Month: March 2011

I’m inspired, you?

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Looks like everyone likely to eat pork have signed on. The pork people aren’t looking for new customers; they are going to get pork-lovers to eat more. They changed their slogan, Pork, The Other White Meat, to Pork Be Inspired.

Frankly I don’t have high hopes for the campaign.

If you ask me I think the pork people should do what the prune people did. When they found out prunes brought to mind constipated old people, they changed the name.  No less than the US Food and Drug Administration told the prune people, “Yes, you can call yourself dried plum people.”

So why not just rename pork? Call it … dinner. What’s for dinner, mom? Well, dinner is for dinner, son. Oh, yay, yay says son.   

While they’re at it, pork people need to own a holiday. Candy people sell 2 billion dollars worth on Halloween. Set up a meeting with the Santa Claus people before the dried plum people get around to it. Let it leak that the cookies and carrots thing is so over. Make Santa happy with a side of bacon, a nice pork medallion or ham’n beans.  

Well what do you know, I just became inspired by pork.

Look Who’s Here

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Every year, back comes spring, with nasty little birds yapping their fool heads off and the ground all mucked up with plants.

Dorothy Parker reportedly spent lunches for 10 years straight sitting around a round table in the Algonquin hotel in New York wisecracking with her literary friends.

Her quotes are perfect when you buy a blank greeting card and then draw a blank at figuring out what to write. Tuck these somewhere with your extra stamps:  

The first thing I do in the morning is brush my teeth and sharpen my tongue.

This wasn’t just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it.  

Starry Night

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The 100 Word Challenge from Velvet Verbosity invites writers to tell a story in exactly 100 words based on a one word prompt. This week’s word is sleek. 

SuperMoon was down a flight of stairs from the sidewalk. The door opened to a wide hallway with a ceiling lit like a starry night.  

Jay stood inside facing the entrance. 

He had been the gatekeeper ever since the club opened. His custodian’s job paid the bills but every night except on Sundays, he was at the club. SuperMoon attracted a sleek, moneyed crowd partial to late nights, highballs and muted jazz.

Jay pulled at his shirt sleeves and patted his hair.  Tonight’s the night, he told himself. He opened the door, nodded hello and nothing was ever the same.

Cash In

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How many times have you been sitting around with friends; someone says something funny and you all yuck it up. Then someone says that would make a great t-shirt! And everyone agrees. And life goes on.

Back in 2000, two guys who had entered an online t-shirt contest thought maybe they could make something of it. And so they started Threadless.

You upload your own t-shirt design to the site. Visitors and members of the community rate the design on a 1 to 5 scale. Each week a number of the top designs are selected for production.

Here’s the good part. The designer is paid $2000 and a $500 gift certificate (or an additional $200) plus $500 for every time they reprint the shirt. If designing isn’t your thing, send in a slogan; if it’s selected you’ll get $500.

Bonus: An online shop carries t-shirts for all ages and the prices are very good. 

Happy St. Pat’s Day

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The first time I heard the Elders was at a big party. They had donated a night of music as part of party package for an auction and a friend of ours had the winning bid. It was sooo much fun. Looking back it is not surprising the band has since become a Celtic Rock Super Group.

The 6 member band proudly declares they were founded in 1998. Lead vocalist Ian Byrne hails from Ireland but the rest of the band are “American, Kansas City and Midwestern –bonded by a love of all things Irish.”  

It’s lucky for us that they found one another. Here are the Elders singing a song about Irish girls; it has the lyrics so you can singalong which along with drinking a green beer or two is guaranteed to set irish eyes a’smiling.   

PS: Happy Birthday Jacqueline!

Remembering Henry

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And so if, as rarely happened, a customer was distressed over a price, or irritated by the quality of an Ace bandage or ice pack, Henry did what he could to rectify things quickly.

Tilting his head toward his unhappy customer he’d position his rather over-size ears to catch every word and nuance of the complaint. His eyes would narrow in concentration. He’d tuck his chin down and absentmindedly rub his hands together.  

He would look down at the item splayed forlornly on the counter, cup his hands, gather it up, and stand there holding it against his chest. And then he would say,  “You are absolutely right.  This is just not right for you; I’ll take it home with me.”

In all the years Henry ran the corner pharmacy, he never lost a customer.

A rose by another name?

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What’s in your vocabulary? What words or phrases do you think sound beautiful? And what words are simply gross? The wordsmiths at Dictionary posed those questions on their blog, The Hot Word.  (Yeah, I think it’s kind of cute, too.)

The whole thing started when they announced what is commonly considered the most beautiful word or phrase in the English language: cellar door.

People said, “Whaat?”  

Yup, according to those who make it their business to study the pleasantness (euphony) or the unpleasantness (cacophony) of sound, cellar door has just the right combo of sounds that make it most pleasing to the ear. 

Edgar Allen Poe seems to agree with the combo as he gets pretty close with nevermore, forgotten lore, and chamber door. But their blog readers have different ideas, choosing words whose both meanings and sounds are beautiful to them.

Serendipity is most often submitted for the most beautiful (along with scissors, fudge, epiphany, languorous, voluptuous, ambrosia, and melancholy). Many believe moist is among the grossest (along with flaccid, juice, wasps, nugget, morsel, pork, vomit, acrylic, gooey, oyster, egg, and sludge).

The moral of this story is name your 2011 baby Celadora. I’d stay away from Moist.

Ya think?

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Dear Abby,

1) A couple of women moved in across the hall from me. One is a middle-aged gym teacher and the other is a social worker in her mid-twenties. These two women go everywhere together and I’ve never seen a man go into or leave their apartment. Do you think they could be Lebanese?

 2) I have a man I can’t trust. He cheats so much, I’m not even sure the baby I’m carrying is his.

3) I am a twenty-three year old liberated woman who has been on the pill for two years. It’s getting expensive and I think my boyfriend should share half the cost, but I don’t know him well enough to discuss money with him.

 

 Excerpts from The Best of Dear Abby, 1981 

 

Rouge et noir

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Wine clubs are so old style. How about a licorice club?

Licorice International moved from the upper east side of Manhattan to Lincoln, Nebraska in 2003. Located in the historic Haymarket area, the store stocks 160 types of licorice along with keeping up with a hefty mail order business.

Here are the black and red collections. My favorite? It’s a German licorice that is salty called Katjes Salzige Heringe.

 

Thinking of you, Japan

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When you face disappearance and death head on, vanity falls right off the radar. Fear illuminates what matters, and leaves the rest in shadow, perhaps forever.

Kate Muir from her book, Left Bank

Source: Consolatio, a collection of quotes to help those who are grieving.