November 26, 2004

• Excellent link! I have always wanted a dictionary devoted to the "etymology" of expressions. Most concentrate on individual words.
• Fascinating - now you've made me late for work. Thanks, Nostril.
• One expression I don't see is "sprained an eyeball" (from trying to read the FP of this site.) Tasty content if you can stand that, though.
• Nice, Uncle :) Chip on one's shoulder - bears a grudge; behaves anti-socially The reference is to a custom originating in the USA, but also known in Canada, in which a person who was looking for a fight carried a chip of wood on his shoulder and invited people to knock it off; anyone who did so agreeing to fight. Perhaps the custom made better sense in pioneering days when chips of wood were litter as common as pieces of paper today, and fighting for its own sake was equally common. I thought it was from the story of Tantulus cooking his son Pelops to serve to the gods. They all knew it was the boy, except Demeter, who was so distraught over the loss of her daughter Persephone that she ate a piece before realising it. So when the gods re-formed Pelops, he had a piece of his shoulder missing which was replaced with a chip of marble.
• I like your version much more, Al.
• I seriously dig this site. Many thanks your Bookmark Department, Nostril.
• Excellent bookmark!
• Great stuff nostril, although the one I was looking for isn't there: "From out of left field"
• rocket, I just happen to have that very phrase bookmarked from Phrases.org: OUT IN LEFT FIELD - Out of touch, eccentric, odd; also, misguided. This term alludes to the left field of baseball, and there is some disagreement concerning its origin. Some writers suggest it comes from the remoteness of left field, but only in very asymmetrical ballparks is left field more distant than right field. Others suggest it alludes to the 'wrongness' of left as opposed to the 'rightness' of right. A correspondent of William Safire's in the "New York Times" said it was an insulting remark made to those who bought left-field seats in New York's Yankee Stadium during the years that Babe Ruth played right field, putting them far away from this outstanding player. Perhaps the most likely theory is that it alludes to inmates of the Neuropsychiatric Institute, a mental hospital, which was located behind left field in Chicago's old West Side Park. Hence being told you are 'out in left field' would mean you were accused of being as peculiar as a mental patient. In any event, the term has been used figuratively for various kinds of eccentricity and misguidedness since the first half of the 20th century. John Ciardi also cited a synonym, 'out in left pickle,' maintaining that 'pickle' was baseball slang for the outfield. Perhaps it once was, but it is no longer current.
• I shall use the phrase, "Go teach your grandam how to grope ducks" with fair regularity, now. What a great link! Thanks!
• oh-oh, it's been Mofi'd.
• oh no! and i was just in it a second ago, i must have broken it. heh. i was checking for the other phrase recently under discussion here, "i'm a lover not a fighter." not in there, poo.
• Geez, they must have bandwidth size comparable to a drinking straw. It's not like it's multimedia. It's just text.
• Name That Itch: thanks for the info. I wonder if that has something to do with the Chicago tradition of "Left Field Sucks!" "Right Field Sucks!" (Probably not, but it's fun to holler.)
• The site is back up. Boookmark while ye can or "make hay while the sun shines".
• I must be slower than a constipated snake in a molassas barrel, cause I still can't get in.
• Try clearing your cache, GramMa. Sometimes your browser is still directing you to the "page is down" page saved in your computer, rather than the sctive one.
• Ah HA! There it is. Very nice, Nostril. I'm just happy as a sandboy. Sandboy? Happy as a pig in a seersucker suit.
• Happy as a sandbox? Happy as a sandbarge? Happpy as a sandwich? Um... Very nice link, Nostril.