Language Follies 32 (An Alligator Walks In . . .)

In an article in The Washington Post someone named Victoria Wolff states, “I would argue that everything you need to know about life can be found in ‘The Sound of Music.’” (1)

Which means, I suppose, you can stop reading now.

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Well, if you’re still here . . .

A Few Questions of the Day

“Why do Jews eat rye bread?” (Google)

“Can Restaurants and Bars Become the New Funeral Homes?” (NY Times)

 

 “What is James Joyce most famous for?” (Google)

 A FewAnswers

The Rev. Ravi Holy (appropriate name) about Russell Brand’s conviction for rape: 

“People, might go: ‘Well, I thought you believed in forgiveness.’ I do, but that doesn’t mean if someone’s committed serious crimes, and then they become a Christian, that you go: ‘Oh well, fair enough.’” (2)

 

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Donald Trump: “I’m a religious person, so in theory, I go to Heaven.” (3)

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Edward Hopper: “If you could say it in words, there would be no reason to paint.”

 

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Donald Trump: “You got to be very smart to turn on a lawnmower. I don’t want you to have to think too much.” (4)

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George Garnett: “A doctoral thesis was meant to be boring.” (5)

Those Underhanded Democrats

“Katie Miller [Stephen Miller’s wife] warns that Democrats are serious about going after Trump staffers who commit crimes.” (6) 

Anticlimax of the Day

“Among other insults Trump launched at [Bill] Maher, he accused the host of drinking a lot of alcohol when they dined together, being a ‘POTHEAD’, not being nice.” (7)

Grammarian of the Day

MarkWayne Mullin: “We wasn't aware the child was in the car, I can tell you that.” (8)

Headline of the Day

“alligator strolls into North Carolina bagel shop” 

(The Guardian)

So an alligator strolls into a bagel shop and orders a cream cheese and lox on a poppy seed bagel.

The counterman, figuring that the beast has only a prehistoric brain, serves up the sandwich and tells the alligator, “That’s 30 dollars.”

The beast opens his (of course) alligator purse and pulls out a 10 and a 20.”

“You know,” says the counterman, “we don’t get many of your kind here.”

“Makes sense,” replies the alligator, “with the prices you charge.”

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(1)  https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/11/08/sound-music-offers-invaluable-lessons-ahead-broadway-revival/I would argue that everything you need to know about life can be found in “The Sound of Music.”  

(2)  https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2026/nov/06/why-did-russell-brand-convert-to-christianity

(3)  https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/trump-douthat-60-minutes-interview.html

(4)  https://newrepublic.com/post/217046/donald-trump-repeatedly-short-circuits-speech-noises?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=tnr_daily

(5)  https://www.historytoday.com/archive/making-history/defence-boring-books

(6)  https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/katie-miller-warns-democrats-serious-194534438.html

(7)  https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/oct/26/trump-bill-maher-truth-social-rant

(8)  https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/markwayne-mullin-ice-shooting-wasnt-145003963.html

 

Election Day

Today is Election Day. And it’s all rigged!

<<<<<>>>>>

Millions of unregistered voters will vote.

Green card holders will illegally vote.

Hordes of undocumented aliens will cast ballots. 

In thousands of high school gyms Chinese thermostats will switch votes.

Hundreds of voting machines will mysteriously break down.

Polling place workers will “lose” thousands of ballots.

Polling place workers will “find” thousands of ballots.

Thousands of school buses will cross state lines and deposit strange people at polling places.

At nursing homes, attendants will fill in ballots for senile seniors. 

Thousands of people will vote multiple times. 

Millions of mail-in ballots will never arrive.

Millions of fake mail-in ballots will arrive.

Hundreds of people will find that their polling place has changed.

Polling places will run out of ballots.

<<<<<>>>>>

It’s all a fake!  It’s all fraud! Cancel the election! Nullify the results!

Unless, of course, my candidate wins.

  

One More Time

If you’ve been following me for a while, you know that I am an avid peruser of arena and stadium walls. My latest find puts all the other signs, slogans, and advertisements to shame. 

Consider “Genesis Employment,” as seen during a recent Coventry City Premier League match. 

What could that possibly mean? Or portend?

Could it mean that the Big Guy has decided to do a make-over of the universe and would like to have an extra pair of hands to help? Considering what a mess mankind has made of it, it would not be unreasonable to imagine the Big Guy calling a halt on things and determining to start over. 

What would the instructions be to the new hiree? “I,” says the boss, “will divide the heavens and the earth. You will be in charge of populating the land with animal life. Things went a little awry the first time, and so we ended up with beasts looking like anteaters, hippos, giraffes, and, of course, elephants. (Though I’m kind of fond of those pachyderms—so maybe give them another shot.) And, of course, there was the screw up with the unicorns, who somehow missed the boat; bring them back. The big question is mankind. Should I bring them back?”

“May I make suggestion, sir? If you decide to give them another chance, don’t start them off as vegetarians.”

“Ha, ha. Good thinking, my boy. And perhaps not start them off in a luscious garden—maybe at the Arctic Circle.”

“What about snakes? One of them screwed up things the first time.”

“As I recall the Irish got along without them. So don’t bring them on this time. My previous assistant thought that a tsetse fly or two would be a fine joke to play; he’s now down in an eternally hot spot.” 

“That insect caused a lot of trouble.”  

“So, what do you think? Are you coming on board?

“I’d be proud to.”

“Oh, one thing more—it’s a six-day week.”

 

Word Salad

Katie Zacharia with her 14-minute press conference missed out on the proverbial 15 minutes of fame by a 60 seconds. After falling on her face during the 14 minutes, she was given the boot out the door as press secretary, and she was roundly criticized for her false claims of being a “lawyer” and an “attorney” when she never passed the bar exam. 

But what has not been examined enough is Zacharia’s background that made Trump and his minions think that she should be hired in the first place. In The New Yorker, “a gossamer résumé in the field of communications” is David Remnick’s verdict of that background. (1) Perhaps more than her thin CV, it was her political footprint that led the seekers of a compliant press secretary to her doorstep. QAnon adjacent, Zacharia was a conduit for wild conspiracy theories: 

“she called John Podesta, the former Clinton and Obama Administration adviser, a pedophile. (This was both false and unkind.) Working the same set of obsessions, she has written that “the radical left Hollywood elitists are sick pedo cannibals.” (Ditto.) Zacharia has also shared phony medical information, including this: “8 in 10 women had a miscarriage after getting the COVID vaccine.”

It would seem that had she not performed so badly in front of the press, with her conspiratorial mindset and her penchant for broadcasting fake information, she would have fit in perfectly with the Trump administration. 

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Zacharia kinfolk are out there in the MAGA universe. The way Maggots see the world is through a weird, distorting window. At a recent Trump rally in Nebraska, one audience member told a reporter that the economy can’t really be bad because “[p]eople have new phones. They get tattoos.” (2)

Another attendee praised Trump for surrounding himself with “God-fearing men who believe in the Bible.”

“Throughout history, if you look at the Bible, God has used people like President Trump to fulfill his will,” [she] said. “There’s Daniel; there’s Joseph. I could go on.” 

(Trump’s “God-fearing men” includes those who have a craving for executing people by firing squad.)

To illustrate the level of intelligence of the Maggots, take a look at this picture taken at that Nebraska rally: 

This was the rally in which Trump said of Iran, “Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego.”

Trump and his minions seem to have no compulsion about having American citizens incinerated.

But, then again, Trump has masterfully explained his war policy:

“I think I’ll probably sit in the Situation Room and make an appropriate decision,” Trump said. “My decisions are correct ones. I mean, look at our country. I was moving. This country is booming during a conflagration. You know, during—some people would say it’s a war, some people would say it’s not really a war. When we get a war this year—you know, nothing’s happened for the last two weeks, right? And somebody drops a bomb, and nothing happens, and they drop a bomb. No, I think that you’ll find out what I’m doing.” (3)

 

Got that?

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(1) https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/anthony-scaramucci-says-the-universe-did-katie-zacharia-a-favor#rid=4fd1e922-0198-40d3-96ef-9efc12114558&q=zacharia

(2) https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/10/trump-rally-nebraska-senate-race-midterms/688894/

(3) https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/10/trump-time-interview-mental-state-takeaways.html

Language Follies 31 (Not Kosher)

Sam Sifton (NY Times newsletter)

I wrote this recipe for Chinese roast pork with garlic bread back in 2020, when I really believed you needed to make the pork — the sweet-salty Cantonese barbecued pork known as char siu — yourself. You don’t. You can buy a small container of the meat from the Chinese restaurant that’s on the way home, and then put the sandwiches together for dinner in about 20 minutes flat. It’s a taste of the Catskills, delicious in the extreme.

(That would be in the Catskills of Grossinger’s, The Concord, et al.?)

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Maybe you have a taste for other pork:

Amazing, the fake costs much more than the real!

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Perhaps you’re looking for something other than food to buy.

How about a teddy bear?

£4,000 for a teddy bear?! How cuddly toys became luxury items (1)

Or maybe you’re concerned about oral hygiene:

Dyson launches £420 toothbrush that films ‘live cleaning footage’ inside your mouth (2)

You might be looking for fashion tips. There’s a Swedish fashion brand called Acne Studios. And the NY Times suggests, “This Fall, Consider Dressing Like Your Living Room.”

You, of course, would want to place your purchases in a shopping bag:

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I purchased food from a Chinese restaurant the other day and received two fortune cookies. One had three fortunes inside, but the other was blank. What does that bode for me?

Speaking of the future, The New Yorker had a clouded crystal ball back in 1955 when it proclaimed that “it would probably take another Battle of Bennington to exorcise Republicanism from Vermont.” 

Justin Bourne plays it safer writing on the sportsnet.ca website about the Toronto Maple Leafs' prospects for the new season:

As I figure it, Bourne means that the Leafs can be better than last season, or worse than last season, or be about the same. 

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Three Questions, One Answer:

Can I Question My Partner’s Moose Sighting? (NYT)

Would Jesus like Waymo? (WaPo)

 

A woman in Belleville, Ontario, the birthplace of [Paul] Theroux’s grandmother, considers Americans “a fearful people,” and points to the fact that they have so many guns. She asks Theroux what Americans are so afraid of. “That’s obvious,” he says. “They’re afraid of other Americans with guns.” (3)

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Hard Luck Story:

“A brain surgeon dropped part of my skull on the floor” (4)

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Language silliness:

Some company claims to be an “Official transformation partner.”

McVitie’s, a famous British snack and biscuit brand, lays claim to “true originals.”

And then there’s “tokenized.”

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Hazardous Pastime (1953)

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Real Life Dramatic Dialogue (The New Yorker 1955)

"But you get so tired with nothing but scenery all the time."

"Yes, but you get even more tired and bored without any scenery."

"Well, I guess. But I like it better when there's mostly landscape and not so much scenery."

"Well, I guess. But then most of the scenery was gone when we were there. There were just mountains and things.”

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And finally, for those who are in fear of our coming AI masters:

1) New York Times

An elite Wall Street law firm has apologized to a federal judge for submitting a court filing replete with errors created by artificial intelligence, including “hallucinations” that fabricated case citations. (5)

2) AI Overview (Google)

 

Vernon Duke (born Vladimir Dukelsky) composed some of the most famous and sophisticated popular standards and Broadway songs of the 20th century, working with legendary lyricists like Ira Gershwin, E.Y. Harburg, and Ted Latouche.

 

(The problem is that the lyricists on the song “Taking a Chance on Love” (1940) were named John Latouche & Ted Fetter.)

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(1)  https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/aug/31/4000-for-a-teddy-bear-how-cuddly-toys-became-luxury-items

(2)  https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/sep/01/dyson-toothbrush-camera-films-live-footage-inside-mouth

(3)  https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/16/books/review/true-north-paul-theroux.html

(4)  https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/sep/25/experience-brain-surgeon-dropped-skull-floor

(5)  https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/21/nyregion/sullivan-cromwell-ai-hallucination.html