Hey, there, server lad,
Have you any wool?
Yes, sir, yes, sir,
One alpaca full!
This Drew Dernavich cartoon in the 6/1/26 issue of the New Yorker:
A wonderfully absurd riff on the custom of restaurant servers offering freshly ground black pepper (occasionally, also freshly ground sea salt) upon the appearance of food at the table, obliging the diners to participate in a pretentious edgy ritual of condiment dispensation
(the third mishearing takes us, in street language, into fellatio-land, a place not suitable for kids or the sexually modest)
Recently logged, three mishearings of televised reels, two from commercials, one from a joke reel on Facebook, all easily verifiable as to what was said (vs. what I heard when I wasn’t looking at the tv, so didn’t get visual information about the text):
I’m not sure which substance offering body pain relief item 1 came from, but the expression is common in ads of many kinds; Muddy Mat commercials (item 2), for easily washable doormats (especially valuable if you have dogs tracking in mud and dirt), are all over the place; item 3, with BJs (referring to food from a restaurant chain, ostentatiously playing on an abbreviation for fellations), comes from a joke Facebook reel about giving BJs to homeless people, which you can watch here
All three mishearings are surprising if you’re watching the reels they come from; it’s crucial that I was looking away from the tv when I heard paint instead of pain and money instead of muddy and DJs (disc jockeys) inead of BJs (blow jobs) — because in all three cases, the intended words appear on-screen.
But still, but still… all three are preposterous; who needs relief from body paint, a mat for the money the dog tracks in, or disk jockeys to give to homeless people? And worse: the first two items came from commercials I had heard a number of times before, with no mishearing.
And then once I had that first mishearing, it was inclined to be sticky: on later repetitions, even looking at the screen, my mind very briefly dredged up the mishearing, triggering a startled moment during which I corrected course. A kind of information-retrieval earworm, very annoying. I have no explanation for this effect, and suspect that most people have experienced nothing of the sort, but there it is.
Yesterday’s dinner order (big enough for that meal and today’s lunch): the Meat Basket Salad from Tacos El Grullense #1, in Redwood City:
(#1) The meat basket at El Grullense #1 (the Tacos El Grullense Grill in Redwood City is the first in a Bay Area family-owned chain of taquerias): beans, choice of meat (grilled chicken for me), rice, onions, cilantro, salsa, lettuce, tomatoes, guacamole, cheese, and sour cream in a crispy tortilla basket
A calendrical reminder, from my 5/4/24 posting on this blog:
today is (at least) three holidays, one deadly serious, two entertaining. … Four Dead in Ohio Day (remembering the 1970 Kent State shootings), Star Wars Day [May the Force be with you], and (in the US, where May 4th is 5/4) Dave Brubeck Day (for the 5/4 time signature in music [celebrated in Brubeck’s album Take Five])
Whassup? Every so often, a friend who, inexplicably, has not been following my postings attentively on a daily basis decides to catch up on things by e-mailing me to ask how I am, how I’ve been doing, what’s up with me, am I ok, or something else along these lines. Most recently, How are you? from a friend on 4/23; I told them more than they probably wanted to know, when something terse in between Not dead yet and Fabulous would have been enough.
If they wrote today, I’d be ready with a reply: fabulous. Well, as fabulous as it gets for a seriously disabled 85-year-old with (among other things) advanced kidney disease. This morning’s I’m still kickin’ e-mail to my daughter (somewhat edited and expanded):
Slept 6 pm to 4:12 am — 10 hours beginning to end, but only 8 hrs. of actual sleep, because of a long break for half-dozing sexual fantasies that crowded my mind and hi-jacked my body, culminating in a fabulous cataclysmic orgasm (a sign of robust general health). And then my first morning vitals (at 5:17 am) had blood pressure in my target zone (123/73) and pulse (at 64) as well.
Figuratively, I danced my happy happy joy joy dance. In actuality I methodically exchanged my soggy underwear for fresh, a morning ritual I’ve performed for 75 years now. But even the messiness of real life can be a delight. I’ve been given, all my life, to nearly dying from one thing or another, so it was inconceivable that I would live to old age; but here I am, with many of my gifts and pleasures either intact or transformed into others that are also valuable or satisfying. That’s just wonderful.
Yesterday’s (4./17) Wayno / Piraro Bizarro cartoon shows two snowmen conferring:
Left Snowman reassures Right Snowman that the frozen confection that they are eating in a cone (“fruit-flavored crushed ice” (NOAD)) is not in fact snow — that would smack of, ick, cannibalism — but instead sno, a substance that merely resembles snow (Wayno’s title for the cartoon is Faux Cone); it’s just a sno cone / sno-cone (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Wayno says there are 3 in this strip — see this Page)
Things I probably should have known, but didn’t, and have just recently discovered: one linguistic (on a pronunciation in BrE), one botanical (on the identity of a plant growing on the street a block from my house).
Today’s (4/14) Zippy strip has our Pinhead in conversation with a giant cement duck:
(#1) An anatine day in Southampton
A couple days ago, with my helper Isaac, I was preparing triplefruit trail mix: a large pouch of commercial trail mix — of almonds, cashews, and (dried) cranberries — with added packs of (dried) blueberries and cherries. (A couple handfuls of this trail mix is then added to some granola — rolled oats with almonds, raisins, cranberries, and pecans — to make a bowl of my breakfast cereal, which is, finally, moistened with yogurt and milk. Fiber, fruits, nuts, probiotics, and yumminess.
Assembling the trail mix involves dumping the pouch of commercial mix and the packets of dried fruits into a large plastic container, fixing the top firmly on the container, and then getting its contents thoroughly mixed, by turning and shaking the container briskly, over and over.
Trail mixing is noisy, energetic, and surprisingly entertaining. You are moved to treat the stuff in its container as a percussion instrument, to sway your hips a bit, and to contemplate breaking into song. This time, Isaac and I had the very same inspiration:
Shake it up, baby … Twist and shout … Come on and work it on out
Oh yeah! There’s a musical score for trail mixing, and it’s glorious.
(alcoholic drinks and lots of condoms, so not for kids or the sexually modest)
I put in a grocery order for delivery from Safeway (a bag of mandarins, 2 containers of yogurt, 2 cartons of milk, 4 boxes of Kleenex, and some Dijon mustard), and Safeway suggested a pile of additions to my order, the first of which came as the word MAXIMUS, which my highly penis-invested imagination took as a reference to condoms, huge ones (no doubt as a compliment to the power of my body; for the purposes of sales, every man is admirably horse-hung, whatever his actual equipment is like). As it happens, I am happily snug — salestalk for small / slim — rather that max / thick, congenial rather than showy, but I’m entertained by the gesture.
But it turned out that MAXIMUS was an allusion to max taste, not max size — specifically to the powerful taste of an ale, Lagunitas Maximus Colossal IPA. Safeway was encouraging me to order some. Or Mad Dog Bling Blue Razz blend raspberry wine. Or Absolut Tabasco — chili pepper flavored vodka. (I swear I am not making these up.) There were probably further remarkable alcoholic drinks on succeeding pages, but I did not venture further into this astounding catalog. In fact, I was falling back on visions of snug but silky condoms. (more…)
Last night’s food-delivery surprise came through an offer on the Grubhub delivery service: for El Camaron RWC in Redwood City — which provides seafood dishes from the state of Sinaloa, plus tacos and (surprise!) Mexican-style sushi (the menu has a Sushi Sinaloa section). I went for the Mexican Japanese items: an aguachile roll and Sinaloa sashimi. Just fabulous, with enough left over for at least one more meal.
