Frog Applause by Teresa Burritt for November 15, 2012

But your eyes say you want to connect in other ways . . .

And I certainly want to connect yours…

Re: W. T. WARREN TESTING HELMETOle W.T. was always good as using his head to come up with a practical solution to life’s problems.

Nice to see her back, too.

WT Warren was a British inventor who developed that helmet in 1912. It looks like a football helmet, but it was meant for aviators. It was equipped with springs to cushion the blow of a crash, and while that photo has a goofball look, it shows Warren’s confidence in his design. Head injuries were a major cause of death and injury even in early air crashes, and during WW I the Warren helmet became fairly common headgear:

http://www.usaarl.army.mil/TechReports/93-2.PDF

(My grandfather may have been wearing a Warren helmet when he crashed a Sopwith Camel. It was very thoughtful of him to not get killed, which allowed him to become my ancestor.)

If I can’t connect your dots can I push your buttons or ring your chimes? Buzz your buzzer?

That’s a come-hither look if ever I saw one.

Forget the darn dots! Just hurry up and finish undressing!

Then, dash away.

..they are not dots..they are freckles…and as long as you cross my t’s ..we’re cool…

Dots OK wit me . . . I’ll be making mary merry . . . . ☻

Maybe not back in business, but definitely connected to the material. When the effort of the relationship’s just too much trouble….The Blog: a drum we all like to play.

Blog: “From A Hundred Fables of Fontaine” is here, complete with illustrations:

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/25357/25357-h/25357-h.htm

I don’t think those guys aren’t barrel makers- it looks like what they are sawing through is not wood but a huge frozen fish.

After revisiting the Blog, I find myself made shivery and wanton by that brass-knuckle dildo-thingy. No wonder Frog Applause is so catchy and bemusing, if that’s one of the tools.

(sob)no one likes my dots…(sniffle)

now that is a bunny!

Not until you lick off the lines.

Those barrel makers look like they are slicing up a ham.

CLEM LIPE’S TAT looks Kliban-ish. Looked on Google to see how much Clem preceded him and found the Frog Blog entry was the 4th hit.

RE: Blog – The coveted Caldecott Medal for Children’s Literature was named after Randolph Caldecott.

No doubt because he palpated her semicolon and ampersand too forcefully.

Ooo, I would like to connect her dots…only there’s just two of them.

I’m no longer interested in connecting your dots, but I sure would like to finish mapping your orifices.

Okay, okay, I’ll connect my own dots then. Or not, maybe I’ll just become a pointillist.Geez, don’t get your curls in a tangle.

She was a one night stand…..Or was she?

Larry Tee and the Love Machine got me a full dose of lame disco-rap for the week! Thanks, Teresa!

I’ve got to say I put no stock in political correctness. There’s a difference between ethnic slurs which subsume overt discrimination and hate speech, and words which have been co-opted by one group or another and declared reductive. I’m a linguist, I’ve been working with languages for the better part of half a century, and never once did I associate in my mind Teresa’s “now 30% lamer” with someone who walks with a limp. In fact, the very word “ableist” is anathema to me; it’s a neologism created for the solitary purpose of crying oppression where none exists.

I am the loyal FA reader mentioned in the latest edition of “Yes, We Feel the Love.” I too am uncomfortable with the idea that the word “lame” should be verboten, but the fact that I’m uncomfortable with it does not mean the issue has been put to rest.

If there are disabled people out there who have a problem with “lame” being used as a pejorative, I will at least hear them out. Which is what Teresa has done. I love the fact that she’s willing to air the matter on her blog.

Regardless of how one feels about this issue, I think it’s certainly healthy and functional that a conversation about it is taking place.

I think the complaint about “lame” lacks a sense of proportion and trivializes the issue of prejudice.

The lame rant is, well, lame.

It is indeed a ‘Culture of Complaint.’ As I’ve gotten older I have become more and more careful to make sure words or parts of speech I use do not offend or trivialize. However, the word ‘lame’ is well-accepted in both figurative and slang terms, and I can’t recall ever encountering a complaint from any group about it, until now. I’d like to second Gaijinrabbit’s thoughts about context. ‘Lame’ can be hurtful, to be sure, as can so many other terms, especially when attacking or ridiculing someone needlessly or cruelly. Raising it to the status of hate speech or slur is stretching it, in my opinion.

“If a man neglects education, he walks lame to the end of his life” — Plato“Faith becomes lame, when it ventures into matters pertaining to reason” — Gandhi“A joke, even if it be a lame one, is nowhere so keenly relished or quickly applauded as in a murder trial.” — Mark Twain“Saying ‘I notice you’re a nerd’ is like saying, ‘Hey, I notice that you’d rather be intelligent than be stupid, that you’d rather be thoughtful than be vapid, that you believe that there are things that matter more than the arrest record of Lindsay Lohan. Why is that?’ In fact, it seems to me that most contemporary insults are pretty lame. Even ‘lame’ is kind of lame. Saying ’You’re lame’ is like saying ‘You walk with a limp.’ Yeah, whatever, so does 50 Cent, and he’s done all right for himself.” — John Green

As a part-time duck, I protest against the use of the word ‘lame’ to describe some of the less fortunate members of our species.But then again, we ducks don’t agree with many things :<>

Blog: Blonds have more fun……he’s not a real blond.

Freaks, lameness… Disabilities scare people. The person with a visible physical disability also finds it’s a social liability… The disability is (as they say) the elephant in the room that everyone tries (unsuccessfully) to ignore. Whispered euphemisms are part of the problem rather than the solution. I suspect that tiptoeing around the words is more often a way to protect the sensitivities of the public than to respect the disabled.

My wife used to be a super athlete until she had a fall that damaged her spinal cord. She regularly refers to herself as a gimp and is someone who never let’s up on doing everything that she can to be mobile and athletic in the ways that she still can.

http://obituarytypo.blogspot.com/2012/11/switched-titles.html

Gary Larson commented on how well it worked:

http://i.imgur.com/fu62h.jpg

and it way from my home town paper, too!