THEN there’s the hassle of trying to get covers, text, and format all lined up. But we can see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Excuse the spam attack on Closed Circle: we got the dike plugged. There’s a hot spot in hell for these jerks. I trust none of you are in the market for quickie loans or mortgages from a shark. What, no miracle drugs from the internet? Weight loss pills?
But we do see the light! It may be the 5:10 freight from Yuma, but, hey, we’ll cope.
We need one thing for the front garden: rock for the path edging. And we finally located the place we were looking for—we hope—not on Google maps, but on some inspired internet searching. I got a word in the company name. Discount. And we hope they’re still in business.
Yesterday, as I found out, Jane’s little foray with the clippers totally filled one of those giant green garbage garden waste bins—all in ragweed. She didn’t stop with us and the 3 neighbors: she kept going, and we have noted that there’s less ragweed where we’ve cut it down in previous years. We have hope if we keep doing this we can eliminate it from the alley…this neighborhood has oldfashioned graveled alleys where weeds grow behind garages and fences, and we have had a heckuva crop. She wore a mask and showered head to foot when she got in, and the air is markedly nicer. My eyes have stopped watering. I would not open the lid on that bin for all the tea in China. Next Friday it all goes away.
Still finding out weird stuff from Akon. After solliciting bios for me and Jane, and getting some good ones which took an hour of our time—they didn’t, apparently use them. Not to mention the madness of the paneling. I can say the anime part of it was quite fun. The sf part, not.
OTOH, we will be back in Dallas this fall for Fencon…and we will be at Soonercon next June. So if you’re in that region, we have hopes that those two cons will be fan-friendly.
“…all the tea in China” makes me chuckle. My father used that expression many times for whatever he wanted no part of. I probably haven’t run into it in sixty years.
I still say “…all the tea in China”.
Speaking of cons, your cherryh.com/index.html “front door” is still posting your appearances in 2010! 😉
I have had less spam in my inbox lately. Most of it lately has been of the questionably financial or pharmaceutical nature. Thankfully, I haven’t received spam lately from rather, ah, enthusiastic young women eager to share their, ah, public spirit. (Odd how that’s generally young ladies and not young men, though.) Ah well, I don’t feel like enlightening them about the oversight. I guess you can’t blame ’em for trying, but gee….
Dallas in the fall? I’d love it if my budget would stretch to that. Probably not this year, though. Smaller steps until then.
You could always have massive sugarcane burns that pump smog and bits of burned leaves into the air. The weather report from DH on the way to a client’s business is IFR conditions about 3 miles from home.
Lol—“all the tea in China”, “all around Johnson’s barn,” those lovely little expressions from back home and years ago.
Paul, the sad problem is, I can’t get ONTO that site to fix it. I changed computers, and the new installation of the program on this computer won’t acknowledge my right to access that site. I’ve tried various passwords and tricks and I still can’t get in. I’m going to have to get organized and make a serious try at hacking my own site. THEN I can fix it.
“Buying a pig in a poke?” [poke=a small bag; ie, without looking at the pig.]
“Up the creek without a paddle?”
And the nautical ones:
“Three sheets to the wind.” [sheet=rope that fastens the sail: there are 4. ‘to the wind’ means flying free]
‘by the board’ — if a splintered mast goes ‘by the board’ it falls over and trails over the side of the ship. Letting something go ‘by the board’ means to jettison it over the side.
“By and large.” In fair weather and foul, in either case; sailing large means with the wind favorably off a stern quarter; sailing with the wind ‘by’, means with the wind coming adversely. So by and large it works—meaning under various circumstances.
“the bitter end.” End of the line. A bitt is a snubbing post fastened to the ship, where the rope is fastened with a running loop so it will not play out and fall ‘by the board,’ ie, overboard. So if your rope has come to ‘the bitter end’ it has run as far as it can: you’re out of rope.
“a loose cannon”—in the days of cannon warfare, these iron monsters on recoil-rollers were chocked in and tied down securely for general sailing. In heavy weather, if you had one come loose and go careening about the deck—you had a serious problem on a wildly rolling ship, a thing that nobody wanted to ‘tackle.’ [the rope/gear used for securing things like cannons.
Just your ‘words for the day.’
For your amusement, I suggest looking at A Sea of Words, a lexicon of nautical terms that have come into (and out of) common usage over the years.
BTW, “IFR conditions” is an aviation term, meaning “Instrument flight rules”, i.e., really terrible visibility that requires instruments to assist the pilot. DH and I both did our time in the cockpit. How many other specialized terms and phrases have made their way into everyday language? LOL!
Hi, Chondrite. Keeping up with the nits, you’re gonna confuse ’em between IFR and IMC! IFR means following procedures (flight rules) suitable for poor visibililty, but says nothing about whether you’re operating in IMC (Instrument Meteorological Conditions).
Indeedy! IMC requires following IFR, although it’s a bit difficult when most cars don’t have altimeters, bank indicators, etc. etc. 😀 In this case, it was a man-made pea soup fog of noxious smoke, not unlike a London Yellow.
Those sayings all bring back memories. We’re getting old … (at least I am)
A minor nit, CJ–your comment about the bitter end of a line is correct except that a running loop was/is not used. A running loop or knot is designed to slip. Line is ‘made fast’ to a bitt so that it won’t slip. In the chanty ‘Drunken Sailor’, one of the lines goes “Hoist him up with a running bowline.” It’s a sarcastic joke–a running bowline will tighten up under load, putting the squeeze on an already-unhappy sailor!
Lol! Thank you for that!
What’s in a tiny little preposition? Or the presence or absence of an article? A lot…occasionally. A notorious local airline in the OK-TX area was known for white knuckle operations, taking planes so low past high-rise office buildings that you could see people at their desks…
Came weather so nasty other flights were grounded. Sheer Terror Airlines kept flying, with the stew reportedly saying “They’re saying there’s weather ahead, but we’ll be flying under the radar, so we’ll get you there.”
Was this the late unlamented TT?
The name of the airline is lost in the fog of memory, alas. There were several plying the OKC-Dallas-Houston routes. And of course the American route, OKC to Tulsa: you’d lose 30 lbs at the top of the arc and down you’d come—90 whole miles. OTOH it was no comfort to fly in or out of Tulsa on American, because that was where their repair for screwed-beyond-a-quick-fix and time-to-do-a-fatigue-test-on-this-sucka aircraft was located—dunno if it still is.
It’s still here. I used to work out at the base but in IT, not M&E. And you want stories of juvenile behaviour, just try working on the South Mezzanine of Hangar 2 where they had to actually forbid the guys from sitting on our stairs and we needed an escort to get to the ladies which was the other side of the small machine shop. And this was in the ’70s and 80’s. We finally got our own buildings, partly underground.
We had to stop in OKC. Part of the idiot rules set by the CAB. Do you think we here in TUL actually wanted to set down in OKC? If one was flying non-revenue, space available, the agents here had a habit of loading us on so OKC could off-load us when the guys from Vance AFB wanted our seat.
They joys of travelling on passes. Still, those were the days of the $10 New York – Copenhagen fares when Finnair was starting the service through to Helsinki.
OK – enough venting!
Then there are the phrases that could go both ways: Another thing coming or another think coming …
Iron was unsuitable for cannons onboard ships. Salt water would corrode them too quickly, rendering the bore unusable. The cannon balls on the other hand were iron, unless you were shooting grape, canister, or chain shot. Cannon was made of bronze because it was easily cast, it also was more forgiving when a round was fired, because it would expand and then contract fairly close to its original dimensions. Even a “long-9”, which fired a 9 pound ball was well over a ton in mass, not to mention the truck upon which it would rest. I think C.S. Forester and Alexander Kent are very helpful in “learning the ropes” (which is what a new seaman was expected to do when reporting to a ship. We don’t call them ropes, except for wire rope, they’re lines, cables, hawsers, sheets, etc., depending on their diameters, compositions, and purposes.
Forester is inconsistent in naming his guns… he talks about ‘long nines’ and also mentions ‘long 9-pounders’ (versus a 9-pounder carronade, I suppose). I don’t recall the exact place, but in one of his books he mentions that the 32-pounder was nine feet long; in another book a character speaks of a long nine being heavy metal for a stern chaser, and I can’t see anyone referring to a 9-pounder as heavy metal.
I believe that he did know the difference between a “long nine” and a 9-pounder carronade. The carronade was shorter, didn’t have the range of the long nine, and was used for anti-personnel action (sweeping the deck). The dimensions of the 32 pounder aren’t necessarily incorrect. Remember, the ship has a small beam to begin with, and on the gun decks it was very cramped. If you consider that the ship might be in action with both batteries firing, there isn’t much room for the powder monkeys to get to and from the powder room. So, they would have been shorter guns, but since they were used for battering the hell out of the other ship by silencing its guns, they didn’t need to be long range, just heavy tubes to throw heavy shot. If you recall in “Lieutenant Hornblower”, when they have the marines haul the 9-pounders up the mountains, Forester says that the guns weigh a bit over a ton each. In fact, Hornblower tells the first lieutenant that, and gets a snappy retort for stating a fact that every officer on the ship well knew. The 9-pounder was used further forward or aft, and would not have been a part of the main battery, anyway. (I used to have a collection of books that described the battery arrangements of a 64 and 100 gun ship in the Royal Navy, but alas, like so many of my possessions, has been withheld from me by a vindictive ex-wife.)
Bronze, yes. But big and heavy. You’re right. The early iron ones, let alone the wooden ones, were not fun to stand next to or work on. The wooden-slat ones were used VERY briefly before they went back to the drawing board.
Well, and re learning the ropes, you have lines, ratlines, sheets, hawsers, stays and such…and in a vast assortment of ropes, knowing which one to let loose and pull on is a good thing.
There’s one condition in which one still calls it ‘rope’ aboard ship–while it is still on the spool or storage reel. Once it has been pulled off the spool and cut, it becomes line of one sort or another; it is usually named by its size or application. A halyard (a corruption of ‘haul yard’) is a line used to adjust or support a yard or spar (a yard hangs by its middle, more or less, and a spar is attached at one end or not at all).
Wire rope is called exactly that in the U.S. Navy, rope.
A small diameter line of hemp that looks like glorified baling twine is called marline. A marlinspike is a wooden implement used to separate the strands of lines in order to splice, make eyes, etc. The metal equivalent to the marlinspike is called a fid.
Hawsers are large diameter lines that are used for anchors, mooring, and heavy duty work that requires a larger line.
May I respectfully differ, joek? Wire rope is called either wire rope, or just plain ‘wire.’
I’ve often heard, “for all the tea in China.” I say it sometimes.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard, “all around Johnson’s barn.” Without context, I’m not sure I get that one. Something about going all around the subject without addressing it? Or what?
I had to adjust my thinking on preposition usage with “a couple.” Most of the time, and the way I was taught was proper in nearly all cases, was “a couple OF (things).” But certain parts of the country routinely omit “of” and it “sounds/looks funny” to them with the “of” in there.
I’m curious, was there some brass “monkey,” literal or otherwise? (Aside from allusions to the monkey’s masculinity. I’m not asking about that.) I’ve seen references to a brass monkey or gold monkey, besides the brief (and fun) TV series in the 80’s or 90’s. I’ve wondered if there was some reason for the term.
Right now, it’s “hotter than a $2 pistol firing up hill” outside. “higher than giraffe’s ears” applies to anything that’s high (like 100+ degree temperatures) or is very expensive. And then there’s “fixin'” to do something, as in commencing to begin to start to get ready to do it– . One of my favorites is “I’ll be all over you like ugly on a warthog” which is another way of saying you intend to “whallop the snot out of”
someone if they act up, misbehave or cause trouble. — if someone is acting up or trying to make trouble, they’re “cruising for a bruising.” And when you feel sick from overwork and exhaustion, you feel “like you been rode hard and put away wet” (which is a terrible way to treat a horse!) And someone who is very short/or a small child is “knee-high to a grasshopper.”
And then there’s “What do you want? Egg in your beer?” (Meaning you’re being overly critical or hard to please.)
As to the brass monkey, I dunno about that one. I do know that a powder monkey is a boy who carries gunpowder cartridges from the ship’s powder magazine to the gun crews. And then there was the reason sailors were flogged up on deck, because there wasn’t enough room below deck “to swing a cat”
as in “cat-o-nine-tails” — referring to a space that is small and confining.
When my aunt was annoyed or exasperated, she’d say, “Oh, goodnight Irene!” (from the song, “Irene, Goodnight” — the chorus of which involved saying goodnight to Irene. Repeatedly. Ad nauseum.) That’s where I got it from.
Ah, where to begin!
So many of these terms have mutated over the years, and you hear them so many different ways. My family used to say “Round Robin Hood’s barn” (did Robin Hood even have a barn? Why? What would he keep in it? “Unfazed” versus “unphased”? What’s a faze? (though it is by far the more common form in my experience). One that drives me crazy is when people say they are “honing in” on something… No! It is homing in, as in a missile which homes on a target.
As an engineer who loves to play with words (go figure), I have developed and maintained for more than 10 years a dictionary of Naval slang (137 pages so far), and while some of the words and phrases are, well, not exactly suitable for a family-friendly website 😀 I still enjoy taking the occasional walk through it.
As for brass monkeys, while this is usually claimed to be a naval term, it is NOT a shipboard term. ‘Monkey’ was the term for a structure used to contain a stack of cannon balls near the guns of a fortification–it acted to keep the bottom layer of the pyramid from rolling away (ships used ‘garlands’ instead, racks near the bulkheads). The theory is that the coefficient of thermal expansion of brass is greater than that of iron, so that, in extreme cold, the brass monkey would contract so much more than the iron balls that the projectiles would be forced out of containment and roll away. I ran the math and am doubtful!
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You’ve heard the one about “The Devil to pay”, right? The full saying is “The Devil to pay, and no pitch hot.” The Devil seam is found aboard a wooden ship, it’s the joint between the vertical line formed by the uppermost timbers of the hull and the horizontal timbers of the uppermost or ‘weather’ deck (there’s another one, a weather deck is one exposed to, well, weather). All seams of a wooden ship ‘work’, or move relative to one another, under the stress of a seaway (it’s noisy!) because it is impossible to build a structure rigid enough to prevent it (you wouldn’t want to build it that rigid anyway, for a variety of reasons). Seams were caulked using oakum (manila fibers picked from a worn-out line or hawser) and sealed with hot tar (pine tar, or pitch). This process was called ‘paying’ a seam. So in a storm, the Devil seam would work, and leak. Paying the Devil seam was a right bastard (ahem) because you had to hang out over the side of the ship in the middle of a storm and hammer in oakum, then smear hot pitch over it afterward. So, if the Devlil seam is working, you’re taking on water–and if the pitch isn’t hot, you can’t fix the leak.
That’s probably enough for one overlong post!
Robin Hood’s barn was Sherwood Forest… so ’round Robin Hood’s barn was over hill and dale and through the woods and still not likely to find what one was looking for.
Another phrase from our frontier: “Lower than a snake’s belly in a wagon track.”
Don’t get me started on the horse related phrases. My pet peeve is people misusing rein (leather or woven strap that attaches to a bit or headstall used to guide an animal), and reign (to rule). Both words come from the same root meaining to guide. When one is given free rein one is loosening the reins and letting the horse have its own way, going in whatever direction at whatever speed the mount determines. As far as I can tell there never was a usage of “free reign” except in the bodice ripper novels currently so popular. A horse “with the bit in his teeth” was unguideable. (The bit action is on the jaw and “bars” of the mouth (a gap between the incisors and the grinding molars) or across the tongue or corners of the mouth.) When the bit hangs so low that it can be held between the teeth, it can’t act where it is effective. When someone says “Heads Up” s/he is saying watchout for falling bales of hay/straw or any other item coming from above. Working in a barn is a hazardous occupation.
And for any of you who love sea stories, if you haven’t got Patrick O’Brien’s books, you’re missing a treat. Sort of like a seagoing Jane Austen in several regards; good period piece; good personal stories; good technical stories; and he doesn’t define the terms, just tells you go get a diagram of a ship…;) For many years his stories didn’t sell well: he even burned his copies in despair, so I hear; now he’s shelved with the classics. And deserves it. I never found anybody I liked as well as Forrester until O’Brien.
We still have the standing joke around our house, “Sir, you have debauched my sloth!!”
Wikipedia has an article on brass monkey as a colloquial expression.
And my (now retired) Navy aircraft carrier friend told me that a usual joke to play on a newcomer was to tell him to “Go get a hundred yards of flight line.”
Oh, there’s dozens of things like that, mitha! I was present once when the noob was asked to go get a bucket of prop wash (that actually being the disturbed air behind a turning propeller). Some other good ones: “Get me a bucket of striped paint!” Mail buoy watch… sea bats (my personal favorite)… 3-man lift… golden rivets… ahhh, memories!
Once in a while the guy figures it out in time. One time the new guy got sent for a left-handed monkey wrench. He returned with a ‘regular’ one, of course, and the old heads got on him for it, of course. He pulled it off by taking the wrench back and saying “No, you’re holding it wrong, see?” then turned it over.
The expressions people use and the figures of speech they come up with are an endless source of fascination for me — not just in the real world but in the vast realms of the imagination, both charted and un-. The other day, a character I have been playing around with exclaimed in annoyance, “Well, circumnavigate the globe!” — Don’t know why that particular expression sprang to her lips at that particular instant, and don’t have any idea where such an expression might have come from, but there it was. I never cease to be amazed at how the human brain (mine included) comes up with stuff like this — like the day my mind was idling, and suddenly decided to take the word “Mississippy” and turn it into “Mrs. Sippy.” I not only got a new character out of that one, I also got a whole story to go with it.