Last night I shared a book on the train, and it was everything I hoped it would be.

Yesterday I had a hankering for a new book, as I often do. I found myself in the Reference/Language section, as I often do. As I was perusing, I found a book that looked like fun and up my alley. It’s I Didn’t Know That: From “Ants in the Pants” to “Wet Behind the Ears”–the Unusual Origins of the Things We Say, by Karlen Evins. It’s a really cute small book with brief explanations about expressions and phrases we all say, but seldom know the origin of. The truth is that many expressions have multiple claims of origin, and the author does a nice job of either mentioning the mutiple “sources”, or gives a reason why she chose a particular explanation. It really is a charming book when it seems as though nearly every time you read an entry you go “Oh, hmm. Nice. I didn’t know that.” Some of them are actually pretty funny.

Which brings me to my story.

I bought the book in the afternoon, so I didn’t get a chance to read it until I got on the train. Enjoying the book, I sort of zoned out of my surroundings, as I often do. Out of the corner of my eye (don’t ask which corner I’m referring to), I notice somebody reading over my shoulder. I looked up and saw a nice fellow, probably a few years older than me, looking slightly sheepish at having been caught sharing my book with me. He sort of blurted out that he couldn’t help it, but he found it really interesting. I assured him that it was completely fine by me, and I offered for him to actually hold the book so he could read it until he got off the train, with the thinking that I knew I was going to be on the train for another fifty minutes anyway, so I was safe. He declined and told me he preferred to not interrupt me, and that he would just look over my shoulder. It was a bit strange having somebody periodically laughing aloud from behind you, knowing he’s laughing at a book in your hands.

Towards the end of his ride, I saw him lean over and write down the name of the book and author, so he could pick up a copy. I felt some sort of pride that “my” book had so impressed a look-sneaker into actually going out and purchasing the book. Perhaps that feeling of pride should be reserved for the writer, but I shall leave that up to you to decide.

The last bite

You sit down to eat something. Something delicious. As the bowl/plate nears empty, you stake out which bite you’ll save for last. This bite becomes something vital, something that you choose most carefully, because it will leave the best flavor of this fabulous food for last, leaving you with only the warmest of thoughts about your meal.

When executed properly, this final bite is savored and eaten more slowly than all others. You may notice people eating nearby coveting this final piece, and sometimes it must be defended from roaming forks, spouses, or both.

Sometimes you are doing something else while you are eating, and your know that your focus on your food is wavering. To avoid this disaster just waiting to happen, one should separate said bite from all of the others.

Upon occasion, despite all measures designed to ensure protection of the final bite’s savory succulence, the bite may be stolen from your grasp by a nearby “friend” or “spouse”.

The first reaction is denial. YOU WHAT? No, seriously. You didn’t just take my last bite. I KNOW you didn’t. It just can’t be.

Next, rage settles in. With gritted teeth and fire in your eyes, you manage to say things like, Do you have ANY idea how long I’ve been saving that bite? I had my eye on that very morsel while it was still on the waiter’s arm! At this point, have all sharp objects removed to avoid a direct attack upon the perpetrator of this most abhorrent act.

Finally, despair and despondency set in. Once that last bite has been consumed, little can be said or done to repair the situation. Apologies fall upon deaf ears and the meal (and most likely your day), is ruined. The pharmaceutical companies remain diligent on finding a remedy, but it is still currently regarded as a largely hopeless situation.

Scales, and following guidelines.

Someone may throw out a question as you walk out of a theater. How much did you like the movie?

First thing I want to know is what sort of scale are we working with? Objective? Subjective? Bathroom? (Somebody please find me a digital one that isn’t wildly inaccurate and fluctuates 10 pounds one way or ther other in a matter of seconds. I look at the scale, see I lost 20 pounds and yell “HUN, START BAKING CAKES!” and “HEY, WHY DON’T YOU FRY IT AGAIN! FRY IT DEEPER!”) Doctor’s scale? (always 3-5 pounds higher than any other scale anywhere, ever.) Seismic? Richter? Regardless, people never stick within the assigned range. It’s either a negative 2 or 100. “How much do you love me, honey? 1-10?” “Oh, a billion, my angel.” People need to learn how to stay within predetermined parameters.  It’s about time.

Who was Washington’s favorite?

George Washington was “the man”. He was uncommonly tall for his time, broad shouldered, stoic, and unflappable. He remains the only President that was elected unanimously. Just about everybody adored this man, despite the fact that even his closest friends referred to him as General Washington, or similarly cold and formal titles. He could be quite charming, and was a great dancer and equestrian, but behind closed doors he was known at points to have a violent temper. Even his skills as a Commander were questioned, and at different points he lost many supporters of his post.

Interestingly enough, there seem to have been a few of his closest military aides/Generals that were all considered his “favorite”, at least by historians.

Terry Golway’s 2004 book on the life of General Nathanael Greene is actually called “Washington’s General: Nathanael Greene and the Triumph of the American Revolution”.  Washington showed tremendous confidence in Greene’s ability to lead, especially later in the war when Washington entrusted him with the entire Southern army, which at the time was pretty close to folding altogether after the slaughter at Camden. To quote from Publisher’s Weekly, “Golway shows him as one of Washington’s most trusted subordinates, with a mixed record as a field commander and a good one as a very reluctant quartermaster-general (a job that made making bricks without straw look simple). In the war’s darkest days, in late 1780, Greene was appointed commander in the Southern theater, where the British had nearly swept all before them. Without ever winning a major battle, Greene, Golway shows, kept his army in the field, supported Patriot militias and suppressed Tory ones, undercut British logistics, eventually forced Cornwallis north to Yorktown and besieged Charleston.” Quoting the wiki on the Battle of Camden. “Gates lost control of the southern army due to his cowardice. General Nathanael Greene, standing next to George Washington as the most able and trusted Colonial officer of the Revolution, was given Gates’s command of the southern army and started recruiting additional troops.”

The Marquis de Lafayette is another person that had an extremely close bond to the Commander-in-Chief. After paying for his own journey from France to America at the age of twenty, he impressed everybody right away with his looks and easy manner, and also offered to serve as Major General without pay. In early 2008, a book was released by David A. Clary, entitled “Adopted Son: Washington, Lafayette, and the Friendship that Saved the Revolution”. To quote from Publisher’s Weekly’s review, “…Clary…argues that although each man was a hero of the American Revolution, it was their partnership that secured American victory. Both men were orphans, and their devotion to each other was motivated by a deep psychological bond. As the title suggests, Washington was something of a father figure to the younger Frenchman, and Lafayette gave the general “unwavering loyalty, truly filial devotion.” But the mentoring was not wholly one-sided: Lafayette was committed to the abolition of slavery, and Clary suggests that it was because of Lafayette’s influence that Washington chose to free his slaves on his wife’s death. The chapters on Lafayette’s role in the French Revolution and Washington’s anguish over Lafayette’s imprisonment make this book far broader than the usual 1776 account…”

I just finished Mark Puls’s February 2008 “Henry Knox: Visionary General of the American Revolution”. It’s really astounding the number of times Washington wrote glowingly of Knox to Congress and its delegates espousing his gifts for military command. Numerous times during the war Washington took Knox’s advice even if a majority of his Generals disagreed. After Gates abandoned the Southern army, General Greene, speaking to Washington about who his replacement should be, fully advocated Knox as the best person for the position. Washington agreed, and said that because of how great of a military man he was, he couldn’t afford to not have Knox by his side. At the beginning of the war, when Knox was merely 25 or 26, Washington had such confidence in him that he appointed Knox to build and lead the army’s artillery corps, which he did with astounding success until the war’s end.

Another person who was remarkably close to Washington was Alexander Hamilton. Reading Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow, released in 2004, you would think that everybody else on the Patriot side took a backseat to the relationship between between these two men. Despite Hamilton’s unrelenting desire for military glory, Washington kept him close by as an aide for years, unable to spare Alexander’s oratory and writing gifts. Numerous sources have stated that they two of them worked so well together that Hamilton was able to write what Washington wanted to say without even consulting the General.

In His Excellency: George Washington, Joseph J. Ellis shows that earlier in the war Washington writes personal notes to and confides in Joseph Reed, while later in the war he often writes extremely warmly to John Laurens, as though he’s adopted both of these younger men as adopted sons.

Perhaps people wanted to as close to him as possible because of who he was:

First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen, he was second to none in humble and enduring scenes of private life. Pious, just, humane, temperate, and sincere; uniform, dignified, and commanding; his example was as edifying to all around him as were the effects of that example lasting…Correct throughout, vice shuddered in his presence and virtue always felt his fostering hand. The purity of his private character gave effulgence to his public virtues…Such was the man for whom our nation mourns.

-Eulogy by Congressman Henry Lee, a Revolutionary War comrade

An excerpt from the Introduction to His Excellency: George Washington, Ellis makes a very telling statement: “It seems to me that Benjamin Franklin was wiser than Washington; Alexander Hamilton was more brilliant; John Adams was better read; James Madison was more politically astute. Yet each and all of these prominent figures acknowledged that Washington was their unquestioned superior.”

One can also point out things done to honor him, including the name of our Capital, another state, the quarter and one-dollar bill, a monument in his name, his face on Mount Rushmore, along with countless counties, streets, bridges, etc. scattered across the country. One can find few Americans to be more proudly, or more closely associated with, than George Washington.

Uberoverpositivenessiosity

(For starters, I’m a neologist. Questioning my usage of words is futile .)

To the point!

I’ve recently joined a gym. In order to join the gym, you have to speak with a sales rep who gives you the spiel about pricing, get a tour of the premises, etc. I realize that as a sales rep, you’re supposed to talk what you’re selling up; Make it sound amazing.  You should be expressing it so well that I feel like I couldn’t possibly even entertain joining another gym. Their trainers are the BEST. The current deal is the GREATEST and will never be beaten! Invariably, the discount ends by the end of whatever day you walk in.

I get all that (and oh boy, did I get it).

The problem is, if I know from the get-go that you’re going to be one of those “everything is amazing” people, everything you say is taken with a grain of salt. If some of what you say turns out to not be true or exaggerated, even if almost everything you say is ACTUALLY honestly and objectively amazing, your credibility is in question.

I don’t like being sold something. I wanted to join when I walked in. Despite the barrage of constant lauding of the place in leiu of real conversation, I joined anyway.

Henry Knox is the best

So, I don’t know if he really is, but I’m reading this book about his life, and it’s pretty darn good so far.

The revolutionary history period continues to be a winner for me.

It aint broke. Don’t fix it. Scrabble adding a hyphen and apostrophe?

I was reading the most recent issue of Scrabble News (members only!) and chanced upon this. Hasbro is considering adding hyphen and apostrophe tiles to the game. First of all, no. Absolutely not. Scrabble is the best selling board game of all time. To imply that you need to change it, let alone add non-letter tiles, is just brutal. Also, more than any other game, Scrabble has been run by its players. Most of the employees of the N.S.A. are actually expert-level players. Additionally, before you could buy a handy dandy word list, you had to use an actual dictionary. When it was decided that a word list was actually going to be created, it was assembled by players who would go through dictionaries and hand-write every word, and submit it. If whoever was going through the dictionary missed a word, it wasn’t allowed. The outrage from players, among whom are mainly purists, is going to be overwhelming.

To address the apostrophe first, it’s complicated. Many people don’t know how to properly use the apostrophe in regular writing, let alone in a board game. Very simply, there are many usages for the apostrophe:

1) to form possessives of nouns (the dog’s fur)
2) to show the omission of letters (don’t, can’t, etc.)
3) time and money references in constructions (one hour’s respite, two weeks’ holiday, a dollar’s worth, five pounds’ worth)
4) in abbreviations (gov’t for government, ‘twas? ’til?)

There are many others, and there is some disagreement about certain usages.

What’s even more maddening is the number of common misuses of apostrophes which would make playing the game near impossible unless it was a gathering of fans of orthography.

1) When the noun is a normal plural, with an added s, no extra s is added in the possessive, so pens’ lids (where there is more than one pen) is correct rather than pens’s lids. If the plural is not one that is formed by adding s, add an s for the possessive, after the apostrophe: children’s hats, women’s hairdresser, some people’s eyes (but compare some peoples’ recent emergence into nationhood, where peoples is meant as the plural of the singular people). These principles are universally accepted.
2) If a singular noun ends with an /s/ or a /z/ sound (spelled with -s, -se, -z, -ce, for example), practice varies as to whether to add ’s or the apostrophe alone. In general, a good practice is to follow whichever spoken form is judged best: the boss’s shoes, Mrs Jones’ hat (or Mrs Jones’s hat, if that spoken form is preferred). In many cases, both spoken and written forms differ between writers.
3) No apostrophe is used in the following possessive pronouns and adjectives: yours, his, hers, ours, its, theirs, and whose. (Many people wrongly use it’s for the possessive of it, but authorities are unanimous that it’s can only be a contraction of it is or it has.)

How would it be decided what’s acceptable? The spelling fo’c’s’le, contracted from the nautical term forecastle, is notable for having three apostrophes. The spelling bo’s’n’s (from boatswain’s), as in Bo’s’n’s Mate, also has three apostrophes, two showing omission and one possession. The fo’c’s’le’s timbers is also possible, and has four apostrophes in one word. The abbreviations would be hard to pick and choose.

The hyphen is a whole different story. Most people don’t use them at all, a large majority of the time.

First, some of the most common rules:

1) Two or more adjectives before a noun that act as one idea (one-thought adjectives) are connected with a hyphen.
Examples:This is a low-budget job. [The sense is not this is a low job and a budget job. The words low and budget are linked into the single concept of "low-budget."]

First-class decisions require clear-headed thinking.
He has a devil-may-care attitude.
He is a typical twelve-year-old.
2) Concepts that become to be known as one (X-ray, mother-in-law, top-notch)
3) Numbers and fractions (twenty-three, twenty-fifth, one-fourth, two-thirds)
4) Clarity (re-sign for resign, re-creation for recreation)
Of course, there are many other rules, most of which come with exceptions.

Common misuses/exceptions:

1) Do not use one with adverbs ending in -ly (a project planned carefully, a virus discovered recently)
2) Do not hyphenate words prefixed by non, un, in, dis, co, anti, hyper, pre, re, post, out, bi, counter, de, semi, mis, mega, micro, inter, over, and under (among others) except when the second element is capitalized, as in Un-American and non-English, a hyphen is used.
Of course, there are many more.

Messing with the game isn’t worth it. You would have to completely redo all of the Scrabble word lists. Because there are actually two official word lists, OWL/OSPD (for the U.S., Canada and Israel) and OSW (the rest of the world), different lists will have a different usages depending on the country. Fact is, nobody is going to purchase Scrabble because of the new tiles. The game never really had “pizazz” in the traditional sense and that’s the way it should be. To change the game so that a few Scrabble addicts can now score triple-triples twice a game is just absurd. It would also further the gap between coffee-table players and professionals.

Eh. No thanks.

Eddie Izzard – Squirrel

So, because I’m in the mood, I’m just going to share a bit of a comedy routine that I find funny. Today’s entry is Eddie Izzard – Squirrel:

Squirrels always eat nuts with two hands, always two hands, “Raar-ra-ra-yum-yum-yum”. And occasionally they stop and they go [gasps, starts, then pauses and looks around, wide-eyed] As if they’re going, “Did I leave the gas on? [sudden happy realization] No! No, I’m a squirrel!” [munching nuts]

-Eddie Izzard

Here’s the video, but there’s one cuss word I eliminated from the text, but not from the video.

Everyday errors, every day

I apologize for the poor quality of the photo. It was taken with my phone on the subway, so you get the graininess and the glare from the plastic in front of the photo. The quote, from Ernie Anastos, (FOX 5 anchor in NYC) reads “We work hard everyday to earn your trust and respect. I am so grateful for being able to report the news in the best city in the world”.

Because I imagine that this website will explain it better than me, I’ll paste what’s written there:

The one-word modifier everyday and the two-word phrase every day are not interchangeable (despite store ads that say, “Lowest prices everyday” – incorrect).

Everyday (one word) is an adjective meaning “encountered or used typically or routinely; a synonym is ordinary. Every day (two words) literally has the same meaning as “each day.”

A simple way to test which is appropriate is to substitute “each day” in place of “every day / everyday.” If “each day” works, we want to use every day (two words); if “each day” does not work, we want everyday. For example, “We have low prices every day” = “We have low prices each day”; therefore, every day is correct – and everyday is incorrect. On the other hand, since we may not correctly rephrase “This is an everyday event” as “This is an each day event,” the one-word adjective everyday is correct.

I see this ad like 5 times a week, and it kills me. Did anybody even look at this before the printed thousands of copies and plastered them all over the subway? Don’t people even read this stuff? Grrrr.

Mother nature, we’ve bested you, apparently…

There’s something I’ve always wondered. As a ballpark figure, dogs have been around for 10-15,000 years in their current form. They may or may not have evolved from wolves, and been tamed, but I’ll leave that part of the discussion to the experts. Dogs have something we humans don’t. It’s called fur. And despite their apparent ability to survive every feasible element that mother nature has thrown their way, people feel the need to dress these animals. Seeing a little canine in a cute coat when it’s 50 degrees boggles my mind. There may have actually been an entire ice age since dogs have been around, but somehow this thick furred creature needs a sweater made by Burberry.

Now, I know the picture above isn’t a dog. The bull is wearing an ad for the Sports Museum of America, which opens today, actually.  When I saw a 7,000 pound bull wearing a sweater advertisement yesterday, I decided that I’d about had enough and needed to comment.