At the Drop of a Hat

Political wheels are already getting oiled for the 2016 presidential bandwagons. Numerous hats have been tossed into the ring, especially on the Republican side. Does anyone still wear a hat? Not so much, but they still get thrown proverbially into that ring. Why?

Stories vary, and about the only thing they agree upon is that the phrase originated in nineteenth-century America. Most sources trace its origin to the sport of boxing. In the early nineteenth century, almost all men wore a hat or cap of some kind. Early fights were less organized than today’s sport and often took place in an informal circle surrounded by a noisy crowd. At the end of a fight, if a new challenger wished to take on the champ, the clearest way to make known his intentions over the din was to throw something into the open space—and the handiest thing for most people would be their hat.

On early citation was found in 1805 in The Sporting Magazine, which reported of a boxer, “Belcher appeared confident of his success, and threw his hat into the ring, as an act of defiance to his antagonist.” In 1810, there is a reference in a publication called The Mirror of Taste that explains in more detail how the hat-in-the-ring process worked: “A young fellow threw his hat into the ring and… the … umpire called out ‘a challenge’...He then walked round the ring till a second hat was thrown in, and the umpire called out, ‘the challenge is answered.’" 

The first use of the phrase in a political context may have been in 1912, when Theodore Roosevelt, an avid amateur boxer himself, announced his intention to challenge William Howard Taft for the U.S. presidency by proclaiming, "My hat's in the ring."

Other soi-disant authorities attribute the first use of the phrase to much later sources. One says it was the boxer John L. Sullivan, heavyweight champion from 1882 to 1892, who originated the phrase, as he challenged spectators to a round in the ring with him. Another tale has Woodrow Wilson attending a circus performance in 1916 and announcing his candidacy for a second term by throwing his hat into the circus ring. Based on that unlikely event, some people credit P. T. Barnum, founder of “The Greatest Show on Earth,” as the coiner of the term. 

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou doesn’t often wear a hat (unless he's keeping something under it), so he is unlikely to throw one anywhere. That doesn’t stop him (alas!) from commenting when others do.
            

            Two, four, six, eight—

            It’s almost time to nominate!

            Republicans must dig and delve

            To narrow down their field of twelve.

            It might be Romney’s turn again—

            Does he know when he should say when?

            He’s in the same boat with Santorum,

            They know the ropes, we can’t ignore ‘em.

            And way down South, that purple corridor,

            The enigmatic state of Florida

            Cannot decide to pull or push—

            Propelling Rubio or Bush.

            Texas, too, thinks more is merry,

            Their favorite son is Cruz—or Perry?

            Poor Perry may be in a hole

            Unless he turns on Cruz control.

            Fox News has lost its Huckabee,

            So he can run again, quite pluckily,

            Unless, of course, he’s just a stalker

            For some much darker horse like Walker.

           

            Doc Carson’s new, and bright, and breezy,

            And thinks it should be easy-peasy

            To sing the Democrats some dirgery—

            After all, it ain’t brain surgery.

           

            Some folks think that he’s too noisy,

            But Christie’s shown that in New Joisey

            He’s as happy as a clam

            If he can cause a traffic jam.

                       

            Four years ago, who would have reckoned

            That this year we’d have Paul the second?

            And finally, speared upon the spindle,

            The most unlikely name of Jindal.

            After fighting tooth and nail,

            The strongest of them will prevail

            And be acclaimed upon the pillory

            As man enough to tackle Hillary.

P. S.:  One more would-be on the scene,
            Brings the number to thirteen—
            Lindsay Graham is just “exploring”;
            He may discover that he’s boring.

Duck Soup

In the early years of World War II, when Britain had successfully resisted German air attacks, Prime Minister Winston Churchill recalled the dire prediction of the French Vichy government that England would collapse under the German assault, just as France had done: “When I warned them that Britain would fight on alone whatever they did, their generals told their Prime Minister, 'In three weeks England will have her neck wrung like a chicken.' Some chicken! Some neck!"

There have been similarly dire predictions—citing a different hapless bird—about the final two years of Barack Obama’s presidency: that he would be a “lame duck,” unable to accomplish anything. In view of his whirlwind of actions—restoring Cuban relations, issuing executive orders on immigration, agreeing on a climate change plan with China, making progress on a nuclear pact with Iran, securing approval of key appointments, steadily improving the economy—one can only echo Churchill by saying, “Some lameness!  Some duck!”

The phrase “lame duck” was coined in the 18^th century at the London Stock Exchange, referring to a stockbroker who defaulted on his debts. The allusion is to an injured duck, unable to keep up with its flock, and thus becoming a target for predators. In 1861 the British historian and politician Horace Walpole used the term in a letter to Sir Horace Mann. Thomas Love Peacock wrote that a “lame duck is a man who cannot pay his differences, and is said to waddle off.”

“Lame duck” became a political term in the 19^th century, used to refer to a public official serving out a term after losing an election (or becoming ineligible for re-election). The term is used in the official record of the U. S. Congress in 1863, when “lame ducks” was used to refer to “broken down politicians.” A newspaper article in 1878 recounted Abraham Lincoln’s earlier reference to a “senator or representative out of business” as a “lame duck” who “has to be provided for.”

Before the 20^th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution, he President and members of Congress continued to serve until March 4 of the year following the November elections, even if they had been defeated. The Amendment changed this to January 2 or 3, shortening the “lame duck” period.

When it comes to fowl, the Bard of Buffao Bayou prefers goose, hoping that someday it will lay him a golden egg. 

            When folks said Obama was just a lame duck,
            And predicted two years of his passing the buck,
                        McConnell and Boehner
                        Could not have been plainer
            In hoping the POTUS was bogged down and stuck.

            But Obama then showed he had plenty of pluck,
            And said, “The Republicans’ principles suck—
                        If executive orders
                        Overstep borders,
            Too bad—but you fellas are just out of luck.”

Love, Honor, and Oh, Bae!

 The Oxford English Dictionary has chosen vape as its “word of the year” for 2014, edging out bae for top honors. The meaning of vape—to use one of the new smokeless electronic cigarettes that produces a steam-like vapor—is fairly straightforward.  But what in the heck does bae mean, and why?

According to Time Magazine, bae, pronounced just like the word bay, began as a term of endearment, usually applied to one’s boyfriend or girlfriend. It first turned up in rap songs around 2005.

It took on a wider meaning for anything generally good or cool. You can even say “This sandwich is so bae” or “My new Calvin Klein underwear is really bae,” and people of a certain generation will probably know what you mean.

The origin of bae, like that of all good slang words, is debatable. Some say it’s an acronym meaning “Before Anyone Else.” Another theory says it’s simply a shortened form of baby or babe, the latter which would account for the peculiar juxtaposition of a and e.

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou is thinking of changing his sobriquet to The Bae of Buffalo Bayou. What do you think?

            It’s too bad folks have learned to vape,
            It’s now in their vocabulary.
            I guess there’s no way to escape
            The Oxford English Dictionary.

Bulls vs. Bears

Stocks and bonds ended 2014 in a bull market, and most investors hope the bears will stay away. A bear market is one in which prices are going down, as opposed to a bull market in which values are rising.

These designations for pessimism and optimism about the market outlook originated in the 18^th century, but the exact origins are debatable. The bear as a symbol of pessimism can be traced to 1709 in a shortening of “bearskin jobber,” a term for a merchant who sells bearskins before the bear is caught and hopes that the price will go down by the time he provides the goods. From about 1720, the term was paired with bull, indicating one who believed that prices would go up. Some speculate that bull was adopted as an opposite to bear because of the use of those two animals in the sports of bear-baiting and bull-baiting.

Others trace the bull and bear to the London Stock Exchange during the Crimean War in the 1850s. Britain was typified in political cartoons as “John Bull” against its Russian adversary, usually depicted as a bear. Even though John Bull is not an animal at all, but a stout country squire, and the lion is the customary English animal, the bull-bear symbols were picked up by London stock traders for positive and negative positions.

It’s also suggested that the bull-bear symbolism stems from the fighting styles of the two animals that parallel movements on the stock market: when attacking a bull thrusts his horns up in the air, while a bear strikes downward. Thus if the price of stocks moves upward, it’s a bull market, and if they’re going down, it’s a bear market.

Finally, some say the symbols simply reflect the personality of the two animals: bulls charge ahead and bears move cautiously.

Wherever the symbolism originated, it was popularized in the 1860s by cartoonist Thomas Nast in Harper’s Weekly. In 1879 William Holbrook Beard painted a notable work called “The Bulls and Bears in the Market,” an image of the two animals fighting each other in front of the New York Stock Exchange.  And in 1883 a board game called “Bulls and Bears: the Great Wall Street Game” became popular.

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou, who is so full of bull that people cannot bear him, unfortunately remains undeterred by his defects. 

            The Russian symbol is the Bear,

            The Brits’, the Lion most regal,

            And matched against this awesome pair,

            Americans have their Eagle.

            But by that Eagle, I’m appalled:

            He’s not so very brainy,

            He’s predatory, mean, and bald—

            Reminds me of Dick Cheney.

The Joint Is Jumpin’

-->
A recent Houston Chronicle article about barbecue joints explored the origin of the word joint as applied to an eating or drinking establishment. As the article pointed out, in addition to barbecue joints, we speak of “hamburger joints,” “beer joints,” and “pizza joints.” In this sense the word means a “restaurant or bar that is informal, simply decorated, and inexpensive.”

Originally, a joint was something not so savory. It is recorded in English slang in 1877 meaning a “place where persons meet for shady activities.” In the U. S., the first use of joint was recorded in Harper’s Magazine in 1883, meaning an “opium-smoking den.”

The etymology is thought to be based on the fact that these places for illicit activities—drugs, gambling, or liquor—were usually separate side rooms “joined” to a legal operation such as a restaurant or retail establishment. 

Joint took on a more general connotation of disrepute in the 1940s when juke joints were widespread in the United States, especially in the South. These were working-class African-American drinking and dancing clubs, noted for their rowdiness. Juke is derived from the word joog in Gullah, a Creole language in coastal South Carolina, Georgia and north Florida. It means “wicked and disorderly.” The music in these clubs gave rise to the term juke box.

The Oxford English Dictionary also cites joint as a late 19^th-century term for outdoor bookmakers' booths that contained various gambling paraphernalia joined together in movable segments.

Eventually joint lost the connotation of “disreputable” and referred to any casual eating or drinking place. Today even upscale restaurants are sometimes referred to as “classy joints.”

A joint is similar to a dive, an American term for a “shabby and disreputable bar,” so-called because such places were usually in basements.

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou avoids joints and dives with their stale air and dirty glasses. He prefers the refined elegance of his own home, where he can drink straight from the bottle.

            My joints are worn but they don’t creak yet,
            My plumbing’s old but doesn’t leak yet,
            My hair is thin and turning white,
            I cannot see things well at night.
            My heart needs help to keep its rhythm,
            My lungs, I’m sure, have things wrong with ‘em.
            My knees are getting very wobbly—
            I have a few years left, most prob’ly.
            But though I’m crumbling bit by bit,           
            I am not ready yet to quit.
            Instead, I think that I would rather
            Find all those rosebuds I should gather.

Elf Defense

Santa’s elves are busy this week, hammering together the last of the toys for good children, baking gingerbread men, and cleaning up after those notoriously messy reindeer, who always suffer digestive problems from too many goodies. We think of Santa’s elves as happy, cheerful, benevolent creatures, exuding good will and Christmas joy. Yeah, maybe. But lurking beneath that veneer of effervescent chirpiness is a wicked malevolence that is up to no good and longs to wreak unholy havoc. 

In Germanic folklore an elf was one of a race of powerful, supernatural beings  who typically did nasty things: made sexual threats against people, seduced both women and men, ruined crops, and caused nightmares, hiccups, and other physical and mental illnesses to people and livestock.

The word comes from Northumbrian ælf and West Saxon ylfe, meaning “sprite, fairy, goblin, or incubus.” Its further derivation is from Proto-Germanic albiz, Old Norse alfr, and the German alp, meaning “evil spirit or goblin.” Some linguists trace its origin to Proto-Indo-European albho, meaning “white”—perhaps alluding to ghosts or to illnesses that caused white skin.

By the Middle Ages elves were confused with fairies and became a little more benevolent. The Christmas elf showed up in the 19^th century. In 1822 Clement Clarke Moore’s A Visit from St. Nicholas referred to Santa Claus himself as “a right jolly old elf.” In 1850 Louisa May Alcott wrote (but did not publish) a book called Christmas Elves. Godey’s Ladies Book had an image of elves in Santa’s workshop in 1873.

Today, the cherubic Elf on a Shelf is ubiquitous at Christmas time—but I’d be careful about turning my back on him if I were you.

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou knows when he comes up against a better rhymester, and he grudgingly yields his usual place this week to the superior artistry of the late Morris Bishop, who wrote the quintessential paean to elves.

                        How To Treat Elves

                        I met an elf man in the woods,

                        The wee-est little elf!

                        Sitting under a mushroom tall—

                        'Twas taller than himself! 

                        "How do you do, little elf," I said,

                        "And what do you do all day?"

                        "I dance 'n fwolic about," said he,

                        "'N scuttle about and play;" 

                        "I s'prise the butterflies, 'n when

                         A katydid I see,

                        'Katy didn't' I say, and he

                        Says 'Katy did!' to me! 

                        "I hide behind my mushroom stalk

                        When Mister Mole comes froo,

                        'N only jus' to fwighten him

                        I jump out'n say 'Boo!' 

                        "'N then I swing on a cobweb swing

                        Up in the air so high,

                        'N the cwickets chirp to hear me sing

                        'Upsy-daisy-die!' 

                        "'N then I play with the baby chicks,

                        I call them, chick chick chick!

                        'N what do you think of that?" said he.

                        I said, "It makes me sick. 

                        "It gives me sharp and shooting pains

                        To listen to such drool."

                        I lifted up my foot, and squashed

                        The god damn little fool.

                                                      From Spilt Milk, The Putnam Publishing Group, © copyright 1941, 1969 by Morris Bishop

The Dope on Dope

Doping has become a controversial topic in both professional and amateur sports. Cyclist Lance Armstrong, sprinter Ben Johnson, third baseman Alex Rodriguez, batting champ Barry Bonds, tennis whiz Andre Agassi, tiddlywinks ace Ladislav Paffufnikl—these are just a few of the myriad athletes who have taken various kinds of drugs that allegedly enhance their performance.

Admittedly, they may be dopes for doing so, but why are the drugs they take known as “dope”?

Most etymologists trace the word to the Dutch doop, “thick dipping sauce or gravy,” which stems from doopen (“to dip”). It entered English as dope around 1800.

By 1851 it meant a “stupid person. This meaning probably relates to the notion of “thick-headedness,” analogous to the thickness of the dipping gravy.

By 1889, dope was extended to mean a “thick, oozy opium concoction” given to racehorses to enhance their speed on the track. Thereafter the word was applied to any illicit narcotics or addictive drug.

As a word for “inside information,” this came around 1900, probably based on racing tips about which horses were “doped” to run faster.

A recent New York Times article cites a different etymology. It says the word derives from dop, a South African stimulant drink. In South Africa dop is also a word for an imprecise measure of any alcoholic drink, similar to a tot, a nip, a shot, or a slug. This meaning may have come from the same word, dop, which is a “copper cup in which diamonds are cut.”

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou is proud to say he takes no artificial stimulants to enhance his poetic prowess, which comes perfectly naturally to him, but he is not averse to a tot, a nip, a shot, or a slug.

            Some athletes who took methamphetamine
            Thought that doping would be sure to get ‘em in
                       The hallowed Hall of Fame.
                       But when the time came,

           The powers that be wouldn’t let ‘em in.

Chinese Checkers

A recent news story reported the alarming news that the Chinese government has banned puns in radio, TV, and films. The rationale is that wordplay makes promoting cultural heritage more difficult and tends to mislead people, especially children. A recent directive decreed, “Radio and television authorities at all levels must tighten up their regulations and crack down on the irregular and inaccurate use of the Chinese language, especially the misuse of idioms.” Altering accepted patterns of speech risks “cultural and linguistic chaos,” the Word Nazis have decreed.

The director of Chinese Studies at Beijing Capital Normal University, whose name, curiously enough, is David Moser, says that wordplay is part and parcel of Chinese heritage. He points out, for example, the traditional wedding gift of dates and peanuts stems from the fact that the Chinese words for these foods—zao and huasheng—are homophones for the phrase Zaosheng guizi, which means “May you soon give birth to a son.”           

Moser faults whoever gave this order as “conservative, humorless, priggish, and arbitrarily purist.” He suspects the real reason behind the ruling is to prevent jokes about government officials, which often rely on puns for their humor. One recent example plays on the nicknames of President Xi Jinping and first lady Peng Liyuan to come up with the word for “marijuana.” In another political example Mao Zedong’s phrase “Serve the people” has been transformed into “Smog the people,” using two words that are homophones.

One rather naughty example of a political Chinese pun is the phrase “grass mud horse,” an anti-censorship symbol that has become a widely popular Internet meme. It is usually represented by an alpaca as the mascot for citizens fighting for free expression. In Mandarin Chinese the phrase “grass mud horse” sounds very much like the phrase “fuck your mother.”

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou is an inveterate punster—everything he writes is inverse.

           

            The Chinese all run from a pun,

            So this question is one they must shun;

                         It’s a terrible quandary

                        Much too double-entendre-y:

            Who came out? The sun or the son?

Monkish Business

A television program on one of the higher-brow channels featured a day in the life of a cloistered Benedictine monastery. The day centered around the canonical hours—a set of prayers known as the Divine Office, or Liturgy of the Hours—observed around the clock at intervals of three hours by extremely devout monks who apparently get by on brief snatches of sleep.

The practice began in the mid-6th century when St. Benedict of Nursia established an order of men dedicated to prayer and contemplation.

The daily prayers start at midnight with Matins, a word from the Latin matutinas vigilias (“morning watches”), derived from Matuta, the Roman goddess of dawn. Next comes Lauds, from the Latin laudare (“to praise”), at which Psalms of praise are sung. At 6:00 a.m. is Prime, so named from the Latin primus (“first”) because it is a prayer at the first hour of daylight. 

Terce, or sometimes Tierce, from the Latin tertius (“third”), is the third hour after Prime, followed at noon by Sext (from Latin sextus, “sixth”), which is the sixth hour (and under no circumstances should be confused with sext in the modern smart-phone sense). None (Latin nonus, “ninth”) is at 3:00 p.m.

At six o’clock in the evening, it’s time for Vespers, which comes from vesper, the Latin for “evening star,” derived from the Greek Hesperus (or Hesper), the personification of the evening star sometimes conflated with Venus.  (A Vesper is also a James Bond Martini, which made its appearance in Casino Royale and consists of 3 measures of Gordon’s gin, 1 measure of vodka, and a half-measure of Kina Lillet, shaken—not stirred—with ice, and garnished with a lemon peel. It is not traditionally served to the monks, who, after all, have their own tasty Benedictine liqueur.)

 Finally at 9:00 p.m. comes Compline, from Latin completus (“complete”), which ends the liturgical day.

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou, when given the chance, never fails to take part in Vespers, sometimes two.

            Liturgical Latin’s 
            Intoned for the Matins. 
            
            Each monk applauds 
            The hour of Lauds. 

            At six it is time 

            To kneel down for Prime. 

            Monks don’t converse 
            With heads bowed for Terce, 

            And they do not text 
            The prayers of Sext, 
   
            Nor do they phone 
            When they’re chanting None. 

            The first star of Hesper’s 
            Out for the Vespers, 

            At last, then, at nine, 
            No complaint—it’s Compline!