Second Senses

Entries from the Complete Uxbridge English Dictionary:

beehive: what Australian teachers tell you to do
blistering: someone you enjoy calling on the phone
cannelloni: Scots refusal to give one an overdraft
cherish: rather like a chair
colliery: sort of like a collie but even more so
emboss: to promote to the top
female: chemical name for Iron Man
flatulence: an emergency vehicle that picks you up after you have been run over by a steamroller
Icelander: to tell lies about Apple
ivy: the Roman for four
lamb shank: Sean Connery’s sheep has drowned
laundress: grass skirt
pastrami: the art of meat folding
quick: noise made by a New Zealand duck
splint: to run very fast with a broken leg
Venezuela: a gondola with a harpoon
wisteria: a nostalgic form of panic
xylophone: the Greek goddess of Scrabble

A foible is “something coughed up by a New York cat.”

| Humor · Language

Fare

The recipe for “Groper, Head and Shoulders Boiled” in Mrs. Beeton’s Everyday Cookery (1923) concludes with the warning “Great care should be taken of the immense gelatinous lips, as these are considered the best part.” In 1948 New Statesman challenged its readers to invent a recipe with a more disgusting last line. L.G. Udall obliged:

GRILLED GORILLA’S FOOT

One foot will suffice for each person.

First shave the upper part of the foot and wash in warm water. With a gimlet (for preference as the skin is very hard) bore a number of holes through the thick skin of the under part of the foot. Grease liberally with lard. Grill slowly for about twenty minutes with the under surface downwards. Then turn the foot over and continue to grill steadily. From time to time place a fork on the foot. When it is quite done it will be found that the toes will curl up firmly over the fork, so that it can be lifted up and put on a hot plate. Leave the fork in the toes and serve immediately.

The other winners are here.

| Humor

Hematology

[T]o the human mind there is more to blood than its mere chemical content. … For example, blood must essentially be thicker than water, impossible to get out of stones, indelible in its staining. … When apparent on heads, it should leave them unbowed; and should have the capacities to combine formidably with toil, tears and sweat and to attain boiling-point when its host faces frustration.

— Patrick Ryan, in New Scientist

| Humor · Science & Math

Dispatches

“A Time-Series Analysis of My Girlfriend’s Mood Swings”

“Behavioral Conditioning Methods to Stop My Boyfriend From Playing The Witcher 3”

“Sub-Nyquist Sampling While Listening to My Girlfriend”

“Who Should Do the Dishes? A Transportation Problem Solution”

“Freudian Psychoanalysis of My Boyfriend’s Gun Collection”

“Breaking Up With Your Girlfriend but Not Your Friends: A Cyclic Graph Algorithm for Social Network Preservation”

“The Future of Romance: Novel Techniques for Replacing Your Boyfriend With Generative AI”

“Winning Tiffany Back: How to Defeat an AI Boyfriend”

“Would He Still Love Me as a Worm: Indirect Sampling and Inference Techniques for Romantic Assurance”

Via r/ImmaterialScience.

| Humor · Science & Math · Society

Plaque Buildup

For a fictional character, Sherlock Holmes has a strangely real presence in the physical world. This plaque is posted near the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sherlock_Holmes_plaque.jpg
Image: Wikimedia Commons

This one’s on a cottage in Sussex:

sussex holmes plaque

There’s even a plaque at the spot where Holmes met Watson.

Naturalist Gilbert White, author of Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne, seems to have had an imaginary contemporary nemesis. Someone has posted this plaque on the house opposite White’s 18th-century Hampshire home:

sullivan black plaque

(Black is the opposite of white, and Sullivan is the opposite, or at least the complement, of Gilbert.)

Finally, this plaque adorns the Park Street Eye Clinic in Tauranga, New Zealand:

nz plaque

Accurate enough.

(Thanks to readers Tom Race, Brieuc de Grangechamps, and Derek Christie.)

| Humor · Oddities

Footwork

Conclusion of a 2021 investigation by physicist Eve Armstrong of her cat’s reactions to a laser pointer:

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fffscinating and merits further investigation.

(Eve Armstrong, “My Cat Chester’s Dynamical Systems Analysyyyyy7777777777777777y7is of the Laser Pointer and the Red Dot on the Wall: Correlation, Causation, or SARS-Cov-2 Hallucination?”, arXiv preprint arXiv:2103.17058 [2021].)

| Humor · Science & Math

“Geographical Enigma”

https://archive.org/details/StrandVolume22/page/n117/mode/2up?view=theater

Charles Craik of Weston-super-Mare received this enigmatic postcard from a friend in 1901 and sent it on to the Strand:

I think it rather cleverly done, and it took me some time before I could understand its meaning.

The principal message is on the big island in the centre of the map — an invitation to meet the sender at a café, with the day. The name of the island below on the left-hand side is at once translated, ‘If so, do.’ The names of the land at the bottom of the map are meant for ‘Same time and place as before’ and ‘Don’t let anything hinder you’ respectively.

The following is a translation beginning at the top and working to the right: ‘Straights of cash. If you don’t come, all sorts of ills befall you. Come early. Let me know if you can come or not. I say, there’s a peculiar thing! You’re getting it by degrees. Can’t you see? Bay rhum. Get your hair cut! Deuced bad straights. See you later. Don’t you see? Devil take you. You are a merry cus! Good old flipper. Love to all. Oh! Tut, tut. R.S.V.P. Yours ever, Guy.’

| Humor · Oddities

Still Waiting

In a 1901 parody edition, the journal Mind! offered £1,000 to any philosopher who could produce adequate documentary evidence that he:

  1. Knows what he means.
  2. Knows what anyone else means.
  3. Knows what everyone means.
  4. Knows what anything means.
  5. Knows what everything else means.
  6. Means what he says.
  7. Means what he means.
  8. Means what everyone else means.
  9. Means what everyone else says that he means.
  10. Can express what he means.
  11. Knows what it signifies what he means.
  12. Knows what it matters what he signifies.

“At first sight it might seem as though the Twelve Labours of Hercules would be in comparison with this a slighter achievement,” the editors wrote. “But in view of the extensive and peculiar knowledge of the Absolute’s Mind which is now possessed by so many philosophers, a large number of solutions may confidently be expected.”

| Humor