I’m beginning to think that I might have known this at some point in the not-so-distant past, but my aging brain decided to store it away until such time as I read the phrase “cashew fudge” again.
It was a comment on :
[Is an online puzzle “a creative work”? If not, too bad! Here goes.]
My wife and I have been doing the New York Times’ Spelling Bee puzzle every day since the end of March, and one of the things that annoyed us was never knowing how many words we had left to get to our goal: the Genius level. Then today, eight months in, I just happened to touch the little yellow box with the number of points we had earned so far, and got this popup box:
Rankings
Ranks are based on a percentage of possible points in a puzzle. The minimum scores to reach each rank for today’s are:
- Beginner (0)
- Good Start (4)
- Moving Up (10)
- Good (17)
- Solid (31)
- Nice (52)
- Great (84)
- Amazing (105)
- Genius (146)
D’oh!
And it was only in June that I accidentally discovered that if you found all of the words in their word list, you achieved the level of Queen Bee.
Great neighborhoods covered in graffiti, not just run-down areas.
… unless, of course, you are British with a non-rhotic accent, in which case the stereotypical sound of a donkey is Eeyore!
I was an adult before I figured that out.
It’s the non-rhotic accent that is key. Lots of things suddenly make sense once you know about and take it into consideration.
Holy crap. That never before occurred to me.
Most of the rest of the stuff in this thread is stuff about a creative work I would never have realized because I’ve never seen that creative work. This…
As much as I love Charlie Brown, comic strip and Christmas special, I have to bring up the overwhelming irony of Schulz lecturing us on on commercialism in between commercials for Ford Motor Company, Dolly Madison treats, Little Debbie, Metlife insurance, Chex Mix, Cheerios, Comind (Brazil Bank), Calbee (Japanese snacks), All detergent, 7/11 (in Thailand), All Nippon Airways, Hallmark cards, Hart’s bread, Honda cars, Burger King, McDonald’s, Wendy’sMacy’s, Milk Bone, Peanut’s Peanut Butter (in Australia), Friendly’s, Mattel, Mr Donut (in Japan), Popsicle, Red Baron Pizza, Webber’s Bread, Whitman’s Chocolates, Wonderful Pistachios, Cedar Point, Kings Island, Knotts Berry Farm, and some more foreign ones.
Yeah, but at the same time he managed to get a very lengthy direct quote from the New Testament into a prime-time show that is eagerly watched every year. And is highly anticipated year after year. Pretty good stealth merchanidising of a non-commercial product.
I’m not criticizing – I’m admiring it. the Chuck Jones/Dr. Seuss How the Grinch Stole Christmas manages to place a similar non-commercial message in a commercial-laden presentation, but without the Bible verses. You can argue that the very existence of such a thing on commercial television subverts its message. But, then again, the popularity of the show itself subverts the advertising.
This isn’t exactly new. Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol not only argues against mercenary values at Christmastime, it also was a factor in the creation of Christmas As We Know It. And Dickens’ message wasn’t only one of “care for people and human values, not just the money”. He worked in condemnation of specific laws and regulations against the poor. These were overturned ages ago, but I notice that the Disney/Zemeckis/Jim Carrey version still explicitly refer to them, even though it could easily have been cut from the script, and most people don’t even know about it. That’s really good stealth propaganda, when your authorial arm can still reach across more than a century and a half. And in a good cause.
I am put in the unfortunate position of criticizing something I do love, but that kind of underlines and puts a bow on the hypocrisy. It’s like praising a televangelist for delivering Bible messages while fleecing his flock.
I love Peanuts. I even love his last decade of work. Charlie Brown Christmas is my favorite special. But I do get bothered every time I watch it.
That’s what Christmas is, though, to millions of people. I’m an atheist and even I can recognize that.
One clear example of something I noticed after a millionth time:
Bugs Bunny’s in Hair-Raising Hare (1945) the end has a sexy robot bunny girl giving him a kiss after Bugs dismissed her as just “mechanical” Never noticed that his tail then turns like the mechanical key of the robot bunny girl while he follows her off screen in a very exited but robot like way.
Not to mention the fact that Snoopy and crew have been commercialized to death.
In ACDC’s You Shook Me All Night Long :
“working double time on the seduction line…”
“Seduction line” is a play on the term “production line”. All this time I was equating it with something like “pickup line”. Shya! Like some girl has to work on this guy to get him in the sack 
Shawshank Redemption also apparently takes place in a parallel universe where the prison is designated as a place to be entirely populated by prisoners, guards and wardens who don’t sound as if they’re from anywhere within 1,000 miles of Maine.
Yeah, that was my point. We’re being sanctimoniously lectured on how bad it is using an avatar that is itself highly over-commercialized. If I wasn’t clear, my previous post listed the products and services Peanuts shilled for. Car and Insurance companies? All the major fast food restaurants? Multiple bakeries? It’s one thing to merchandise, it’s another to use your child characters to sell whatever product backed up the Brinks truck that week whether appropriate or not (what does Charlie Brown have to do with Ford Falcons or insurance?). Again, this comes from a place of love, but that Bible verse smugly delivered by Linus puts it over the line even if it was meant at the time to be sincere (Schulz fought for its inclusion).
Can you explain this?
I made a thread about this but no-one’s interested, so I’ll just mention it here. The tune written by Raymond Leppard for the Kyrie Eleison that is sung as a march early on in the 1963 Lord of the Flies, is suspiciously similar to the March movement in Dag Wiren’s Serenade for Strings, from 25+ years earlier. That March has been bugging me every time I heard it, and the penny finally dropped today when I heard it again on the radio.