This seems to have passed by and had its day before I got around to it, but I did request three words from Lydy N., so here they are, a chance to talk about random topics off top of head:
Needle. Of course the first thing that word makes me think of is a joke told by a friend in the days of the Wars of W.
Q. Why are knitting needles prohibited on airplanes?
A. They're afraid you'll knit an afghan.
Although I don't like being pricked, medical needles don't frighten me as long as I don't have to watch them going in. (Eye drops: those frighten me.) Sewing needles I have nothing to do with; of the life skills my mother tried to teach me before I went off to college, mending clothes is the only one that didn't take. (I relied on friends with sewing machines.) But the kind of needle with the most impact on my life has been the phonograph needle. It may seem odd today that we used to run these slivers of diamond through grooves in plastic, but we did. Keeping my needle fresh so that its damage to the disc was minimal was an obsession, so I changed the needle frequently. However, the last time I did that, several years ago now because I don't play the records much any more, the store where I'd bought my then-newish turntable was no longer selling needles, and when I found a quaint old bushwack of a store which did, the crusty owner looked at the needle and said he couldn't replace it. To borrow a line from Walt Willis, the manufacturers had made this one cartridge and then broken the dies, burned the blueprints, and shot all the technicians responsible. He could replace the cartridge, but I had to bring in the entire turntable for that.
Stalk. As a privileged white male who cooks dinner, my principal encounter with stalkers is the ones in vegetables. They usually are best cut off: broccoli (just above the point where it branches out), brussels sprouts. The ones that cause the most trouble are asparagus, which is mostly stalk. The problem with asparagus is that the bottoms of the stalks get woody and inedible, and that this gradually climbs up the stalk as the vegetables age, even in the fridge, but it's impossible to tell by sight where the woodiness terminates. I've gotten woody bits in asparagus even in fine restaurants, so apparently nobody knows how to prevent getting this in your food except me. I can hardly believe this, but it's simple. Asparagus stalks grow in sections, with joints between them. As the stalk becomes woody, the joints harden. So break off the stalk by hand (hold both ends and snap from the bottom), and the point it will break is the first joint above the woodiness. Do this and the residue will be guaranteed to be wood-free. Works every time.
Tape. Recording tape, formerly a major part of my life and now even less used than phonograph needles. Medical tape, for securing non-stick bandage pads, which has become more a part of life. Duct tape. Householder's rule: If it moves but it's not supposed to, apply duct tape. (If it doesn't move and it is supposed to, apply WD-40.) Packing tape.* Ah, yes. That one's useful where you might not expect. Having given up on typewriters when my last one's electronics went on the fritz, but still disliking hand-addressing envelopes, when I do need to mail a package or some other item that isn't a bill that came with a pre-addressed envelope, I type the addressee into a Word document on my computer, cut it out of the printout, and tape it to the envelope with transparent packing tape, because Scotch tape is neither sturdy enough nor wide enough.
*I tend to call it strapping tape, but that's wrong. Strapping tape has filaments, which I don't want for the purpose to be described.
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