A vacation from ourselves

We're staying on vacation this week.

Well, not that we've been on vacation, but we're not actually "going" anywhere either. We're taking vacation, but staying home. It's your classic "staycation" or "holistay."

Anyway, posts may be even rarer than usual around here.



tagged: staycation, holistay, vacation, Seinfeld, mustache

hokey pokey

A few weeks ago I received the following email from my little brother in North Dakota (or as I call it, NoDak):

We still haven't had any snow since May, but I'm not ready to rule it out.

I raised the question to Dad about the origin of the phrase "rule of thumb" when you guys were here for G's Baptism. Since then I have been exposed to another phrase that I need help with.

"Don't buy a pig in a poke"

I understand this to mean: Don't buy some thing (or idea) until you know exactly what you are getting."

But what is the connection?

Ah yes, perplexing questions indeed. Luckily I was well equipped (or at least quipped) to answer.

Here's the email I sent in reply:

Re: Your question about the "Pig in a Poke."

As you may know, I'm a bit of an expert on word origins. You might say I'm a cunning linguist. Anyway, I thought I'd finally respond by bringing my considerable brain power to bear on your question.

Like many modern expressions, the phrase "don't buy a pig in a poke" is a linguistic hand-me-down from our Middle Ages English forefathers (and foremothers).

Back in jolly old England, a "poke" was a kind of sack used generally to carry things around. Your typical lower-level medieval henchman, for example, might use it to carry around loot from his latest pillaging. A Shakespearean actor might use it for the conveyance of quill pens or frilly collars or Lee Press On Nails.

Serfs and peasants were big users of pokes. Dentally-challenged farmers would use them to carry potatoes, cabbages and other produce to market in the local village where they would barter and trade for necessities brought by dentally-challenged English merchants -- things like cloth, tools, deodorant and the like.

This was a pretty good system, and worked fairly well as a rule -- so long as everyone followed the unwritten social contracts of middle-age England. The problem, of course, arose when certain not-so-savory individuals tried to game the system.

These individuals, these rubes (who, we can assume, were the forefathers of energy company executives and mortgage loan brokers) often tried to cheat the unsuspecting peasant out of hard-earned cabbage by trying to pass off a nasty, feral cat as a nice tasty pig.

So the trusting peasant would trade his cabbage for a "pig in a poke" expecting a nice dinner of ham and back bacon, only to find a big sour puss in the bag when he got it home.

Of course, the English peasant being no fool, word quickly got around that you shouldn't "buy a pig in a poke." You should first look in the bag and make sure you're getting the pork and not the shaft.

And, as proverbs tend to do, the advice came to mean you should seriously look into any statement made by sellers of pork (including energy company execs and mortgage loan brokers).

And that's... One To Grow On^®

tagged: language, England, pig in a poke, Skilling, idiom, feral cat

Friday Blogthing: Colonized

Excuse me, I just need to go wash my hands...

1,977,360How Many Germs Live On Your Keyboard?
tagged: Friday, blogthing, keyboard, germs,, clean, quiz, blog, meme

Bullitt list 07.30.08

Today's Category: Things You Shouldn't Have Done

• Promised your neighbor you'd build their fence
  
• Tried to eat, in one day, a number of pounds of food equal to your age
  
• Casually tampered with the laws of space-time
  
• Pissed off your publicist/only friend in the universe
  
• Trampled that toad
  
  
  tagged: Bullit, list, fence, toad, links, Steve McQueen

YouTube Tuesday: Canadian ringer

I've been wondering about Canadians lately, seems like they're doing some kind of oddball stuff (not that I, as an American, really have room to talk).

Anyway, sometime the oddballs can be pretty damned entertaining. Like this Canadian street performer.



tagged: ring, street performer, artist, Canada, YouTube, movie, video

First degree battery

I've been intrigued by the Tesla Motors eponymous electric car since the project was announced ages ago.

In case you've been living in your mother's basement for the last five years, the Tesla is an all-electric car that essentially runs off of power supplied by laptop computer batteries.

And while the knock on all-electric cars had been that they're underpowered and unsexy, the Tesla Roadster is based on a Lotus Elise chassis and can go from 0-60 in about five seconds.

Here's a little more info from my good friend Jay Leno:



So anyway, the point is that the car is cool. Not sure about the feasibility of driving it around KC in the dead of winter. Seems like the batteries might not survive the minus 10 ba-billion degrees average temperature. Ah well, room for improvement I guess.

What I really wanted to pass on (in case you haven't read) is that over the weekend the Tesla hit another milestone in that all American cars face -- it's first road accident.

Evidently, the driver was out for a spin when he was rear ended (since it was an electric car, it may have been the shocker) by another vehicle, thus causing a reaction whereby the Tesla hit the car in front of it (a Mercedes, I think).


And I gotta say, judging from the pictures, it appears the Tesla Roadster came through it in pretty good shape.

It's a good sign for the future of transportation. As soon as I make my third million dollars, I'll buy a Tesla and let you guys drive it around and see for yourself.

Until then, Tesla continues to rule.




tagged: Nicola Tesla, Testla Roadster, crash, Hand Me Down World, Jay Leno, electric, environmentalist

Random photo XII: Flower fountain

I'm liking the new strip mall at 115th (or whatever) and Nall. It has more of a small town, almost a left bank feel to it. Don't get me wrong, it's still all evil and corporate just like everything else in JoCo.

But at least it has a nice atmosphere, aided by a small pedestrian park and these flower fountains...


tagged: flowers, fountain, Left Bank, JoCo, strip mall

Carefully taught

I overheard an unpleasant conversation recently that made me think of these lyrics from South Pacific.

You've got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You've got to be taught
From year to year,
It's got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught

Interesting that Rogers and Hammerstein wrote this in 1949, and here we are nearly 60 years later and some people still haven't learned. Or maybe they've learned too well.

tagged: race, prejudice, South Pacific, Rogers and Hammerstein

YouTube Tuesday: Dimitri the stud

This has been around for a while, but that doesn't change the fact that it's pure comic genius.


This is actual audio from an actual phone call (the video is a lip-synced version). Here's a little more background ganked from the YouTube entry:

A woman and her friend were out one night in the SF Marina district, hanging outside one of the bars trying to find a cab. One of the girl's, Olga, ends up meeting this guy Dimitri and they talk for at the most for 2 minutes. She hands him her business card and says call me.

This was the actual voicemail that Dimitri left Olga, accompanied by Eric (brotha E) Anderson's interpretive reenactment. Billed by many as, The Douchiest Phone Message In History.

And here's the "very elegant" Part II:


tagged: movie, YouTube, video, Dimitri, stud, phone call, voice mail

Mac, Firefox... little help here

Okay you smart, computery types, I need a little technical help.

Here's the set-up... I have a middle-aged iMac G5 running MacOS X Leopard (fully updated). I have an Apple Mighty Mouse (with the track nipple). And I recently updated to the latest version of Firefox.

Except now, my mouse functionality is somewhat fucked up. I can still move around the screen. The scrolling track nipple works correctly. No problems clicking (right, left, side buttons, etc.) But there's one highly annoying problem that's really starting to piss me off.

I used to be able to left-click, hold and drag to select a group of text on the browser screen, or left-click, hold and drag the scrolling bubble (you know, the one in the right-hand border of the window?) to scroll the web page.

But now, whenever I try to left-click, hold and drag anything, it just moves the entire browser window around on my screen.

I've looked through my Firefox preferences and mouse preferences to try to determine if I have somehow inadvertently screwed up a setting somewhere, but I can't find anything that looks like it would control this behavior.

So, WTF?! Has anyone else run into this? Is this a flaw in Firefox, or (more likely) pilot error on my part.

And if it is my fault, how in the heck to I fix it. Because, like I said, it's annoying the hell out of me.

tagged: Apple, iMac, Mighty Mouse, Firefox, bug, Leopard, MacOS, problem