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Fifth Friday Footnotes, Follow-ups and Far-Flung Fripperies:

• My best takeaway from Ireland: “Don’t disrespect the tea.” I was taught to wrap the tag and string around the bag on a spoon, wringing out the liquid remains. Now I will try to unlearn that lesson. It’s a bad habit to take what is willingly given.
• Our appetites are more often whetted than sated.
• BTW is the new P.S.
• Your 40-year roof will last 40 years, but only if you keep it indoors.
• “Eddress” is not a word, but it should be.
• Give me just one instance of pomp without circumstance.
• Being noticed is good. Being remembered is better.
• I sometimes get Rhode Island and Delaware confused.
• I don’t understand why beer companies don’t produce a series of commercials with different endings. They know football fans will see the ads six times in three hours. Why not reward their attention?
• Language sometimes gets set in its ways. Boats “set sail” and books refer readers to “see above,” as if sailboats and scrolls were still the norm.
• No one should feel obligated to buy anything in an airport’s Duty Free shop.
• Don’t look now, but Nissan built way too many Leafs.
• Dublin’s city planners once imposed a glass tax to soak its richest downtown merchants. (Many blocked their windows to avoid paying.) Eugene should now do the opposite.
• A fruit salad shouldn’t include grapefruit (for taste) or bananas (for texture).
• Frugality sees only practicality in the mirror.
• Donald Trump now risks losing the 400-pound-male vote, which may have been one of his few remaining strong demographic groups.
• “Uprising” is demeaningly redundant, unless it refers to when the uppity rise — then it’s just demeaning.
• I need reading glasses only when I’m tired or sad. Usually I don’t mind the extra work of squinting.
• Mornings aren’t enjoyed more because they never play hard to get.
• City dwellers naturally understand the limit of statistics. They hear about percentages but they observe particulars.
• I’ve been in other places where bugs seem to have vanished, but no other place has letters to the editor on the subject.
• How long before some baseball wizard decides none of his team’s pitchers should ever throw more than 50 pitches or three innings in a game?
• Weeding is fun only when you’re winning or making discernible progress.
• Should Dairy Queen be concerned that DQ has become shorthand for “disqualified”?
• Eugene is a 10-to-2 town that likes to congratulate itself for working through lunch.
• Why has no presidential candidate has ever moved aggressively to “own” the Olympics? The timing and tone align perfectly and predictably.
• A truth sundae sometimes tastes better with a little fudge.
• Some secular humanists are trying to retain Sunday “church” for its social benefits. They call themselves “faitheists.”
• Google has banned payday loan ads on its sites. Why? Because sometimes advertising can be targeted too well. Watch this awareness grow and make everything more complicated.
• When sunglasses make the world look darker, they also somehow make it feel a bit cooler.
• Some things that are easily found are also impossible to seek.
• Freedom has always been for sale. Freedom to change travel plans? Refundable tickets cost more. Have your choice of any rental car on the lot? That costs extra.
• Remove the threshold from a building and it becomes a sculpture — an entirely different thing.
• I’ll bet you can’t leave your TV remotes face down. You could, but you don’t.
• Stories shed light in places where statistics can’t reach.
• Does it help to know The Register-Guard’s new publisher comes to us from Bakersfield?
• I’m guessing that the University of Oregon’s leaders are following a simple directive: Don’t be near the bottom of any of the Association of American Universities’ four ranking criteria: research spending, percentage of tenured faculty, awards, and citations.
• If you’ve never worn flannel in July or shorts in January, you’re not yet officially an Oregonian.
• A pet rescue organization has the best slogan I’ve heard in a long time: “Where help is a four-legged word.”
• The Container Store is redundant.

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Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) writes a column each Friday for The Register-Guard and blogs at www.dksez.com.

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