I saw a reference to this story, headlined “Routing is Tooting.” It made no sense to me, until I realized that I was reading in American.
(Culture note: In the UK ‘routing’ is pronounced to rhyme with ‘tooting’ In the US it’s something like ‘rowding’.)
There is a rule in English that you shouldn’t end a sentence with a preposition. For example, “What did you do that for?” is incorrect, because ‘for’ shouldn’t come at the end of a sentence. Here’s a little story that amusingly (if you’re a sad, lonely grammarian) comments on the rule:
A family is planning a move to Australia, a prospect which the young son does not relish. His parents have been telling him all about the country to try to get him excited about the idea, but without success. One evening the father sends his son upstairs to bed, and comes up a moment later with a book about Australia. The irate child sees it and says “What did you bring that book I didn’t want to be read to out of about Down Under up for?”
Winston Churchill is said to have commented on this rule with something like:
“This is the sort of bloody nonsense up with which I will not put.”
I was cycling home from work on Friday, and while still around 5 miles from home I got a puncture. No problem, think I, as I whip out my repair kit. That didn’t work (for some reason I always puncture inner tubes on a seam, where patches don’t stick so well), but I carry a spare inner tube as well so I just swapped to that. As I was pumping that up, however, one of my spokes broke, which pretty much put an end to cycling (you can ride with a broken spoke, but it’s not a great idea).
On the walk home, among the many people who stopped to ask if I needed help (score one for my faith in humanity) was a guy I used to work with. Let’s call him Hans, because that’s what his parents called him. He stopped without knowing it was me, which was nice, and we had a bit of a chat. One of the topics covered was weekend activities. I mentioned that I would be rowing, and he said that he knew someone who rowed. After a little back and forth it turned out that his new girlfriend (except-it’s-only-been-a-couple-of-weeks, so-lets-not-get-ahead-of-ourselves) rows in the same program I do, and I’d had an email from her that day. Small world.
I went out in a proper single yesterday. For those of you scrabbling for context, we’re talking about rowing. I’ve been out in a recreational single before, which while tricky to row in a straight line have the great advantage that one of the straight lines they don’t do is straight down. The single I tried last night, however, had no such natural propensity, so it was up to me to keep it stable. I was hampered in this by the fact that the boat was incorrectly rigged; it was set up so that during the recovery (when the oars are supposed to be out of the water) my port blade would dig in and try to flip me. Unfortunately I didn’t notice the incorrect rigging, just the effect. And as I expected to suck, it didn’t occur to me that it wasn’t necessarily entirely my fault. A passing single pointed out my problem, so I limped back to the dock and fixed it, but decided I’d tempted fate enough for one day.
To give you an idea of how tricky these things can be to balance, the one I used was probably around 24 feet long, and no more than a foot wide at the waterline. With your blades on the water acting as stabilizers it’s remarkably safe. Unfortunately you don’t go very fast in that position, and once you start waving the oars around it can all go horribly wrong.
I was chided by a friend for not having posted in a while. Far be it from me to keep my fan waiting, even when I’m taking a mental break from all the nauseating excesses of the political and ‘cultural’ world. So instead, I thought we’d go with inanity.
Fire up Google’s map site. Mouse carefully over to the zoom bar thingy on the left, and switch to ultra-zoomy mode without changing the view in any other way. You’ll find that the google-center of the US is just north of the Coffeyville Country Club, which in turn is just north of Coffeyville, Kansas. And why is Coffeyville interesting? Well, frankly it isn’t. But it does have the distinction of not being labelled on Google’s map. Nearby South Coffeyville, scraping out a precarious existence as a lawless Oklahoman border town, gazing jealously across the divide at its rich northern sibling, and while we’re on the subject where the hell does Coffeyville get off not having a compass point attached to its name, why do we proud South Coffeyvillians have to have that hateful qualifier attached, like we were the musty basement of Coffeyvilles? Just because Kansas became a state 46 years before us Coffeyville thinks they can lord it over us like some kind of…big…lordy thing. Heck, they’re so stupid they had to have two goes at incorporating their town. Anyway. South Coffeyville is labelled, from which it is possible to derive the name of its much larger neighbor, but this would seem like a stunning indictment of something if I could be bothered to work up the energy.
More ‘interesting’ facts (OK, fact) about the villes Coffey. If you’re a young bachelor with thoughts of taking a lusty Kansan (or Oklahoman) farming wench for your own, head for the border. The southern Coffeyville has 100 women for every 86.5 men, while just a few miles north in the bustling metropolis that is Coffeyville proper, there are a stunning 100 women for every 82.1 men. No word on how many still have their teeth.
Lest you think I was making up all that stuff about the border, btw, take a look at this amazing map (Coffeyville is the grey checkered pattern just north-east of center). Who knew the border was so prominent?
Next week: Crewe, Coffeyville of the UK.