I was referring to the written forms, not to spoken. ![]()
Probably No Way Out (1987), which also featured the world-famous Georgetown Metro station. ![]()
I was reading a piece on Wikipedia the other day where someone was described as “the spit and image of _________________.” :smack:
I’ve got two from McDonald’s. Although I haven’t been there in years, so they may have changed by now.
Fries: They used to (and maybe still do) sell fries in 3 sizes: Medium, Large and Extra Large. Gah! How can the smallest of something be Medium?
Cups: They used to have this statement printed on the side of their cups - “Please put litter in its place.” Um - the place for litter is on the ground. If you put it in the trash, it would be garbage and not litter. So every one of their cups was quite literally promoting the increase in litter.
Finally - the flag for the State of South Carolina bugs me. It features a crescent moon where the tips of the moon curve back towards each other. Except that they never do in real life. The tips of an actual crescent moon only ever point away from each other, or perhaps in parallel. But never towards each other as depicted.
Don’t forget my favorite, Madison. Meaning “Son of Soldier”, it never registered (according to the Social Security administration) as a female name until 1985, when it was the name self-given by Darryl Hannah’s character in Splash as an obvious joke*.
So now there are millions of women around declaring themselves the male progeny of their warring father’s because of a joke in a movie. ![]()
*Darryl was a mermaid who rescued, then fell in love with, Tom Hanks. She appears, stark naked, in the middle of Madison Ave in NYC. While she is arrested and detained, the police somehow finds Hanks (it’s been almost 30 years since I’ve seen this) and when he asks her name, she gives him the only word of English that she knows: “Madison”. Big laughs ensue.
Today, that bit would probably play totally straight and many wouldn’t get Hanks’s flustered reaction.
(I think the name is brought up jokingly a couple more times - like I said, it’s been 30 years.)
<Bolding mine>
What does that mean? I googled that phrase, and all I got were references to the exact phrase, with no discussion of what that means.
Wendy’s does that size thing, McDonald’s does not. Drives me batty.
As I recall it (and it has been almost as long since I’ve seen it, FWIW), they are walking down the street AFTER he’s picked her up from the police station. They are discussing names for her (since her actual name sounds like a dolphin’s screech and is thus unpronounceable to him). He throws out a couple of names that she rejects, then makes an offhand comment like “Let’s see where are we… oh, 5th and Madison” and she lights up when she hears Madison and decides that’s what she wants to be called.
I think the joke would play exactly the same today. Its not funny because Madison is a strange thing to call a person (or a mermaid) but because after trying so hard to come up with a name she abruptly picks something from their immediate surroundings.
Bareheaded, with no cap or helmet on. Marines typically have ultra-short crewcuts (or just plain shaved heads), hence the grape reference.
The flags of some Muslim nations (e.g., Turkey) are the same way. Or, they (e.g., Turkmenistan) have stars between the cusps, which is also impossible.
Because the phrase “no cover on his head” would be easily understood by all, and not a phrase understandable only by US Navy and other military types. It cheapens the thrill when non-members of the club understand things. ![]()
Or, you know, “without a hat”.
Ukken, Ooken, etc.
Granted, in these days of texting and LOLspeak, U for “yu” sound comes more naturally, but my actual point was the odd spelling.
The original crescent was meant to represent a gorget.
It’s been redesigned a number of times, and it’s unclear whether the most recent incarnation is meant to be a moon or gorget.
The Star and Screscent is actually va complicated issue. Astrophysicist Brad Schaefer wrote a paper about it (partial abstract here 1990BAAS...22.1232S Page 1232 ). There’s also a hefty article on Wikipedia about it.
Some depictions of Star and Crescent are clearly not intended to be representational. There are some legends when a star actually appears between the tips, and in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner some versions have a star between the tips of the crescent moon, and some have it outside. Coleridge changed his mind. But having it between seemed mystical, siomply because it is impossible.
There are reports of at least momentary lights in the body of the crescent moon – Cotton Mather (who was interested in science as well as theology) reported seeing it. Some people thought it might be due to meteor strikes on the surface of the moon.
So it’s a complex question. In general, though, when it’s on flags and seals it’s best to view the image as fanciful, just as navies might use a “fouled anchor” emblem (with the anchor line twisting around the body of the anchor in a way no seaman ever would allow), or those “Engineering” seals that use three gears engaged, each with the other two, even though that couldn’t possibly work.
OK OK - I’m willing to accept that it’s a gorget (learnt something today, by the way). Or a stylized moon meant more for artistic impact than scientific representation.
But dagnabbit - I still don’t have to like it.
Maybe I should post this in the “Possibly accurate things that drive you insane” thread . . . .
For many years past, I’ve frequently encountered “the spit and image of…” – used interchangeably with “the spitting image of…”. While acknowledging that the latter is more generally accepted as the “correct” rendering – I can’t get bent out of shape about the awfulness of the “spit and” variation. It seems to me that both are flights of imagination and figures of speech, rather than accurately or meaningfully describing “whatever / whoever looking just like whatever / whoever” – in this instance, why not just let people play with words as the fancy takes them?
Yep. I shaved mine when I got it and I assume some of the high speed troopers still do this though I wouldn’t know. A new beret is thick and fuzzy, wetting it and shaving it streamlines the beret’s look when it’s being shaped.
Well, if it’s supposed to be proof that “Lloyd Webber” is an unhyphenated compound surname, there is at least one famous counter example.
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien’s father was named Arthur Reuel Tolkien, and his brother was named Hilary Arthur Reuel Tolkien, and his children were given names ending “Reuel Tolkien”… but “Reuel” is not part of the surname, which is strictly “Tolkien”. It’s a family traditional terminal middle name. If you alphabetize by last name, you put everyone in that family under “T”.
This is a nitpick, not a tiny error that drives me insane.
She appeared stark naked at the Statue of Liberty and had his wallet, which was how the police found him.