First on the list was "pinion nut," with a 92 rating. Less near were "intimate," "indiscriminate," and "Berlin summit," at 88. The most interesting suggestion was "sinful lust," 84....
Conversation at Meadhouse:
ME: Do you know what a pinion nut is?MEADE: Opinion nut?ME: No! A ... ... ... pinion ... nut?MEADE: Not some nutty guy with an opinion?ME: No. Pinion. Nut.MEADE: Like a pine nut?ME: That's what I thought too. No. The hardware kind of nut.
It's hard to move forward poetically from "infinite" to "pinion nut" but probably actually a better move than going for "sinful lust." Actually, the best solution is to use "opinion nut"!
Speaking of infinite, you're probably wondering whether it's going to take me forever to get to that story I will call Andrea, Jennifer, and The 2 Williams. If I'd seen that last night, I'd have jumped right on it. But I went to sleep at the Tom Brady bedtime (8:30 p.m.), so I missed my chance to be an earlier noticer of this ripe, ripe tidbit. I saw it first thing when I woke up (at 3:30 a.m.), but I knew it had been noticed all over the place. I'll have to bring more to the table than a simple acknowledgment of the evil, hilarious screwup. But I assure you I mean to get to it. It's one of my favorite stories ever. It's nearly 8 a.m., so I've been warming this place up for 4 hours. It's time to face the music. The next post will be "Andrea, Jennifer, and The 2 Williams."
Posts
95 comments:
"but I new it had been noticed all over the place."
Although since you were discussing when it was new, it kinda works.
A cockney lass, on being flashed: "Stiff 'un, init?"
Why is "finite" pronounced so differently when you put "in" in front of it?
The arrogance and ignorance of the “elite” media like Andrea is always fun to expose because she is such an asshole to Republicans in a nasty partisan haughty way. Her claim to be a Faulkner scholar as cover for not knowing the source of the title was an outstanding cherry of stupidity on top of her ignorant pile of work. Jen’s “you go girl” joinerism illustrates her 3rd tier status as token “conservative” employed as court jester to flatter the royalty like Andrea in big media. Pitiful. Jenny of the Blockhead, she is.
Pinion nuts work via good old interference fit, which I suppose is another imperfect rhyme for infinite...
I've been warming this place up for 4 hours.
What's it called when you write that instead of "I've been warming up this place for 4 hours" - "split infinitive" ? (Which doesn't rhyme with infinite...)
It's one of my favorite stories ever
I'm mildly interested in how Ann works this episode into one of her favorite stories ever...
Not to be confused with pepitas, or píñon pine nuts.
Harlan Pepper: I used to be able to name every nut that there was.
And it used to drive my mother crazy, because she used to say, "Harlan Pepper, if you don't stop naming nuts," and the joke was that we lived in Pine Nut, and I think that's what put it in my mind at that point. So she would hear me in the other room, and she'd just start yelling.
I'd say, "Peanut. Hazelnut. Cashew nut. Macadamia nut." That was the one that would send her into going crazy. She'd say, "Would you stop naming nuts!" And Hubert used to be able to make the sound, he couldn't talk, but he'd go "rrrawr rrawr" and that sounded like Macadamia nut. Pine nut, which is a nut, but it's also the name of a town. Pistachio nut. Red pistachio nut. Natural, all natural white pistachio nut.
on Instagram they pinned it
In the UK they binned it
a bottle that might djinn fit
the ravers who sinned, lit
the mind of some leftist idjit
C'mon man. Too easy.
Doesn't "infinite" rhyme with "orange"?
Maybe I'm pronouncing it incorrectly.
There are various sizes of infinite.
"What's it called when you write that instead of "I've been warming up this place for 4 hours" - "split infinitive" ? (Which doesn't rhyme with infinite...)"
It's called speaking English as a first language.
I suppose you'd consider consider calling out to your lover "Come get into bed and warm up me" instead of "warm me up."
But I do like the idea of an infinitive in the vicinity of infinite. Even if there's no infinitive in sight. That's a definitive insight.
Back to the 1970s?
To rhyme in-fin-ite, JJ from "Good Times" would say "Dy-No-Mite!"
"Not to be confused with pepitas, or píñon pine nuts."
Yeah, I thought it was a misspelling of píñon.
"I suppose you'd consider consider calling out to your lover "Come get into bed and warm up me" instead of "warm me up.""
Now, I'm thinking of the Rolling Stones song "Start Up Me."
"And the Northern girls with the way they kiss/They keep warm their boyfriends at night..."
See? I'm delaying. Every task seems like more fun than the subject I regard as the ripest of the week, Andrea, Jennifer, and The 2 Williams.
What is wrong with me? I just got up to make my 5th cup of coffee!
Did William Shakespeare drink coffee? Did William Faulkner?
That's a great way to name that story. I confess to checking your blog last night because I wanted to see your take. I'm glad you're going to have fun with it.
"He didn't have coffee, he didn't have vanilla, he didn't have cocoa. Imagine writing Hamlet without a cup of coffee. That's amazing."
I don't know the AJ2W story. Two boys and two girls?
Infinite orange.
Opinion nut borange.
Easy.
Peasy.
Faulkner drank, but not so much coffee.
"Jeezus Christ! Have you ever heard of anyone who drank while he worked? You’re thinking of Faulkner. He does sometimes—and I can tell right in the middle of a page when he’s had his first one"
Well rhardin it all started with Ted Cruz saying the fakepeachment was “full of sound and fury signifying nothing” and Andrea tried to bigfoot Ted with her superior edutainment skillz.
If you were Shakespeare or Faulkner you could coin, “bear and grin it”.
After all, Don Maclean (sp?) came up with “lonely teenage broncin’ buck”.
May you have infinite crab nit.
To really assert her bonafides Andi Mitchell should have riffed from As I Lay Dying or Absolom Absolom!
How are they pronouncing "inifinite"?
The way I pronounce it, intimate or compassionate work just fine. Pinion nut--which I expected to be a fastener because when I hear "pinion" I think "rack and pinion steering"--isn't even close.
That "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" thing was a song from "Annie", right?
Apropos of almost nothing...with that Fenn Poem treasure thing, Forrest mentioned you could smell 'pinyon nuts' in the treasures location. My guess location was in Wyoming, where the treasure was found. I'll be pissed if I spent 15 minutes on the thing and got it correct...
tcrosse said...Why is "finite" pronounced so differently when you put "in" in front of it?
Why is rhetoric pronounced so differently from "rhetorical"? Quixotic from Don Quixote?
Because English is an obnoxious language.
Ann Althouse said...
What is wrong with me? I just got up to make my 5th cup of coffee!
Did William Shakespeare drink coffee? Did William Faulkner?
Pretty sure Faulkner would have been on his fifth whiskey by this point in the morning. Maybe you should give that a try.
It's a nut that screws onto a pinion shaft. Doesn't everyone know that?
So, yeah, I had read about Andrea Mitchell and Jennifer Rubin, both of whom have been masquerading as informed, intelligent people for years. I had read it, was unsurprised by it, and kept moving along with my day. Yesterday.
Today I saw this post and was not thinking about Andrea Mitchell or Jennifer Rubin, and had (still have) no idea who the 2 Williams are in this story, so I'll check in later to find out). But...as I said, I was not thinking about the A. Mitchell/J. Rubin story. I just saw this thing coming up about some women named Andrea and Jennifer. So...I MetaGer'd Andrea & Jennifer. This hilarious video came up. Want to go for a ride?
Not so good on Shakespeare, it’s clear, but earns top dollar as a Faulkner scholar.
After the classic social media own goal of screwing up the obnoxious correction of somebody else, my favorite part is that Mitchell didn't even get Faulkner right.
Cruz: full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Faulkner title: The Sound and The Fury
Mitchell, the classics major who didn't recognise one of Shakespeare's most famous lines, and defends it because she knows Faulkner so much better, also got Faulkner wrong.
Had I known Faulkner was drinking when he wrote, I would have drank to read him in high school and college.
Ann, after the 4th cup of coffee you should be on water. On cup #5 I'm sure you are talking at ludicrous speed now and Meade, listening to you, is just smiling and nodding but not actually answering you.
You've heard of rack and pinion steering? That rack needs a pinion to connect to the steering rod and needs a nut on the end. But don't tighten that nut too much -- you'll screw up -- and have to get new bearings. Or so I'm told. Best left to the guys who know what they are doing.
I'm your only friend
I'm not your only friend
But I'm a little glowing friend
But really I'm not actually your friend
But I am
Blue canary in the outlet by the light switch
Who watches over you
Make a little birdhouse in your soul
Not to put too fine a point on it
Say I'm the only bee in your bonnet
Make a little birdhouse in your soul
I have a secret to tell
From my electrical well
It's a simple message and I'm leaving out the whistles and bells
So the room must listen to me
Filibuster vigilantly
My name is blue canary one note* spelled l-i-t-e
My story's infinite
Like the Longines Symphonette it doesn't rest
Blue canary in the outlet by the light switch
Who watches over you
Make a little birdhouse in your soul
Not to put too fine a point on it
Say I'm the only bee in your bonnet
Make a little birdhouse in your soul
I'm your only friend
I'm not your only friend
But I'm a little glowing friend
But really I'm not actually your friend
But I am
There's a picture opposite me
Of my primitive ancestry
Which stood on rocky shores and kept the beaches shipwreck free
Though I respect that a lot
I'd be fired if that were my job
After killing Jason off and countless screaming Argonauts
Bluebird of friendliness
Like guardian angels its always near
Blue canary in the outlet by the light switch
Who watches over you
Make a little birdhouse in your soul
Not to put too fine a point on it
Say I'm the only bee in your bonnet
Make a little birdhouse in your soul
(And while you're at it
Keep the nightlight on inside the
Birdhouse in your soul)
Not to put too fine a point on it
Say I'm the only bee in your bonnet
Make a little birdhouse in your soul
Blue canary in the outlet by the light switch (and while you're at it)
Who watches over you (keep the nightlight on inside the)
Make a little birdhouse in your soul (birdhouse in your soul)
Not to put too fine a point on it
Say I'm the only bee in your bonnet
Make a little birdhouse in your soul
Blue canary in the outlet by the light switch (and while you're at it)
Who watches over you (keep the nightlight on inside the)
Make a little birdhouse in your soul (birdhouse in your soul)
Not to put too fine a point on it
Say I'm the only bee in your bonnet
Make a little birdhouse in your soul
My Dad said that the most dangerous part of a car is the nut that holds the steering wheel.
The beauty of nature is infinite
Especially if there's a nymph in it.
rhhardin said...There are various sizes of infinite.
The Greeks got rid of their infinitive verb form some time ago. Now you have to conjugate the main and auxiliary verbs using να which is not exactly our "to."
I dig the "infinite/intimate" rhyme. I know I've heard it used in a song or two before.
Re: thrill ride videos. This one makes me laugh. The different reactions between American girl and Irish friend are great. IrishGirl Let Me Down!
rhyme for "infinite"? What about "in a bit"? Or "a minuet"? Or "fin of it"?
Come on, this isn't so hard. With a little art and cunning, one could construct a line or two that made those choices plausible and even pleasing...
Well, I once did it this way: "my happiness is infinite when my life has this nymph in it..."
https://youtu.be/nb4msGlmlOc
I suppose you'd consider consider calling out to your lover "Come get into bed and warm up me" instead of "warm me up."
The difference is that "me" is always an object, to the verb "warm[ing]", and "this place" is not inherently an object; so "warm[ing] up my body" is correct and "warming my body up" sounds worse but not completely wrong.
But why changing the verb from "[heater is] warming [me]" to "[heater is] warming up [me]" makes it sound wrong, is one of the many mysteries and exceptions that make me think the only consistent rules in English are "it should sound right" and "it should be clear". (my own personal quirk rule is to use as few words as possible, violated in this post, and which sometimes overpowers the other rules. Oh, and "no writing on the walls..." is another good rule for written English.).
When I read "warming this place up", it initially 'sounded' like "warming this place-up", so, as a faint crash-blossom, it sounded wrong and therefore it was wrong. At any rate "warming up this place" is clearer, and is therefore better.
Oh well, it took me years to connect “Donkey Kong” with “Don Quixote”.
Well the way this mathematician pronounces “infinite,” it does not rhyme with its opposite, “finite.” It does, however, rhyme with stanzas that end in “win it,” or “spin it,” or “grin it” (as in “bear and grin it”).
YMMV, but “pinion nut”?!?!?
In my opinion no one can surpass these idiots. Though I wouldn't have thought anyone could outdo Andrea Mitchell yet Jennifer Rubin did. But you have to be in their world. Anyhow why should people be so upset with these two for not knowing Shakespeare - he's not that great he's full of cliches.
"rack and pinion" - According to the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs, sounds such as thudding, clunking, or a persistent knocking can be warnings of a loose rack and pinion steering system. If you hear these types of sounds as you drive, you need to get the system checked out. The car of state moves on but Opinion makers begin to sound like a bad rack and pinion;
Oh well, it took me years to connect “Donkey Kong” with “Don Quixote”.
Jesus Nut. Not to be confused with Jesus Freak.
In Biden time
I bide my time.
In my opinion
The rack and pinion
On the car of state
Is not that great.
Wait. I should be saving my best takes for the next post?
Try something like what Arlo Guthrie did:
I don't want a pickle
Just want to ride my motorsickle
I don't want to die
Just want to ride by motorcy...cle
he's not that great he's full of cliches.
Good one!
Wait. I should be saving my best takes for the next post?
Just repost...
rhhardin is correct. The number of positive integers (“whole numbers”) is countable, and so are the set of all integers (not merely the positive ones). So is the set of all rational numbers (proper and improper fractions). But the number of irrational numbers is uncountable. For that matter, so are the set of all real numbers (rational plus irrational) kin the open interval between zero and one.
Funny to remember that after all these years.
Anyhow why should people be so upset with these two for not knowing Shakespeare - he's not that great he's full of cliches.
Yes. Not to step on your setup, but an earnest answer is Andrea Mitchell sells herself as an intellectual and has an Ivy league degree in English Literature.
It must be in American English Literature...
"It's hard to move forward poetically from ‘infinite"
It’s easy , just throw an nymph in it.
Anybody wan’t a peanut?
"I don't know what poems and raps you are working on, but me, I needed a rhyme for 'infinite.'"
Poetically speaking, you'd probably be better off searching for synonyms for "infinite" that you could then rhyme. Infinite is probably too common a word now to be poetic and then if you're shoehorning* an awkward phrase in there to rhyme, it doesn't do you any favors.
shoehorning? shoeinghorn?
Jennifer and Andrea
Who but they know?
Vacant to the vacant
They go.
I went from Phoenix, Arizona
All the way to Tacoma
Philadelphia, Atlanta, L.A.
Northern California
Where the girls are warm
So I could be with my sweet baby, yeah
As long as you start the rhyme with, 'Yo, yo, yo' it doesn't really matter what comes afterward.
Toss in a few gratuitous N-words and you might earn a Grammy.
Oh well, I see I was beaten to it.
One of the funniest passages from Enderby was about sprung rhyme. He had offered to write love poems for a fee and his customer got angry because she couldn’t see that sprung rhyme was a sign of sophistication. I guess you had to be there.
Fair Harvard! we join in thy Jubilee throng,
And with blessings surrender thee o’er
By these Festival-rites, from the Age that is past,
To the Age that is waiting before.
O Relic and Type of our ancestors’ worth,
That hast long kept their memory warm,
First flow’r of their wilderness! Star of their night!
Calm rising thro’ change and thro’ storm.
Farewell! Jennifer and Andrea are here.
"The beauty of nature is infinite
Especially if there's a nymph in it."
Fantastic!
You always need to remember that you can use multiple 1-syllable words to rhyme with a multisyllable word. You get the most amusing rhymes that way.
"Nymph in it" is still an imperfect rhyme but it's much better than "sinful lust"!
@churchylefemme
Thanks for that. I love those guys.
In my perfect world, that would roll into George Clinton with a funk version of the same tune. The way they compress the changes on the chorus is genius.
Every time I think of the concept behind the song, tears come to my eyes. Over a damn night light. People are funny.
How many degrees of separation is Andrea Mitchell from Stan Getz? Who is her lighthouse?
"Isn't it" might do in a pinch.
Infini nit or Infini nite
Is it regional?
I always said infini nit.
Nit rhymes with ...
Culturally appropriate
Presently.
Night rhymes
for me
With bite,
Regionally.
Just sayin.
"You always need to remember that you can use multiple 1-syllable words to rhyme with a multisyllable word. You get the most amusing rhymes that way."
Along the line of:
"What do you get when you kiss a guy?
You get enough germs to catch pneumonia,
After you do he'll never phone ya..."
Or again:
"What the world needs now
Is love, sweet love
It's the only thing
That there's just too little of..."
Btw, my best 'worst' rhyme ever in a song is in Jackson Brown's 'The Pretender.'
He rhymes 'legal tender' and 'ice cream vendor.'
: )
It's terrible...it's so bad it's good.
Every time I hear it I cringe, and then I chuckle.
I will be honest here. I thought that a pinion nut was a kind of pine nut.
While fishing he pondered the infinite
The trout stream he whipped thread tied nymph in it.
He felt quite a tug
And felt then quite smug
Caught tin can with no scale or fin in it.
"It's terrible...it's so bad it's good.”
I think Dylan’s “diplomat” and “On his shoulder was a Siamese cat” is worse.
Shakespeare was a man of wit nearly infinite
If you're not so clever then stick to your knit
ing.
Joe Smith said...
Btw, my best 'worst' rhyme ever in a song is in Jackson Brown's 'The Pretender.'
He rhymes 'legal tender' and 'ice cream vendor.'
Wait, that's worse than the line about the junkman pounding a fender? Why the hell would a junkman pound on a fender?
"I think Dylan’s “diplomat” and “On his shoulder was a Siamese cat” is worse."
I take secret pleasure in awfulness...especially awfulness that somehow achieves great success.
I came across an author when I lived in Japan. The club I belonged to had a limited library but they had multiple novels of the author Stuart Woods, so I thought I could go through the series and keep myself occupied (not a WWII pun).
The first one was laugh out loud terrible. The worst writing ever.
But the guy sells millions of books...the airport bookstores are stocked to the gills.
Once in a while I will read one just for the entertainment value.
"Wait, that's worse than the line about the junkman pounding a fender? Why the hell would a junkman pound on a fender?"
Jackson Brown was a pretty boy who sold a lot of records...but nobody will mistake him for Einstein.
If you take his songs at face value some are very poignant, especially if you are 'of a certain age.'
But the song in question is pure 'Spoon moon June swoon' kind of stuff : )
But the guy sells millions of books...
You know what they say. “Sell to the classes, live with the masses, sell to the masses, live with the classes.”
Ian Flemings books are really kind of awful and rescued by the movies. For Your Eyes Only was partly set in Vermont, and his description about a guy hunting beaver in a hillside field of goldenrod with a long gun was cringeworthy. But I think that the story itself was actually better than what came out in the movie.
American Pie is a great song, but basically it’s stream of consciousness dictated by whatever he needs for a rhyme in the next line.
Yes but the books didnt have barbara bach did they?
I've always called them flange nuts. A quick primer on fasteners:
https://www.theprocesspiping.com/a-short-article-on-mechanical-fasteners/
Big Mike, yes, and Georg Cantor's proof of the uncountability of real numbers is the neatest thing I've ever seen.
The way you prove that a set is countable is to set up a correspondence between your set and the positive integers. Doesn't matter how you do that, just that it's possible. The positive integers are a set of the size Cantor calls aleph-null.
OK, so say you're a mathematician, and you claim to have a way to link every number between zero and one (so, an infinite decimal, beginning with a decimal point and continuing forever) with the set of positive integers. You say that every number between zero and one is in there, and therefore you ought to be able to produce a chart, naming this decimal as "one," this other one as "two," and so forth to infinity, or aleph-null.
Cantor then manufactures a number. For its first digit, he takes the first digit of the first number on your list, and subtracts 1. (If the first digit is zero, he puts 9.) For the second digit, he takes the second digit of the second number on the list, minus 1, and so for the third digit and the fourth, and all the way to infinity.
If you claim that his number is on your list, at position n, he can then say "It can't be, because the nth digit of my number is one less than yours." Ergo, his number isn't on the list.
So the number of real numbers is a different infinity, aleph-one. There is also aleph-two, the number of possible curves, but I don't think proving it is anywhere near as easy as this.
Ann, for me the obvious near-rhymes for "infinite" are "intimate" and "intricate." The strong resemblance all through the word helps obscure the fact that it doesn't actually, properly rhyme. But I really need to sic Mark Steyn on this. Unfortunately he's super-busy this week, what with his covering the Impeachment Part the Second for Fox and all. But rhyming is one of his specialties.
It pains me to say it MDT, because I do fancy myself a somewhat better than average rhymer, but those two rhymes for infinite work very well and I am mad I didn’t think of them.
Infinite
a word with no end in it
'Tis said there's a poem quite intricate
that treats both the wide and the intimate
with rhyme scheme quite grand
and meter that scans
that work has a scope that’s quite infinite
not a true rhyme in the whole thing.
Infinite Jest..
for infinite you could get away with catamite or canaanite, or even dynamite. In a song you could say "one I like". the trick is that the shwa in infinite must be long i ite rather than eht.
I distinctly remember having to write poetry at some point during my years of schooling, desultory done, with as little effort as possible. Hey, if you like poetry and rhyming, finr. I enjoy a good limerick. As many of them are punny, and I enjoy punning.
I have written a filk song. A, quantity, one. Came to me one day while eating dinner. I actually sang it at a con, but first audience was my wife and kids. You'll guess the tune if you're an old fart like me.
Schrödinger's cat
The quantum mechanical cat
Alive or dead
Or neither yet
Until you open the box
Do you believe in
Schrödinger's cat?
My kids have all informed me at one time or another we never had "normal" dinner conversations, at least not like ones they ever heard at friend's homes. Apparently Schrödinger's Cat, The Fermi Paradox, Berserkers, the outrage over demoting Pluto from planet to planetoid, black holes, and other such subjects aren't normal dinner conversations.
Buy AL-LAD Online
AL-LAD for sale
Four-olive Martini: A Minor Drama at Last Call
Your eyes are drained as sapphires lost in blue
And ice. The frown your face is wearing tells
An adequate counterpoint to the tap
Of painted nails now playing up and down
The crystal stem. What is holding me from you
Maintains for us our several separate hells.
Our share in the punishment — your sullen lip
Against the rim, my olive quarto on
A cocktail spike — each rings as clear and true
As Gordon’s and diamonds (or Seagram’s and pearls).
Delivering the sudden burning sip —
The winter sting that splits us skin from bone —
“To each our own!” I say, and know it’s false
But wish to cut the crap with a little gin.
Isn't it.
"Win with it."
Finding good rhymes can be very difficult. Tom Lehrer once said that the problem with writing songs about mathematics is that nothing rhymes with algebra.
And, of course, there's this famous line from The Pirates of Penzance:
"When I have learnt what progress has been made in modern gunnery,
When I know more of tactics than a novice in a nunnery
In short, when I've a smattering of elemental strategy
Hmmm... strategy... strategy, lategy, bategy... Aha! I have it!
You'll say a better Major-General has never sat a gee."
Post a Comment