Romance writer friend Sharon sent me English usage questions to ponder, which sparked a discussion. I’ll share some of our notes.
Double negatives are a no-no.
In the word scent, which letter is silent, the S or the C?
Isn’t spelling the word queue just a Q followed by four silent letters?
When abbreviating refrigerator as fridge, why does a D appear?
If womb and tomb are pronounced ‘woom’ and ‘toom’, shouldn’t bomb be pronounced ‘boom’?
What is the pronunciation rule for words ending in ‘ough’? I.e, tough, through, thorough, dough, cough, bough?
And what about bow, row, and sow that rhyme with how; and bow, row, and sow that rhyme with low?
And why is read pronounced like lead and read pronounced like lead?
Sharon’s correspondent says the pronunciations of Kansas and Arkansas trouble her more than it should.
And why are all three letter ‘A’s in Australia pronounced differently? And likewise two letter ‘A’s in Stephen Ross’ New Zealand?
Why do bologna and bony rhyme?
Even if it’s spelled baloney, why doesn’t it rhyme with money?
In childhood, I fretted that ‘W’ should be called double-V instead of double-U. (French and Spanish pronounced ‘W’ as double-vé and doble ve respectively.)
And finally…
How do you console a sobbing English teacher ready to throw in the towel? “There, their, they’re.”
Wait, Wait…
Notes and jokes for those techies out there who pronounce the ‘www’ of World Wide Web as “Dub-dub-dub.”
The three most common languages in India are Hindi, English, and JavaScript.
Many people in India know 11 languages: Hindi, English, and JavaScript.†
What is your favorite Engish quirk?
† It’s unfair not to explain ‘in’ jokes. The punchword 11 refers to binary: In English, we count 1, 2, 3, but in binary we count 1, 10, 11.
It’s time once again for a touch of flash fiction.
It’s time once again for a touch of flash fiction.
I can’t accept full credit for the word play seeded by one of those chain emails that arrived via the internet, author unknown. I merely turned the idea into writing advice disguised as a short story. Read and enjoy.
Room for Improvement
by Leigh (and Anonymous)
During a domestic discussion, my wife said, “I can describe you in six words.” She went on to say I’m mature, I’m moral, I’m modest, I’m proper, I’m polite, and I’m perfect!
I love my wife, shes the greatest. “Anything else?” I asked.
“You also have a fundamental misunderstanding of apostrophes.”
For reasons I can’t fathom, I enjoy reading and watching legal sites, one of the reasons I appreciate Mark among us. Perhaps it’s due to old black&white Perry Mason reruns. Perhaps I picked up the bug taking two years of commercial law— 101-102 and 201-202 simultaneously— taught by John Beishline, a former WW-II general.
Whatever occurred, I have the disease, and thus I follow a handful of lawyers on YouTube specializing in civil liberties and other topics. One off-topic gentleman pops up occasionally on my feed, the Lock-Picking Lawyer. I agree it sounds weird, but his following, well over four million subscribers and more than one-billion views, dwarfs everyone else including higher profile personalities such as Glenn Kirschner.
Harry, the Lock-Picking Lawyer, is a fortyish attorney in the Bethesda-Damascus, Maryland area, one child, one wife. His hobby-turned-gold-mine makes so much money from videos, consulting, and flogging lock-picking gadgets in his on-line store, he retired young.
Episodes run short, typically 2½-4½ minutes. He can open locks faster than I can fumble a key into a door– one of the reasons why I presently use an intelligent, home-built computerized security system worthy of a James Bond mad scientist. Bike locks, padlocks, car locks, door locks, even ‘boot’ locks– the gadget that clamps over a car’s wheel to prevent it driving away– gone in seconds. Viewers even send him locks to challenge him. Companies have changed manufacturing in response to his talent.
Harry has said he wished he could involve Mrs Lock-Picking Lawyer in his videos and finally he found an opportunity with Ben & Jerry’s ice cream lock. Oooooohhhhh, watch out for the Mrs. Harry the LPL is a very smart guy, but Mrs LPL is on an entirely different plane. Don’t stand between a woman and her ice cream.
No excuses, this comes far too late to be an acceptable movie review, but this article has another purpose— how not to write historicals. Although I wrote this long ago, I pushed it aside as other articles took priority. It dates back to one of John Floyd’s articles, where we found ourselves among the tens of people who kinda, sorta liked the movie, Django Unchained, which I watched with my friend, Sharon. She agreed with the rest of the world that the film was, to put it gently, flawed.
1858
Both Sharon and I were distracted by a staggering number of errors and anachronisms in the movie, especially items from the wrong century. To our disbelief, the DVD came with a Tarantino interview in which he bragged about the historical research. That was, pardon the pun, djarring.
Anachronisms leaped off the screen. They included wrong period clothing, wrong period guns (multiple), wrong period props and accessories, and very wrong period verbal expressions (mother-ƒer? Seriously?). When non-experts notice 20+ errors in a film, that celluloid is in trouble.
Except for two pieces of incidental music, I won’t address the soundtrack beyond saying the modern cuts djangled the nerves. It felt like an amateur YouTube video where contributors slip in unrelated cuts of music and images, without regard to the story. David Frost called out-of-context media the Lord Privy Seal effect.
Likewise, accidental appearances of modern devices aren’t included here. For example, some sharp-eyed viewer noticed a security camera high on the veranda of the antebellum mansion.
Time Warped
The movie contained the famous bust of Nefertiti, incorrectly referred to as Cleopatra. It wasn’t discovered until 1907. (I learned of Nefertiti as a child. My mother gave my father a bust for his birthday. I mean she gave him a statuette.)
Teddy Bears, associated with President Teddy Roosevelt, wouldn't appear until the 1900s.
Thousand-dollar bills weren’t issued until 1861.
The Confederacy had not been formed and the Civil War had not begun, so Confederate uniforms wouldn't have existed in 1858.
Likewise, the Ku Klux Klan didn’t group until the end of the Civil War.
The town of Lubbock didn't exist until 1890, well after the American Civil War.
The word malarkey came out of the 1920-1930s.
Für Elise famously wasn’t discovered until 1867, four decades after Beethoven’s death and nine years after the movie’s period.
The song ‘In the Sweet By and By’ was published in 1868, a decade after the movie.
Flip-top beer bottles may or may not have been a German innovation, but at least in the US, they weren’t patented until 1875.
Beer pumps were first noted in the UK in 1691 and patented a century later in 1785, but this methodology of draught beer only became popular in the mid 1900s.
Drinking straws made of paper were invented in 1888.
While cigarette holders were introduced in the 1700s, they didn’t become popular until the flapper era through the 1970s.
Dynamite was invented by Alfred Nobel in 1864 and patented in 1867.
Hearing aids weren’t invented until the 1900’s and miniature aids didn’t appear until the latter half of the 20th century.
Attendant to the previous, the first primitive plastics weren’t introduced until 1907 and materials suitable for hearing aids and chin straps took another half century to come about.
Even some guns were out of place and time.
The Remington New Model Army revolver, used by Django and Billy Crash, weren’t manufactured until 1860.
The Remington double-barreled Derringer, used by Django and Dr. Shultz, weren’t manufactured until 1866.
Bonus Points
Sharon caught most of the following:
Cool looking sunglasses and contacts weren’t available in 1858.
Hats with cord locks and eyelets were a 20th century invention.
Likewise, trousers with belt loops weren’t an 1850s convenience.
I can’t think of another movie that flooded the screen with historical inaccuracies. What about you? Do you have such a film in mind?
As you may have noticed earlier this month, I’ve been paying attention to license plates and signs while idling in traffic. While negotiating neighborhood streets in south Orlando, I noticed a street sign labeled Chaucer and shortly thereafter Voltaire,† two favorite classic authors.
This came as a surprise because Orlando is better known for family entertainment, not classical arts. Orchestras, opera, and ballet have died from indifference. WMFE, the local Public Broadcasting studio and station, collapsed. Hereabouts, Longfellow is thought to be the tall, floppy-eared pal of Mickey Mouse.
Upon returning home, I looked up this mysterious literary neighborhood and discovered references to nineteen authors, more precisely, sixteen names, two novels, and an epic poem. Two byways puzzled me, Jordan Avenue and Brice Street. I’m unable to think of significant writers matching the names, which indeed may be naught. You may know better.
So before our book-burning Governor DeSantis bans this defiant neighborhood, check out the names. (Click the map to expand it.) A list of authors follows.
† Little known Mystery factoid: Voltaire (real name François-Marie Arouet (1694-1778)), arguably was one of the earliest writers of science fiction and detective fiction.
For friends who claim I don’t reveal much truly personal, pfffft. End of month, I’m getting a colonoscopy. So there. That’s personal.
It’s not my first and afterwards, like Poe, I bought a pallet of bricks and walled up the bathroom remains in an attempt to protect future archeologists from planetary collapse.
Those so-called flavor-packs… what are they thinking? Brake fluid would taste better. At least this doctor, a gastroenterologist, allows Gatorade in the prep. And he has a sense of humor. Note this sign in their parking lot:
But what really prompted this article was a license plate on a nearby car. As I snapped the photo, a lady came strolling up, nicely, not aggressively. I explained why I was taking pictures of her car.
Nancy didn’t mind and explained it was her husband’s. He’s a writer, a real one, not merely professionally published, but award winning. Peer closely at the license tag and notice the frame around the plate. He’s a winner of the Bram Stoker award for Best First Novel and a Stoker award for Lifetime Achievement. Pretty damn cool.
Obviously he writes in the horror genre. He goes by Owl Goingback and happens to be the only other non-romance fiction writer I’ve come across in Central Florida.
Computer programs that generate tag numbers are designed to weed out certain combinations. Obscenity is an obvious category, whether automatically generated or requested by a car owner. Florida rejects about 500 request a year, not counting those manufactured by the state in the format of XYZ•123.
But vulgarity isn’t the only filtered category. You won’t see plates with certain combinations:
FBI-123 CIA-123 IRS-123
DEA-123 ATF-123 IBM-123
and so on…
IBM? True. It’s among the many forbidden combinations. Thus I was surprised to pull up behind a vehicle bearing a tag certain to outrage Florida’s book-banning obscenity police.
As I returned home, a traffic light caught me at Lee Road (they misspelled my name) and I-4, I noticed a license tag.
I can’t wait til the governor discovers this affront to book burners across the state. It must be a conspiracy. Its left part is as pornographic, lascivious, lecherous, licentious, libidinous, and scabrous as the right. Our governor will clutch his wee pearls. Surely, that cannot be an accident.
Will the governor’s appointees plan a plate burning? Or bonfire the entire car? Or torch the hapless party who allowed this… this… this lewd, rude, dirty, filthy, vulgar, foul, coarse, crude, gross, vile, nasty, disgusting, offensive, shameless, immoral smut to sully America’s roads?
Wednesday, Rob wrote about Neolithic graves in Europe. We hear about burial mounds, bogs, and even buried boats, mostly in the British Isles, but we know less about our own prehistoric Native Indian culture that preceded what we consider First Nation.
I grew up a short distance (a brief bicycle ride or a longish walk on little-boy legs) from an Indian mound called Hogback. It’s one of the simpler prehistoric Indiana burial sites, especially compared to the Serpentine Mound many miles east. The region was known as a finder's gold mine of points (arrowheads), spear tips, and birdstones.
The latter was a throwing weapon carved into an elongated form to fit the hand. While most birdstones were simply shaped without regard for museums that might come long after, a few have been found carved into the likeness of a bird with folded wings. An ancient craftsman had taken the time and effort to indulge in aesthetics, an astonishing reach across time and space.
Mounds
Indian mounds dotted the landscape through the Illinois, Indiana, Ohio belt, but also could be found in New England and New York. Some have been bulldozed, flattened for farming, or simply, disgustingly, used for easily obtained road-building material. Fortunately, others remain, some accessible by the public.
A curious question has arisen. Genetic research has shown the four major native American bloodlines descend from migrants traversing the Bering Land Bridge, a fifth strain suggests a prehistoric European migration.† Not only is the DNA distinctive, but napping technology and burial practices differed. Were the mounds from this ancient group?
Classmates, Lela, Diane, and Kristi, found this fascinating documentary.
That Which Remains
One day I mounted an expedition to search the mound (no digging, just scoping the ground) and I made a find. It was a perfect, miniature axe head. I rushed home to show my parents.
brachiopod
My dad took one glance and said, "Not an axe head." I must have looked stricken because he handed it back and smiled. "It's much, much older. It's a brachiopod."
That was cool. And emblematic of Dad, an encyclopedic Google before Google. How many fathers could instantly identify a brachiopod by name?
Credit
Inspiration and following links are thanks to bright, beautiful, and brainy classmates Diane, Lela, and Kristi. They are an amazing resource.
† Distant European ancestry isn’t unique amongst anomalies. Melanesian and Australian genes have unexpectedly popped up indigenous American populations.
I can’t write flash fiction without thinking of Fran Rizer. She ‘complained’ those ultra-short stories upset her Sunday routine of preparing coffee and then breakfast, whereupon she’d spend a few minutes enjoying SleuthSayers.
On flash fiction days, that’s when (a) she’d find those few minutes were reduced to a few seconds, and (b) it caused her to snort coffee up her nose. Damn, I miss Fran.
Here’s a flash fiction with her in mind.
My Husband Died
by Leigh Lundin
After he died, I couldn’t even look at another man for almost twenty years.
But now that I’m out of prison, I can honestly say it was worth it.
Checks (‘cheques’ in other English-speaking countries) are becoming less common in our digital society, but they still have their uses: Investors often receive dividend checks, some companies send refund checks, and many of us write checks to our lawn guy and housekeeper. Check handling still holds a place in our economy and so does a scheme called ‘check washing’.
Crime segments on programs like Dateline and 20/20 have warned us against the practice of bad guys plucking checks out of mailboxes and ‘washing’ them in a ‘household chemical’ bath. Then with a blank check in hand with the original signature, they fill in a new payee and amount. The scheme can work with bonds, wills, and other instruments, anything with a dye-based ink written with ordinary pens. Very old inks comprised of iron compounds remain unaffected.
Wait. Are you going to share with us?
What is the household chemical? Enquiring crime writers want to know.
The answer is ink-dependent and I’m aware of two compounds. Women baddies may have an advantage: The primary go-to chemical, acetone, is the principle ingredient in fingernail polish remover. Other dye-based inks may better respond when treated with ordinary bleach.
Here’s a how-to video by Dr Uniball… (Shh. I know, I know, the poor man. I’m afraid Dr Uniball suffered an unfortunate lab accident.) That aside, here is one of his experiments:
Note: Although not mentioned in the video, fraudsters can preserve the signature by covering it with transparent tape. Ink not so protected washes away.
So how can you shield yourself against lawnmower man bleaching your check or your nifty cleaning lady rewriting the palty cheap-ass amount after an acetone bath? You can purchase speciality India ink pens costing in the hundreds of dollars. Or, as I recently learned, you can buy a less than two dollar Uniball at your local Dollar Store. This pigment-based pen is made by Mitsubishi Pencil Company, yes, a sister company of the car manufacturer. Look for Uniball 207, pictured here:
A casual survey suggests Chase Banks may figure in more frauds than all other banking institutions combined.Worse yet, Chase battles customer victims who try to get their money back. Lily, our Chase target in a previous article did everything right, trying to get an oblivious and lackadaisical Chase to take action. And they die– they blamed her.
No place in the world is safe from fraud, but if YouTube is to believed, Arizona suffers an outsized number of attacks. And naturally, Chase customer service isn't there when needed.
From A to Z, ATM to Zelle
Zelle is German for jail, literally, a prison cell. I’m frankly surprised it doesn’t mean Sucker!
I can’t trust Zelle. If accounts of a money app can’t be viewed and studied on the web, the customer/victim is at a disadvantage when attempting to reconcile transactions. Unfortunately banks and society at large push us in that direction.
Former business partners owed me money and had been steadily paying me through Sun Bank. Abruptly payments stopped. I notified them. It turned out Sun wanted to cease sending direct, electronic payments to my bank (and others) and insisted its ‘partners’ use Zelle. The problem was that Sun submitted payments into the black hole of Zelle, but my bank didn’t see them.
“Not our problem,” said Sun. “Call Zelle.” “Not our problem,” said my bank. “Call Zelle.” “Not our problem,” said Zelle. “Call your bank.”
This occurred after repeated and futile attempts to get a phone number for Zelle, who declined to help because they were ‘too far removed from the situation’, claiming they were outside the transfer rather than being the conduit. It took four months of repeated complaints to resolve the issue.
☚☛
As you might imagine, Zelle is a convenient tool for fraud. In one particular scam, you receive an SMS text that your bank account has been put on hold, pending unusual activity. You phone the conveniently provided phone number, and a polite professional asks how she can help you.
She ‘checks’ your account, saying it appears nefarious forces are attempting to penetrate your security. The solution is to safely move your money into a bank-approved Zelle account. If you’ve not heard of Zelle, she provides you a web link showing your bank works with Zelle, and she’ll help you set up a new free account, which will make bill paying so much easier.
Ten minutes later, your new Zelle account is all set up and your money moved into it. “Thank you, thank you,” you say before hanging up, upon which the scammer sets to work. You receive another text message, this time from your real bank. Your accounts have been emptied.
“Not our problem,” says Zelle. “Call your bank.” “Not our problem,” says your bank. “Call Zelle.”
One upon a time I was scammed, or rather American Express was. In my consulting days, a pair of cancelled flights kept me hostage at Chicago Airport for ten hours, which covered a couple of mealtimes. For one of those, I plunked down in their sit-down restaurant and partook. And was partaken without my knowledge.
The end-of-month credit card statement showed a charge that could have fed a family of twelve instead of not-so-little ol’ me. AmEx explained this was called a ‘waiter’s charge,’ literally so in my case. A waiter hands you a bill in a black leather folder. The diner casually tucks a credit card in the folder and the waiter carries it away. At this juncture, the fraud happens.
If the restaurant keeps a computerized tally, the waiter adds on an additional lobster and a hell of a tip. Without an ongoing account, a waiter simply adds in a dollar figure. In olden days, waiters might run two or three blank slips through the imprinter for later use. These days thanks to skimming devices, a waiter can mint a new card before you leave the premises.
Once a card is out-of-sight, waiters can do anything they wish.
As did a waitress a waitress in Minneapolis’ beloved Pannekoeken Huis. Two things had come together to draw my attention to a minor racket. Unlike my girlfriend whose sharp eye for cash register fiddles caught one in the middle of a famous theme park, I don’t have specialized training in these things. However, a conversation with a vice president of finance at the company I consulted for raised my awareness. After meals, he carefully perused the bill and credit card slip, commenting he’d find mistakes nearly half the time and went on to prove it.
Bad Taste
And so I found myself in the very restaurant where he’d enlightened me. Frankly, the waitress did little to avert attention to herself. In a Midwestern city where everyone is friendly, she was unusually hostile. Perhaps it was the result of a bad morning, but she acted distinctly sour. Thus when the check came and bearing in mind the VP’s admonition, I looked over the register’s paper tape and there it was… or in this case wasn’t. The line items didn’t match the inflated total.
Her scam took but a moment to unravel. The register tape provided the clue– the restaurant’s logo was missing at the top of the tape. She’d rung in a false item, rolled the register’s tape forward several inches and tore it off, and then rang in the real breakfast tab.
I brought it to the attention of the front-of-house manager. That trusting soul cheerfully waved off the discrepancy as a register glitch. Fine, not my problem, but the practiced moves of the waitress announced she’d done this many times. I did not encourage her by leaving a tip.
That wasn’t why he glanced at your derrière
Does your credit card have a tap ’n’ go icon? If so, it has a built-in bit of electronics called passive NFC… near field communications, a cousin of RFID. Your cell phone may have something similar, but is active NFC because it’s battery powered. They work on the same principal as store exit scanners that sense security tags still attached to the jacket you just bought.
Besides the likelihood of your butt mashing your phone, NFC is a major reason you shouldn’t carry your phone in your hip pocket. A passerby brushes her phone past your pocket and *snap* — she’s captured your information.
Sleight-of-Hand
Scams can happen other ways. You check out of your doctor’s office, or you pay at the window of that overpriced restaurant, or you’re enqueued at Wendy’s drive-thru window and your fuel gauge is running low as is the patience of the guy behind you who taps his horn for the third time but it’s not your fault because your salad isn’t ready and finally the server comes to the window and hands you a bag with a freckled girl’s face on it and says, “That will be $36.80,” and you realize for that kind of money you could have dined at Pannekoeken Huis with money left over but you dig through your purse and there’s your MasterCard that you hand over and a second later he hands it back followed by a receipt that you stuff in your purse and before the guy behind you can blast his horn again you pull forward and out of his way, yet when you get home you receive a text message that your credit card has hit its limit. What? How can that be? You should have at least fifty dollars to spare.
And there it is: Instead of $36.80, you were charged $96.80. Maybe the guy’s finger slipped ringing it up. But wait, there’s another $23 charge from the same place at the same time. That shouldn’t be possible. What happened?
When you handed over your card, you lost sight of it for an instant only. But it was enough time for the window guy to pass the card over a pocket skimmer or even a second NFC machine, a modern analogue of imprinting an extra credit card slip.
Universal Contactless Cards (NFC, RFID)
ATM : Access Thy Money
You may seen recent warnings about ATMs with inoperable card slots, glued shut according to articles. Nearby, a helpful guy who’s standing a respectable, unobtrusive distance behind you offers a suggestion. “You can tap your card.”
But of course you can. You thank the guy, boink the card over the symbol, stuff $200 in your purse, and nervously flee the scene to safety. Or so you think. The helpful guy, he moves in and empties your account.
When an ATM’s mechanical reader returns your card, it automatically logs you out of the system. Likewise in store transactions, once the clerk rings you out and you see the Thank You message on the screen, you’re once again disconnected from your account.
Surveys show at ATMs, tap ’n’ go customers often don’t manually log out of their accounts. Without a mechanism holding their card and releasing it as they sign out, clients fail to realize the connection to their account remains active and vulnerable. Please, log out.
R.T. Lawton and others have written about Les Misérables. That great novel comprised a number of threads woven together and parted again to accommodate other stories. Think of this as a strand arising from Victor Hugo’s work. In this tale, think of me as Bishop Myriel, while my petite mother played one tough Inspector Javert. And Cosette… Okay, there’s no Cosette. Sorry.
My mother stood nearly five-foot-nothing (150cm, or, for the more worldly among us, about ⅝ of a Hobbit). Like Smaug, she breathed fire. She was fearsome. Mess with her, and she’d reach up and smack you in the kneecap. My 6’4 (193cm) father was usually a calming influence… usually.
I was wrapping up a lengthy, year-end consulting gig in Columbus, Ohio. That particular time I lived at a large, sprawling motel, not far from the Busch Beer Brewery, although lager has nothing to do with this incident.
Following six straight months of work, I mentioned to my parents my project was winding down and I was due for a break. My dad came up with an excuse to visit Ohio, and thus my folks offered to pick me up and tote me home for the Christmas holidays. I agreed.
The hotel staff and particularly the chambermaid, whom we’ll call ‘Val Jean’, had been kind and considerate of my cave, working around the clutter of work papers and my vampire hours.
After half a year’s occupancy, my hotel room had morphed. Computer discs and software listings covered tables and chests. A computerized chess board spread across a bench. Pairs of never-quite-dry swim trunks hung on the bathroom shower rod. And, next to the television sat an oversized box of chocolate cherries my mother had sent me.
No, er, Few cherries were harmed in the making of this production.
I allowed myself one or two a day, but soon I noticed the chocolates box becoming lighter. While I gnoshed on the upper tray, cherry chocs were disappearing from the layer beneath. My legendary detective skills kicked in, locking in on The Case of the Disappearing Cherries.
I found it amusing: My unseen cleaning lady had a sweets addiction. Her weakness was entertaining, almost endearing. She had to know I knew. An odd relationship developed. I left the candy box in place, occasionally noting the declining numbers.
My project finished and the day came for my departure. My parents arranged to pick me up. As we were clearing out the room, I made the mistake of mentioning the mysterious Cherry Chocolate Bandit.
Carting clothes and computers down to their car took a few trips. Mom disappeared for several minutes. Upon my final return, my mother wore a look of self-satisfaction. My dad shook his head sadly.
“What?” I said.
Mom drew herself up to nearly Munchkin height. “I took care of the candy thief. I reported her to the front desk.”
“You what? Oh no. Why?”
She folded her arms, ready to bite someone in the ankle.
“I ordered those for my son, not a motel maid.”
“Mom, I don’t mind she ate a few chocolates. She dusted around expensive computers and hard drives. Books, my passport, even my wallet when I swam… nothing else was touched. I have to fix this.”
My father tried to explain to Mom management wouldn’t simply lecture the employèe. They would hear only the word ‘steal’ and be compelled to fire her. As Mom and Dad trailed behind, I jogged down to the front desk.
I’m pretty bad at lying and the manager surely knew it. Not wanting our Val Jean to lose her job, I explained I’d given her permission, rationalizing that in a way I had. In the corner of my eye, my mother appeared less righteous and more stricken.
The manager said she’d take care of it. I paid up and departed, uncertain what the manager meant.
My mother’s Irish temper cooled and my upset faded, but the incident cast a pall over the holiday. Hotel housekeeping is hard, grueling work. What if the woman lost her job days before Christmas?
Mom had a way of doing the right thing. Christmas Eve, a card appeared with a Mom note inside. She’d checked with the hotel management. ‘Val Jean’ still worked at the motel.
Abruptly, the holiday felt a whole lot less Misérable.
So I’m trying to think up an article and Lenovo Google Display is playing rock in the background when I hear the intro to ‘Blurred Lines’, a song so rampantly sexist even Andrew Tate declared, “Holy Ç¥Œ◊‰, that’s sexist,” and went on to say, “Can I get them b✫tch✫s’ phone numbers? What? What did I say?”
But no, it wasn’t Robin Thicke nor even the originator of the tune, Marvin Gaye. It was Weird Al Yankovic presenting a video perfect for SleuthSayers. I could almost hear Rod Serling intoning, “Submitted for your edification, the words of one Mr Yankovic…”
Whereas most reviewers approved the video, some sourballs have to complain and not even about a couple of naughty bits slipped in. One argument grouched that judgmental grammatical purism promotes social distinctions, while another grumbled about ‘linguistic prescriptivism’, i.e, we don’t need no rules. This flies in the face of classical education when rhetoric and logic reigned, when the educated believed rigor and precision of language underpinned rigor and precision of thought.
Long ago in the depth of the pandemic, our friend ABA mentioned a game she thought might interest SleuthSayers. Rob mentioned it in passing, but said nothing further. At the time, I was working on other articles and gradually it slipped into my mental æther until I stumbled upon it Friday. You remember ABA– She won the Criminal Brief Christmas Puzzle way back when, an impressive feat.
As a puzzleist, she couldn’t resist telling us about Wordle… and believe me, auto-correct is right now having fun at my expense as it substitutes worldly, workable, and girdle. But ‘worldly’ is applicable: Wordle is literally being played around the world– Europe, Africa, Asia, and Oceania. So I have to apologize, letting our SleuthSayers wallow mentally while the rest of the planet has been playing… unless you read the New York Times. It bought the game a year ago.
It’s been compared to the game Jotto and the television show Lingo. It’s a fame of guess-the-letters of an unknown word, simple like Hangman, but a stretch to the imagination. You must submit real words. You can’t probe by using, for example, ABCDE.
Each word (in standard play) has five letters with six attempts to guess it. Results are color-coded:
green correct letter in the right place
yellow right letter, wrong place
grey wrong letter
Beginner’s Luck
On my first play joining this game world at large, From a single letter E, I nailed it in my third attempt (proof attached):
STEAM Notice how I cleverly deployed the commonest letters,
DRECK only to be punished with merely a single letter E,
QUERY but as luck would have it…
I simply couldn’t think of any other word with a letter E in the middle that didn’t use letters already ruled out (i.e, steak). And then boom! Got it!
First Wordle game ever.
Not bad for a beginner!
Oh, before I forget, did I mention Wordle was invented by a Welshman named Wardle?
After the New York Times purchased the rights, concerns arose the newspaper would charge for the game. They haven’t done so, but clones have arisen. I include a couple here because Firefox gave me problems loading the original. Here are various places to play it:
Whenever I finish one of the Florida news articles, out of sheer exhaustion, I doubt I’ll write another. But when one lives in such a state with a cornucopia of crazies, it’s impossible and ungrateful not to embrace such riches.
As before, items here are ‘news’ only in the sense events have transpired since the previous edition. If nothing else, you must read the last item.
Nassau County, FL. Two stand-your-ground road-rage warriors decide to settle matters with a gunfight. Their aim is as poor as their judgment as they accidentally shoot each other’s daughters.
Polk County, FL. Good Samaritan rings doorbell to deliver mis-delivered medication … stand-your-ground something … recipient and son arm themselves, figuring the coming Sunday war has arrived … shoot up innocent woman on her cell phone … Celebrity Sheriff Grady Judd explains it better than I.
Leon County, FL. You may have heard our governor banned more than 4 out of 10 math books (7 of 10 under grade 6) because of BLM and CRT and, um, dark arithmetic stuff. People who actually read all 54 rejected books found only one possible reference to the dark arts and sciences… but one commonality seemed to be black authors. Meanwhile in response to think tank recommendations, the governor said he is considering shutting down all advanced placement programs to prevent indoctrination of our precious students.
Orange County, FL. In a town in a county in a state that confuses family entertainment with the arts (or the lack thereof) and confuses black with binomial, the FBI forged ahead with a raid of Jean-Michel Basquiat paintings (or not) that raises interesting questions.
Sumter Co, FL. Know that feeling when you purchase a bright and shiny automobile and before the new-car smell wears off, the dealer calls you back in, saying you have to negotiate a new deal with worse terms? No? You must not live in Florida.
Date County, FL. FBI raids again! This time they’ve taken on a number of nursing schools in South Florida, which have churned out 7600 falsified nursing certificates amid a number of legitimate certificates. (Reports claim three schools are affected, but the real number is five or six schools under three different legal entities.)
Hillsborough County, FL At Brad Raffensperger’s press conferences, I found myself fascinated by one of his sign language interpreters, the bald guy with the white beard. His listen-up, wimps, don’t make me repeat myself, no-nonsense demeanor hammered home the rivets of the Georgia Secretary of State’s message.
Not Florida (Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger press conference)
That’s sign language! Here in Florida, uh, not so much. A television press conference sign language interpreter volunteers for the Sheriff’s department and turns out to be… well, not an interpreter. She is a fake, a marvelous forgery in the flesh. Note: Authorities aren’t certain if she was a former nursing student.
Lisa Loring, who played the original Wednesday Addams, died last weekend, the 28th of January. Since her 1964 series, Wednesday has been played by a number of actresses.
The Addams Family grew out of a series of 1938 cartoon panels and evolved ever since. Most recently, in the titular Wednesday, Jenna Ortega stars in the rôle in which she enters a private school where she plays detective to solve a murder. She’s good as the character and interacts well with her charming, scene-stealing werewolf roommate, Enid. Anything involving Tim Burton and Danny Elfman is bound to be interesting.
Fortunately, Wednesday’s parents barely appear on the screen, Part of the fun of the original series was the deep and abiding (and over-the-top) romance between Morticia and Gomez. Hardly so in the latest incarnation. The performances of Catherine Zeta-Jones and Luis Guzmán fall colder and flatter than a collapsed gravestone. Reading between the pixels, the couple appeared ready to barf as they monotoned dry-rotted romance lines.
Yes, Jenna Ortega took two months of cello lessons to learn how to handle it. No, she does not play the popular excerpt in the film.
The series appears to nod at a few influences– Harry Potter, The Munsters, and The Exorcist, this last hinted at in a few strains of tubular bells. It’s on Netflix.
Thus far, I’ve spoken of official elements owned by MGM, Paramount, and the Tee and Charles Addams Foundation, but clearly this recent release has been influenced by a lovely YouTube renegade, Adult Wednesday Addams starring Melissa Hunter. She crowd-funded it, seeking $5000 through IndieGoGo… and received $15,000, hardly a fetid pimple pop on the studio’s Uncle Fester.
And her skits are funny. Word spread about the little episodes. Adult Wednesday rights small wrongs. No injustice is too minute not to be taken seriously. Until one day…
A letter arrived from the Tee and Charles Addams Foundation: cease and desist. Thus landed a slap on the creative face.
On the one hand, Addams intellectual properties are owned by the foundation and studios. Further, they have the financial means to wear out almost any litigant: Those with the deepest pockets wins, and clearly Hunter doesn’t have deep pockets.
By some lights, Melissa and her little group appear on the side of the (dark) angels– the work is parody, clearly transformative, and appears in a smaller format. But fair use law remains exceedingly vague and only a judge could decide. She couldn’t afford to challenge the big guys on an iffy outcome.
But what an opportunity for the studios! Why not hire Melissa Hunter and her crew? Hit the ground running with an existing popular series with millions of views? Nah, that would be too sensible.
The big corporations issued take-down notices forbidding YouTube to publish Adult Wednesday Addams on her channel. Since then, episodes appear, disappear and reappear as stubborn fans post and repost.
Try these episodes while they’re still available. Tell me if you enjoyed the show.
Two minutes… ⏱️ … two minutes of reverent silence lapse as the camera passes under a gate bearing an encircled letter K. In the distance, a castle-like mansion beckons, a single lit window draws in the audience.
Through the glass, snow, swirling mysterious snow. When the camera pulls back, the scene reveals a snow globe cupped by an aged, dying man.
As the old man expires, the sphere rolls from his hand and shatters.
At that moment, theatre doors burst open. A piercing shaft of light slices the audience’s peripheral vision. The late-comers stumble and mumble, and their voices boom through the hushed auditorium.
“Hold this. Oh geez, I told that kid extra butter, no ice and lookie, extra ice and no butter. I’m gonna slap him silly. Hey, it’s started already. Oh, it’s that old guy, Orkin something. Scuse me. Oh crap, it’s in black and white.”
“Damn it. I can’t see. Scuse me. Scuse me.”
“Shh! Shh!”
On screen, the dying man whispers something approximating, “Яzzchoz€ßplub.”
“Whuh?”
💬
“What’d he say?”
“Don’t know.”
“Shhh!”
“He said nose rub.”
“Slow snub?”
“Or clothes scrub.”
“No, no. Hose tub.”
“That makes no sense.”
“Maybe he whispered nose blood.”
“Like nosebleed? ’Cause he’s dying?”
“I’m thinkin’ Moe’s Pub.”
“Nonsense, no Moe and no pub.”
“It’s the bar next door. I need a drink.”
“Are you all deaf? He said toe stub.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Shhh.”
“Huh?”
“He said snow glub.”
“No way. It was a snow globe, not a glub.”
“When it rolled, it went glub-glub.”
“That’s silly.”
“Honey, would you go back to the concession stand?. I can’t eat popcorn without butter.”
“Shhh!”
“Scuse me. Scuse me. Scuse me.”
“What?”
“Turn off your phone!”
“I’m googling.”
“What’s it say?”
“Yo. Reddit says rosebud.”
“What? That makes even less sense.”
“Facebook misheard it too.”
“Scuse me. Scuse me. Okay, they gave us triple butter.”
“Two hours debate and we still don’t know.”
“I vote to close-caption theatre subtitles.”
“That concessions kid forgot salt.”
“Shhh.”
“#@%£∂!”
👀
“Hey, look. Something’s painted on… on… on that burning thing. What is that?”
Above the rumble of the Trois-Rivieres – Montréal night train, an agonizing scream rent the dark. Two world-famous criminal experts rushed into the compartment of their secretary, M. LeJeune. They found him seized in death throes, struggling to whisper.
Hercule Gaboriau knelt. He loosened LeJeune’s collar.
“Speak, mon ami.”
Before he expired on the threadbare carpet of the rumbling carriage, three faint syllables fell from the dying man’s lips. Hovering above them, Professor S.F.X. Van der Dyne frowned. Awaiting an impromptu autopsy by the train’s multi-talented conductor, the traveling companions adjourned to the next car where they debated the murder.
“Porky Pig?” Van der Dyne said. “What could that mean?” He lit his pipe. “What a puzzle. Good God, man. If LeJeune wanted his last words taken seriously, he shouldn’t have mumbled ‘Porky Pig.’”
“Incroyable.” The great egg-headed detective shook his head. “Sacre bleu.”
The on-board autopsy revealed LeJeune’s brain had been penetrated by a thin, needle-like object.
“Obviously penetrated by a thin, needle-like object,” said the professor. “But what does Porky Pig mean?”
The great detective drew himself up. “It’s all so obvious. En français, he say porc-épic.”
“Right you are, old man, Porky Pig. We all got that.”
“Non, non, mon ami, you misheard.”
“The least LeJeune could have done was enunciate before popping off.”
“Mais oui, bacon brain. He say porc-épic.”
“D’accord, my friend. We agree he said Porky Pig. So what?”
“Pork-ee-peek, you lumbering lump of lardon. Eet means zee porcupine.”
“But Porky Pig’s a hog, not a hedgehog.”
“Non, you swaggering, swollen swimbladder of a swineherd. Porc-épic. He was killed by a quill.”
“Bah! No one’s written with quill for three hundred years,† not even our secretary who believes, er, believed his antiquated Underwood comprised the pinnacle of word processing technology.”
Gaboriau gritted his teeth. “I… said… a quill… killed him, you boarish, bloviating, bumptious, barbarian biographer of balderdash. He was murdered with a quill.”
“You didn’t get the memorandum, old man. Geese got quills. Pigs– porky or otherwise– no quills.”
“Merde du taureau, you pretentious, pompous, porcine proletarian.” The great detective palmed his face. “It means nothing, this shirr knowledge in my egg-shaped head. That Belgique fellow, at least he got respect.”
Leigh here with a sexist rant: I like watching US women’s soccer. Why? The players are exuberant and serious. When a men’s player (pick a country, any country) stubs a toe over an imaginary slight, he tearfully collapses on the ground, grousing and groaning like a sobbing 3-year-old whilst pointing a quaking finger at his opponent, hoping for a red card. Ooo, boo hoo. When one of the women is knocked down, she gets up and goes back to work. Hey, don’t trash me for telling it like I see it.
This isn’t one of Shifty’s best, but FIFA football fans will watch anything soccer related. Let’s have a look.
Twenty seven years ago on another New Years Day in a small northern Louisiana town, the bodies of a moderately wealthy couple in their late sixties were found shot to death, Lee and Helen Louise Morris. Their visiting 9-year-old grandson, Ryan, was missing.
Near the end of the month, a teen found Ryan’s pajama-clad body. All three Morrises had been shot in the head by the same .22 calibre pistol. Two months after the discovery, investigators arrested Mark Morris, son of Lee and Helen, father of Ryan, for first degree homicide.
The arrest surprised no one except the arrestee. He had been terribly careless in quotes and comments, raising suspicions since the beginning of the case. He was even picked up on a courthouse microphone admitting to his then-lawyer that he was guilty. The unusual aspect of this case was the motive– Louisiana’s Legislature had recently changed the law.
Fiction Becomes Factual
Several years ago, a Canadian publication serialized a locked-room mystery, one I’d written. Its title, ‘Untenable’, was a play on words. The motive in that homicide was a 2010 change in federal law.
It was a damned good locked room conundrum and I considered the motive unique. Then recently, I discovered a real murderer reacted to a change in state statutes.
For two centuries, a Louisiana doctrine called ‘forced heirship’ dictated that parents must divide their estate evenly amongst their progeny. No child could be disinherited without disinheriting all. The repeal abolished forced heirship and would take effect exactly midnight on New Year’ Day 1996.
Unhappy New Year
Helen Louise and Lee Morris visited their attorney and wrote a new will, leaving out their troublesome kid, Mark. They made the mistake of telling him.
Mark Morris allowed his parents to live into the waning hours of 1995 and then killed them for their nest egg. Grandson Ryan witnessed the killings and, in that parent’s depraved mind, he had to go.
With one exception, surprisingly little about the case appears on-line, mainly an AP news item and a find-a-grave squib. The one exception, however, is a well-written article explaining details. I recommend it.
As far as I can determine, Mark Morris resides in Angola Prison. He’ll die there whereupon his corpse will be interred in a grave with no marker revealing his name nor even his prisoner number, 00419088.
May you have a singularly wonderful — and safe — 2023.
