It's funny (or pathetic) how some topics mentioned on this forum lure the Old Dog from under the porch to chase a squirrel. In this case, "99 bottles of beer on the wall," a song dating to the mid-20th century. Wait a minute! Weren't we all born in the mid-20th century? What the heck was going on?
Anyhow, there seem to be two variants, "take one down and pass it around" and "if one of those bottles should happen to fall." I don't know which one is the most popular or if there is a regional preference. And I didn't realize there is a final verse when there are "no more bottles of beer on the wall." Apparently it's "go to the store and get some more, 99 bottles of beer on the wall." I've never heard it get to that point and, theoretically, it repeats.
So, why 99 bottles, and what are they doing on the wall? I would think that they should be in a cooler or on ice. Some wise guys have a never-ending version, "Infinite bottles of beer on the wall, if one of those bottles should happen to fall, infinite bottles of beer on the wall."
Damn squirrels.
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Here's another squirrel...at some point in time breast became beast.
This phrase was coined by William Congreve, in The Mourning Bride, 1697:
Musick has Charms to sooth a savage Breast,
To soften Rocks, or bend a knotted Oak.
I guess folks weren't comfortable mentioning breast in polite company and beast looks almost the same in print. Any other working theories?
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Mr. Beagles, you had ration cards for cigarettes in Berlin? How did that work, did you get a free carton every week? And were you paid in greenbacks, or was their some other currency used? It's confusing to me, thinking about what money was used in the various sectors. Converting between dollars, pounds, francs, and marks would be a big pain in the ass.
Okinawa was easy, money-wise. The US dollar was coin of the realm, used everywhere; no fiddling around with the Japanese yen.
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I don't know whether Ig or Og would be more successful in the arrowhead marketplace. A perfectly good, but cheaper, arrowhead by Ig may outsell the better arrowhead of Og, eventually making Ig the richer and more desirable (cave?)man, thus allowing him more opportunities to, uh, spread his genes. Superior products don't always succeed in the marketplace; maybe it takes Og as much time to make one arrowhead as it does Ig to make a hundred, Og is a fussy jerk, we're starving and we can't wait another week for arrowheads. Ig's arrowheads kill the critters just as dead, and if we lose some, no big deal. They're cheap and we have lots of them. So, whose gene's will get spread the furthest?
I realize I may have completely missed the point of Uncle Ken's comments about the selfish gene; I haven't read the book by Dawkins. But, I ask, if we are now the product of the most successful genes, why are we in such turmoil and things so screwed up? Am I looking through the wrong lens?
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There's definitely a lot of money in fandom. I read that some local bars and taverns are charging up upwards of a hundred bucks cover charge, just to stand around and watch the big games on TV. It'll cost you five hundred to reserve a table. Either the economy is doing really well or some people are really stupid. I'll go with P.T. Barnum on this one.
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And from our good friends at The Atlantic, "Trump also means, especially in British English, to, erm, break wind,"
That sounds about right; I can easily think of him as Mr. Fart.
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