Obvious things - in hindsight - you were belatedly surprised to learn.

sigh.

I just learned that MNBC's Alicia Menendez is the daughter of Sen. Robert Menendez.

I just learned that Vogue is not pronounced vohg- goo. I also figured out that Don King and Larry King are not brothers. And that pickles were at one point in their lives cucumbers.

In a thread here someone recently mentioned that the writer Jean Stein was the mother of journalist Katrina van de Huevel. I had no idea.

I have several embarrassing ones, but off the top of my head: I was well into my 30s before I realized discreet/discrete are two separate words.

And piggybacking off r4, I was also in my 30s before I realized Isabella Rossellini was Ingrid Bergman's daughter.

That Beanie Feldstein & Jonah Hill are brother & sister!

It was only last year I realized grocery stores carry ping pong balls close to the beer and Solo cups because of beer pong.

That Jesus is not buried in a ditch next to my grandma's farm.

Until I started school, I thought there were two major cities within driving distance of my suburban home: Los Angeles and El Lay.

And I was an adult before I realized the colored "measuring sticks" next to the door in convenience stores were to measure the height of a fleeing thief for the surveillance camera.

I didn't realize until recently that the song "Don't Sleep in the Subway" was about underground pedestrian tunnels, not an underground train system.

I just learned on DL yesterday that the German "Kaiser" comes from "Caesar".

r11 "My Favorite Year" King Kaiser = Sid Caesar

r11 Czar, too.

I remember being surprised to find out that Yiddish was written with the Hebrew alphabet. Since it's very much like German, I just assumed it would be written the same was German is.

Nothing really. I'm pretty cynical, and figure things out quickly.

I didn't know that about the 19 either. To be fair, I'm blonde and a ditz.

I consider myself fairly intelligent and a font of useless facts; despite that, I had no idea that Mad Men referred to Madison Ave, Covid-19 referred to the year and that Caesar/Kaiser/Czar were all derivatives of the same thing.

So thanks for the lessons today, DL.

I did not know that John Cusack was related to Joan. I assumed the last name was coincidental because they look nothing alike and he doesn't have the heavy accent. Am I alone on this one?

Today I learned “The Reflex” song by Duran Duran is about gambling addiction.

r18 I have always known they were related and think they look quite a bit alike. Cusack is not a very common name.

I saw an interview where Cher said she once thought Mount Rushmore occurred naturally.

R15 doesn’t know how to play

Lol R21!

That Fire King was just ripping off Pyrex’s name.

We did this recently, FWIW.

Well, as embarrassing as this sounds, I really thought the song "Relax" by Frankie Goes to Hollywood was about fighting. THEN, one day in my car, I actually paid attention to the lyrics. My sister laughed when I told her but wasn't surprised since as she says I was "always naturally spaced-out".

[Quote] the colored "measuring sticks" next to the door in convenience stores were to measure the height of a fleeing thief for the surveillance camera.

How interesting! They've sure put a lot of thought into this.

[Quote] I really thought the song "Relax" by Frankie Goes to Hollywood was about fighting.

What is it really about?

Not me, but my partner recently discovered that there are tabs on the side of the aluminum foil box that one pushes in to keep the roll from falling out. He could never figure out why the roll stayed in place after I use the roll.

r20 Cusack is a pretty common name, if you're a member of that well-known Irish acting family. Damn but those people breed like rabbits. Niamh Cusack is a dead-ringer for DL fave Joan.

r19 Wait until you find out what the Beatles' song "Ticket To Ride" actually means. Curious? Read on..... The 'ticket' was a clean bill of health from the local VD clinic.

How do those street maps, the ones on stanchions, always know exactly where I am? 😉

[quote]I just realized that the “19” in Covid-19 referred to the year 2019.

Are you Kellyanne Conway?

This is from early elementary school, but the first poet I ever read was Poe, and I assumed "poetry" was derived from his name ...

I guess you must pronounce it po'try.

Lol, R32! That thought process actually makes sense.

bunch of dumb clucks here

I just realized that Adam Sandler is a talentless hack.

It wasn’t until I was in college delivering pizzas that I learned streets were numbered with evens on one side and odds on the other. I had only learned to drive earlier that year and pretty much anywhere where I went prior in my life I knew ahead of time the location and I had never had to search for an address before.

r21 I remember reading that Sonny said that about her to show how dumb she was (post-breakup, of course.) I'm pretty sure he made it up--but who knows?

R7 Learned something new. I swear I just recently noticed this and thought what a random item to be hanging in the paper products aisle. Thanks

My mother was genuinely surprised recently when I mentioned that singer Johnny Mathis was black.

Grand Poobah is purely satirical term with no reference in the history of the Middle East.

Confident Germans are often in fact arrogant. Arrogant Frenchmen are instead confident.

That pretentious intellectualist Sam Harris is the son of funny tv creator Susan Harris.

R37, tell us more about your pizza delivering experiences that were sexy.

Mmmmmmmm.

Pizza AND a college delivery man? Too much.

I didn't know Patty and Cathy were BOTH played by Patty Duke. And then I turned 9 and the truth revealed itself.

I was 35 years old before when I realized "Main Street" was not a street that went across the country. I just assumed, because almost every town has a Main St. that they were all connected.

That the gas gauge in a car has an arrow pointing to the side where the gas cap is. I learned that right here about a decade ago.

R47 I just came on here to post that....

R47, that was about the time I realized that, as a general rule, the gas cap for German cars is on the right, and the gas cap for Japanese cars is on the left,

R37, that's how I learned the street numbering system, as well! I'd been driving a few years but grew up in a rural area where directions were landmark-based. I was still pretty embarrassed over how long it took to realize, though.

As a kid, at the end of TV shows, I thought they were saying “brock” to you by….

I was in my forties when I realized that the flowers on berry bushes are what turned into berries. I always thought it was two different and unrelated processes.

[quote] that was about the time I realized that, as a general rule, the gas cap for German cars is on the right, and the gas cap for Japanese cars is on the left,

I have a Subaru and the gas cap is on the right. Alas.

I thought the world was actually 2021 years old and then I found out it was much older!

R18: there are a lot of Cusacks. After Joan and John the one I have seen the most is Ann. She was on. Better Call Saul for a couple of years.

I can think of a few examples from movies, but probably the best is A Streetcar Named Desire. I was mildly obsessed after watching it on AMC when I was around 11 or 12 (and may have had a crush on young Marlon Brando). I also bought and read the play several times, which, iirc, is more explicit about Blanche's fate.

It wasn't until embarrassingly later that I realized Stanley actually rapes Blanche. I honestly thought he just beat her up.

I just learned a few years ago that “Werewolves of London” is not “Where Was The Thunder?” Ex bf corrected me and I cried laughing

I was in LA for the better part of a year before I read that the interstates that end in the number 5 ran North to South and the ones that ended in 0 ran West to East. In one fell swoop it made driving in LA ten times easier.

r58 Umm ... partial credit.

Odd-numbered interstates start in the west (I-5) and run north and south. It's not just those than end in '5'.

Even-numbered interstates start in the south (I-10) and run east and west.

The ones that end in 5 or 0 are the main routes, but the other one-or two-digit routes are also full interstates. I-8, I-17, I-93, I-64, etc.

The three digit routes are either loops/belts or spurs to one or more of the main interstates: I-495, I-605, I-280, etc.

US Highways follow a similar pattern, but start in the north and east. US-1 runs north south along the east coast; US-101 along the west coast. US-50 runs across the middle; for that reason there is no Interstate 50 because it would cause confusion.

Speaking of interstates, it was at least a decade into driving that I realized mile markers on the highway indicate how many miles you are from the state line.

Regarding 3-digit interstate highways: if it starts with an even number it's a loop or a bypass. If it starts with an odd number, it's a spur.

r61 Yeah, I know that's the way it's supposed to be, but in reality ... well. For example--there isn't much difference between the 605, the 110 and the 710 in the LA area. They all go north-south in a more-or-less straight line. They connect to several other interstates (and other freeways.) It's hard to say that one is a bypass and one is a spur.

Recently I was driving a friend to an appointment. We were closing in on a stinky bus and I pushed the air recirculation button. It’s the button with the car with a u-shaped arrow inside the car. She asked me why I pressed the button. I explained to her if I turn on that button the air in the cabin of the car would recirculate and outside air won’t get in. The stinky bus fumes stay outside the vehicle. She was floored! She had no clue what that button was for.

Here’s an informative article about that handy little button.

For a long time I thought Pilates was pronounced pie lates.

The soap dispenser on my kitchen sink just pulls out so you can refill the plastic bottle screwed on to the underside. For years, I'd reach under the sink, unscrew the bottle, refill and then struggle to screw it back on.

R29, I just discovered this with your post. I fixed my plastic wrap, too. Bless you.

During Covid I went on a cleaning spree and discovered you need to wash your dishwasher and clothes washer and dryer! Also your dishwasher has a filter in the bottom and a mesh cover that also needs to be cleaned. I had had my new dishwasher for two years and did not clean it once. Once I took out those filters they were nasty! But now I clean my dishwasher every six months or so.

This man’s dishwasher cleaning video is very helpful.

I still don’t really and truly know how to pronounce Annie Proulx.

Is it AnnEE, AnnAY, AHNee?

That Alice Ripley was once a Hee Haw Honey.

As I kid I thought NIMH in the secret of NIMH was a welsh name and not that it stood for National Institute of Mental Health.

I learned that Chicken of the Sea is not really chicken.

Just leaned Chad Allen and Chad Lowe are two different people. Not sure which one is which though.

Another one from when I was a kid: I thought UK was an abbreviation for Ukraine.

Can't think of any thing for me right now but I am sure there was something.

A friend in high school thought that babies came out women's asses because he had always heard that having a baby was like trying to shit a watermelon. He was not a stupid person despite that.

R47/R48, WHAAAaaa?

I recently learned that about the dishwasher filter--I've been living in the same place for 20 years and never knew it. Unfortunately, I'm unable to remove it. I've watched a couple of dishwasher-cleaning videos, and neither showed the kind of filter mine has. I'd practically have to dismantle the thing with some tool I don't have.

I have always found this one hard to believe but

there are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on Earth.

When I was a kid, I'd see Jewish guys with yarmulkes. Most of them were balding, so I thought it was caps to cover their bald spots.

I am ashamed to say I only learned a few years ago that the pitcher is the key player on any baseball team.

I never knew that you can catch diseases if you put your face up to someone's ass while they fart, I learned this can happen with Covid. I always thought it was harmless, like breathing regular air.

I never bothered to think about what CVS stands for despite going once a week to pick up my Adderall prescription. Consumer Value Store.

Also it was about season 6 of RuPaul where I realized C.U.N.T.

When a contestant lost on a game show, they would get a parting gift. I always thought they said party gift. It made sense to me when it was Rice a Roni because you might have it at a party. I couldn’t understand the party gift of car wax or some such other item.

R4 That would be me. Are you the person I recommended West of Eden to?

I still don't really understand Great Britain, United Kingdom, The Commonwealth all refer to.

More lifeboats wouldn't have helped the Titanic. They didn't have enough time to finish launching the ones they had. What would have helped was sending the boats away full. Many of them were launched only half full or less.

R77 look up your make and model online for a users manual. In that manual they will tell you where to find the filter if it has a filter. I’m pretty sure all dishwashers have a filter.

R84 Not any of those posters, but I will say West of Eden is a worthy follow up to Edie.

That is a funny one r85. I actually had to explain all of this to an incredulous American when my MasterCard was stolen when I was in London. I had to get a new one delivered to me while I was in Edinburgh, on a trip.

After the Card person tried hard to say Edinburgh and failed every time, I had to give the address I was staying at and finished by saying United Kingdom. That is when the fireworks began.

“ You said you were in Edinburgh, which is in Scotland, you mean Scotland.” I explained that the address had to be United Kingdom for the card to get to me. Then I unfortunately said “ You know the UK” Her response. “ “ But you said you were in the United Kingdom, but you are in Scotland. I am sorry but you are being confusing sir. What is the address you wish this card to be sent too?” Again explanation. Penny starts to drop. She then calls over her team mate , who is equally mystified. I then, as I am tired and frustrated and it is now past 1 am and I have been trying to explain for 20 mins cut to the chase. “ It is all the same basically but we need to have this sent to Great Britain asap.” Short response WTF WTF WTF!! Next 30 mins trying to explain the difference. Eventually she sort of understood.

Of course the next problem was she said it was more convenient and quicker to get it to London. When I tried to explain I was not going back to London for a while , she said “ But I am looking at the map and it is only a tiny distance between Edinburgh to London “with her fingers nearly able to touch!!

Yep it was a long night.

Not me, but I was at a stateside party once & I came upon a older English woman talking to a younger woman. When I said to the older woman that she must hail from the United Kingdom, the younger woman seemed genuinely hurt. “I thought you said you came from England.”

It wasn't until I was well into my 20s, maybe even over 30, that I realized that, when you take your car to get serviced and they "rotate the tires," they are simply changing which of your tires is attached to which part of your car. They are not swapping out your tires for brand-new tires. Which is what I thought, all for a total price, including the oil change and everything else, of about $100. Wtf was I thinking?

When I was little I thought cartoon characters were actors. Like, they weren't drawings.

I didn't know that you can't put regular dish soap in your dishwasher. I learned the hard way and never did it again.

What happened R93??? Dare I ask?

[quote]I just learned on DL yesterday that the German "Kaiser" comes from "Caesar"

[quote]R11 Czar, too.

[quote]I had no idea that… Caesar/Kaiser/Czar were all derivatives of the same thing.

Whoa! How did I not know this until now?

[quote]That Fire King was just ripping off Pyrex’s name.

Duh! Don’t I feel silly for never making this connection.

[quote]We were closing in on a stinky bus and I pushed the air recirculation button. It’s the button with the car with a u-shaped arrow inside the car. She asked me why I pressed the button. I explained to her if I turn on that button the air in the cabin of the car would recirculate and outside air won’t get in. The stinky bus fumes stay outside the vehicle.

Thank you, R62/R63, driving behind trucks and past road work on the highway just got better.

[quote]Regarding 3-digit interstate highways: if it starts with an even number it's a loop or a bypass. If it starts with an odd number, it's a spur.

Interesting but also confusing, there is an even numbered interstate in Maryland, I-270, it’s not a loop or a bypass and it has a spur. I looked it up and it’s noted as an exception.

I’d been using computers for more than a decade when I started working with a fellow left-hander and discovered I should be using the mouse with my left hand. It was too late to relearn, but I finally understood why I couldn’t “draw” with the mouse the way other people could.

It's easy r96. Just switch to your left hand, stick to it a couple of days, and you'll feel like you've always been doing it. I did it.

Maybe that will be my retirement project, r97!

r94. Foam party in the kitchen! Hand me the Crisco.

When I was a gayling we went to visit people who had a fabulous apartment on Park Ave.. The women were drinking rose' wine and talking about the French provincial furniture and the gorgeous parquet floors. I thought that parquet was French for park and the floors were called that because everyone on Park Ave. had them.

Also, through gossip I knew that the teenage daughter was a cocksucker and I was excited to see one in person. She looked totally normal and you couldn't even tell. I remember thinking it's odd that I was thinking more about the cocks she sucked instead of her sucking me. Hmmmmm.

r100 Those floors got that name because they were finished with a margarine semi-gloss stain.

😉

R87, unfortunately, I did and they don't. GE owner's manuals are basically all the same, and they don't say anything about removing cleaning the filter. That's why I never learned you were supposed to and have never done it.

It wasn't until season 3 that I realized Transparent was a combination of Trans and Parent.

A friend recently blew my mind when he told me that "Gidget" (the old TV/movie series) is a combination of "girl" and "midget."

Beatles fan since childhood, I was embarrassingly into adulthood before I realized the “Beat” in “Beatles” referenced the musical definition of the word. I knew Beatles and beetles were spelled differently, but I didn’t realize why.

^Growing up with the Beatles since they first landed in the US, when I was 6, it never once occurred to me (over decades) that the name referred to ANYTHING except itself. It was sui generis, they were just the Beatles. It didn't hit me until I was probably close to 50 that the name was a kind of pun.

^And similarly, it JUST occurred to me now that the Monty-Pythonish satire of the Fab Four, The Rutles, is also a pun, and a dirty one, on rutting, fucking. I hadn't noticed...

I thought they were named for Rutland.

r105, you just blew ..... my ........... mind.

Up until a few years ago I had apparently never paid attention to the name of the song, and thought Cat Stevens was singing "Come on and BE STRANGE" in stead of Peace Train.

Come on now, be strange

I still sort of like my version of the lyrics.

I kid you not. Until about 20 years ago I had no idea the earth was encircled by hundreds of man made satellites, lots of them, just for communications. I thought all that was up there was one, Telstar. The satellite that they shot into space in the early 60’s.

It wasn't until after my second year of Spanish that I realized that Spain and España are the same country.

When I was a kid I went to see the original production of ALNM. Of course I played the obc a lot. I had no idea what Send in the Clowns meant. It wasn't until my father who grew up in Italy explained what it meant to me. It certainly wasn't a common phrase as far as I knew. I never heard it used by an American. And my father hated Broadway musicals but he liked that song. I guess it was more of a common phrase in Europe.

When I was driving to DC everywhere I went I saw signs that said NO HAZMATS. They were everywhere. I was like wtf is a hazmat? It took a bit of time before it popped into my head.

When I was little I thought the Prudential building in Boston was the Empire State.

Driving into town we would play the "who spots it first" game.

I had issues with MPH. I didn’t know how people could estimate how long it would take us to get somewhere.

70 miles per hour.

^I *still* don't understand how that little lady who talks to you from inside the car knows *exactly* how long it's going to talk you to get to where you're going, within minutes, even if it's, say, 7 hours away...

^"take" not "talk"

Mine’s a guy.

Guess I got lucky.

Fun fact: In Berlin they have a complete different system for the house numbers. Numbering starts where the street begins on one side, then turning at the end of the street and counting forwards on the other side. So number 10 may be on the opposite of number 125.

For the longest time I thought "coffee cake" was supposed to taste like coffee. It never dawned on me that it was cake eaten with coffee.

I never understood why it was called a "second hand" on clocks/watches. I thought it referred to the number of hands (there were already 2, that told the time). I was surprised when it was explained that it's the hand that counts down the [italic]seconds[/italic].

Both these things I learned well into my 30s.

When I was young my father had a workshop in the basement. It had saws, hammers, etc. Basically losts of dangerous things I should not be touching. I would go in his workshop often because I was bored. Finally he put a sign on the door that said “No Minors”. I wondered to myself why miners would come down into his workshop anyway. I kept messing around in his workshop until he finally sat me down, pointed to the sign, and said “that means you!”

r32 here ... I also thought that "Anon" was the name of an actual poet.

[quote]I just realized that the “19” in Covid-19 referred to the year 2019.

You probably yet to realize a quarter is 1/4 a dollar.

I always wondered who ibid was.

That the bris ceremony is/was cocksucking. The torah says you have to suck it so it's not gay.

Saliva is a disinfectant and anti bacterial. That said circumcision is barbaric child abuse.

^Oy vey.

OP, I always thought Mad Men was a play on Ad Men.

This guy learned something today...

One of my friends in high school thought the handicapped sign was for people that had to use the toilet, lol

I’m quite ashamed to say that it took me a long time to realise that the title of the tv show “Third Rock From The Sun”, meant Earth.

I didn’t figure out the play on words with Sharon Needles name until years after she was on Drag Race.

OP, you're not very bright, are you? I like that in a man.

That they named Moderna for mRNA

[quote] I never knew that you can catch diseases if you put your face up to someone's ass while they fart, I learned this can happen with Covid. I always thought it was harmless, like breathing regular air.

So now that you know it's risky, have you cut down on your fart sniffing?

[quote]MAD MEN

[quote]A term coined in the late 1950's to describe the advertising executives of Madison Avenue.

[quote]They coined it.

It's in the pilot!

[quote]OP, I always thought Mad Men was a play on Ad Men.

I've always figured that it's both. The ad men of Madison Avenue.

For a long time when someone said they adopted a rescue dog, I thought they meant a dog that rescued people from collapsed buildings and other catastrophes and were now retired. After awhile having met so many people with rescue dogs, I was like, there can't be that many retired search & rescue dogs in the world!

It's not only in the pilot, it's in OP's post.

[quote]That pretentious intellectualist Sam Harris is the son of funny tv creator Susan Harris.

I had to look this up. I thought it must be a joke from one of our GG-loving eldergays. But this is true and my mind is kind of blown.

I'm going to be belatedly surprised when I learn what the fuck R113 is talking about.

[quote]I just learned a few years ago that “Werewolves of London” is not “Where Was The Thunder?” Ex bf corrected me and I cried laughing

Ha! Our neighbor Alecia thought the same thing as a child and we secretly mocked her for years! "Ahhhooooooo! Where was the thunder?"

[quote] One of my friends in high school thought the handicapped sign was for people that had to use the toilet, lol

I thought it was for people who couldn’t walk because they had extremely big butts.

Regarding the joke--- How do you get down from an elephant. You don't get down from an elephant you get down from a duck---I thought the word down referred to the act of ducking down, as if to avoid being hit. I was well into my 30s before I realized that the pun referred to duck down, as in feathers.

r130 But England is not an island -- it's ON an island.

R139 that is so fucking adorable!

Yes, r18, you are. They both have the Irish pale skin, black hair (original) combo.

R135, And MRNA is the acronym of Moderna stock.

[quote] You probably yet to realize a quarter is 1/4 a dollar.

Mind……….BLOWN!!

r149 Acronyms have to spell a pronounceable word.

I watched this scene many, many times before I realized the same actor is playing both parts:

Oh boy. Don’t watch Eddie Murphy’s The Nutty Professor. You’ll blow your mind.

[quote] MAD MEN A term coined in the late 1950's to describe the advertising executives of Madison Avenue. They coined it. It's in the pilot!

Not only in the pilot, but that title screen is the first thing you see. But if you blinked, you missed it entirely.

Love you, R151. People say "acronym" when they mean "initialism." It doesn't bother me much, if at all, but there is a difference. They could also just call it an abbreviation.

I was 6 years old, listening to the "new" song "Afternoon Delight" that came on the radio.

I stared at the stereo system for the entire song, completely convinced that these singers were inside the stereo somewhere and it made me happy.

Yes, R156, as a child I thought the songs were being performed live by the artists at the radio station.

But I literally thought they were inside the stereo console, R157. Your story is cute too.

LOL.

Mad Men was a play on "Ad Men" but the "Mad" part referenced Madison Avenue

When I was first learning the alphabet I thought "LMNOP" was one letter called "elemenopee"

I've since learned that many other people made this assumption too

From this thread I learned about

* Dishwasher filters

* Send In The Clowns was from a musical and that ALMN stands for "A Little Night Music" or "Eine kleine nachtmusik"

* How to keep tin foil rolls in place

I thought the words in the Pledge of Allegiance were “for Richard stands” rather than “for which it stands.”

I didn't know the Hirohito made fun of in all the 1940s war movies was the same person as the Emperor who ruled Japan until the 1980s. I had no idea they left him in place and didn't execute him like they did the Nazis. Brilliant move by the Allies which allowed them to occupy Japan with very little resistance.

I recently learned that "Bae" means Before Anyone Else. It also means poop in Chinese I think.

R164 wow, I didn't know it was an acronym. I just thought it was a new (lazy) way of saying "babe".

I always heard that "bae" meant Best Anal Ever.

When I was 4 or 5 I remember asking my mother, "when did people start seeing in color?" She gave me a look I'd learn well....I gave birth to a moron! To which I followed with, "When did they invent color? When did you start seeing in color." I was under the impression that the world was black and white until someone invented color. I got this notion from seeing old movies that were black and white and mew movies that were in color. "PEOPLE ALWAYS SAW IN COLOR!" she said.

Similarly, R167, to this very day, I have trouble grasping the past in black & white in living color.

Me too, r106. But only in the era of black and white photography and film. So from about 1850-1950.

Everything that happened in the silent film era I envision in black and white.

Sorry, r106. r169 was directed at r168

r160 The old Mervyn's department store used to have a store brand for women's clothes called ELLEMENNO.

I cannot envision historical figures in the flesh; only in black and white.

For some reason, I counted the number of matches in a matchbook a year or so ago. There are 20.

There are 20 cigarettes in a pack. So the book of matches is a matched set with the pack of cigs. If you don’t fuck things up on a windy day, you have everything you need.

Did we know this?

The "Great" in Great Britain refers to the expanded four nations as opposed to just England . . .

and not an unseemly boast.

[quote][R130]But England is not an island -- it's ON an island.

An island called Great Britain.

[quote]The "Great" in Great Britain refers to the expanded four nations as opposed to just England . . .

The "Great" in Great Britain refers to greater or big Britain. Lesser or little Britain is across the Channel, now known as Brittany (French: Bretagne, as opposed to Grande-Bretagne/Great Britain).

I think it was on DL where I learned that "Streets" (in Manhattan, anyway) run east-west, while "Avenues" run north-south. This is also true in my area of LA.

I further learned that "Roads" normally lead out of the city, "Boulevards" are usually wide streets separated by a median to divide traffic, "Lanes" are narrow roads leading to residential areas, "Ways" are short streets branching off a road, "Drives" are usually long roads that wind round a mountain or river, and "Courts" and "Places" usually end in dead ends. I never really gave these road naming conventions much thought.

I just learned tonight exactly how stupid some DL members are.

[quote]The "Great" in Great Britain refers to the expanded four nations as opposed to just England . . .

I thought "Great Britain" referred only to the island that includes England, Scotland and Wales. Otherwise, why would the country be called "The United Kingdom of Great Britain AND Northern Ireland?"

Till I was in my 30s I thought the phrase was “ends meat.” As in, they were so poor they could barely make ends meat…. ie, could only buy the cheapest, cast off bits of meat at the butchers.

The fact that you just learned it tonight shows your stupidity has us all beat.

R173 That’s much better then the hot dog packs and the bag of buns that don’t match up at all.

R177 I grew up on Beechwood Dr., it had four houses on and was the shortest road in the whole development. But it sounded great together and I didn’t know anybody else who lived on a “drive.”

R177 I live on XXXX Drive, which is a cul-de-sac with a dozen houses on it. You make some points with your theory, but there are no real hard and fast rules with lots of street designation.

I'm not going to lie, I still don't understand what it means when someone says city streets are on a grid system.

r185, picture a tic tac toe grid (x10). It means the street design is the same as the ttt grid rather than willy nilly connections between point a and point b

Obviously you've never looked at a map of Manhattan above 14th Street, which was intentionally laid out in perfect grid.

Is it safe to say the confused Mad Men queen missed the show's entire lead-in because she was in the kitchen preparing a little after dinner snack of pie $ ice cream, Cheetos, Skittles and stewed prunes?

Alicia Menendez was filling in for Brian Williams tonight. All I could think of was "she's Bob Menendez's daughter. Interesting."

Y'all stupid !!!

R185, look at a map of Chicago/Manhattan and then look at a map of Boston. You'll see the grid clearly.

The grid plan goes back to ancient times and was about military occupation and political and economic domination.

Does the grid plan relate at all to the way SLC does their street names? That shit was bizarre.

Manhattan grid is because of the Freemasons.

R151, I know that, but was hoping no-one would notice. (In my defense, I say "Myrna," as in Loy.)

I always thought “the man going up into the other man” was a reference to “Fantastic Voyage.”

I thought i posted this already...Utah streets make absolutely no sense. Can anyone expound?

Mormons.

R167 that's hysterical (and kinda cute)!

[Quote] when did people start seeing in color

Not such a stupid question. Babies are with only rod cells in their eyes and therefore can see only in black and white. Cone cells for color develop later

Re color: humans didn't even see the color blue until relatively recently.

"Yet we still don't know if all of us perceive these colors in the same way"

Wouldn't that be true of any of our senses?

r202 = Thomas Nagel

The post about street naming conventions is right. If "there are no hard and fast rules," it's only because developers are ignorant nowadays and don't apply them properly. They think "Lane" sounds cute and "Avenue" sounds grander than "Street," I'm guessing, and apply the names willy nilly.

[quote]Re color: humans didn't even see the color blue until relatively recently.

OMG!

But did you know R11 and R 11 that Caesar was pronounced “Kay-sar” in Latin? Just like the German pronunciation of Kaiser.

R202 I had to Google Thomas Nagel. Yup. Thanks!

I am professor and never realized until recently that “XIng” means “Crossing”. I thought it was some sign for Chinese minorities.

[quote][R185], picture a tic tac toe grid (x10). It means the street design is the same as the ttt grid rather than willy nilly connections between point a and point b

Thank you, r186!

I thought the world was in soft focus until I got eyeglasses at age seven.

I don’t know why people are slamming the Mad Men commenters. The intro mentions nothing about Madison Ave. although in hindsight it’s clear that’s what it was short for. But it’s not far fetched to think the word Mad was a play on Ad and Mad.

It was a double entendre. I think back then they were called "agency boys"

Who can relate? I grew up in paradise, or so I thought. When I went to HS with the rich kids I realized I had grown up on the wrong side of the tracks!

[quote] That pretentious intellectualist Sam Harris is the son of funny tv creator Susan Harris.

She must be so disappointed. I’m disappointed for her.

R208 I found out rather recently that the word Xmas [italic]wasn't[/italic] created in an attempt to remove Jesus from the celebration of the Christmas holidays. It's an actual shorthand for Christ, stemming from the Greek spelling.

[Quote]The "X" comes from the Greek letter Chi, which is the first letter of the Greek word Christós, which became Christ in English.

As for Xing, the X merely represents the sign of the cross. I also once thought it was an attempt to remove the Christian word "cross" from heathen mainstream English. This is what happens when you're taught by ignorant Christians during childhood.

[quote]as a child I thought the songs were being performed live by the artists at the radio station.

I thought that as well. I also thought that the actors on the soap operas I would watch with my older sisters were all performing live and would freeze and stand in place during the commercial breaks, then resume acting once returned from break.

We had an old fashioned radio with a large loudspeaker behind a mesh. As a child I thought this was the silhouette of the speaker...

R206, the Roman pronunciations of many famous phrases would surprise us.

Caesar himself said “veni, vidi, vici” but this would have been pronounced “way-nee wee-dee wee-kee.”

R206, that's something I just learned on DL, too!

Not if we studied Latin, B-G.

It might surprise you to learn that the French do not pronounce words as we would.

If ancient peoples did not see blue, what did they see when they looked up?

“The sky was so [ ? ] that day.”

R215, I learned that in Catholic school.

But Catholics see things differently. When I heard about Bible Study classes, I thought people were learning about the ancient literary forms and cultural beliefs that influenced the authors of the Bible. I thought people were learning the what parts of the Bible are historically and scientifically inaccurate. How the ancient Middle Eastern religions contributed the the stories, beliefs and Iconography of Christianity.

Recently I found out that only Catholics learn that. Protestants Bible Study is not about context or influence. I am not sure what it is about. But now when I look at references to Bible study, I see it was obvious, but I never picked it up.

The question about ancients seeing blue is open to debate. They may have seen it, but not had a word for it.

The first color word coined in most languages is "red." "Blue" is usually one of the last.

So the fact that Homer never uses the word blue may say more about linguistic development than about vision.

In Rwanda about a decade ago I found out that they had no word for Orange in Kinyarwanda and thus the color did not exist for them despite the very orange soil everywhere.

[Quote] “The sky was so [ ? ] that day.”

Green. You're welcome. R221

r215 I remember seeing an invoice for a repair at an auto mechanic that had "Xler" on it. Took me a while to figure out they were shorthanding "Chrysler."

When I was a kid I used to watch that old show "The Millionaire " and I thought his name was John Bears Fortipton.

In Homer, the color used to describe the sea is "red."

Latin in ancient Rome wasn't pronounced the same way it was pronounced in the Middle Ages, from which modern church Latin is further derived.

As a small child, I remember watching Romper Room and kind of freaking out when she brought out the magic mirror. I thought she actually was looking at me through the TV.

The Brittany/Bretagne post made me wonder-- you know how in French class the teacher would give everyone French names, so Peter was Pierre, Mary was Marie, etc.?

I wonder if they called all the girls names Brittany (and Britney and Bryttni) "Bretagne"

I was in California and kept seeing road signs for such-and-such CYN. I could NOT figure out what that meant. OK, I'm dumb. You're all smart, so I'm not saying what it actually is.

r232 I've lived in California for most of my life and have no idea what you're referring to. Can you post an example?

r229 should know -- he was there!

Canyon?

For the longest time I thought this song was about Snoopy from the Peanuts comic strip.

R233, think Topanga.

She WAS, r230.

That’s what made her mirror magic, silly.

r237-- Ah, OK. I wasn't thinking of those kinds signs. I thought you were referring to some kind of informational or warning sign.

Yes, I’m not him, but I thought he was referring to those signs also.

I was thinking “California __ __.”

Then it occurred to me he was talking about directional signs, not road warning signs.

Re: The color blue. It wasn't that the Greeks didn't have a word for it, it was that they considered it a version of black. The sky goes from the Black of night to the blue of day. If there was something that they did not have a name for, it was grey. Note that when we interpret "wine colored sea as red, we are using our own bias. Also, orange was not commonly used until the 19th century. Until then it was usually referred to as yellow-red, red-yellow, or just plain red.

R233 a google search revealed it stood for "canyon."

I googled using the terms:

CYN

sign

California

It’s also possible that we couldn’t actually see blue. There are colors most of us can’t see now.

Blood is impossible to get out of carpet and old floors.

Bless your heart, r242.

R228 Homer's description for the sea was not red but the "wine dark sea".

The funny thing about "orange" is that people think that the fruit was named after the color, but it's the other way around. The color was named after the fruit. It would be like calling yellow "lemon".

I didn't see r241 yeah the color of the sea in Homer is describing wine in a metal goblet not as seen in wine glass.

[quote]The fact that you just learned it tonight shows your stupidity has us all beat.

Oh, I can't think of at least one.

When I was younger, I thought the Monkees were such a popular group that they were given their own TV show.

In the 80’s I was singing Ali g to the radio—you know the song, “Knock, knock knock’in on Deborah’s Door….”

*along to the radio

When I saw "gluten" free diets in the Sunday magazines as a kid, I always thought they meant "glutton" free diets for greedy eaters. I thought it sounded strange that foods would be listed like "Contains glutton"

You’re not alone, r250.

That if you take an 8 mile walk in to the desert on a 100 degree day you can cook your whole family in a couple of hours.

This is another from earlier childhood: when I learned to read, they were using the phonics system in my school (late 1980s), in which you were taught to "sound out" unfamiliar words.

For some reason, I didn't realize that people learned and remembered entire words. I thought I'd have to "sound out" every word I'd see for the rest of my life, and I couldn't gather how anyone had the time to read that way.

[quote] I didn't know that about the 19 either. To be fair, I'm blonde and a ditz.

Yes, but your equipment is stunning

[quote] I never knew that you can catch diseases if you put your face up to someone's ass while they fart, I learned this can happen with Covid. I always thought it was harmless, like breathing regular air.

That’s the best. They never covered anything like that in health class. No wonder why so many classmates got ill.

Learning about Africa...

[quote]I never knew that you can catch diseases if you put your face up to someone's ass while they fart, I learned this can happen with Covid. I always thought it was harmless, like breathing regular air.

I learned.

I didn’t realize that other currencies have different value. I thought that one American dollar equals one British pound which equals one euro, etc.

That girls have 3 holes. Being a good gold star gay, I didn’t realize until my college years, that that was not the case. I thought that they just had 2 - the A-hole and the V-hole. Imagine my surprise to find out that there was a third hole, the P-hole, and that babies and pee didn’t come from the same place. Mind blown.

r262, which hole does the dick go in?

I did the same thing for years R66.

Finally one day, my Dad saw me doing it. He was as nice as he could be I suppose, when he said, “Are you a fucking idiot?”

I also could not pronounce “jewelry” properly until high school. This wasn’t an accent thing. My parents pronounced it correctly.

For the life of me I don’t know why. A kind English teacher took me to his office (no not for that), and he would say it, and I would try to repeat it.

Only took two 20 minutes sessions, but I got it after that.

[quote] I also could not pronounce “jewelry” properly until high school.

What's with all this talk of Soviet jewelry?!

Maybe you need to color your hair, R265...just avoid blonde or you'll make it worse!

RE: blue. A Dominican American friend of mine insists that lemons and limes are exactly the same thing.

Ok .. so now I have to ask DL.

I haven’t thought about this in years (and YouTube was in its infancy when I was in high school), but I googled it.

I was “corrected” to say it the “British” way per the linked video. I was saying it the other way she mentions.

How do you say jewelry?

r268 In Spanish, they use the same word (limón) for both fruits -- although sometimes they say "limón verde" for lime.

I used to like blue.

No. Because my gimmick is to make everyone love me.

Is that a Canadian thing?

I think Canadians are often sweet. But I think that, for me, that is my work area: the crew, the director, the writer. If I’m there to be entertaining, I want their support, I want them to laugh, I want them to like me. Look, if you hate someone, but they’re doing a brilliantly funny performance, you’re not going to laugh at them. Once I win everyone’s trust, then I can go to the director and say, “Can I have a freedom take, please?” If I was an asshole, they would say, “No, we got to move on. Sorry.”

Going all the way back to the start, you’ve been in so many amazing ensembles, and I wonder about sharing energy on sets. Because starting with something like “SCTV,” everyone’s so fabulous—Catherine O’Hara, Eugene Levy, John Candy, Andrea Martin. How are you sharing glory?

Well, “SCTV” had a very unique gimmick to it. What they’d do in the ninety-minute shows is, they’d have someone do the story line, the wraparound. As far as everyone else, if you weren’t doing the wraparound, you’d do your own piece. The brilliance of the show was that it had all these different voices, and it combined into this thing. Everyone was very autonomous in that way.

I remember when I first did Ed Grimley. I was doing this piece where he’s hypnotized by a snake. Dave Thomas came down and went, “I have no idea what you’re doing, but it’s hilarious.” That was the strength of the show. Everyone was trusted.

It seems like everybody was really close.

We’d also known each other for a long time. I remember I met Catherine when she was seventeen. I was going out with Gilda [Radner] and Catherine came with her friend Robin Duke to see “Godspell,” and then we went out for dinner afterwards. I’m just saying, there’s a long history.

R269, Jewelry (US) or jewellery (UK) is /joo-uhl-ree/, but I have heard /joo-luh-ree/, which is nonstandard.

How interesting, r272.

It’s hard to know if you’ll bomb or not. I’m sure you’ve had your share of it.

Absolutely. But, again, being in a movie that doesn’t work, a sketch that doesn’t work, if you really do say, “I’m only a human being here, I’m doing the best I can, I wish I was better, I’m not, but you can’t fault me on effort”—that’s like a salve to heal the wound.

I mean, “Clifford” is an effort and it’s amazing.

I have a joke about “Clifford” in the show with Steve, where I say, “You know, I made a film called ‘Clifford,’ ” and you hear a smattering of applause. And Steve says, “See? People who saw ‘Clifford’ remember that movie, and people who didn’t applaud also remember that movie.”

The single silliest piece of trivia in your entire book was the fact that Elizabeth Taylor loved that movie.

How about that? She literally said to me, “Oh, I’m such a ‘Clifford’ freak.”

I only met her once, at her house, at this afternoon party, and she couldn’t have been more fun and loose. She said one time she phoned QVC, because she was fascinated by it. This was 1997, in July. And she said, “I phoned QVC and I said, ‘I’d like this and that.’ ” And the woman on the line said, “What’s your name?” I said, “Elizabeth Taylor.” And the woman said, “Yeah, and I’m the Queen of Sheba.”

Doing movies like that, that were mixed in their reception, is there something to be learned from it?

I have this story in my memory. I know all the dates. It’s 2002, I’m at Spago. And I was having dinner with Rob Marshall, the director, and Victor Garber. And Victor says, “Oh, jeez, look who’s over there.” It’s Joni Mitchell. And I love Joni Mitchell, so I went over and introduced myself, and she said, “Sit down,” so I sat down. And we just discussed careers. She was a fan of “SCTV,” and I knew all about her stuff. And we’re having some white wines, I’m bumming her Spirit cigarettes. In another era, it would’ve been [sings in a Joni Mitchell voice]: “I met a Canadian boyyyyy.”

Anyway, I said, “Joni, really, I have to ask you, you have hit, hit, hit, hit, and suddenly you veer more jazzy, and was that a psychological attempt to say to your fans, ‘I need new fans’?” And she went, “No! I was just on my journey. That’s all. I was just doing the next thing. I thought ‘Mingus’ would be as big a hit as ‘Court and Spark.’ ” You just keep doing your stuff. Harold Ramis said to a friend of mine, upon seeing a screening of “Clifford,” “It’s going to make a hundred million dollars.” So you don’t know.

You went on a late-night show via Zoom this past year. The amount that you prepare to go on these programs is shocking to me. I read that you will work for weeks on your spiel.

When I would do Letterman, I’d have every beat prepared. And then sometimes Dave would hit about thirty per cent and we’d veer off, because we’re friends. But I could also say to myself, “If Dave’s off or if I’m off and it doesn’t go well, again, I’m still toasting myself with champagne tonight, because I did the best I could do.” Sometimes you prepare, and often you don’t hit it, but the preparation makes you in a very loose state.

And sometimes they seat you next to Bette Davis. I cannot believe she didn’t realize you were impersonating her.

That was something. It was 1988, January. (I’m “Rain Man” with dates.) I’d never done “Johnny Carson,” so I was supposed to be the first guest up. And then they phoned me and said, “Oh, is it possible you could switch? Because Bette Davis can only do that night now.” I said, “I am honored and thrilled to be the second guest out.” And then I told Rob Reiner I was going to do “The Tonight Show” with Bette Davis. He said, “I’ll give you a hundred dollars if you do Bette Davis to Bette Davis.” And so, part of the reason I came out and said [affects a Bette Davis voice], “And what a pleasure to meet you,” was to make Rob laugh at home. But I don’t think she had a clue who I was. I don’t think she’d seen “Three Amigos!” So she thought that’s the way I spoke, I’m sure.

I've always loved Martin Short, and that's a very good interview (and thanks for posting it), but even I got tired of him about halfway through.

Here's something I STILL don't know: How do you copy a quotation from somebody else's post? I'm literally the only person on DL who hasn't figured it out.

R277, just put [ quote ] without the spaces before pasting whatever it is you're quoting.

I figured out that not all people were kind and well-meaning WAY too late. Still coming to terms with it.

Do I detect a whiff of anti-Semitism in all this talk of how people pronounce the word for hard mineral brilliants?

R280 you're insane. Gone mad in your attempts to find antisemitism everywhere. Go talk to a Palestinian.

R281, sarcasm is beyond you illiterate understanding. Get an education and come back. Or don't.

R282, failed attempt at ad hominem. I'm doing my PhD so I'll be fine, but you need to take a long hard look at yourself and notice some obvious things yhat you may have missed

If you're getting a PhD, it's a sad commentary on the current state of education.

Really, R284? And why would that be?

I didn't know there was a term called Narcissistic Personality Disorder until I was in my forties. And this was after 25 years partnering a narcissist who comes from a family full of malignant ones. I think the accumulative and ongoing stress damaged me permanently, somehow.

Realization was like a heavy weight being lifted off of my spirit. Before that time, the only thing preventing me from cracking up entirely was self worth due to all of the unconditional love I've received from my Mom.

We're in it for the long haul I think, but I still can't believe how naive(not stupid) I've been all of that time.

I also learned about NPD after a devastating relationship with one when I was 30. It was a revelation and I realised my parents have it too, in different forms (mother - grandiose psychopath, father - covert).

No one cares about truth on Datalounge but I still feel it necessary to inform you guys that r21 is lying to you. Cher said no such thing, he never saw it in an interview.

Sonny said it to insult her. I'm 99% sure it was actually a joke from one of their show's monologues that Sonny dug out to use as a soundbite when he was a politician in the 1990s.

Cher brought it up in her eulogy, pointing out that she was 16 at the time and so naive she believed Sonny's lie that he was a descendant of Napoleon.

For him to later say that she at nearly 50 years old still believed it was him insulting her.

r277, you copy the text as you normally would in your browser.

When you post it, use [quote] in front of it.

[ quote ] How do you copy a quotation from somebody else's post?

^^^ Like that, just remove the spaces around the word quote.

You can't use [quote] anywhere but at the very beginning of a sentence, so don't try to use it in the middle of a sentence, it'll just show up as text.

And put two hard returns at the end of the quoted material or your replay will appear as part of the quote.

^ your reply, not your replay. Sorry.

Some Bonapartes did settle in America. It wasn't that farfetched.

I didn't know that Sonny said Cher still thought that about Rushmore when she was 50 - but the eulogy proved that she "once" believed that - or at least said that she did.

So I was no lying. I rest my case.

* not lying

R286 Sis how can you stand to stay with someone you know is NPD? The money and/or the dick must be top-shelf.

R279 me too.

Also it recently hit me that almost all women really are dismissed and written off after age 25. A woman has to be loaded, connected or very fucking lucky enough to get famous if there’s any hope to escaping that Fate. Someone really ought to have drilled that into my preteen girl skull 16 years ago.

That I wasn't a nice person. It really was disappointing.

Well we knew that the minute you showed up here.

[quote] [R262], which hole does the dick go in?

When it comes to hole selection, you do have choices. The most common choice is the V-hole which is preferred by most chicks aka people who menstruate, and is the hole for baby making. But for a similar penetration pleasure without the baby making part, consider the use of the A-hole. Just start out slow before you ramp it up and go bait shit crazy and annihilate the shit out of that A-hole. She’ll love you for that.

When I was in high school, a kid in my music theory class announced he and his friends were driving to Panama City (we were in Ohio) for Spring Break.

I was astonished that high school students were able to drive all the way through Central America.

It wasn't until later I realized there is a Panama City, Florida.

This thinking about live playing in radio stations sounds very familiar to me. I was a pre school kid. The most astonishing thing for me was, when there was this Programm people could wish their songs. It took only one song in advance to get the musicians in the studio to fulfill the wishes.

Can't remember, when and why I found out that there were just playing singles or LP's.

One other anectode from my preschool times. When they announced the numbers for the weekly lottery they always said: "ohne Gewehr" , which I interpreted as without a weapon which is the German word for a rifle. WTF they need a rifle to get the balls with the lottery numbers? And why do they announce they were selected without a rifle? I was waiting for the moment they would say "mit Gewehr" so I could literally see them shooting out the balls with the numbers.

I think at the age of seven I figured out they were always saying "ohne Gewähr" which just means "no guarantee". This both words sound identical in German.

Still nowadays it gives me a smile when the weekly lottery announcement is made and I can't get the image with the rifle and the numbered lottery balls out of my head.

R301 - funny, I had a nearly identical experience. I had started college in Cincinnati and everyone kept saying they were going to Miami for the weekend and I thought they were all wealthy and flying to Florida and back all the time. And it was really just Miami University, about an hour away.

Well, as long as we’re on this train:

My mother’s grandmother lived upstate from her in New York. In northern New York there’s a town called Florida, so there are some directional signs indicating Florida with an arrow, etc.

Her father, ever the jokester, had her convinced you had to drive all the way upstate before you could start heading south for Florida because that’s the only way you could get to the road that leads you there.

That there's a Florida, New York was a plot point in an episode of SVU; the detectives thought they were going to have to chase a suspect to the state of Florida before realizing he was headed to upstate New York.

R305 I like your grandfather 😃

Until recently, I always thought that the reason they called the terrorist attack 911 was that after the towers fell, somebody called in the emergency.

Location, location. location stories continued… My parents grew up in a small town in Lebanon, Pennsylvania and both my grandmothers still lived there and we traveled to see them often. We always stopped at the little corner store on the way out of town to get the “good” Lebanon bologna (Bomberger’s not Seltzer’s if you’re wondering) so even very young I was very familiar with the name. During the 1970s there was much conflict, bombing and war in Lebanon, the country, and it was on the news continually as my mother was a news junky, and I was completely horrified that all this was going on where my grandmothers lived and that they were in danger.

Related, during my vintage stage in the 1980s I snagged and wore my dad’s classic red wool Boy Scout’s jacket that had troop information in a big patch on the back that acknowledged it’s name “The Tall Cedars of Lebanon.” In NYC once, I had a cab driver who picked me completely fascinated that I had a jacket on with the name and information related to “His Country.”

Whenever anybody mentioned Venice Beach I thought they were talking about the Lido.

When I moved to NY (I was only 18 years old at the time) I was surprised to find that so many of the towns and cities are named after cities/countries in Europe. I was actually a really smart kid, but I was used to California names (a lot of Spanish-inspired names). I thought it was really cool that there was a Hamburg, Rome, Eden (not Europe, I know), Naples and a whole host of other European-inspired names.

When I moved to New York as a young man, I was stunned to meet so many hot men named Jesus. I thought it was sacrilegious. But I sinned as often as possible.

R309 My nephew goes to Lebanon Valley College and gets asked about how things are in the middle east all the time.

Several of these comments about being young and thinking singers and musicians were performing live on the radio reminded me of this memory. My grandparents were visiting and we were watching a rerun of 'Hee-Haw'. (It was the South in the early 80s.) I had the story mixed up in my memory, as I thought my grandfather told me Grandpa Jones had died. But now I see it was this guy, who was friends with Grandpa Jones (and poor Grandpa Jones discovered his friend Stringbean's murdered body!). All that to say, they must've been in a skit together on this rerun, as I asked my grandfather if they had "propped up the dead guy" for the show. My grandfather laughed and explained it was a rerun; that's when I learned what reruns were. (I was probably about 6.)

R314 here; Wikipedia spazzed out on the link and linked to "David" instead of "David 'Stringbean' Akeman. It was also not until very recently I learned of Stringbean's murder; my grandfather was, of course, not going to tell 6-year-old me about that.

Reddit had a good thread in this about terms from RuPauls Drag Race.

I was amazed at how many people didn’t get Charisma Uniqueness Nerve and Talent.

That being said, I didn’t get the reference that squirrel friends referenced those who keep nuts in their mouth. I just thought it was a rhyme.

R313 The town where the college is, is where my parents grew up, and literally my grandmother’s and mother’s childhood house was on the campus, before they bought it and tore it down during expansion in the 1950s. My grandmother lived to be 103 years old and for about a decade she was the oldest living graduate of LVC. Her brother had been a brilliant young student there and was hired to teach after he graduated. He was very much an introvert and most likely Gay, but a favorite professor because of his youth and intelligence.

One of the female students came on to him, this is like the 1920s. He had a complete mental breakdown and basically became almost mute and someone who would shuffle about. He went from being the star faculty of the Chemistry department to being one of the janitorial staff on campus. He lived with my grandmother and her eight children in the house on the campus and was like the “funny” “odd” old uncle. At some point he basically stopped going to the bathroom and died of an obstructed bowel. It’s one of those tragic backstories of Gay relatives hidden in a family’s past. When I was young my grandmother would occasionally call me by his name, though quickly catch and correct herself. Whatever it was in him, she also saw it in me, one out of 27 grandchildren.

^ Uncle was a schizophrenic but family calls it "mental breakdown". Family makes up stories to cover it up (female came on to him and he had a breakdown= Nonsense.)

almost mute = catatonic schizophrenia. Shuffling = shock treatments/thorazine/ and or lobotomy.

I'll bet you've been told a lot of lies about your family history and Like most of us you don't question it. I signed up for newspaper dot com and I found out a TON of info about my family history that no one talked about. Small town papers used to print the most trivial gossip.

R317 What a story, I'm sorry about your grand uncle! We visited LVC and my nephew is happy there, the town is cute looking but sadly seems to have a strong Trumpistan undercurrent.

Before the net, there was a famous story that went around about someone who called the 800 number to order something from a mail order catalog. The rep took the product info, name, credit card number and then asked for the shipping address, which was somewhere in New Mexico.

"I'm sorry, sir, we only deliver to the continental US."

I lived in New Mexico for a few years, r320. You'd be astonished at how many Americans don't realize it's a state

R390, that reminds when I worked in Shipping & Receiving many years ago. I was training this rough-around-the-edges biker mama on UPS shipping. There was one package going to Santa Fe, NM, but she was having trouble finding the rates to Santa Fe in the international shipping guide. She also had trouble finding UPS Ground Shipping rates to Honolulu. She didn't last very long.

^^Typing from the future.

I figured out early on that "hamburger" and "frankfurter" were named for German cities, but it took me a while to figure out that "wiener" came from Vienna ("Wien" in German) and that linzertorte came from Linz.

r324. And some useless information on top: in South Germany we call the Frankfurter sausages "Wienerle"

Is it pronounced with a W or a V sound to start?

R301, Far and foreign enough!

R326, Who doesn't know this? "V."

No, r321, no, I wouldn't.

r326. W like in whisky. The le at the end is a diminutiv

R313, I'm in PA. It's not like LVC is some big-name school, so come on.

What were you saying, r328?

This, r332:

Also, in general, r332 (and r330):

r331 no one said that it's a big name school, obviously it's not, but he gets asked about it/razzed on his social media account often from those unfamiliar with Lebanon Valley College.

R324, and don't forget Berliners.

Maybe we should start a thread on foods named after cities, like Peking Duck and Cincinnati Chili.

R337, and why Peking Duck and not Beijing Duck? Why Crab Rangoon and not Crab Yangon?

I had lived in my condominium for well over 25 years before it dawned on me that the row of mailboxes at the end of the street included a slot for outgoing mail.

Just this morning I learned that "copypasta" referred not just to copying, but pasting.

I'd thought it was a term like plopping spaghetti on a plate: "Here's a bunch of words."

That people are so stupid they would take medical advice from a college drop out tv host and a crack head pillow salesman.

I didn't know until deep into adulthood that ponies weren't baby horses.

I was in France, looking at a map of Canada (I have no idea why…..), when I saw the province Nouvelle Ecosse. I never realized until then that Nova Scotia means New Scotland.

On a related note to R342, I just learned (maybe when American Pharoah won the Triple Crown) that Thorougbred is a specific breed of horse, not a word to describe a horse of pure breed.

(The pony thing was maybe a few years before that.)

I’m not a horse person, in case that’s not apparent.

That Fenty is Rihanna’s last name

R342 and R344. I was TODAY days old when I learned that! Wow....mind officially blown.

Who knew The DL could also educate? LOL

Maybe I never though to closely about this, but is was a revelation that the eggs you eat are not fertilized and could never become a baby chick.

Poor R347. All these years you've shuddered a little every time you've cracked an egg hoping a dead baby chick didn't fall out. Whatever you do, don't look up 'balut'.

R348 Actually as a vegetarian who always wanted to become a vegan I have a fraught time with them to begin with. But I have remained anxious of yolks with blood spots that happened a lot in the 70s, but seems less likely these days. But if it happens I know it will put me off them for quite awhile.

That I could’ve gotten $10k for every woman I’ve snitched on for getting an abortion.

The chinese takeout cartons are literal origami. Not only are they ingeniously designed to prevent liquids leaking, but if you remove the metal handle (easy to do) it will unfurl into a paper plate.

On a totally separate note, I still don't know if it's pronounced "orangutan" or "orangutang" (I've heard both). Any answers?

That sparkling water, seltzer and club soda are different things!

R351 Without the “g,” it’s based on a Malay word pairing “orang” meaning person and “utan” meaning forest. This is how Birute Gladikas, the foremost person in the world who is knowledgeable about them pronounces it. She’s an amazing speaker if you get the chance to hear her and the Orangutan Foundation International is an important organization to support if you can.

R352 But tonic always stood alone for you.

Calvin and Hobbes explains the color/black and white discussion

When - pre-internet, pre-GPS - I was a young pup just beginning to drive, I had a job as a stock boy & had to make a delivery to a part of town that was unfamiliar to me. I was directed to take a certain highway to my destination but when I got to it the sign said that it was headed for a major city hundreds of miles away. But that’s not where I was supposed to go! I had to get off the highway, find a pay phone & call my Mother to ask for her help.

R356, poor darling. I wonder what would you have done if you found yourself on the Sacramento-bound lane.

The really confusing thing about R357's pix is that the Ventura Fwy. goes BOTH north and south AND east and west depending on area. Very confusing for non locals.

[quote]That Fenty is Rihanna’s last name

I don't think that qualifies as an "obvious thing."

[quote]The chinese takeout cartons are literal origami. Not only are they ingeniously designed to prevent liquids leaking, but if you remove the metal handle (easy to do) it will unfurl into a paper plate.

I haven't seen a takeout container with a metal handle for YEARS. Once microwaves became prevalent, people didn't want any metal in their containers.

We called those carry home the turtle from Five & Dime store containers.

[quote] I haven't seen a takeout container with a metal handle for YEARS.

Really? All the Chinese restaurants by me still use them.

Has anyone actually ever unfolded one with the food in it? Doesn't the food go everywhere? And, on another note, took me forever to realize that those little pleated cups you can fill with ketchup are meant to be unfolded to make a container about 4x as large.

When a large indoor stadium was opening, it was said on the news that fans would have something to do with the inviolability of the domed top. I thought actual fans, as in people, were being enlisted.

R363, I was today years old when I learned that little nugget.

I’ll be damned.

[quote]On a totally separate note, I still don't know if it's pronounced "orangutan" or "orangutang" (I've heard both). Any answers?

My German ex thought it was hilarious how Americans pronounced it. In his best Mama's Family voice, he'd say "Arangatang!"

He pronounced it "oh-rang-OO-tahn."

That you had to be a paying member to start a DL thread.

No you don't, R367. Only to post in the Treason threads because Muriel likes treason, I guess, and doesn't want it discussed. Every single time a new thread starts, it's locked by the 100th reply. A real Repug move.

My bad, R368. My intent was to point out a MISTAKEN belief. That is, that you HAD to be a paying member to start a thread.

R354 tonic water has a very clear quinine taste to it.

I always assumed the actress Joanna Gleason was Jackie Gleason’s daughter.

She’s not.

[quote]R105 Beatles fan since childhood, I was embarrassingly into adulthood before I realized the “Beat” in “Beatles” referenced the musical definition of the word.

I thought “beetle” was spelled “beatle” for a very long time.

It’s not a word you encounter that often… or one I’m terribly interested in.

Ok stands for Oll Korrect.

After GWTW was published, English teachers across the country reported having to read book report after book report about Hawthorne's The Scarlett Letter.

Why isn’t Scarlett O’Hara’s first name spelled [italic]Scarlet[/italic] ?

Was the author drunk one night?

R375, the character's name is Katie Scarlett O'Hara, Scarlett being her grandmother's maiden name. Scarlett originated as a occupational surname for one who sells fine cloth and fabrics.

Mitchell didn't make a final decision on her heroine's name until a month before publication. She spent ten years writing the book with the heroine's name as Pansy. Pansy O'Hara.

True story, look it up.

I do know the original manuscript was all written in longhand, and the editor read it on the train back to New York.

I wonder if they got motion sickness.

R228, Not quite. He wrote "wine-eyed," which modern scholars have often written as "wine-dark," but that is disputed by the scholar in the linked article.

He also states unequivocally that the Ancients both saw and had a word for "blue."

Joey, you're welcome.

Mitchell couldn't make up her mind whether to let the Macmillan editor who was scouting for new authors see her manuscript until literally the very last minute. She finally got a suitcase and and just started pulling chapters out of the closet and stuffing the suitcase with them. They were in totally random order with some chapters missing and others unfinished. She got to the train station just in time to give the suitcase to the editor before he left. Despite the incredibly messy state of of the manuscript, he knew before the train reached New York he wanted Macmillan to publish it

I hope she had decent handwriting. Imagine being the typist who had 300 lbs. of moldy, out of order pages dumped on their desk.

R371, you "knew" she was a daughter of a celebrity & naturally went to Jackie Gleason. In fact, she's the daughter of Monty Hall.

Most people had decent handwriting back then. "Penmanship" was taught as a subject in school and you were graded on it all through elementary and sometimes high school.

I have my grandfafther's penmanship practice books. Page after page of perfect, legible and astonishingly beautiful handwriting. Sometimes page after page of one repeated sentence.

^ great-grandfather

Whitney being a lesbian. After I rewatched the "I'm Your Baby Tonight" video as an adult, I went "how the hell did the rest of the world not know?!".

One day while I was standing outside having a conversation with someone, a U-Haul truck drove past. I stopped, mid-sentence, and actually said out loud: "Oh... YOU haul... now I get it."

My friend rightfully laughed at me for a solid 5 minutes.

R360 They’re still around. I have rice from carry-out in a container with a metal handle in my fridge now. I’m going to use it to make fried rice (see 5 ingredient recipe thread) then open up the container just to check out this little known fact.

I've seen people refer in writing to "utube."

As a young adult I was surprised to learn that one of my favorite actors and humanitarians, Jerry Lewis, was a toxic world class asshole, and that everyone who had to deal with him despised him!

Lewis left an estate of $50 million and included a clause intentionally disinheriting all five of his sons from his first marriage. One of his sons gave an interview and described what he called years of "vicious" physical and emotional abuse. Jerry Lewis, who loved children so much. As long as they weren't his.

[quote] "Penmanship" was taught as a subject in school and you were graded on it all through elementary and sometimes high school.

Triggered.

Speaking of the asshole that Jerry Lewis was, why doesn’t his playboy son Gary get more respect for his multiple ‘60s hits?

[quote] Jerry Lewis, was a toxic world class asshole, and that everyone who had to deal with him despised him!

Might this explain his wide appeal in France for many years?

That Nicki Minaj wasn’t a natural blonde.

OK, so what does "send in the clowns" really mean?

Wikipedia to the rescue:

The "clowns" in the title do not refer to circus clowns. Instead, they symbolize fools, as [composer] Sondheim explained in a 1990 interview:

I get a lot of letters over the years asking what the title means and what the song's about; I never thought it would be in any way esoteric. I wanted to use theatrical imagery in the song, because she's an actress, but it's not supposed to be a circus [...] [I]t's a theater reference meaning "if the show isn't going well, let's send in the clowns"; in other words, "let's do the jokes." I always want to know, when I'm writing a song, what the end is going to be, so "Send in the Clowns" didn't settle in until I got the notion, "Don't bother, they're here", which means that "We are the fools."[2]

In a 2008 interview, Sondheim further clarified:

As I think of it now, the song could have been called "Send in the Fools". I knew I was writing a song in which Desirée is saying, "aren't we foolish" or "aren't we fools?" Well, a synonym for fools is clowns, but "Send in the Fools" doesn't have the same ring to it.

I still don't really get it - maybe Sondheim is referring to a Vaudeville kind of show, like if you're doing a dramatic reading and the audience got antsy or booed, you could start doing jokes instead?

In what kind of play could you decide to ignore the script and just start telling jokes?

How do you mean, r392? His group (called Gary Lewis and the Playboys, not that HE was Jerry's "playboy son") still plays gigs. Gary gets as much respect as most other popular 2nd-tier acts from the 60s.

[quote] One of the female students came on to him, this is like the 1920s. He had a complete mental breakdown and basically became almost mute and someone who would shuffle about. He went from being the star faculty of the Chemistry department to being one of the janitorial staff on campus. He lived with my grandmother and her eight children in the house on the campus and was like the “funny” “odd” old uncle.

Get ready to be belatedly surprised in hindsight again. Your great uncle had encephalitis lethargica, a still not-well-understood contagious disease of the 1920s that followed on the heels of the Great Flu epidemic. Victims suffered varying degrees of loss of neurological function. Some became comatose. Others were conscious but not “all there” and had Parkinsonism symptoms like shuffling gait & mask-like face with degrees of muteness. The movie Awakenings was about a group of these patients who were severely affected but well taken care of into the 1960s and 1970s when Oliver Saks documented their response to Parkinson’s drugs. Your grand uncle was able to be a janitor - he was a high functioning victim. And btw he didn’t get an obstruction because he stopped going to the bathroom. He stopped going to the bathroom because he had an obstruction

Someone here on Datalounge had a relative who’d had it (undiagnosed) and the person just sat in front of the radio for the rest of his life.

Wow r399 that’s so sad.

Encephalitis lethargica, also known as von Economo encephalitis, is a rare disease of unknown cause that affects the midbrain and basal ganglia that is characterized by high fever, headache, double vision, delayed physical and mental response, and extreme tiredness (lethargy). In acute encephalitis lethargica cases, patients may enter coma. Patients may also experience abnormal eye movements (oculogyric crises), upper body weakness, muscular pains, tremors, neck rigidity, extrapyramidal movements (parkinsonism and dyskinesias), and neuropsychiatric disturbance (psychosis, obsessive, compulsive disorder, catatonia, mutism, apathy and conduct disorders) and behavioral changes.

Whilst the exact frequency or incidence, presentation, disease course, treatment response and disease mechanisms are relatively undefined, there are some classic or typical presentations: encephalitis lethargica often presents as an acute illness in young adults (and sometimes children) with initial fever, headache, lethargy, visual symptoms, muscle weakness, neuropsychiatric features (e.g. confusion, hallucinations, behavioral changes), altered consciousness state (e.g. drowsiness) and sleep disorder (increased or decreased sleep). In addition, many patients develop a movement disorder, with either parkinsonism (reduction in movement) or abnormal increase in movements of various kinds, affecting limbs, trunk, face or eyes. This may sometimes develop many months after the onset of the initial illness. Typically behavioral and motor disturbances fluctuate over hours or days. Laboratory tests may show abnormalities of the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF – the fluid that the brain and spinal cord float in), abnormalities of brain imaging and negative tests for other known infectious and inflammatory cerebral disorders.

The cause of encephalitis lethargica is unknown, but a viral origin is suspected. Between 1917 to 1928, an epidemic of encephalitis lethargica spread throughout the world affecting half a million persons, but no recurrence of the epidemic has since been reported

1). The acute phase was lethal for many victims. Postencephalitic Parkinson’s disease may develop after a bout of encephalitis lethargica-sometimes as long as a year after the illness.

The course of encephalitis lethargica varies depending upon complications or accompanying disorders. Some people may make a full recovery, some patients die, and for others a Parkinsonian-type state may persist. Von Economo wrote “to look at these patients, one would suppose them to be in a state of profound secondary dementia. Emotions are scarcely noticeable in the face but they are mentally intact”.

Sorry, forgot the link

As a kid, I assumed Mahalia Jackson was Michael Jackson’s mom, because of the song “Michael, Row the Boat Ashore” on one of her albums.

Since the Parkinsonism symptoms could occur months after the acute phase of encephalitis lethargica, it would be understandable why R317’s family didn’t connect a flu-like illness with his subsequent “breakdown.” Plus, many people completely recovered from the disease (or didn’t develop Parkinsonism until years later), so there wouldn’t be reason for them to suspect the acute illness had anything to do with subsequent mental & physical problems happening months or years later. The muteness is what stood out as a symptom. That was classic Parkinsonism lethargica

I wonder why the disease abruptly disappeared. It was around for about a decade. Not as many people come down with it as with the flu, so you can see why it wasn’t until years later that the full effects of the disease were realized. My mother told me my grandfather’s sister had encephalitis at age 11 or 14 and that she’d been perfectly normal until then, but after the illness she became belligerent, violent and unable to be taught new things. She went to live with the nuns. I hope that didn’t mean she was sent to the laundries. Because she stayed there for the rest of her life.

[quote] Survivors were sometimes afflicted with parkinsonism or with bizarre behavioral disturbances. Some survivors, mostly adolescents, suffered pseudopsychopathic states. In a review of early work on the illness, children who had been normal became uninhibited, damaging property and attacking strangers in the street. Few neurological abnormalities were seen in these cases.

There it is.

[quote] encephalitis lethargica, a still not-well-understood contagious disease

Sorry shouldn’t say contagious. I meant infectious but that might not be correct. It’s not an autoimmune disease, a genetic disease, a congenital disorder. It’s possible it may have been sone type of poisoning from the environment or even from something people took as a treatment. They’ve never found the cause. They’ve done autopsies for decades but never found a virus or bacteria that was present in all cases. It may have been a sequela from the great Influenza. Or maybe not.

Maybe not obvious, but I never knew portmanteau was a word made up of sounds from 2 or more words to make a new word like “smog” fro smoke and fog, or tibovirus for TIck BOrne virus. I thought it was just a suitcase. In fact, portmanteau is a portmanteau (port - to carry, manteau - mantle).

I"m still convinced Glenn Close gave birth to Robin Williams. They look exactly the same!

When I was younger, I was convinced that Glenn Close was the same actress who was on that soap that my grandmother watched (Guiding Light) and on Star Trek: Next Generation.

I thought that Burt Reynolds was the father of Ryan Reynolds until about a year ago.

Growing up in the ‘60s, I had a friend from a wealthy family that ate a lot of TV dinners. As my family didn’t partake in such fare, I naturally assumed that such fine dining was exclusively the province of the 1%.

[quote] Growing up in the ‘60s, I had a friend from a wealthy family that ate a lot of TV dinners. As my family didn’t partake in such fare, I naturally assumed that such fine dining was exclusively the province of the 1%.

When I was growing up in similar circumstances, R412, I had a friend whose family - unlike mine - owned an Olympic-sized pool. I made a similar conclusion. Silly me.

That the FedEx logo contains an arrow in its negative space.

Once you see it, you can't unsee it.

I was watching an ESPN documentary on the 20th anniversary of Pardon the Interruption (PTI) - a show I record & watch daily - & it was brought to my attention something I somehow never noticed before. The logo - PTI - is included in the spelling of "Interruption"!

That Peter Allen was gay…

OP, the first thing they ever show in the very first episode of Mad Men is the following. lol

Right, R417, but if - prior to the start of any dialogue - you averted your glance at the very outset of a series that you don’t know then was going to be one of television’s greatest, it’s not hard to see how that could’ve been missed.

Anthrax is the name of the infection caused by bacteria and isn’t the name of the bacteria itself.

It’s bacillus Bacillus anthracis. A lot of diseases like anthrax were named before the organism which caused them was discovered. So you’re pretty much going to get “pneumoniae” in the names of most bacteria that cause pneumonia, eg

I didn’t know that war/accident “casualties” encompassed fatalities & injuries. I thought it only included the dead.

A few years ago, I learned that the tab on soda cans is also for your straw.

I recently learned that humans had different sleeping patterns pre-electricity. Basically, people would go to bed when it got dark and sleep for four hours or so. They would then get up around midnight. Some people used this time to meditate, read/write by candlelight, even visit with neighbors. After an hour or two, they would return to their beds for another four hours of sleep. Then they would wake up and start their day all over again. All of this changed in the 1800s, after the introduction of electricity, which allowed people to work or enjoy their post-work time late into the evening. In conclusion, our bodies weren't designed to sleep eight hours straight. That became the 'new normal' within the past 200 years.

That’s news to me, R422.

I always thought that black panthers were a specific species of big cat. It's only recently that I learned that they are simply dark coated leopards or jaguars.

R13 what about Tsar?

R365, that is not why those paper cups are pleated. They're pleated so they stand up. Necessary to do because it's made of paper. Some slob just decided to unfold it to get more ketchup and make a mess.

Erika Jayne is female....although I'm not sure how obvious that really is.

Don’t feel bad, r425.

I didn’t know that until you posted. Always something new to learn, isn’t there?

[quote]Not me, but my partner recently discovered that there are tabs on the side of the aluminum foil box that one pushes in to keep the roll from falling out. He could never figure out why the roll stayed in place after I use the roll.

I never noticed this! I had to go my kitchen drawer and inspect the foil package and now I get it! The Saran wrap has the same little tabs. I had no idea, all these years.

Thanks R29

[quote]That the gas gauge in a car has an arrow pointing to the side where the gas cap is. I learned that right here about a decade ago.

I never noticed this! I had to go down to my car to check because I thought my car didn't have this feature. I was wrong...it's right there in front of me and I just never noticed it! It is subtle but it's there.

Thanks R47

r430. Me too! And since I ve learned it here I taught at least five other persons about it. Age range from 19 to 81. Great fun. Same happened with the gas gauge, but I know this from a similar thread here.

And just as a bonus: You can cover any plate, dish, bowl which is microwave safe with cling film during microwaving it. No use for a cover on it. It works perfect.

[quote] Basically, people would go to bed when it got dark and sleep for four hours or so. They would then get up around midnight. Some people used this time to meditate, read/write by candlelight, even visit with neighbors. After an hour or two, they would return to their beds for another four hours of sleep.

This is such a crock of shit. It’s one of those things repeated endlessly as fact online. There’s no evidence for it. Nobody who wrote novels or non-fiction work in pre-electric times ever referred to such a bizarre sleeping pattern. Most people couldn’t read, for one thing. Candles were expensive, for another (see “Cranford”). And for another, people were tired. They worked at physical labor all day long in fields, forges, shepherding, fishing, hunting, cleaning, washing, walking everywhere, serving the rich, churning butter, milking cows, farming rice paddies. Some had to walk all day just to get clean water.

They were fine with sleeping for 8 hours.

A.B. Stoddard, political analyst and frequent MSNBC contributor, is the daughter of the late TV executive, Brandon Stoddard.

When I was a kid, I thought that restaurants filled up their soda fountains with 2 liter bottles of soda they purchased from the local grocery store.

At work I sent a shipment to London England, who knew there was a London Canada.

Sigourney Weaver is the daughter of legendary NBC executive Pat Weaver who invented both The Today Show and The Tonight Show in the 1950s and which are both still on the air decades later. He also created many other hit shows not quite famous and set programming practices that are still followed to this day.

437, That dilettante.

When I first move out of my parents home and started cooking for myself, I wanted some baked potatoes, I didn't know you had to poke holes in them, and of course they exploded all over the oven. Imagine the inside of your oven coated with instant mash potatoes. Then to make things worse while I was trying to clean up the mess I put a cold damp sponge on the oven light and it exploded also.

[quote] I didn't know until deep into adulthood that ponies weren't baby horses.

Wait… they’re not?

My Dad and I drove to El Toro Marine Base for shopping. We drove between 2 water towers. I said, "One is for how and one for cold," in all seriousness. My Dad laughed.

"One is for hot and one is for cold."

Re: ‘bae’, referred to way, way upthread months ago—

It is slang for ‘babe’, originating among black Americans in the South.

It is NOT an acronym that stands for ‘before anyone else’. That’s just a stupid Internet ‘fact’ that is completely made up retroactively by very young, ignorant people.

When people said "it dawned on me," I thought they were saying, "it Don Don me."

My Dad struck my Mom once when drunk. She said, "That's assault and battery!" I thought she said, "That's a salt and battery!" I thought "salt and battery" must be some kind of boxing move.

I thought "nostalgia" was some kind of disease of the nose.

How old were you, R441? I was far too old to think this but when a new domed stadium opened locally years ago, with reporting that “fans” would have something to do with the maintenance of the ceiling, I thought this was a job for people.

That you can turn a childproof cap on a medicine bottle upside down so you don’t have to fuck with the childproof cap end every time you open it.

The genius who came up with that killed Tennessee Williams.

Maybe not so obvious (but I didn't know where else this would fit & didn't think it merited a new thread), but the recently deceased Peggy York, the inspiration for Cagney & Lacey, was the wife of Lance Ito.

R13. Wow. So , "tsar" and "tsarina" too.

I don't know how obvious it is, but we have "Frontage Road" in my city that I used to pronounce, "Fron'tahzh." SO was like, you know that's a "frontage" road, right? There are several streets here with a frontage road.

Someone in the Entennman's thread posted "As a kid I thought coffee cake was made of coffee" and someone else replied "LOL, so did I."

R451, I said the same thing in R121

R439, you sound absolutely adorable.

I’m sorry I’m laughing, but I do find your story funny as cute as hell.

The first time I baked a cake (I was 15) I didn't know you had to let it cool completely before frosting it. So I applied the frosting (a 2-layer cake) and was proud of it. It looked just like the picture on the box of cake mix. I left the kitchen, came back 15 minutes later, and the top half was on the floor.

The first time I made lasagna, I forgot to boil the noodles.

The first time i posted on DL, I assumed we were all just one big happy gay family.

R455, when I first made Kraft mac and cheese, I followed the instructions on the box. Those instructions did not tell me to cook the pasta first.

These last few are hilarious.

Someone should start a thread about cooking disasters that happened because of our own stupidity.

And, in r455’s defense, I was shopping a few weeks ago with my mother and in the pasta aisle there was a “cooked lasagna noodles” in a box like all the other pasta. She said that meant you didn’t have to cook the noodles, but only bake them when you make the lasagna.

I wouldn’t have known that.

Yeah, R456, there sure are some nasty people here.

I just read an article on car features that most people don't know about and it said:

[quote] A mind-blowing feature that the majority of modern cars have is one of the least known, but coolest of all – hold down your unlock for 5 seconds, and you’ll see your windows roll down! This is brilliant for cars that need airing out in hot places, especially if you’re in a rush.

I just tried it on my 2017 Chevy Colorado and it didn't work.

R450 I think that is how I will pronounce it from now on. I much prefer it and wish I had thought that.

Well, r457, I knew to cook the macaroni first, but I didn't know to drain it before adding the flavor packet and butter. I cooked dinner as a "surprise" on Mother's Day. My parents choked it down, God love them.

So you left all the water and ended up with macaroni and cheese soup?

Of the 16 million Americans who served in WWII, nearly 99% have died.

R416=Liza Minnelli, always the last one to know…

Shit r416 IS ME!

There’s a reason why all traffic lights (at least in the U.S.) have the green light on the bottom or on the left-hand side as you’re facing it.

I thought Brooklyn and the Bronx were their own cities, and not part of NYC.

R467 pray tell what might that reason be?

R469, it’s so if someone is colorblind, they don’t need to see the color of the light, but the positioning of where it is in the hierarchy to know.

For years I thought that Brooklyn and The Bronx were the same place.

R468 I thought the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and Manhattan were neighborhoods in New York City like Chelsea, SoHo, and Harlem. 😂

r433, Samuel Pepys very famously referred to that sleeping pattern.

There was also a book published a decade ago with hundreds of examples of people mentioning the split sleep pattern in historical documents.

I'm trying to wrap my head around the fact that you yelled at someone for posting a "crock of shit" when they were right, while you just made crap up in your head and posted it as though it were fact, and then 7 gullible fools believed you just because you were a cunt about it.

This is the link I meant to post at r473. The DL thread I accidentally linked is old news!

R474 I have an odd sleep pattern this year while working from home. When I finish work around 5-6pm I crawl into bed and put the TV on to chill out for a while at least until the evening news is over. But usually I end up falling asleep for about 2-3 hours. Then I get up and make dinner and stay up until at least 2am and sleep until about 7am. So I'm getting a combined sleep of about 7-8 hours but it's in shifts.

I just recently learned that a tomato is actually a berry. And I still regularly get confused about the Netherlands being the same thing as Holland and the same thing as Dutch- and how that works with Deutchland - in fact I still don't understand to be honest. And how does Amsterdam work into all of it.

It’s wine dark, r226

R476, Holland is a geographical region and former province of The Netherlands. It is presently split into 2 provinces, Noord-Holland and Zuid-Holland.

For years I thought that Nyc had an elusive urban skunk population….I would smell them but never see them. Lived in the city on and off through my 20s and was visiting my sisters there (in my late 30s) when the lightbulb went in that it was pot not skunks…. My unbelievable obliviousness on that one still cracks me up!

That the Holland Tunnel was not named for Holland!

That the Holland Taylor was not named for Holland!

That the Holland Tunnel was not named for Erna's butt.

That “pikachu” is actually Japanese for “voyeur.”

That when you see the circumflex accent in a French word, it often means a letter—usually an “s”—-went missing over the years. For example, maître, côte, hôtel, pâté, and bête get much closer to their English equivalents (master, coast, hostel, paste, and beast) when you insert the imaginary “s”!

That f in early english texts are an s. Why didn't they just use an s in the first place?

I thought that was just how they used to draw the letter 's' in certain circumstances. (though I don't really know)

[quote]For example, maître, côte, hôtel, pâté, and bête get much closer to their English equivalents

When you add the 's' and turn the 'e' to 'a,' you get Occitan! (sort of)

maïstra, còsta, ostal, pasta, bèstia

I don't know the difference between uptown and downtown in NYC, and please don't bother to explain it to me, I would look it up if I cared.

R485, not quite. The archaic long s was represented by ſ, which is a different letter from f. The ſ combined with ʒ formed the German ß (eszett).

Long s was used at the beginning and middle of words, but never at the end, where short s was used instead:

ſucceſs (success), poſseſs (possess)

Long s and short s had the same sound, so late 18th century printers decided it was pointless to have two characters represent the same sound and dropped the ſ.

That clique is pronounced to rhyme with pique.

Saying it like "click' is ok in American English (or even preferred).

Similarly, I didn't learn that the Brits said niche like neesh, while we use nitch.

I like the French pronunciation better in both cases but what can you do? Look how we fucked up "lingerie" which should be something like, "lawn-zher-ree"

WAIT I still fucked up lingerie. The first syllable should be closer to the a in land.

That it's easy to understand the meaning of the two Os in the Greek alphabet.

Omega and Omicron:

o MEGA

o MICRON

One is a large O, one is a small o.

When I was little and used to hear gay jokes I thought a blow job was a "below job. "

R495 ..😂

Technically, you are correct. The job is definitely below!

R495, speaking of which, when I was a teen I thought that a blow job literally meant that it was blown on. So I got a hair dryer and "blew" myself. I found out that hot air makes your dick shrink like cold water does.

That the spelling of the letter W is "double-u."

I mean ... I always knew how to say it, but as kids, we learn the sounds of the letters aurally. And we don't pronounce it exactly "double u" either.

Incidentally, I have wondered why it isn't "double-v"? It looks more like two V's instead of two U's.

I think that's how it's pronounced in French r499

Do you ever get the feeling that no one on Datallounge knows the existence of this thing called.... Google?

The name of the 23rd letter of the English alphabet is “double u” because it was originally written that way in Anglo-Saxon times. ... It wasn't written as a “v” because the letter “v” didn't exist in Old English, as we've written before on the blog. And a double “v” would not have approximated the sound anyway.

R501, I get the feeling that people on DL would rather engage each other in conversation. If we all kept going to Google to find the answers, there would be no witty repartee here.

At least half of the pronunciation videos on YouTube are wrong.

That Flemish language is just Dutch.

R504 same with Afrikaans, no?

I’m really stupid . And an attorney which doesn’t help.

My ex and I own the marital home together where I live. It has more than doubled in value.

I had to take one class in tax law. I just learned from my stupid baby sister about capital gains tax , that we will be taxed on the appreciation of the house UNLESS we make improvements so we can write it off .

I just learned from my doofus know it all brother in law that if u sell house as a married couple , you get a half million deduction ..

My sis to me; bro , you are a fucking idiot … why do you think I married that loser ( living together for long time ). I said , y’a know I always wondered that .

I just learned this morning that a baby porcupine is called a porcupet. That's just so damn cute & sweet. :-)

Jon Hamm used to make me cringe slightly. Something mean in his face.

I thought olives were pickled grapes until I was 18 and saw an olive tree

I thought Brutus in Popeye used to be named Bluto. I was right. He was Bluto and he was Brutus.

R510 why did they change it?

That Archie Bell & the Drells were from Houston, Texas.

That Cecile Richards, former president of Planned Parenthood, is the daughter of the late Texas Gov. Ann Richards.

For the longest time I thought the MASH TV show took place in Vietnam.

Ricky was short for Ricardo. His full name Was Ricardo Ricardo.

I just learned that longtime sportscaster Jay Randolph is the son of longtime West Virginia Senator Jennings Randolph.