and he mentioned that old saying, or combo of sayings for a mixed metaphor smorgasbord, “the early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.” They were discussing bitcoin and whether it was toast (I thought it was virtual currency) or not, and then it turned out it was either the early bird, or the first mouse, and only time will tell.
Indeed, as is often the case. Thank you pundits.
But what if the perspective is all wrong, and you are the second worm, or the first cheese? Being an early worm must be a bad plan. But is one a worm, a bird, a mouse or some nice tasty gruyere? Should we be sly like a fox, happy as a clam (how are we to know this is true? did they fill out a survey? love the cold water, don’t mind being boiled and eaten?), or busy as the proverbial bee?
Dickens rants in two separate novels about the inappropriateness of being compared to an insect that lives in a massive hive, with particularly good effect in Our Mutual Friend, in which the disillusioned Eugene, made into a lawyer by his autocratic father, can barely bring himself to move a limb so phoney and materialistic is the world into which he has been born. [Yes, in 1865 it was already thus, ed.] Indeed the novel begins in the home of the Veneerings, who turn out to be just that: veneer.
But running in horror away from the fact that our unbalanced economic edifice has been many centuries in the making, and drifting comfortably back into language, having attacked the metaphor and/or simile (as different as like and as, or as like as as and like) I must leap to its defence, as it would be impossible to convey abstract ideas without it.
Constantly stuffing our experience into a narrative, hoping it might all make sense, or at least be a good coherent humorous bedtime story, we are always expressing new things with the tools we used to express old things. A new word is meaningless without a definition made up of old ones. Thus we are always using apples to describe oranges, and metaphors to describe real stuff.
Doomed though we are then to speak around things and never about them quite, let me nonetheless use words to suggest that you have a whale of a day and I hope nothing looks like a dog’s breakfast except the dog’s breakfast, and that whatever happens is the cat’s meow!
from one bad apple to the whole damn pie-
mmmm … pie …
Origin unknown? So I can make up my own possibility. From the Southern Belle era- sit her down, fan her, and bring a toddy quick.
Okay, this is from an even weirder web site, where the guy speaks in initials, but it turns out my original search was cursory at best. A provenance has been found, or he calls it a pedigree, so let the dogs have it:
Fantod
Yes! The quintessential DFW [apparently David Foster Wallace, a modern American novelist, who checked out young, not quite 50, in 2008] word. Wallace owns this word. As in “the howling fantods,” one of his most brilliant and instantly recognizable turns-of-phrase. I had always assumed that fantods were basically like the heebie-jeebies. But here’s the etymology and definition from the OED:
fantod [? An unmeaning formation suggested by FANTASTIC, FANTASY, etc.: cf. fantigue.] A crotchety way of acting; a fad.
Crotchety, huh? Interesting. The first recorded use is from 1839: “You have got strong symptoms of the fantods.” Elsewhere it’s cited as a name given to the fidgets of officers on a ship or “a fit of the sulks or other slight indisposition.”
I had also always assumed that this was one of those totally obsolete words that hadn’t seen common usage for hundreds of years, until Wallace single-handedly resuscitated it. Wrong. It actually has a strong pedigree in American literature — Mark Twain used it in Huckleberry Finn: “These was all nice pictures,… but I didn’t somehow seem to take to them, because… they always gave me the fan-tods.” In this passage Huck is describing pictures drawn by a girl who died at the age of 15. Which, I think, jives quite nicely with a general sense of the heebie-jeebies.
If nothing else, the use of this word places Wallace squarely in the tradition of quintessentially American literature.
His introduction is kind of hilarious if you are into obscure funny academics who think words of the day are interesting … hmnn …
his blog is called The Good Word, but it certainly doesn’t appear biblical. He seems to have been working on a unified theory of Phillip Roth novels. Why? she pointless wailed into cyber space.
Happy π day!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi_Day
wish i had some lysergic laying around about now, hesitation would not be a factor.
So if you had some, would you want to come bang on this piano in Wisconsin?
It would look more like this to you though.
none for me, but can i be your guide?
…sigh… …
again
blueberry for me.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/edysicecream/pie-and-ice-cream-pairings-youve-never-considered
turn it up to eleven.
i wish i would have made a pie. i have some homemade pastry dough in the freezer, and plenty of apples. but i did smoke a corned beef brisket today. right now it’s breaking down into strings over cabbage, celery, and onions in a stock pot on the stove. the aroma is amazing and i am getting impatient.
I was going to chime in about pi day. I had no idea until my delightful daughter emailed me. She says next year is particularly exciting as it will be 3.14.15
mmmm … brisket
and did i mention my former secret ingredient – saved dill pickle brine?
we do eat a lot of pickles around here.
where’s this Xty? clue – there is a well known lighthouse here…
have to go. check out this gallery.
http://www.patstewartgalleries.com/gallery2.html
Here’s an interesting post from a blog I sometimes read. The legal hassles of running a high profile blog, and a web savvy response. Good stuff.
MMM Receives Legal Threats – Great Lawyer Wanted
Thanks EO, i bookmarked that site.
The best place to start is probably the…uh…Start Here tab, but then I guess that was pretty self explanatory. 🙄
tunes while you surf
I like to start here, but then, I’m just funny that way.
All The Posts Since The Beginning Of Time
Here’s another one in the same vein. I would classify these as “frugality/early retirement” blogs. Frugality is not for everyone, but you never know if you might be able to steal a good idea here or there. Every little bit helps.
Retire by 40
The refreshing thing is that the amount of time spent talking about how “they” are out to kill/enslave us all is…ah…pretty much zero.
as is customary, please turn dial past 10.
b cuz you are all full of shit.
i’m out, gotta re-charge, didn’t want you to think you killed the thread Sir Woodpecker…love you guys, (gal) , till tomorrow.
Not sure who was full of shit, I cheated and found it was Peggy’s Cove, and Mr Moustache wants me to get rid of my cell phone! I hate it when I get proper advice. But that blog looks like an excellent read – and a kindred spirit in stubbornness it looks like with his perfect response to pinhead legal threats. When my sister-in-law’s life took an unfortunate turn and she found herself the sole breadwinner and in a legal battle from hell with her ex, who left her with three young kids and a mortgage and a heap of lies, and tried to get alimony, I remember her saying that what you had to do was keep working and not buy anything you didn’t need. And it worked. I would have had to murder the fellow, as my hubby is well aware. It is not until death do us part around here, it is no one is getting out of this alive.
And Good Morning! It was above freezing this dawn! I know it is going to get cold again, but winter’s back has been broken finally.
I don’t know why the sigh cartoon didn’t post – oddly, I can see it in the media gallery section in the basement of the blog. It does look like me, although somehow I always identified more with Linus. And I did have an awesome blankey, which I have to this day. Let me see if I can get it to show.
Good Morning! 67 here today, then snow on Mon.
Yup. And tonight it is going to be -17 C. But still, what can you do?
I have been on a bit of a Beatles’ kick lately – just doesn’t get old.
I don’t make my own wine, or should I say bottle it, because I have always detected a weird taste in homemade wine – but perhaps I should reconsider. I am linking to this article by Mr Moustache because he sounds so familiar – even using ‘meh’ as a response to something. And he seems to live in or travel to Ontario – I can’t help but wonder who he is, when his writing style and vocabulary strike me as so, well, familiar. His advice is also irritatingly good:
Fine Canadian Winemaking with Mr. Frugal Toque
Since we’re doing cartoons, this is my image of DP as a father:
I like reading what I call “tightwad” blogs now and then. Sadly, not a lot of it sinks in, but I like to think about the possibilities. And even if I went whole hog, my wife and daughter would have none of it.
The basic dichotomy is some lean more toward financial advice (get debt free, investment stuff) and some lean toward more domestic concerns (clipping coupons, home cannning). Reducing spending is paramount throughout.
I buy a lot of second hand stuff. I drive my cars until they literally turn to a pile of rusty dust. I wear my clothes until they turn to rags. I probably won’t replace any windows in our house until I can see snow blowing in through the cracks. I save plastic bags and bits of aluminum foil. Odd shit like that. But I’m not giving up the phone or the tv or anything like that. We eat well, but mostly at home. In our old age I suspect the scenario will be me pinching pennies, and Mrs. O giving it away to the kids on the sly.
There’s just not much that I want to blow money on for the sake of blowing money. I got about $300 last year for birthday and christmas gifts and I still haven’t spent it all yet. A couple of old chess books and a couple of vintage cast iron skillets off of ebay. Still have money left. I went and bought some socks. Should I take that out of my birthday money? That seems wrong.
I think Mr. Money Moustache is a Canadian expat, now in the states, if that helps explain it.
A big retailer in our area is going out of business and emptying the store. Our son also needs a bed for his campus pad next year. I snagged a queen size mattress and box spring for a total of 70 bucks. It’s an old floor demo from the 90’s that has sat in the warehouse ever since, but who cares. The kid was going to toss the futon on the floor. For 70 bucks this is a big upgrade.
So I saved hundreds. And the wife insisted she needed a trailer hitch on her car, that might get used once. Easy come, easy go.
Beatles, hunh? I may be one of the few who didn’t fully embrace them for a while. I remember the hype when they released their first song here, 1963. Saw mobs at the airport when they first landed here. (Thought it would be cool to be caught in the crush of all those teen girls.) Got caught up like everyone else.
Then I had my eye problem 1964, and while hospitalized, heard Beatles tunes all day from next room. Tonsillectomies didn’t seem to hamper the screams of those two 10 year olds. So, was I, a 15 y.o. man of the world, going to continue to listen to “children’s music”? No way. Returned from personal boycott at Sgt Pepper.
EO, I find a lot of similarities between us re: frugality. We did it to the max this winter for a while. We cringed at the already extra $1000 lp and electricity cost and turned our thermostat down to 60. We have it up to 65 now, since lp not being used as much with geothermal able to handle most needs.
I’m the opposite on the Beatles, Dude. Only the early stuff for me. Especially the Chuck Berry and Little Richard covers. Basically, they were the best cover band ever. As for original tunes, I’m good with it all up until about 1965. After that I thought they lost their edge. I blame cannabis.
Of course, I’m the guy who posted “Da Doo Ron Ron” here last night, so that should tell you something.
For my money, the best Beatles tune ever. OK, it ain’t no “Long Tall Sally” but then, what is?