squinting is unbecoming to an anchor/host! 
     

I'd Rather Have a Twisted Tongue than One of These

     From the annals of baseball failings and ailings come this one, and you've got to wrap your tongue around it at least 7 times fast:


                     TORN GROIN
   
     "OUCH!"  And if you said it fast, your lips might also need a stretcher!
 

Whiling Away the Morning

     One day I said this to myself, and then I thought, "What a funny expression--one while after the other."


          while,
          while,
          while,
          while,
          while,

          just whiling away the morning.


     To better feel the morning going by, when you say it aloud, try to utter the breath sound [h] first and merge with the sound [w] following.  It takes a while longer to say.
                                                           
     The Proto-Indo-European root is kweie-, "to rest, be quiet."

"Feed a Cold, Starve a Fever"

    A nice antithetical device, right?  Opposites or contrasts facing one another.  Feeding versus starving; a cold's mild, a fever...?  Yet "device" is almost a demeaning word to me when it comes to literature and language.  Yes, it's a way to make words memorable.  "Ask not . . ." You can say the rest.   

     BUT REALLY, it's a way of conceiving and relating, of noticing things in tension with one another in real life, in one's experience and sight.  So "device" is small-minded compared to the capacity to see, understand, and express one's world with language that illuminates it.

     Word and Phrase Origins by Robert Hendrickson says that the Greek "father of medicine" Hippocrates is credited with the "prescription" but that "several doctors" have recently doubted its scientific truthfulness.  Personally, I'm with Hippocrates.