The merest suspicion of a shadow of a thought of such a thing had not so much as begun to cross my mind before reading his thread.
While waking to the train just this Monday night (or possibly Tuesday, I forget), I was musing on a Dorothy Sayers mystery (set, of course, in England) featuring a college porter, and my impression that these so-called porters really didn’t carry much if anything; they mostly just sat around guarding the door… at which point the thought drifted by:
port=carry,
hmm,
port=door,
hey! :eek:
This isn’t an obvious thing, but my ah ha! moment was during the movie Traffic. Miguel Ferrer was being interrogated and his voice reminded me of the emperor in Dune. Waitaminnit! Miguel Ferrer? Jose Ferrer? Pow!
I read an interview with Bryan Adams where it was originally going to be titled “Summer of '75”, but his record label made him change it (even though Adams was 9 in the summer of '69) because “No one gives a shit about the 70s.”
I just last night, while watching Groundhog Day realized that the whole story about the groundhog and the shadow and the winter is all just supposed to be a dark joke.
Because there’s always six more weeks of winter after Feb 2. And, the only way you couldn’t see your shadow is in the middle of a storm. So the winter is either long or it’s long and hard.
Nor have I, but there was a sense of recognition when I saw AUCE, because I immediately thought of the weird jazz song that Nat King Cole and lately Diana Krall have sung where the lyrics have things like (pardon my spelling) “Frim Fram Sauce, AUCE-on-fay, and Sha-fa-fa on the side.” I may have to go locate the real lyrics if anybody challenges that the song exists. But that’s exactly what I thought of.
And it was only just now that I realized that as well.
Reading it, I guess I always kind of assumed it was pronounced “seg.” I’m not sure why it never dawned on me that I never heard “seg” in actual conversation.
My contribution, which I think I’ve mentioned before, is what I discovered last Christmas. When in ‘‘The 12 Days of Christmas,’’ my true love gives me six geese a laying, those geese are in fact laying… eggs.
My freshman year of college I once remarked I was the EP-i-tohm of coolness. (Epitome. The weird thing is, I knew how to say it. For some reason, I just pronounced it the way I always do inside my head, incorrectly. I still get teased about that.)
I’m also now confused about the correct pronunciation of genre because myself and everyone I know say, JON-ruh, not jen-EER.
What’s funny is that it struck me one day that Spring begins on March 21, essentially seven weeks after Groundhog Day. Which means that either of the groundhog’s predictions (six more weeks of winter, early spring) are equally right or wrong at all times. Making Groundhog Day basically Schrödinger’s Cat Day.
I only recently really deconstructed the name “The Beatles” in my head. That name (and that band) has been in my life since I was born, so I never really thought about what the name means. It’s not just a play on the word “beetle”, it’s also a play on the word “beat”. Like, I just never “got” it before now… d.u.h.
However apochryphal the story, I like that they modeled their name after The Crickets (Buddy Holly) and that earlier they were The Quarrymen (for guys who dig rock, perhaps). John and Paul did enjoy twisting words about.
