Gimme Swelter

Gimme Swelter

Yes, it's that time again.  August.  It isn't often that "this August" is worse than some "August of your youth" or "back home." But this August, this week?  I think it's the worst.  Even if you have the good fortune of having a nearby pool at which you can end the day, it can happen as it did yesterday.  We were overheated and out of sorts and hoping to spend some quality time cooling it there.  But, as the Rolling Stones put it nearly fifty years ago--"it's just a shot away, just a shot away--it's just a shot away." What sounds more like a shot than distant thunder?

Sure enough, it happened.  We heard it rumble, and flash, then "Oh, a storm is threatening, my very life today."  We had to leave the pool as the thunderstorm approached and stumble back home--"War, it's just a shot away."  This week has been miserable enough that more than once I said it out loud--how can anyone stand to work outside today?    

Monday, it rained all day, a deluge.  We spent time walking around a certain Plaza , dodging the spots where the overhanging roof leaked a pouring faucet down on us.  We dared to hope for a hot, sunny day.  Then we had to cross an alley between buildings, where it turned out the water was four inches deep.  Aa Mick and the rest of the Stones put it back in 1969, "Oh, the flood is threat'nng my very life today."  But the sweltering weather returned yesterday, unrelieved by the pool stay we had been hoping for.

Today, it was awful again--in terms of heat, anyway.  You still have to qualify that some.  Any day you can be free, be loved, have hope, give love, smile, frown--whatever--is a gift isn't it?  Just a few moments ago, when I opened the sliding glass door and the hot air plowed in, nearly knocking me over, I remembered it's still good to be alive, so I have to say it--"Gimme, gimme swelter, or I'm gonna fade away."

The Road Not Taken

I own a collection of puns that I picked up one day and, after opening it randomly to a couple of different entries, I was hooked.  I went to customer service to see if they had anything with which to remove the hook and they handed me a deck of cards and said "Here, go fish." and this was a branch of a large bookstore operation.   Just can't understand how these bookstores keep afloat. canoe?  Want to try punning?  Don't go there.  That road is not one for the taking.  Soon enough you will find yourself stuck, and it's a sticky business--branches or not.  

Not long ago, I was reading an article written by a local writer that I read on a semi-regular basis.   Her subject was couponing, and at first glance, when she described her mother's attachment to green stamps, and I reflected on my own mother's experiences with green stamps, I sized it up as at once a genuinely informative article on the present-day art of couponing and a wry reflection on how, despite ourselves, we are "becoming our parents" as we age.  I set the article aside for a more careful read when I would have some time and went on to other things.

When I picked it up again, I realized the direction the author had taken did not include the reflection on how we are taking on some of the characteristics, habits, idiosyncrasies of our parents.  I had read that into the reference to her own mother.   As has often happened, I misread the direction she was taking.  I wondered if this was simply because she had long ago accepted the notion that she was becoming like her mother?  Or did she not notice that her interest and apparent commitment to using the new variety of coupons that are sprouting everywhere around us was similar to her mother's green stamps habit?  Or, was her mother not really a coupon person and her interest in saving did not extend to coupons in general?  We'll never know.  Perhaps her article had included that discussion about following in her mother's footsteps and it wound up on the cutting room floor, so to speak, in the interest of brevity.  Or, like usual, I had no idea where she was going with the story.

But it gave me pause, and now I can hardly type--paws are just not made for keyboard work.  One of the similarities between I have observed in my own behavior and what I recall of my father's is a love of puns and associated malapropisms.  Often, I get distracted from what a speaker or writer has said or written, because I'm chasing a self-made pun.  The article described above started with a pun of sorts.  "Here's the deal (no pun intended)."  Which made me ask, what's wrong with intentional punning?    Why are puns like the Rodney Dangerfield of humor, they "get no respect."  But what is due the author of the following--"The Zen enthusiast said to the hot dog vendor, 'make me one with everything.'"  This one is just so right.  Who could put down such a clever expression?

I spend way too much time examining puns from all sorts of places.  They seem to fall on me and I collect them.  Most are not gems, but a few require a bit of thought.  Others are easily spotted as in the question, do animal rights activists prefer PETA bread?  Speaking of Spot, I really miss him--I spilled some spot remover on my dog and now he's gone.  Now I am worried about my pony.  He's got a cold and he's a little hoarse.  Make me stop....

I thought I Was Having an Apocryphal Moment, But....

On my way to the hardware store to buy a pipe wrench, I looked up and found myself at the corner of Bow and Arrow (streets, that is, and I am not making this up).  I had driven past Archer, which is where I really needed to turn to get to Grayco, but I drove past and turned at my next opportunity, which was Bow Circle, and that just happens to be the street the hardware sore is located on, even though it is quicker to turn at Archer, then you don't have to double back to actually enter the parking lot.   But back to pipe wrenches.  The Stilton or pipe wrench was invented--not by the Pied Piper, he was another sort of nut job--but by Daniel Stilton, and patented in 1869.  In those days there were no standard nut sizes, so every nut job needed his own wrench, or so it seemed.  

But the adjustable pipe wrench was invented for use with round objects, such as pipe.  Softer lead pipe could be grasped by the steel teeth of the pipe wrench and turned.  It might be thought that one pipe wrench might handle an infinite number of nut jobs,   This wrench must be distinguished, however, from a spanner, which can be adjusted to fit a nearly infinite number of nut sizes.  Unlike the pipe wrench, which had to have teeth to grasp the rounded lead pipe, the spanner had flat parallel edges that were adjusted to fit the flat corners of a square or four-sided nut, or otherwise flat-sided nuts of say eight sides, for example.

Neither of these wrenches should be confused with a lead pipe cinch, which is a sure thing, sometimes used to refer to sure profits, such as those made by monopolistic wealthy people.  By extension, a lead pipe cinch would be a certainty, unlike my turn one street late onto Bow from Arrow, instead of Archer--winding up at the intersection of Bow and Arrow.  

There I sat, musing about the old-time tool I was running out to buy, really for the first time in my life.  When I owned my first house, I borrowed a pipe wrench from my father-in-law.  The second house we bought, was near my own father's house, so I would borrow his when I needed one.  Shortly after that, my father-in-law sold his last house and gave me a box of his old tools, including his pipe wrench.  I'd kept it until my son bought his first house, and I had what I thought was my last house on the market.  I gave it to him.  Now, I am about to buy a house again.  This seemed to be an apocryphal moment, but....

Later that day, I was driving my car back home after having jump-started it for the second time--this time to buy a new battery for way more than I wanted pay.  As I grumbled to myself about the battery and its cost driving back home, I was glaring through the windshield at the mess on it.  What was it that I was struggling to see the road through?  Well, it was white, sort of, and splattered over most of it.  The place we have lived in for the past couple of years has no garage, so the car is parked beneath a large live oak, which shelters birds of all sorts throughout the year, and well, you get the idea, my windshield view was obscured by a lot of bird "stuff."  I knew the cause of my sh***y outlook on life today, in more ways than one.  Was this another apocryphal moment?  Nope, apocryphal really means fictitious or erroneous.  The word people like me who use it--or misuse it--these days, really are looking for the word epiphany--'a usually sudden manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning of something.”  I thought these were apocryphal moments (little ones) but they were really minor epiphanies.  Oh well.  What's in a name?