By Zay N. Smith
News Headline: “Two Kabul bank executives sentenced to prison for fraud.”
This is what happens when bankers aren’t smart enough to commit their crimes on Wall Street.
News Headline: “College basketball’s regular season is nihilism and emptiness.”
Will someone please do something to cheer up our sportswriters?
News Headline: “U.S. budget austerity sets in.”
Austerity failed in the Great Depression.
It failed in Japan.
It is failing in Europe.
But if we don’t keep trying it over and over, how can we ever expect a different result?
News Item: “Workers at a United Arab Emirates company said they submitted four attempts to Guinness World records. . . most people wearing paper hats, largest barefoot race, longest high-five chain and largest hopping race. . . .”
Note to Guinness:
Please award these workers at least one record.
We don’t want 400 people wearing paper hats, racing barefoot, doing high-fives and hopping to look silly.
Beverly Feldt, a Homewood reader, regarding QT’s asking its readers to stop playing games with the names with fish, writes in agreement:
“Hake ut it out.”
Maybe we all need to seek kelp.
News Item: “. . . leading to the end of civilization as we know it. . . .”
QT will get back to you.
Still looking for a downside.
The Case for Zero Tolerance of Modern School Administrators:
The Baltimore school that suspended a 7-year-old boy for bending a breakfast pastry into what the teacher thought resembled a gun has reaffirmed the suspension and its zero-tolerance weapons policy while offering counseling to pupils who might have been “troubled” by the bent pastry.
News Headline: “After police chase, naked man crashes into river, stands on top of sinking minivan, waves underwear over head.”
As reasonable response as any to the day’s news.
From the QT Archive of Knowledge:
+ The Quonset hut was invented in Rhode Island.
+ A third of the soot found in San Francisco comes from Asia.
From Poor QT’s Almanack:
On this day in history 177 years ago Mexican soldiers took the Alamo, which is mentioned here for those who didn’t remember.
QT Grammar R Us Seminar on the English Language:
Ellen Hinsch, a Columbia, S.C. reader, regarding QT’s mention that it is not “spitting image” but “spit and image,” writes:
“I read somewhere long ago that before ‘spit and image,’ the phrase was originally ‘spirit and image’ to describe someone who was like another person not only in appearance, but in demeanor, as well.”
QT still favors spit.
As it was written in 1689: “Poor child! He’s as like his own dadda as if he were spit out of his mouth.”
Or there is always the Norwegian “som snytt ut av nesen paa.”
Which translates to “as blown out of the nose of.”
And aren’t you sorry you brought it up?
Speaking of spit, is it past time for QT’s semiannual reminder that oral contracts are always verbal, but verbal contracts aren’t always oral?
Evidently.
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Posted on March 6, 2013