This Pope's No Turkey — Burtonology — More Ukes — Cormac McDrama

Note recounting dream, ca. summer 2006:

"[We were] praising Alexander Pope—that guy nailed suburbia!"

(Wish I could remember more—sounds like a great dream.)

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After reading about "contagious gunfire" in the Times (the piece compared its spread to that of germs, laughter, fear), I opened The Anatomy of Melancholy (for a piece I was working on—I don't just spend my days dissecting the Anatomy!) and my agéd peepers fell on this line:

"Why does one man's yawning make another man yawn?"

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69 Love Songs: The uke circle closes...opens...closes...

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Termite Artist James has a stellar post about Cormac McCarthy's play, The Sunset Limited.

I asked some other Termiters what "getting off the schneid" meant — I assumed it was something like "getting on the stick" — here is what Dizzies team members Matt and R.E.S. said:

Matt: "Off the schneid" is a baseball term—means finally getting a hit after going on a bad stint of 0 for whatever.

R.E.S.: Getting "off the schneid" means ending a run of bad luck (it's used a lot in sports when players end a hitless streak and such). No one ever says they're "on the schneid", they're always getting off it.

More in depth, from Sports Illustrated:

The term comes from gin rummy. In that game, a "schneider" or "schneid" is when one prevents an opponent from scoring a point in a game or match. In sports, the "schneid" has become a general term for being scoreless, winless, hitless or other unsavory "-less" states. Thus when one achieves that first run, point, win, hit, etc., one is said to have "gotten off the schneid." The actual word originates from the German and Yiddish term schneider, for one who cuts cloth, i.e. a tailor.

Curiously, the same day I read James's take on the Cormac, I started a Friedrich Dürrenmatt novel in which the murder victim's name is...Schneid.