Try These.
Hello. Just this morning I received an email from my secondary insurance company, the one that theoretically kicks in after Medicare scurries away, rat-like, from coverage. This is verbatim, including the fonts.
On behalf of UnitedHealthcare, we wish you a happy and healthy new year.
Welcome to 2025! We are honored you chose us for your Medicare Supplement plan and want you to know your health and well-being are at the heart of everything we do.
I responded: “Thank you! Please be aware that at this time I am not intending to assassinate you.”
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Okay, so, today, as advertised, is a mystery grab bag.
Our second item concerns AI, something submitted by Alex Blackwood, an alert reader. I am also going to do this verbatim, without explanation, though you can ask for an explanation in “Comments” and I might honor that request.
In this case, the reader asked for an explanation for a certain expression, and AI dutifully explained.
“One in the pink, two in the stink, is a playful rhyme, often used with children, that means ‘one shoe is on correctly (‘in the pink,’ meaning good or perfect) while the other is on the wrong foot, (‘in the stink,’ meaning bad or incorrect.)”
Now, I have two problems with this definition. The first is logical — if one shoe is on correctly, doesn’t the other, perforce, also have to be on correctly? I will not articulate, here, my second problem.
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Also, this is horrifying. The fact of it, the headline on it, and the very need for it. Watch the video, which is embedded midway down.
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It occurs to me that we all — you, me, everyone in the English-speaking world — have been recklessly and idiotically using certain undeniably redundant phrases from time immemorial. It is literally unspeakable. And no one has pointed this out, and chastised us for it, including me, your official curator of language. So I shall do it now. May God have mercy on our souls.
Standing “up.”
Sitting “down.”
Lying “down.”
So. I don’t know what to do about this, except publish it here, in the Gene Pool.
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And a news flash: The Senate committee sent the nomination of RFK Jr. to the full Senate for confirmation. According to the NYT:
Senator Bill Cassidy, a Republican torn between his concerns as a doctor and supporting President Trump, cast the deciding vote to send Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination as health secretary to the full Senate.
My observation: Yep, it do indeed take some spine and courage to save your country, you colossal asshole.
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Today’s first Gene Pool Gene Poll. Alert: There is a second, more dramatic one, further down.
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Good. We now move to the famed Real-Time part of The Gene Pool, which is now only sporadically '“real time” inasmuch as we have discovered, exclusively, that most Gene Poolers don’t give a crap about doing it in “real time.” Today’s questions and observations were all sent in before 11 p.m. on Monday. Many of these are related to the Weekend Gene Pool’s request for odd objects you have on display in your home.
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Q: My observation is that my last 10 observations haven't made the cut.
A: See, that’s why perseverance matters.
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Q: We own The Mobius Poo Lamp: This is a lamp we purchased from a curio shop in the basement of an antique store in Eastern Market in Detroit. When my wife and I spotted it, we laughed so hard I drooled on myself, and then ponied up like $45 for it. The base is a sort of rough pretzel shape, but with no beginning or end, like a mobius strip. The surface texture is rough. The original color we would describe as "steatorrhea," which a hypochondriac would doubtless recognize. We gifted it to my youngest brother as a housewarming gift, after painting it a glossy, nay, glistening brown. Strangely, he did not appreciate it & so it resides with us. — Mike Bardallis
A: Excellent.
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Q: In response to your call for unusual display items, I offer a clay sculpture of Walter Cronkite, made by my brother in 7th grade (circa 1981). Our parents kept it on a bookshelf, and every few years, my mom and I would snicker at it. When asked if he *meant* to sculpt Cronkite -- or if, as I have long suspected, the resemblance is accidental -- my brother refused to comment. — Julie Nachman
A: Still laughing here.
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Q: Like you, I feel dubious about displaying an arguably racist sign in my office. I was on a school trip circa 1968. I stole the sign from the door of the third bathroom at a gas station in Montgomery, AL.
The sign says, "COLORED"
I tried to give it to the African - American Museum in DC - no answer.
A: I would display this in my house, proudly. We have two bathrooms, a nice one and a kind of grungy one in the basement. I’d hang it outside the nice one.
Rachel: (Just now, from across the room) — “Okay, but then we couldn’t use it.”
Me: “That would be okay.”
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Okay, we are almost done here.
Three readers wrote in to ask the same question, concerning a photo that appeared in my last column, about items in my house. This was the photo, of a wall display in my living room. Many people zoomed in and wondered why there was a bumper sticker displayed there that said “Who is the Czar and Why Does He Hate Me?”
I promised to tell the story behind it, and I further promised it would be good. It is, but many of you will respond “Ewwww.” Understood.
In 1997, I was running The Style Invitational under the pseudonym “The Czar.” My name never appeared. The prize sent out to Honorable Mentions was one of several bumper stickers, including the one now displayed on my wall.
Okay, so. One week in 1997 the contest was to come up with funny ways to complete the old-fogey grump line, “Why, in MY day … “
One of the entries, from a Peg Sheeran in Vienna, Va., was “Why, in MY day, we didn't have Strom Thurmond. Oh, wait. Yes we did.”
We published it. I felt it was good enough to win an Honorable Mention. The prize was mailed.
A few days later, in Vienna, Va., a man named Tom Manteuffel snapped open his Washington Post, checked out the Style Invitational, which he and his family always read, and noticed, to his surprise, that his wife — Peg Sheeran — had evidently entered the Invitational, and gotten ink. He asked her about this. She denied it. Then all accusatory eyes fell on their daughter, Rachel. She was 13.
Yes. Eleven years before I would ever even meet Rachel or know who she was, I had chosen her entry, publicized it, and sent her the randomly chosen bumper sticker about me. For years, she had it affixed to her binder in middle school.
Yes, here is the “ewwww” or “awwww” moment for you.
The original sticker is long gone, with the binder, but years ago Rachel told me the story, so I knew about it. Recently, Pat Myers was dispensing with some old Style Invitational memorabilia, and discovered a few unsent bumper stickers, including the one that is now in my living room.
I don’t hate Rachel anymore. I am 73. She is 40.
Second Gene Pool Gene Poll:
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Okay, we’re done here. Please send Questions and Observations here:
And, if you like this stuff, please send $4.15 a month here. If you do not like it, just send the money to Trump and Musk. They’ll steal it.
Here's Cassidy's post on X: "I’ve had very intense conversations with Bobby and the White House over the weekend and even this morning. I want to thank VP JD specifically for his honest counsel. With the serious commitments I’ve received from the administration and the opportunity to make progress on the issues we agree on like healthy foods and a pro-American agenda, I will vote yes."
The key sentence here is "I want to thank VP JD specifically for his honest counsel." Translation of "honest counsel": "Nice state you got there. Be a shame if federal funds dry out. Oh, and FEMA takes a long walk off a short pier."
Military orders can include the command to “stand down” and many a parent has told a child at the dinner table to “sit up,” so their opposites, “stand up” and “sit down,” are not really redundant. (This carification brought to you by the United States Department of Repetition and Redundancy Department of America — soon to be eliminated, no doubt, by the Duke of Musk.)