By Zay N. Smith
News Headline: “Christmas season is finally here.”
News Headline: “Man punched in face, pulls gun on line-cutting shopper.”
News Headline: “Shots fired outside Walmart.”
Ho, Ho, Ho!
News Headline: “Electronic tracking: new constraint for Saudi women.”
News Headline: “Satellite images show gulags still operational in North Korea.”
Electronic tracking. . . satellite images. . . .
Who says the human race isn’t making progress?
News Headline: “Food banks brace for holiday rush.”
News Headline: “Food pantries in need.”
News Headline: “Food banks are getting worried.”
News Headline: “New vending machine in Beverly Hills dispenses caviar, escargots, truffles.”
The stories seemed to go together, for some reason.
The Case for Zero Tolerance of Modern School Administrators:
A school official in Vaughan, Ontario, has proposed cutting down a stand of oak trees near the school because there is the chance that a child with an allergy might eat try to eat an acorn.
News Headline: “Alligator hunters may be able to use guns.”
P.B., a Bethesda, Md., reader, writes:
“It’s about time.”
QT agrees.
You will not find alligators excluded anywhere in the Second Amendment.
News Headline: “Naked man spends 3 hours on London statue.”
Authorities have put him under psychiatric evaluation, as what rational man would spend three hours cavorting naked on a statue?
A half hour maybe. . . .
QT Modern Corporate Gibberish of the Week:
Xylem and Alix have announced acquisitions.
News Headline: “Next Big Ten expansion: Would you believe North Carolina?”
News Headline: “Big Ten getting too big for its own good?”
OK. All right.
Some worry that the Big Ten is heading toward an unwieldy sprawl of 16 teams with no identity, regional or otherwise.
But that’s easily taken care of.
All we have to do is divide it into a couple of conferences.
QT What Passes for Miracles These Days Update:
An image of Jesus has been found on a used cupcake wrapper in Brighton, Mich.
News Headline: “End of the world: the Mayan prophecy of 2012.”
News Headline: “Mayan apocalypse believers take refuge in French town.”
Add ends of the world to the list of things that aren’t what they used to be.
The Target chain explaining why it opened its stores on Thanksgiving:
“. . . . the first thing we did was reach out to all of our store leaders and ask them to have discussions with their team members. . . .”
And R.M., a Chicago reader, wants to know when did managers and clerks become team leaders and team members, and when can we have managers and clerks back?
And. . . .
Modern Education + the Criminal Mind =
A Detroit teenager who stole a laptop from a woman’s apartment returned later to offer it back to her for $40.
She asked him to come back the next day.
He returned the next day with the laptop, police said.
Rush Limbaugh regarding the Thanksgiving weekend:
“The true story of Thanksgiving is how socialism failed. With all the–”
Oh, be quiet.
News Headline: “Woman calls cops on Salvation Army for ringing bells.”
Ho, Ho, Ho!
From the QT Archive of Knowledge:
+ It isn’t “God rest ye, merry gentlemen,” but “God rest ye merry, gentlemen.”
+ Christmas pudding should be stirred clockwise.
Grammar R Us Seminar on the English Language:
D.C., an Owen Sound, Ontario, reader, regarding QT’s wondering whether it should be “hurrah” or “hurray,” writes:
“Isn’t it, or wasn’t it at one time, ‘huzzah’?”
It is and was.
The trouble is, does this word, also known as “huzza,” rhyme with “hurrah” or “hooray”?
Dictionaries tend to put it with “hurrah.”
Then again, few among us can forget Alexander Pope’s Essay on Man, in which he writes:
One self approving hour whole years out-weighs
Of stupid starers, and of loud huzzas.
So it was left to the poet Jack Brickhouse to set the entire matter right:
“Hey! Hey!”
Write to QT at qt@beachwoodreporter.com
Visit QT at facebook.com/zaynsmithqt
QT appears Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
Posted on November 26, 2012