[Vhfcn-l] Monday musings

[Gary Thewlis]

Congress is now appointing a debt committee to deal with the debt. I thought
Congress was the debt committee. Aren't they the ones who put us in debt?

Jay Leno

 

A federal watchdog agency says that overlapping and duplicate programs waste
billions of dollars each year. Congress is taking this study so seriously
that they're ordering a second study to look into it.

Jay Leno

 

Reporter: "Did you visit the Parthenon while in Greece?"

Shaquille O'Neill: "I can't really remember the names of all the clubs we
went to."

 

Paper cut: A tree's final moment of revenge. 

Anonymous

 

Lazy people fact #2347827309018287. You were too lazy to read that number.

Anonymous

 

Seeing a spider in my room isn't scary. It's scary when it disappears. 

Anonymous

 

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Gravy train

 

The British are thoroughly conversant with the gravy train, a form of
transport by which a person can make a lot of money for no more effort than
riding on it. It was heaven-sent as an expression to be borrowed when
writing in recent years about the excessive pay and bonuses of those fat
cats who run the British railways. And here's a more recent example from the
Guardian last January: "Long-running attempts to clean up the European
parliament's notorious 'gravy train' image were scuppered yesterday when EU
governments blocked a new pay and perks package for MEPs."

 

Despite a happy acceptance of the phrase, it comes from America. Perhaps
that's why some British writers have expressed confusion, muddle, and doubt
about its origins. Might, one pondered, have "gravy train" have been a
mishearing for "gravid rain"? "Since", he wrote, "gravid means laden with
eggs, a gravid rain would seem to imply a fall of eggs (possibly laid by
golden geese?) from the sky." Ingenious, tortuous even, but about as wrong
as it is possible to be. Since another form of the phrase is known, to ride
on the gravy boat, you might think it started life as a joke on the name of
the container for gravy placed on the table during meals, so called because
it is often roughly boat shaped. But, alas for a promising theory, gravy
boat in this sense isn't recorded until the 1940s and is clearly a joke on
the older gravy train. American etymologists have puzzled over it as much as
anyone: Charles Earle Funk thought it might have arisen in "railroad lingo,
in which a gravy run or a gravy train meant an easy run with good pay for
the train crew." This is much more probable, but unfortunately there's no
evidence to support it - none of the known appearances of gravy train refers
to a literal train.

 

The experts do generally agree that the phrase has its source in the slang
use of gravy for something easy or cushy, simple to do, or an unexpected
benefit. This is recorded in the major references books as appearing
slightly earlier (1910) than gravy train (1914). As a result of the
digitisation of old newspapers in very recent times, these dates can be
taken back somewhat. For example, advice to potential advertisers appeared
in The Daily Independent of Monessen, Pennsylvania, in October 1906: "If you
buy right and then tell an exacting public in a clear, concise way, just as
you would over your counter, you are then getting in line for good gravy."

 

There is some slight evidence that gravy goes back rather further than that.
If it is the source of gravy train, it would have to, because from the
Courier of Connellsville (also in Pennsylvania) in November 1895, almost two
decades before the previously oldest known example: "Johnston claims that
Reuben Nelson and another tall negro were in New Haven the night of the
escape and that they broke into the lockup. Johnson further states that the
next day Kelson laughingly told him that the New Haven lockup was 'a gravy
train.'"

 

But why and how do trains come into the picture? We don't know, which leaves
the matter in an uncertain and unsatisfactory state.

 

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The only rock that floats in water is pumice.

 

The three most common elements in the universe are 1) hydrogen; 2) helium;
3) oxygen.

 

The United States government keeps its supply of silver at the US Military
Academy at West Point, NY.

 

Chicago's Lincoln Park was created in 1864. The original 120 acre cemetery
had most of its graves removed and was expanded to more than 1000 acres for
recreational use. 

 

Christmas became a national holiday in the US in 1890.

 

>From its completion in 125 A.D. until 1958, the Pantheon's domed ceiling was
the largest unsupported concrete span in the world. It was surpassed only
with the construction of the CNIT building in Paris.

 

In England and the American colonies the year 1752 only had 354 days. In
that year, the type of calendar was changed, and 11 days were lost.