[Vhfcn-l] Monday musings

[Gary Thewlis]

I dunno. I never smoked any Astroturf.

Tug Mcgraw after being asked if he preferred grass or Astroturf

 

Square box, round pizza, triangle slices, now that's confusing. 

Anonymous

 

Never test how deep the water is with both feet. 

Anonymous

 

Silence is golden. Too bad nobody is buying. 

Anonymous

 

Why is Monday so far from Friday, and Friday so close to Monday? 

Anonymous

 

Our toaster has two settings: too soon or too late. 

Sam Levenson

 

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Real McCoy, the

 

Until recently, the origin of this common expression - meaning the real
thing - has been unclear, which has opened the gates to admit an
astonishingly wide range of suggestions, owing much to ingenuity but little
to hard fact. Most of these argue that it was one of the myriad McCoys of
America who was the real McCoy. Was it perhaps:

 

.Elijah McCoy, who invented a machine to lubricate the moving parts of a
railway locomotive?

.The famous Hatfield-McCoy family feud that enlivened the West
Virginia-Kentucky border in the 1880s?

.As Alistair Cooke once argued, a famous cattle baron of that name?

.A Prohibition-era rum-runner named Bill McCoy?

.The real Macao, pure heroin imported from the Far East?

.The American boxer Norman Selby, known as Kid McCoy, who was welterweight
champion from 1898-1900?

 

There has been a fair measure of agreement among writers on word histories
that this last one is the true origin. It is said that McCoy had so many
imitators who took his name in boxing booths in small towns throughout the
country that eventually he had to bill himself as Kid "The Real" McCoy, and
the phrase stuck. In another anecdote a sceptical drunk who met the boxer in
a bar denied he was the genuine article with such vehemence that McCoy was
forced to hit him. After recovering the drunk said, "He's the real McCoy!"
These stories are apocryphal and there's no evidence whatsoever for the
imitators or the drunk.

 

There's plenty of evidence, however, for suggesting that the original McCoy
was actually a Mackay. The earliest example is from 1856, which is recorded
in the Scottish National Dictionary: "A drappie [drop] o' the real MacKay".
The same work says that in 1870 the slogan was adopted by Messrs G Mackay
and Co, whisky distillers of Edinburgh. In the recently revised entry in the
Oxford English Dictionary, all early examples mention strong drink and
they're all spelled McKay or Mackay. That includes the first figurative
instance, which is a letter written by the author Robert Louis Stevenson in
1883: "He's the real Mackay".

 

Other examples also point towards a Scottish origin. A Rock in the Baltic,
by Robert Barr, dated 1906, has: "I shouldn't have taken the liberty of
introducing him to you as Prince Lermontoff if he were not, as we say in
Scotland, a real Mackay - the genuine article". Many early appearances - the
first dated 1865 - are from New Zealand, suggesting that it was taken there
by Scots settlers. Conversely, it doesn't appear in print in the US before
1898, in either spelling.

 

It is clear from all this recently unearthed evidence that the term was
originally the real Mackay, but became converted to the real McCoy in the
US, either under the influence of Kid McCoy, or for some other reason.

 

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Diet Coke was only invented in 1982.

 

Beatrix Potter created the first of her legendary "Peter Rabbit" children's
stories in 1902.

 

Mario, of Super Mario Bros. fame, appeared in the 1981 arcade game, Donkey
Kong. His original name was Jumpman, but was changed to Mario to honor the
Nintendo of America's landlord, Mario Segali.

 

It took Leo Tolstoy six years to write "War & Peace". 

 

The Neanderthal's brain was bigger than yours is.

 

The most common name in the world is Mohammed.

 

Amount American Airlines saved in 1987 by eliminating one olive from each
salad served in first class: $40,000.