Frog Applause by Teresa Burritt for January 24, 2011

How about flatulence? Or parsimonious? Or onomatopoeia?

Brooke McEldowney talks about what inspires him to create 9 Chickweed Lane and Pibgorn.

Antisextapedalianism. Hope I spelled that right.

Or maybe it’s antisesquepedalianism?

Montana has Super Troopers!

supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. That will make you sound precocious and save your nose a tweak.

Laurel and Hardy looked rather debonair in that 1932 photo.

Legs. Get me every time.

The “RR” in the picture of the 1950s gas station probably stood for “Rail Road.” At the time some gasoline was still transported in railway tanker cars. Here’s a picture of one gasoline tank car from 1936:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:OP-16236.jpg

http://obituarytypo.blogspot.com/2011/01/in-public.html

Though this guy could easily get nabbed for urinating in public or, I suspect, public drunkenness, it may interest you to know that there are no laws against public nudity in San Francisco.

Lewd and lascivious behavior is still prohibited, and one could conceivably be arrested for disturbing the peace, but as long as you’re not being overtly sexual, it *is* possible to walk the streets naked without going to jail.

Therefore, a cadre of nudists has established themselves in the open spaces of the Castro district. Read all about it here:

http://www.sfweekly.com/2010-12-01/news/nudists-public-nudity-castro-san-francisco/

Quotidian. Anomalous. Australopithecus boisei.

incontinence.

sacre bleu, Major! I salut you! I am but a lowly private in the French Army.

Private Latrine

I like the pretty colors of the background…

Danny Oppenheimer of Princeton found that we view people who use long words are less intelligent than people who use smaller words.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/10/051031075447.htm

Brooke is one of the few people who can send me scurrying for a dictionary, and I like that. For getting your meaning across, a 25¢ word will do nicely. People like O Henry and Eudora Welty, however, knew how to write prose that needed to be chewed on and savoured, much like a 16-oz tenderloin.

It’s always troubled me that there is no synonym for “thesaurus.”

w00t for the Gas Station!

The interesting thing about the gas station sign is that it points out what is still going on today: most of the price of gasoline is made up of hidden taxes and fees (usually going to some government entity) and very little profit for the retailer.

Though I am sure that a retailer is not allowed to clear 25% even in the best of economic times!

@Flight Suit:

Leave it to San Francisco to be the goofy capital of the country.

Though I will agree that nudity per se is nothing to get excited about. Esthetically uninteresting maybe, but nothing to get excited about.

That picture of a very young Lucille Ball reminds me of a Three Stooges short I have, “3 Little Pigskins”. It was Lucy’s only appearance with the Stooges, as a 23 year old platinum blonde gangster’s moll. Her first intro to slapstick.

I don’t know any big words.

I know Karate, Kung-Fu and 25 other scary sounding words.

Mock-Urinating on Jose Luis Borges’ grave, a definite political statement.

I like hippopottomonstrosesquipedalianism my self.

The old actor on the F-Blog is apparently Charles Lane

His death notice

Yes that’s Charles Lane NoM0’ol’tomcats.

(AKA Homer Bedloe in 23 episodes of Petticoat Junction.)

^IMDB lists some 375 titles for Charles Lane.

@The Old Wolf: 2. A repository of words or knowledge; hence, a lexicon or cyclopedia. [Funk & Wagnall The College Standard Dictionary of the English Language ©1940

Public nudity in the Bay Area? Berkeley solved their problem with the Naked Guy by reducing nudity to an infraction instead of a misdemeanor. Now he can’t demand a jury trial and talk his way out of it… it’s a straight-up fine of $100 and he can only complain to the judge.

Lucy (on left) getting the standard Stooges’ spray in “3 Little Pigskins” (1934).