Random Stuff LXXII (Yes, I Really Still Exist Edition)
You know what I really like? Those factory reject green olives sold under the euphemistic label “salad olives.” They’re cheap; they taste just as good as the fancy, Platonic ideal ones; they come with extra, freelance pimentos; and they’re entertaining. When was the last time you saw an olive pitted sideways?
Dear Tropical Juice Co.: Shame on me for thinking that anything labeled “Guava Flavored Juice Drink” would be even distantly related to guava nectar. Shame on you for hiding the single guava molecule required by law at the very bottom of the container, so that I had to drink through an entire quart of diluted pear juice to enjoy it.
We have infrared and ultraviolet, but infrasonic and ultrasonic. Shouldn’t the latter be infrabass and ultratreble?
Note to Self: Before yelling “Hey, it’s a Yuppie Short Bus!” at the yellow Hummer stopped at the intersection, best to first make sure the dean of the medical school isn’t driving it. (As it happened, she wasn’t, but I had a scare there for a second.)
Here’s a mondegreen I’d unwittingly been singing in my head for thirty years. Steve Miller’s song “The Joker” contains the lines
You're the cutest thing that I ever did see
I really love your peaches
Want to shake your tree
Until a couple weeks ago I heard it as
You're the cutest thing that I ever did see
I really love your features
Want to shake your tree
The sad part is that I’d rate this song in the bottom third of the Steve Miller tunes I know, and it's one of the most overplayed on classic rock stations.
If you watch a DVD of a television show-say, Mystery Science Theater 3000-does it count as “watching TV”? I would say no,
But then again, this can generalize even to watching TV shows as they are broadcast at their regularly scheduled time. Real TV watching occupies the viewer’s complete attention and is done indiscriminately: whatever’s on is what gets watched.
Dear Tropical Juice Co.: Shame on me for thinking that anything labeled “Guava Flavored Juice Drink” would be even distantly related to guava nectar. Shame on you for hiding the single guava molecule required by law at the very bottom of the container, so that I had to drink through an entire quart of diluted pear juice to enjoy it.
We have infrared and ultraviolet, but infrasonic and ultrasonic. Shouldn’t the latter be infrabass and ultratreble?
Note to Self: Before yelling “Hey, it’s a Yuppie Short Bus!” at the yellow Hummer stopped at the intersection, best to first make sure the dean of the medical school isn’t driving it. (As it happened, she wasn’t, but I had a scare there for a second.)
Here’s a mondegreen I’d unwittingly been singing in my head for thirty years. Steve Miller’s song “The Joker” contains the lines
You're the cutest thing that I ever did see
I really love your peaches
Want to shake your tree
Until a couple weeks ago I heard it as
You're the cutest thing that I ever did see
I really love your features
Want to shake your tree
The sad part is that I’d rate this song in the bottom third of the Steve Miller tunes I know, and it's one of the most overplayed on classic rock stations.
If you watch a DVD of a television show-say, Mystery Science Theater 3000-does it count as “watching TV”? I would say no,
But then again, this can generalize even to watching TV shows as they are broadcast at their regularly scheduled time. Real TV watching occupies the viewer’s complete attention and is done indiscriminately: whatever’s on is what gets watched.