Assorted Confessions

(Quasi anonymous)

 I write e-mails to my father because I know he hardly ever checks them and I don't want to talk to him, but by sending the e-mail, I have an excuse ready if he phones and asks why I don't stay in touch more. -- G.L.

I like to put stock images of racial minorities or less than particularly attractive people in ad layouts just so I can enjoy watching my clients try to come up with polite ways of asking for "something different."  --B.N.



When frustrated or tired or just need a break at work--I play a game of online Freecell. If I solve the game in under 90 moves, I feel refreshed.  If not, I play again until I do. --K.S.

Every couple of weeks or so, I go to the Deli at lunchtime and get an overstuffed Rueben on a hero with chips on the side and a large Strawberry Banana Smoothie.  Then I lock my office door and become reacquainted with the sofa in my office.-- R.K.

I double (and even triple) dip my chips. --T.P.

I always have to pee when I go in a swimming pool, and I do.--J.J.

Every year I tell people I voted, but I never have. --T.G.

A woman sat next to me on the train one morning and proceeded to engage in two (count em-two!)  very loud, very long and purely gossipy phone conversations.  She then put the phone down on the seat between us and got busy on her iPad. As she tapped away on her screen, I took one section of my newspaper and laid it down on top of her phone. When she later reached over for the phone, I enjoyed every second of her rising desperation as she searched frantically through her handbag and under her seat before I felt satisfied enough to come to her rescue and produce the offending device. Did she suspect me of a deliberate deception?  I'm not sure, but I hope so. --R.C.

James Jamerson.
Died 30 years ago today.

It was my dear old Friend Jeremy who alerted my ears to the genius of Jamerson.
I've written about him before, so I'd probably just be repeating myself if I tried to add more.  But for those who love and love to play the music that came out of that basement studio in that little house in Detroit where perhaps no less than a hundred masterpieces were created by an unsung, uncredited, underpaid group of musicians--  the unmistakable and irreplaceable James Jamerson has a special place in our hearts.  Today I'll think of him with a mix of sorrow and gladness--and a renewed appreciation for a man who with one finger on four strings made the world dance and sing with a sound that will live forever.

The Emperor circa 1902

EUPHEMISTIC (saving face) QUOTE OF THE DAY.

August 14, 1945. Emperor Hirohito informed his subjects of their country's unconditional surrender (after two atomic bombs, the loss of 3m people and with invasion looming) with the words, “The war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage.”


DRIFTER'S RANT OF THE DAY: 
I have issues with those who use the word "issues" inappropriately.  And I find it "offensive" when those who have issues with my issues concerning their inappropriate "issues" usage deem my  attitude inappropriate. I therefore propose that any and all use of the word "issues" be confined solely to use as a synonym for "topics"; that any and all usage of the words "appropriate" and "inappropriate" be limited to discussions of etiquette at formal dinner parties; and that the word "offensive" be banned unless used in the context of Sport.  

Flavor of the Day.
Beer Ice Cream. Really?  Really! 

HAPPY LITERARY NEWS OF THE DAY 
Bernie is Back!  

The incorrigible, incorruptible, indefatigable and incomparable Bernie Gunther has returned to fill us in on those middle war years that in eight previous books have been shrouded in mystery--despite the occasional mention that suggested it was a time too horrific to recount.  The Phillip Marlow-esque Nazi loathing German ex-Kripo cop who made his entrance in the 30s and 40s with the Berlin Noir trilogy and then continued into the 50's and 60's in five subsequent books as he made his way to Argentina, Cuba, The U.S. and then back to Europe again to relive it all under interrogation by a cacophony of cold war bureaucrats is still trying to do the right thing --this time while officially running a propaganda  errand for Joseph Goebbels, who he refers to as Joey the Crip-- in this latest by Phillip Kerr.  Kerr here seems to be uncharacteristically willing to let his narrative momentum stall a bit in favor of historical accuracy--and he's become a bit careless and lazy in spots where the language drifts into cliche--but damn, he's been doing this now for nine books and lord knows how he kept it fresh after the first three.  I think Kerr is now more interested in getting the history right  and he's clearly put in the hours at the archives-- and if you don't get too frustrated trying to keep track of all the different players, it moves along briskly with Gunther's voice setting the moral tone of disinterested disgust at the human animal at its most depraved.  Few historians can match Kerr's ability to examine the emotional and psychic toll that war takes on those who experience it first hand--and with Kerr that bell tolls on almost every page.

The slaughter of over 21,000 Polish military personnel and untold numbers of other luckless innocents by the Soviets (or was it the Germans?) is the context this time around, and it's a dark, chilling and all too sickening tale despite the pleasure of Bernie's laconic and existentialist comic/cosmic company. The cover art maintains the look of many previous ones with the Femme Fatale in prominent position--despite the fact that the woman (the only woman in fact) doesn't enter the stage till the the final act.   Ah, those sly marketing folks.

For more on Katyn Massacre:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre

DEAR SAM STOP HELD ON LONG AS WE COULD STOP LOSING $ FAST STOP THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES STOP YOUR FRIENDS IN INDIA 

Samuel Morse had a good run, but it's all over but for the marginal service here and there kept alive for mostly novelty purposes.  Western Union abandoned its telegram service in the US in 2006; and this weekend India, bastion of the last great telegraphy service follows suit. It is not quite the end – heritage services continue in many places and telegrams are still used for specific purposes in some countries (in Argentina, you are supposed to resign from your job by telegram) – but the final STOP is looming.

Reading this story, it occurred to me that Twitter is the new Telegraph.  Short, mostly declarative messages designed to reach intended recipient with the greatest of ease and speed. Went searching for memorable or infamous telegrams and found a few familiar ones and a few surprises along the way.

"HOW OLD CARY GRANT?" a reporter cabled the actor. 

"OLD CARY GRANT FINE. HOW YOU?" he replied.

Victor Hugo was curious about sales of latest book so sent message "?" 
The publisher wired back: "!".

"EVERYTHING IS QUIET. THERE WILL BE NO WAR. I WISH TO RETURN," cabled Frederic Remington to newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst in 1897."YOU FURNISH THE PICTURES, AND I'LL FURNISH THE WAR," Hearst  (apocryphally?)  replied.... Print the legend.

The Champ to MLK in Birmingham County Jail.

 "STREETS FULL OF WATER. PLEASE ADVISE," cabled Robert Benchley to  New Yorker editor Harold Ross on his first trip to Venice. 

Australian comic writer Lennie Lower made use of the condensed form when resigning after an argument with the publishing company that ran his columns by writing: "UPSTICK JOB ARSEWISE". 

February 28th, 1946: Ho Chi Minh, the leader of North Vietnam, writes to U.S. President Truman requesting support against French reconquest of Indochina after WWII.

March 9th, 1965: Jackie Robinson sent this telegram to President Lyndon B. Johnson, telling him to intervene in Selma, Alabama, where peaceful marchers were beaten and even clubbed to death by police.

Dorothy Parker wrote to her friend Mary Anderson (playwright Robert Anderson's wife) on occasion of birth of her baby: DEAR MARY, WE ALL KNEW YOU HAD IT IN YOU. 

Parker was also said to have wired her editor at The New Yorker who was pestering her for an overdue magazine piece while Parker was honeymooning in Europe:  TOO FUCKING BUSY AND VICE VERSA.

And finally, Samuel Morse sent what is thought to be the first telegram, on May 24 1844.  from Washington to Baltimore saying: 

That's me and my staff this week.  Details too odious to share, but suffice to say we're all fried.  Next post will have to wait till next week.  Enjoy the (relative to last week) arctic weekend.

The noun and verb Tweet,  (in the social-networking sense) has just been added to the OED. This breaks at least one OED rule, namely that a new word needs to be current for ten years before consideration for inclusion. But it seems to be catching on.--John Simpson  Chief Editor, Oxford English Dictionary

Other New OED entries in latest 2013 Edition include:

Big Data:  "data of a very large size, typically to the extent that its manipulation and management present significant logistical challenges".
Crowdsourcing: getting other people to do your work for you, origin credited to a 2006 article by Jim Howe in Wired 
E-reader:  both a device on which you read ebooks, and a human being who habitually reads such books. (Why the habitually?)
Mouseover: when you move your mouse-pointer over something on a computer screen, and something else (text or an image) pops up. (Seems a little late in the game for this one now that "touch" screens have all but eliminated mice) 
Stream (the verb)  [with object] Computing transmit (audio or video data) continuously, so that the parts arriving first can be viewed or listened to while the remainder is downloading.

There's also now a new definition for an old word:  "geekery". Now the OED allows it as "obsessive devotion to or knowledge of a particular (specified) subject or pursuit". But the word has existed since at least 1947 to mean "the bizarre or grotesque acts performed by a carnival or circus geek".

A Wing(suit) and a Prayer

to have a cow:  popularly associated with Bart from The Simpsons, but  OED entry traces the phrase back to 1959. 

handyman special: euphemistic term in reference to house/building in need of major renovations--with earliest evidence from 1938. 

wingsuit...as worn by this intrepid gravity resistant thrill-seeker. 

 But what intrigued me most is that the majority of the rest of the 2013 tweaks focus on words containing hand, head and heart — a mighty 2,875 in total including “headfuck” and “knobhead”.

Following from :  http://public.oed.com/the-oed-today/recent-updates-to-the-oed/june-2013-update/a-heads-up-for-the-june-2013-oed-release

The entry for "head" itself shows 126 different meanings of the word in all sorts of contexts: “an accumulation of foam or froth on the top of certain drinks, esp. beer”, “a headline in a newspaper”; “a headmaster or headmistress”; “a promontory, a headland, a cape”; “a tidal bore”; and so on.

Some variant spellings of head thru the centuries

Heads Up.

With "head" we remain in the big leagues as far as its phrases too: the total roll-call is 112: to go over a person’s head (1909 onwards, originally from the United States); to keep one’s head above water takes us right back to Shakespeare’s time (1608-); to bring (something) to a head crops up a hundred years before that, in 1566, in a description of how to treat a boil on a horse.  two heads are better than one (1546 onwards) and the list goes on and on...

Also notable in latest batch of additionsincludes "dad dancing" (dancing poorly, as fathers allegedly do), "payday loan" (now depressingly topical but first recorded in 1937),  transphobic ("hostile towards transsexual or transgender people") and Fiscal Cliff (for which I'll spare you the depressing details)  

Trio of Triolets

All those period dramas on that PBS show
all those cousins and aunts (one bad niece)

Is the footman to blame? Does the Governess know?
All those period dramas on that PBS show
The rich dress for dinner the poor knead their dough
hey, that one looks just like John Cleese

All those period dramas on that PBS show

all those cousins and aunts (one bad niece)

Bonjour and welcome to the Tour de France

Where they pedal (are you kidding?) three weeks!

All there for the chance (excepting for Lance)

Bonjour and welcome to the Tour de France
By kilometer ninety I’m in a Alpe d’Huez trance

And how (without doping) can they climb all those peaks?

Bonjour and welcome to the Tour de France

Where they pedal (are you kidding?) three weeks!

I lie beside you every night

thinking 'funny how love can abide'

For as we slumber might makes right

I lie beside you every night

 and grow chilly while you're warm and tight

Cause you pull all the covers over on to your side

I lie beside you every night

thinking 'funny how love can abide'

Walt and Ub.  

Mickey Mouse was created by and was the sole vision of Disney’s number one animator, Ub Iwerks. Iwerks created hundreds of "Disney" characters and was known as the fastest animator in the business. He single-handedly animated Mickey’s first short film, Plane Crazy (1928), in only two weeks. (That’s 700 drawings a day.) But  Disney did make a contribution– when sound films began later that year, he was Mickey’s voice. Iwerks eventually left Disney in a contract dispute and started his own studio.
And had he the business acumen of his former boss, we'd all be taking our kids to IwerksWorld today. And he was more than an animation innovator:  See:   http://www.cartoonbrew.com/disney/5-reasons-why-mickey-mouse-co-creator-ub-iwerks-is-awesome-81999.html


During the American Revolution, the Continental Congress (or the ‘United States in Congress Assembled’) chose Peyton Randolph as the first President.  Randolph was succeeded in 1781 by John Hancock, who presided over independence from Great Britain . After Washington defeated the British at the Battle of Yorktown, Hancock sent him a note of congratulations. Washington’s reply was addressed to “The President of the United States”. Eight years later,  Washington became America’s first popularly elected President – but strictly speaking, the FIFTEENTH !

Sushi does not mean "raw fish", it translates to "sour rice", or more specifically, vinegared rice.
And for those of you (like me) who have made Sushi at home, you know that getting the rice right is the tricky part. 

“Mind your Ps and Qs.”

Is it...

A.  A warning to watch out for cheating bartenders who would short you when you ordered a pint or a quart?

B.  From the French “pieds” (feet) and “queus” (wigs), or watch yourself from head to toe?

C.  The master printer reminding his young typesetters to distinguish between the letter P and the letter Q, which are virtually indistinguishable in lower case? 

I've been to three sources and found nothing definitive. The author of the Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1898) prefers the interpretation from the French dancing master’s “pieds” and “queues.”

But I like  the printing shop origin. A typesetter in those days had to arrange the type in rows in mirror image, and a lower case (p) and a lower case (q),  are the backward versions of each other. Thus,  very easy to confuse. But since I can't find any conclusive answer to this one, you can pick your own favorite. 

The Word "MayDay" comes from the French M'aidez, or "Help Me."

Marconi

 The Oxford English Dictionary says it is a phonetic reproduction of the French that has become an international signal of distress. The International Radio Telegraph Convention of 1927 lists 51 Rules, and this is one of them. So the word “mayday” was officially born in 1927.

The correct French would actually be “Aidez-moi!”, but apparently, since Marconi was Italian and the International Radio Telegraph Convention was held in Washington--if there were any offended French delegates, they neglected to speak up, and so the bad grammar stuck.

Sunday Times Crossword was a rewarding challenge (though I suspect sis Debby had it sewn up before her first cup of coffee got cold)  Above is Rex Parker's  http://rexwordpuzzle.blogspot.com solution. Since there is no "cents" symbol on the Querty keyboard, he used the image of a spider. And like Rex, it took me a while to realize after getting the dollar and cents symbol trick that so many of the answers were money related.  Very clever stuff--and I remain in awe of those who can construct such complex edifices of symmetrical logophilic delight. 

New York Tri-State area heat advisory is in effect through Tuesday evening,  Temperatures will be in the mid 90's with heat index values that make if feel like  100 or higher.

Those required to be outdoors are advised to drink plenty of water, seek shade when possible, avoid heavy exertion, take frequent breaks, avoid over-eating and refrain from drinking alcoholic beverages.

Those working in air conditioned offices and buildings should be grateful and stop whining and complaining about the heat...now!

Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get.
Mark Twain 

It ain't the heat, it's the humility. 

Was going to say a few words about Trayvon Martin/Zimmerman trial verdict. But then I read TeddyVegas post on the subject.   I'll sign off with recommendation that you transfer your Adrift on Driftwood time today to Teddy's Random Acts of Commentary...with yesterdays post linked here...

http://www.randomactsofcommentary.com/2013/07/oj-zimmerman-rodney-brawley.html

Still Typing... 

...with some examples of typographical design for various purposes...including the purpose of providing content for yet another post requiring only copy and paste skills. 

By hand and in chalk!

New Jersey Performing Arts Center building.

The Tragic Evening Broadside

What's with the Camel cigarettes disclaimer at the bottom? 

According to Delbert, he gave John Lennon
 a Blues Harp lesson during this gig.  

It's the almost perfect symmetry that grabs me in this one.

Frederic W. Goudy (Bloomington, Illinois, March 8, 1865 – Marlborough-on-Hudson, May 11, 1947) was a prolific American type designer whose typefaces include Copperplate Gothic, Kennerly, and Goudy Old Style.  (wikipedia)


I work with a number of experienced professional designers trained in the art of typography and I'm always amazed at how adept they are at understanding how the choice of font, type size and color can influence the way we process and respond to a text.  

And since, once again, I have nothing of my own to post today, I'm passing along the short video below which, despite multiple historical inaccuracies (Gutenberg was a giant, but he did not create typography--The first printing press was invented in China in the late 6th century CE. By 700 the first printed newspaper, created with woodblock printing, was available in Youzhou (today’s Beijing). A Chinese commoner named Pi Sheng invented movable earthenware type in the early decades of the 11th century.  And Juan Gonzalez de Mendoza, in a book published in 1585, states that Gutenberg got his idea for moveable type after seeing books that came to him through Russia and Arabia) is at least mostly true (according to our in-house typography guru who helped educate me with corrections above) and  pretty cleverly executed. 

 The Write Habits...

 Anthony Trollope wrote for three hours every morning before going to his job at the post office

William Faulkner wrote As I Lay Dying in the afternoons before clocking in on the night shift as a supervisor at a university power plant.

Joseph Heller churned out magazine advertising by day and wrote Catch-22 in the evenings, sitting at the kitchen table in his Manhattan apartment. “I spent two or three hours a night on it for eight years,” he said. “I gave up once and started watching television with my wife. Television drove me back to Catch-22.”

Charles Ives

The composer Charles Ives was an insurance company Chief executive by day and devoted evenings and weekends to his scores.

Wallace Stevens, an insurance lawyer, scribbled scraps of verse at the office and had his secretary type them up. “I find that having a job is one of the best things in the world that could happen to me,” 

René Descartes liked to sleep until midmorning, then linger in bed, thinking and writing, until 11 a.m. or so. Voltaire also spent the morning in bed, reading and dictating new work to one of his secretaries.


Marcel Proust wrote exclusively in bed, lying with his body almost completely horizontal and his head propped up by two pillows.  “After ten pages I am shattered,” he wrote.

William Styron would sleep until noon, then read and think in bed for another hour or so before lunch with his wife at 1:30. (He didn’t begin writing until around 4 in the afternoon.) Patricia Highsmith also eased herself into work mode by sitting in bed, "surrounded by cigarettes, ashtray, matches, a mug of coffee, a doughnut and an accompanying saucer of sugar." 

Edith Wharton wrote in bed in the mornings, as did Edith Sitwell, who said, “All women should have a day a week in bed." Sitwell would sometimes stay there all morning and through the afternoon—until finally, she said, “I am honestly so tired that all I can do is to lie on my bed with my mouth open.”

Somerset Maugham got a head start on his morning writing session by thinking of his first two sentences while soaking in the tub. The composer Benjamin Britten bookended his work sessions with baths—a cold one in the morning and a hot one in the evening. 

While working on his scripts, Woody Allen uses the shower as a creative stimulant. 

“The shower is particularly good in cold weather. This sounds so silly, but I’ll be working dressed as I am and I’ll want to get into the shower for a creative stint. So I’ll take off some of my clothes and make myself an English muffin or something and try to give myself a little chill so I want to get in the shower. I’ll stand there with steaming hot water coming down for thirty minutes, forty-five minutes, just thinking out ideas and working on plot. Then I get out and dry myself and dress and then flop down on the bed and think there.”

Bathing was essential to Beethoven's creative process as well. He liked to stand at his washstand and pour pitchers of water on his hands, bellowing up and down the scale or humming loudly to himself, then pacing about the room and pausing to jot down ideas.

Benjamin Franklin, by contrast, preferred a daily “air bath.” In his time, baths in cold water were considered a tonic, but Franklin believed the cold was too much of a shock to the system. "I have found it much more agreeable to my constitution to bathe in another element, I mean cold air," he wrote in a letter. "With this view I rise early almost every morning, and sit in my chamber without any clothes whatever, half an hour or an hour, according to the season, either reading or writing."

After lunch, Victor Hugo embarked on a two-hour walk or performed a series of strenuous exercises on the beach. Hugo would "run until sweat breaks out, strip naked, jump off a rock into the waves, then lie down in the sun to dry."

Franz Kafka devoted 10 minutes to a series of swings, stretches, and body-weight exercises that he performed naked at the window; he did an additional 10 minutes after he had finished writing. P. G. Wodehouse employed a similar regimen, performing a series of 12 callisthenic exercises every morning after waking.

But the most extreme example is the French composer Erik Satie, who each morning would walk from his home in a Paris suburb to the city's Montmartre district, a distance of about 6 miles. There he would visit friends, work on his compositions in cafés, eat dinner, and go out drinking—often missing the last train home, in which case he would walk back again, slipping into bed just before sunrise (and then getting up and walking back a few hours later). The scholar Roger Shattuck once proposed that Satie’s unique sense of musical beat, and his appreciation of “the possibility of variation within repetition,” could be traced to this “endless walking back and forth across the same landscape day after day.”

Updike

 William Faulkner: "I write when the spirit moves me, and the spirit moves me every day." George Balanchine: "My muse must come to me on union time." Chuck Close: "Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work." John Updike: "I’ve never believed that one should wait until one is inspired because I think that the pleasures of not writing are so great that if you ever start indulging them you will never write again." George Gershwin said that if he waited for inspiration, he would compose at most three songs a year.

Just about all the above was collected from the book:
Daily Rituals:  How Artists Work by Mason Currey.  
The rest was from hyperlinks too numerous to recall and if I had better work habits, I'd go back search for them.  But I don't.