Tuesday, August 27, 2013

"The Man With X-Ray Eyes" Starring Ray Milland: Popcorn by The Colonel #59

When a Canadian relation came to visit, the question arose how to entertain him, and part of the answer was a road trip to The Book Barn in Niantic. A few purchases:

☻The Chicago Manual of Style, 14th edition
☻ Cicero: Murder Trials
☻ Mark Twain: Wit and Wisecracks
☻ The Amos Oz Reader
☻ Sredni Vashtar and Other Stories (by Saki = H.H. Munro)
☻ The Practice of Writing (by David Lodge, English novelist)
☻ I Quit, But Forgot to Tell You (by Terri Kabachnick)


Surely you remember Terri Kabachnick of Kabachnick's, a women’s clothing store on Main Street. The subtitle is “Attacking the Spreading Virus of Disenchantment.” Copyright 2006.


Collaboration of Alfred Hitchcock and J.R.R. Tolkien: “Dial M for Mordor.”


"The Monkey's Paw" is a horror short story by author W. W. Jacobs, published in England in 1902. It involves a monkey’s paw with the power to grant three wishes at terrible cost. It is summarized in Wikipedia.


If you ever find anything offensive in Popcorn by The Colonel, rest assured it is not actionable. Every word is combed in advance by our law firm, Rosen, Krantzen, Guild & Stern.


Dear Ed McKeon: “Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things.” --Russell Baker, sounding like Colin McEnroe.


Caselaw marches on. Our Superior Court has granted an annulment of a same-sex marriage on the ground that one party is still in an undissolved civil union to another person contracted in and recognized by New Hampshire.


The lyrics to “Louie, Louie” are not even a little bit dirty. Here they are:


Louie, Louie
me gotta go.
Louie, Louie,
me gotta go.


A fine little girl, she wait for me;
me catch a ship across the sea.
I sailed the ship all alone;
I never think I'll make it home.


Three nights and days we sailed the sea;
me think of girl constantly.
On the ship, I dream she there;
I smell the rose in her hair.


Me see Jamaica moon above;
It won't be long me see me love.
Me take her in my arms and then
I tell her I never leave again.


Two more books, both by Anita Liberty: 

☻ How to Stay Bitter Through the Happiest Times of Your Life
☻ How to Heal the Hurt by Hating.


Cargoyle: a demon trained to sit on your car in long-term airport parking and jump up and down and wave at you to help you find your car when you get back from your trip.


New thought or old? “Ares Perfume: When Love Is War.”


One compensation for growing old is not having to work for fools.” --The Colonel's Lady


“No, you go ahead and eat. I’ll just pick at my beer.” --Dr. Francis Keefe

Picturable equivalents for alphabet letters (useful in mnemonic systems): ape, bee, sea, Dee, He, Hef, gee, itch, eye, jay, Kay, el, hem, hen, eau, pea, cue, are, ess, tea, ewe, Vee, double-ewe, eggs, Y, zebra. (An “are” is one hundredth of a hectare.)

The four-coin reform: let the dime be the smallest denomination at 10 cents. Then the penny as the half dollar, the nickel as the one-dollar coin, and the quarter as the five-dollar coin. Paper money should start at ten dollars. Benefits: all prices are expressed in dollars and tenths of dollars (no more five or twenty-five cent pieces); larger coin size means larger value; counterfeiters are thwarted.

One-dollar bills are the commonest raw material for counterfeit $100 bills. The counterfeiters bleach the bills and overprint the blanks. Eliminating the single and the finif would drive up the cost of raw materials by hundreds of percent.

Canada, our neighbor to the north, has a Loonie ($1 coin depicting a loon on the reverse) and a Toonie ($2 coin depicting Her Majesty on the obverse and a bear named Churchill on the reverse). Canadian paper money starts with the fiver, although Canadian “paper” money is being replaced with sheets of plastic. We have seen and touched one of the new twenties. It will take getting used to.

Apparently it's now a commonplace that those Americans who fought WWII were “the greatest generation,” so it’s time to have a contest to determine “the second-greatest generation.” Make your suggestions in the comment section.

“To us, a field of corn -- to a raccoon, very heaven.” --The Colonel’s Lady, driving through Nebraska.

“We’re an athletic family. We go to the gymnasium so often we call it the gym.” --Lerner and Loewe

“When angry, count four. When very angry, swear.” --Mark Twain

2 comments:

Ed McKeon said...

Dear Colonel.

Thanks.

And if you haven't listened to Todd Snider's The Ballad of the Kingsmen, you should.

Anonymous said...

Canada is also fazing out the penny. Does that make them anti penny?