The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Ann Rose:

Warm Sno-seal waterproofing goo curing on workboots (said workboots placed in the oven), sawdust and Aqua Velva cologne define pretty much all of my childhood memories of my father.

The waxy, rosy/powdery smell of lipstick and coal tar shampoo are what I recall most of my mother. That, and warm bathwater -- she loved to take a long bath every morning, around 4AM, before she got ready to go off to work.

K2r "spotlifter" cleaning solution immediately makes me feel suffocated and panicky, and I think it's because it smells exactly like whatever anesthetic was pumped through the heavy black rubber mask in 1970's hospitals. My mom sent me out once with a can of K2r to clean up a spot I'd left on the carpet in the car, and I came back in tears, with the job undone, so overwhelmed by that stink that I couldn't even explain to her why I couldn't use it. She was, of course, skeptical, but she did toss that can and never replaced it.

On the other hand, I like the scents of Dial soap, fruit punch and the ozone of pure O2, as they take me back to the "safe" parts of all my childhood hospitalizations.

And, does anyone else recall the "aroma of Tacoma," that distinctive heavy, sweet-sulfurous smell from the pulp mills just past Fife, WA? It's a doozy.

My mother's favorite advice: "Pee before you go."
My father's mantra: "We don't write this script."

Robert L @#13: I am certain that you're right about the history of "Adolf Giuliani" in various media, and it makes me wonder if reviving the images will help people realize exactly what dictatorial mindset they'd be getting in a Giuliani presidency (may it never happen)?

In the past week or two, both The Nation and the Philadelphia Weekly, have featured cover illustrations with Giuliani bearing a marked resemblance to Adolf Hitler. Initially, I thought, "Hmm, that's creative." Your post, with all of its links, has transformed my earlier nonchalance into new understanding and real dread. And, how *is* it that Giuliani was able to project such an image of steadfast courage/ "insightful" leadership combined with just enough teary human warmth on such a chaotic day? I feel as if his long hoped for Wagnerian tragic drama found him ready to take center stage.

Teresa -- You're already probably hip to it, but Berkeley poet/performance artist Cheryl Marie Wade wrote a take-no-prisoners poem "I Am Not One of The" in which she skewers all of the nicey-nice PC terms which were rampant back in the 80's and early 90's. Essayist Nancy Mairs takes it on in a slightly different way in "On Being a Cripple," which is endlessly anthologized for introductory writing readers. A group of Modern Language Association types is also slated to sit down and have at the language of disability, so there is, in some circles, a change on its way.

Greg L. --
Sorry for the post-and-run. Yes, Glen got it right: my student meant to type "mosquito spray" and instead carpet bombed the fly for all time with "misquote spray". I'd assigned Tim O'Brien's _The Things They Carried_ that semester, and we read not only that short story but also "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong," from which another student got "broad soldiers" instead of "broad shoulders." I didn't quite have the heart to tell them that many of the soldiers O'Brien depicted would have been rail-thin and possibly even undernourished or malnourished -- the only "broad soldiers" would have been the rear echelon desk jockeys.

This discussion *almost* makes me miss teaching undergraduates, from whom I received the following in essays:
misquote spray
broad soldiers
peachy king

The one mistake which most rankles me is defiantly/definitely. I would issue a blanket condemnation of the use of "definitely" as a wek intensifier at the start of every semester -- it never seemed to help.

James D. MacDonald wrote:
"The DEA takes a dim view of this, and jailers may not take their prisoners to higher ground when a hurricane's coming."

So, am I reading this correctly, that prisoners can be left to die in the path of a hurricane or other natural disaster? I don't doubt your claim, but I do not want to believe it.

Is it okay if I take all sorts of vicarious pleasure in this entire thread? I'm sitting here in my office, resisting the urge to read my own "slush pile" of doggerel produced by my freshman comp students, and fervently wishing I could dole out stacks of form rejection letters. Instead, I must firmly affix my Friendly Commentator mask and pound out comments designed to help my kiddies fix their often horrifying mangles of expository prose.

"Post-grammatical stress syndrome": Exactly. Might I steal it as well?

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