@ sixes & sevens

The almighty comma

It's clear to me now that I have my mother to blame for my love of language in all its aspects.

At the drop of a hat she would repeat an anecdote that stressed the importance of the lowly comma. The fact that the tale was bawdy, the punchline turning on a double-entendre, only added luster to the lesson and would always brought a gleam to her eye. Consider, she would say, what becomes of the innocuous Cole Porter standard entitled "What is this thing called love?" Add a comma, and it becomes "What is this thing called, love?" Somehow I understood the altered title was meant to allude to the sex organs.

Listening recently to an episode "Selected Shorts", I was reminded of the almighty comma during a typically stentorian reading from a work of literature. In this case, however, the narrator gave no clue to the context and I really wasn't certain which reading was correct.

Here is the same sentence punctuated in two ways with vastly different meanings:

He just wanted her lying there.

He just wanted her, lying there.

+ + + + + + + +

Postscript: Isn't the Internet marvelous? Using just this sentence I managed to find a single Google result that answered not only how to read (and punctuate) the sentence but cites the source. The story, "Red," is by Maile Meloy and collected in her Half In Love.

The episode of Selected Shorts is mentioned here. The story is read by Keith Szarabajka (right).

There's something intensely inertial about

There's something intensely inertial about being in the suburbs. I am in awe of everyone who escapes its gravitational pull.

The Wax Plate Museum

I HAVE BEEN MULLING OVER reviving my blog posts lately, but this idea was so spectacular that it rose to the top instantly.

I was trawling eBay for vintage photographs when I came across this item depicting the automobile Mexican president Obregon was riding in when an assassination attempt was made on him. It includes a partial of the license plate, a Distrito Federal plate from 1927. I was commenting to Kiki on how frustrating it was the entire plate wasn't in the photo.

Kiki's reply was that I should open a museum with replicas of famous license plates -- a "Wax Plate Museum." I could include plates from famous vehicle accidents, like James Dean's or, she added waggishly, Abraham Lincoln. I mentioned Isadora Duncan and lamented that it might be difficult to find out what the plate number was on her car. Kiki said, "Hey, they're already reproductions." Once you start thinking about this -- Albert Camus and Jayne Mansfield and Harry Chapin and Princess Grace and either of the Allman Brothers come to mind -- the possibilities seem endless.

As it happens, replica plates of the Porsche Spyder Dean was driving pop up constantly on eBay (see above). As far as I know it's the only one of its kind, so there's plenty of opportunity out there.

"Is There Anybody Out There?"

Long before I became a Facebook 'enthusiast' (something this side of an addict?) I had stopped posting to this blog. Instead I would make a note in my cellphone of something that caught my attention -- a concept, turn of phrase, language abuse, anagram or neologism -- with an idea of 'doing something about it' at a later date.

Well, it's definitely a later date now, and still no new blog posts. And these things continue to pile up in my cellphone. I expect one day it will inform me there's no more room. I've thought of spooling these out, maybe a week at a time, just to get them off my mind and into print.

A colleague from MPOW asked me recently why I hadn't posted anything here for so long, and I related this very story ... and got no sympathy at all. So I've transcribed them below. If anybody wants me to take up one of these first, let me know and I'll spin it out.

Field <=> filed <=> flied … and Fidel
Bra-chitecture
Lost in place
Pheromenon
Mañanismo
Faux-pulence
Crew d’état
Rasputation
Antiskeptic / Antisceptic
Pathways of desire
Thermal toupées
Please <=> asleep
Tenants ≠ tenets
Wheelchair-accessible ≠ wheelchair assessable (new 1/25)
Constructive selfishness: "I took out the garbage because I just couldn't stand it anymore."
erotic ≠ erratic
Phlegmatically mercurial = sullenly moody? (a certain someone) (1/30)
coupons: koopons vs. Q-pons (2/2)
clandestiny (2/6)

There but for the grace of God ...

Schadenfriede

n. The feeling of relief at the misfortune of other museums. See "A Collection of Tribal Art Is Embroiled in a Modern Family Feud".

Wharton's wordplay

By age and by education he belonged to the stout Positivist tradition, and his habit of thought had been formed in the days of the epic struggle between physics and metaphysics. But he had been, then and always, essentially a spectator, a humorous detached observer of the immense muddled variety show of life ...

This from an Edith Wharton story, "The Eyes," to which I was listening happily over a podcast of "Selected Shorts". (Luckily you can read the entire story online here.) Wharton's prose, I was reminded, has a real love of words nestled in it. Sometimes it's a bit dense, and you find yourself lulled into not listening to the words until a word or phrase suddenly leaps out at you.

In this instance I was reminded of an ancient New Yorker cartoon. ... caption, "He says he's just an observer of the passing scene."

Those months were delightful. Noyes was constantly with me, and the more I saw of him the better I liked him. His stupidity was a natural grace -- it was as beautiful, really, as his eye-lashes. And he was so gay, so affectionate, and so happy with me, that telling him the truth would have been about as pleasant as slitting the throat of some artless animal.

and a little farther on:

He shot his head out of the mist with a queer tortoise-like motion he sometimes had, and blinked approvingly at Frenham.

To this genius for capturing a turn of phrase is added a few queer word nuggets, just enough out-of-place to catch your attention but not so opaque as to cause your attention to stumble, at least not for more than a phrase or two, never for an entire sentence. (I am likely to stop the iPod or to scramble for my cell phone that I can leave myelf a note.) The trait is a variation of what reading Shakespeare becomes, where the endless variations in words (using one part of speech for another, as an adjective for a noun, or a by now obsolete form of a word) can make the reading both rewarding and frustrating at once.

Here are just two words that caught my ear in "The Eyes": dupery and hyacinthine. I'll leave it to you to find these words buried in the story.

And on and on it goes. This post was still in draft when I caught yet another Selected Shorts" podcast, reading this time from Wharton's "The Debt". Early on Wharton engages in another one of her sidelong characterizations. The victim this time, ultimately to find retribution, is one Galen Dregde:

He was as inexpressive as he is to-day, and yet oddly obtrusive: one of those uncomfortable presences whose silence is an interruption.

Virtually lint free

Virtually lint free
Originally uploaded by sixes & sevens

This latest bit of advertising fluffery has me particularly baffled.

First off, what does 'virtually' actually mean in this case: How little lint qualifies as 'virtually free'? Do the Consumer Protection folks have standards for lint content in toilet paper? Would I even notice if it were 'slightly less than viturally lint free'?

And since when has lint been a problem in toilet paper? I suspect that it's also 'virtually twig free' too.

New York doctor (blue base variant)

New York doctor (blue base variant)
 

Some of my plate collecting friends think me some kind of expert on New York State license plates. And I'll admit I know a fair amount about them, still far short of being an expert. The plate above proves the point.

Among the many types of plates handed out in New York State to professional employees is the doctor or 'MD' plate. New York has issued plates for doctors officially since 1939 and probably unofficially for a few years before that. The 'blue base' like the one above was issued between 1966 and 1973. By 1966 there a lot of doctor plates being issued. Until 1966 most base plates were valid for one or two years. The blue base was the first to stay on the road for seven years.

In order to accommodate the demand of the multi-year plate, several numbering systems were used:

• MD prefix (MD-1234)
• MD suffix (1234-MD)
• MD infix (2MD-345, 12MD-34 and 123MD-4)

We know this to be the types issued because the New York Department of Motor Vehicles published lists of all plates issued and their county of issue. The last known list issued during this period, dated 1971, has the registration 825MD-9 as the highest issued in the MD sequence. It would be easy to assume that this sequence would continue to its natural end, 999MD-9 and still provide enough plates. What's more, all the plates from 100MD-1 up are identified in the list simply as "Albany Surplus".

That would be the end of the story, a fairly dull one at that, were it not for the plate that came up on eBay and that I nabbed (for a penny, by the way: there are still 'bargains' to be had).

I've gotta put these thoughts in a post if only to get them out of my mind ... :

dour - pour - sour

You gotta love English for its aggravating inconsistencies. I think this lodged in my head after a discussion about how the first word in the list is usually pronounced door (which, now that I look at it, is a different word pronounced a different way, i.e., dore) and not dower to rhyme with sour or hour.

The second of these thoughts comes at it from a different angle: how the same word might be pronounced in any of several ways.

you're: ewer? yer? yore?

This may have come by analogy with your, a rhyming entry akin to pour above. I can't say with any certainty which of these pronunciations I use most frequently. If you check the different audio guides in Dictionary.com you'll hear a subtle difference. I expect I pronounce it ewer more than most people I know. But is some of this regional or just affected?

To the sound of gnashing teeth

From the Daily News letters to the editor, July 31, 2008:

Vote? Why Vote?
Bronx: Why do we even need an election? Why not just coronate the guy now.

And why don't I just crown * you now, guy?

* Informal  To hit on the head.