Typewriters We Have Loved - 31 Mar. 2008

(This episode first aired January 5, 2008.)

Ding! In this week's episode, Mark Twain would be pleased. Reports that it's the end of the line for the typewriter have been greatly exaggerated. Well, slightly anyway: it's not the horseless carriage return yet. Martha and Grant wax nostalgic about the pleasures of pecking away at a rumbling, shuddering Selectric.

A newspaper headline about a faltering legislative proposal prompts a caller to ask: Should they have written 'floundering' or 'foundering'?

A longboarder reports she and her fellow surfers refer to young surfers as 'groms' or 'grommets'--not to be confused, of course, with 'hodads' and 'kooks.' But where'd that surfing lingo come from?

Greg Pliska presents a punny political puzzle about the names of presidential candidates.

A listener says his sister reprimanded him for using the term 'rule of thumb.' She says the expression derives from an old British law that allowed a man to beat his wife with a stick, as long as it's no wider than his thumb. Is that story true?

A caller wonders if the acrobatic 'alley-oop' in basketball is connected with the V.T. Hamlin comic strip, 'Alley Oop.'

Is 'irregardless' a real word? A caller wants his wife to stop saying it. Good thing he loves her regardless!

A commuter hears a radio report about an organization that's 'giving away condoms like they were going out of style.' But, he wonders, if they're really 'going out of style,' then why are they so popular? Isn't the phrase 'giving them away like they were going out of style' contradictory?

In California, everybody gets a little crazy when those hot, dry winds called 'Santa Anas' start blowing. A caller asks the origin of the name. Is it a translation of Spanish for 'Satan's wind'?

By the way, here's how novelist Raymond Chandler described that meteorological phenomenon in his short story, 'Red Wind':

'There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.'

That's all the hot air we have time for this week!

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