Thursday, May 8, 2025

Language Follies 22

The Dalai Lama sent me this:





What do I do with it?


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Pun Corner


The German automobile manufacturer Audi was founded by August Horch.


“Horch” is German for “Listen!”


“Audi” is Latin for “Listen!”


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“Turnabout” was the perfect choice for the name of a recording company—for, after all, “Turnabout is Fair Play.” 


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In the latest issue of The New Yorker, Anthony Lane discusses a stack of books about the magazine’s founder, Harold Ross, and his successor, William Shawn:


The entire stack could be crowned with the heading “Fanfare for the Comma Man.”


(If you don't get it, Google Aaron Copland.) 


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Yes/No/Maybe




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Are You a Cow?

 


$29.99


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That’s Just Too Bad


Billionaire Trump Official Says Missing Social Security Checks Are No Big Deal

Howard Lutnick, Donald Trump’s billionaire commerce secretary, suggested on a podcast this week that missing Social Security checks aren’t a big deal, and that only a “fraudster” would actually complain if their monthly benefit didn’t come in the mail.*

As an aside, here’s an obit from the NY Times:

Flo Fox, 79, Dies; Street Photographer Overcame Blindness and Paralysis**

(She eventually survived mostly on Social Security and Medicaid.)


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Franz Nicolay in The Threepenny Review:

 

 [T]he mediocre writer . . . imagines himself a great one, in the gauche American nouveau-riche taste for ostentatious display that slaps gold leaf on every façade, that claims a place in elite taste without understanding elite subtlety.***


(Remind you of anybody?)


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If You’ve Got Enough Money . . .


. . . you could put it in your fanny pack.


 


Only $1,200.

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