Tag archives: wordplay

That long-running sitcom All in the Family always began with Archie and Edith singing a sort of pseudo-nostalgic ditty, “Those Were The Days”, which included the line, “Mister, we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again.” President Herbert Hoover was indeed emblematic of his time. In his four-year term (1929-33), he had the misfortune […]

One of the things I’m glad to have learned in high school physics was the explanation of why movies “move.” The fact is that those projected pictures don’t really move at all.  But, if your eye sees a number of still pictures in rapid sequence, and each one is only slightly different from the preceding […]

There are many ways to acknowledge defeat. Besides simply putting your hands in the air, probably the most universally recognized symbol is the white flag – which can also indicate a desire to parlay. You may remember a true episode in the movie Battleground, in which a representative from the Germans comes, under a white […]

Probably one of the most famous of all motivational slogans was first thought up in 1911 by Thomas J. Watson, the man who became head of IBM: His brain-wave was the single word: “Think.” But now that we have machines so “smart” that their ability to think is a matter for philosophical debate, we also […]

One idea that keeps cropping up in literature is the notion that our land – whichever land it happens to be – is at least in some way as holy as those far-off Biblical places we have been taught about since childhood.  Here are two fine examples: First, we have the mystical William Blake, whose […]

On April 4 1940, during an early stage of World War II, which American journalists dubbed “The Phoney War,” because not much actual fighting was going on, prime minister Neville Chamberlain, who had led Britain into the war, addressed his Conservative Party with a speech in which he used a common metaphor in a rather […]

I went through much of my life without being aware of this simple fact: One major problem faced by people all over the world is that of getting bitten in the night. And among the chief culprits, besides insects, or even vampires, are ordinary humans. And the humans are ourselves. Biting and grinding our teeth […]

Here’s a quiz question for you: What one famous piece of literature celebrates (1) a musical feline? (2) an athletic bovine? (3) an amused canine? (4) some amorous tableware? Stumped? Then I’ll have to remind you: Hey diddle diddle, the Cat and the Fiddle,The Cow jumped over the Moon.The little Dog laughed to see such […]

What is peace? Two millennia ago, the Roman historian Tacitus quoted an enemy leader as saying of the Romans, “They make a desert and call it peace.” But total destruction is not the preferred method of peacemaking, and various alternatives continue to be tried – one of which is mediation, whose success depends in part […]

Maybe you have heard the story of the man who went to see an eminent Viennese psychiatrist complaining that for some reason he felt sad all the time. After some discussion, the doctor said, “Let me suggest, as a first step, that you go to the theater tonight. The great clown Grimaldi is performing here […]

Here is a question for you: What is the southernmost point of Africa? If you answered “The Cape of Good Hope,” I’m sorry, but you’re wrong. The correct answer is Cape Agulhas, which is 150 km farther south. The “Good Hope” Cape was not even given that name originally. Its first European discoverer, Bartolomeu Dias, […]

Do you ever long for the good old days, when the sun went around the Earth, and we were really the center of everything? Science keeps discovering new ways in which we are less and less significant, and the world more and more strange. Not many eras ago, if I were to quip, “They told […]

Sometimes, staying alive seems too high a price to pay for the privilege of not being dead. Nevertheless, people find ways to cope, including comforting mantras such as “This too shall pass.” One ubiquitous expression advises us to “Take one day at a time.” I satirized this earnest injunction with an epigram which became the […]

Here is a little quiz for you: What country is represented by (a) a part of a tree? (b) a whole tree?  The part of a tree is a leaf, and the maple leaf has been the symbol of Canada for centuries, though it did not get onto the national flag until 1965. A key […]

No doubt you’ve heard of the usher who said, “May I sew you to your sheets?” And you probably know that such slips of the tongue are called Spoonerisms. William Archibald Spooner, the honoree of this eponym, lived much of his long life (1844-1930) at Oxford University, where he was for many years a loved […]

My mother had a favorite joke on the subject of superstition: “Well, I’m not superstitious,” she‘d say. “But I’ll tell you one thing: I would never sleep thirteen in a bed.” Nevertheless, it’s a fact that for several people to share a bed was once much more common in our culture than it has since […]

Despite FDR’s famous dictum, that “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” we do have plenty of other things to be afraid of. But what matters is how we deal with them. The ones really worth fearing are those we can’t prevent and can’t adequately insure against.  Crossing a street is a […]

I don’t want to alarm you, but this is going to be about alarms, and ways of giving them. Let’s start with our culture’s most famous false alarm: The Boy Who Cried “Wolf!” The moral is clear: If you make false alarms, people may not believe it when you have a real one.  But notice […]

Maybe you’ve heard about the child who came home from Sunday School reporting he’d been learning a song about a cross-eyed bear named Gladly. The song turned out to be one called “Gladly the Cross I’d Bear.” Now, let me tell you some similar misunderstandings of which I myself have been guilty. One of them […]

On December 9, 2013, I celebrated my 80th birthday at a hilltop park overlooking Santa Barbara. Inviting everybody, on a pot-luck basis, I announced, somewhat facetiously, that this would enable me to assume the role of a “Wise Old Man of the Mountain.”  To my surprise, the City took this seriously, to the extent of […]