WHAT’S IN A NAME?

by Janice Law

“What’s in a name?” asked Juliet, but she was being disingenuous, knowing quite well the vast difference between being Juliet of the Scullery and the heiress of the Capulets. Her creator surely knew, too. While many of his characters’ names were set by history and legend, he let his imagination run when he could, especially with comic characters: Falstaff, Feste, Andrew Aguecheek, Toby Belch, (all Twelfth Night), Dogberry (Much Ado About Nothing), and Bottom (A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream), all not only funny, but apt.

No one who doesn’t write, and probably not even non-fiction writers, knows how important the right character name can be. Ideas can float in and out, but without le nom juste, they’re not going to grow, certainly not into something as luxuriant as Ebenezer Scrooge. But Dickens was not only one of the great plotters, he was one of the great namers: Harold Skimpole of Bleak House is very nearly in the Scrooge category. And who couldn’t run (literarily speaking) with Wackford Squeers (Nicholas Nickleby), Magwich (Great Expectations), or Bounderby and Gradgrind of Hard Times?

Names like those are money in the wordsmith’s bank. Modern preferences for realism have dampened such Victorian efflorescence, but there are exceptions. Thomas Pyncheon, he of the reclusive habits and massive tomes, has contributed both Pirate Prentice and Tyrone Slothrop (Gravity’s Rainbow) to posterity, not to mention Benny Profane and the Whole Sick Crew, both name and catchphrase in V.

His mystery counterpart has to be Carl Hiaasen. Hiaasen is a plotter par excellence with a truly antic imagination. Reading him is rather like eating a whole meal of marzipan topped off with a chocolate Sunday, but his character names are envy producing: Honey Santana (Nature Girl), Jimmy Stoma of Jimmy and the Slut Puppies (Basket Case) and from his latest, Star Island, the trio of Cherry Pye, Bang Abbott, and Skink.

Funny writers may have more opportunities for fanciful names, but some less hyper scribes have come up with good ones, too. Like Melanie, I’m a big fan of The Long Goodbye and all the other Philip Marlowe mysteries. And how apt his name is. Philip, not only Biblical but apostolic, hints at the gumshoe’s not always well concealed idealism, while the original Marlowe was not only a playwright of genius but an Elizabethan spy. We can love Raymond Chandler for his detective’s name alone.

Other worlds, other names. Dorothy Sayers was also a dab hand at nomenclature, with characters like Old General Fentimen, whose death is the Unpleasantness in The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, Freddy Arbuthnot, of Strong Poison, and, of course, every feminist’s favorite, Harriet Vane, and the reliable duo of Lord Peter Wimsey and his invaluable manservant, Bunter. The names suggest P.G. Wodehouse territory, but if Sayers aspired to the same rarified social heights, she was still willing to venture into such the non-comic territories as shell shock and the struggle for women’s education.

So how does one pick a character name? Some are the gift of the gods. Riding along behind a NEMF truck in Pennsylvania, I came up with Edward Nempf, for a marsh keeper in a novel about a flooded Hartford five hundred years in the future. It seemed just odd enough and yet clearly an English language moniker. Another gift was Iris Weed, perhaps my best ever character, whom I imprudently killed off early in The Lost Diaries of Iris Weed. I liked Iris for the great Iris Murdoch and also for the goddess of the dawn, but Iris seemed too fancy and old fashioned until my husband covered a soccer game. One of the opposing players was a Ms. Weed. Perfecto!

Iris Weed and Edward Nempf are good for another reason, too. Much as I love Dickensian names, typing Martin Chuzzlewit or Peggotty over and over is, for a weak keyboardist like myself, asking for trouble. Make it evocative, but make it short is my mantra, and think about the typing involved. One of the good things about Anna Peters, who labored for me in eight novels, was that her name was easy to use. And to remember. Because, afflicted with continuity problems, I have a bad habit of altering minor character’s names from chapter to chapter.

This is not a problem with short stories and I have a certain affection for some concocted characters. Bren and the ‘holiday names’ of Danielle and Sabine seemed right for “Lying,” a little story about spring break gone wrong. Dwayne Nguyen seemed right for the Amerasian hero of “The Paradise Garden,” who was destined to be the counselor of a warrior princess and finds her, against all odds, while working as a gardener in Southern California.

I have only once gotten to use what I think of as fancy names, in a story called “The Ghostwriter,” when I had to invent not only the protagonist, Marv, but a best-selling author—Hilaire La Doux—his characters Lord Ostrucht and Lady Fergaine, and a magic sword, The Blade of Zermain. That was a good day’s work.

CASEY ANTHONY TRIAL– AFTERMATH

by Leigh Lundin

Minutes after the verdict came in the Casey Anthony case, a stunned defense team held a low-key press conference. In their statement, defense attorneys told us who killed Caylee Anthony.

Here’s how I got there.

Tricoteuses

You’ve heard of the tricoteuses during The Terror following the French Revolution? The women who knitted and gossiped and jeered watching the guillotine’s slaughter? Tricoteuses were alive and well and on-line in Casey Anthony trial chat rooms. The lynch mob seemed uninterested in acting sensibly or fair, intent only in venting their spleen at the Anthonys and the defense.

Long before the verdict, their rage was frightening. They regarded the few brave souls striving for fairness with suspicion and hostility, personally attacking and blocking. They claimed to know who was truthful (to wit, all prosecution witnesses) and who was lying (e.g, all defense witnesses). They referred to José Baez as "Bozo", "stooopid", and other names, concurrently suggesting Baez and Casey carried on an inappropriate sexual relationship.

The Gender Divide

At the courthouse, a guy (some news reports say two guys) attempted to jump the queue and found themselves beaten about the ears by women who’d waited in line from 5am, certainly understandable. Meanwhile, fellows who ventured into trial chat rooms and professed support for Casey found themselves pummeled by others.

I didn’t encounter even one woman who believed Casey Anthony was innocent, but perhaps a third of the few males on-line proclaimed she must be. Their hypotheses typically focused on George Anthony, ignoring his obvious anguish and the fact Anthony was once a homicide detective. Other conspiracy theories targeted the private investigators or Roy Kronk, the man who found the body.

Scientific Evidence

Sheriff’s detectives deserve credit for their conscientiousness. Given the limitations, detectives and investigators performed to their utmost. Although scientific conclusions sometimes disagreed, all experts appeared dedicated and earnest.

As much as I like Dr. Jan Garavaglia, I was disappointed when she overreached in her testimony quoting unchallenged numbers, like 100% of child drownings are reported, without backing them up. Despite the Photoshop visuals, I’ve come to suspect the duct tape was probably used to seal the bags shut, not Caylee’s mouth.

Chloroform evidence is more problematic. You might believe Casey used dangerous chloroform to knock her little girl out so she could have undisturbed sex (still exposing her to execution under Florida law). On the other hand, you could believe she didn’t understand boyfriend Tony’s MySpace joke "Win her over with chloroform," whereupon Casey googled to see what that meant. None of the experts agreed whether chloroform levels were normal or not, but remember swimming pools are known for emitting chloroform as a byproduct.

Computer Forensics

When it came to computer testimony, I’d grade the state’s experts a D and the defense an F. I’m one of the rarified priesthood who have sufficiently deep technical knowledge to attest with certainty the ‘experts’ weren’t expert at all. It’s a matter of money, but I wouldn’t trust my life to the equivalent of a techie in Computer City.

Only one member of the Sheriff’s investigators exhibited more than casual knowledge (grade him a B+), but the others merely read spreadsheet reports without understanding the underlying implications, even when their conclusions made no sense. 84 google searches in 3.1 minutes? Not possible from a low-end household ISP, even if one could read at the speed of a hard drive.

The only moment I felt certain Cindy Anthony lied came when she testified she searched for chloroform on two given dates. Her entire demeanor changed. The lady seemed to shrink within herself and I don’t believe she’s a woman used to untruths.

Defense’s abysmal lack of technical knowledge failed to grasp a surer and more convincing way to challenge the state’s case. Desktop computers contain clock batteries, and as they age, CPU clocks become less and less reliable, even erratic. Several avenues come to mind, but I’d begin with questioning the state of the battery.

The Verdict

Florida has 400 men on death row. Four hundred. Florida can execute for such crimes as drug trafficking. Orange County is among the state’s most aggressive pursuing death penalty cases and conversely has one of the lowest conviction rates. In contrast, neighboring Seminole county doesn’t try to execute every criminal, and obtains a high conviction rate.

Including the jury itself, many observers believe the state ‘overcharged’. In other words, the prosecution opted for the death penalty when the evidence didn’t support either first degree murder option.

The Sentence Calculator

Observers were so intent upon conviction, they ignored the possibility the prosecution might derail. One of the extreme examples was the WESH TV Sentence Calculator. Enter possible sentences of the charge counts and the calculator will tell you how many years Casey would receive– or death.

Ready to pounce, hordes of followers hovered their mouse over the calculator, only to find it useless. The problem, as you can see below, is that their program made no allowance the jury might acquit Casey!

• Counts 1 and 3 (First-Degree Murder & Aggravated Manslaughter):
  • Choose One…
  • GUILTY: First-Degree Murder
  • GUILTY: Second-Degree Murder
  • GUILTY: Third-Degree Murder
  • GUILTY: Aggravated Manslaughter
  • GUILTY: Manslaughter
  • NOT GUILTY omitted!
• Count 2 (Aggravated Child Abuse):
  • Choose One…
  • NOT GUILTY
  • GUILTY: Aggravated Child Abuse
  • GUILTY: Child Abuse
• Counts 4-7 (False Information To a Law Enforcement Officer):
  • Choose One…
  • NOT GUILTY
  • GUILTY: 1 Count
  • GUILTY: 2 Counts
  • GUILTY: 3 Counts
  • GUILTY: 4 Counts

Frankly, the jury got it right. That doesn’t mean I don’t think Casey’s not guilty of something, but with the evidence presented, the jury could make no other decision. If the prosecution hadn’t backed jurors into a corner demanding they find for first degree premeditated murder, the outcome might have been different.

Beyond the Verdict

I suspect Caylee’s death was an accident gone horribly wrong. If we imagine the unimaginable that she deliberately killed her toddler, we have to believe she deluded herself into thinking she could party forever or, as her grandmother once said, you have to believe Casey hated her mother more than she loved her child.

Ex-boyfriend Jesse Grund was amazingly prescient in his second police interrogation two weeks after Casey was arrested. He told detectives if something happened to Caylee, Casey could never admit it to her mother, she would have a breakdown, and she would ‘invent a new reality’. That appears to be what happened.

"Sophomoric Smirking"

Jeff Ashton’s sniggers and sneers came back to bite him. A local media lawyer said he "can guarantee" Ashton’s done that before, but this time he was caught. Baez elevated himself in decorum by asking the judge not to punish Ashton. His post verdict interview was classy too. However, news reports say a Virginia woman has launched a petition in an improbable attempt to force the judge to sanction Baez for contempt of court.

How many families could have survived the scrutiny of the past three years? The Anthonys (George, Cindy, Lee) are a decent if normally dysfunctional family dumped into a horrific situation by a daughter badly in need of psychiatric help (and maturity).

The River Cruz

Given the purported criminal record (fraud, theft, attempted burglary, perjury, aliases) of Krystal Holloway / River Cruz / River Allen and her claims and denials to police, I have doubts she had an affair with George. I don’t believe for a moment a woman on welfare with two recent evictions for non-payment lent a virtual stranger $5000. George-haters believe otherwise.

The Release

Casey will never be free. She won’t be able to live in Florida again. As much as George and Cindy didn’t want their daughter executed, I can’t imagine them taking her under their wing again. No one could abide a daughter suspected of killing their precious granddaughter, and even Casey shouldn’t want to press her position in the same household.

I don’t wish her ill. I hope Casey receives treatment and grows up. Often, murderesses released don’t fare well, such as the perpetrators in the ghastly Sylvia Lickens case.

Who Done It?

In today’s opening paragraph, I said the defense told us who killed Caylee Anthony. In the main message of their press conference, José Baez declared the death penalty doesn’t work, an acknowledgement the prosecution overcharged. But if you carefully consider his statement, there was little reason to mention it if Casey was truly innocent. We don’t know exactly what, but implicit in his words is the assumption his client was guilty… of something.

Opinions expressed are those of the author. Parties not convicted of crimes are considered innocent. Thumbnails indicate images of the Orlando Sentinel.

BITS AND PIECES

by John M. Floyd

In the summer of 1981, when I acquired my first VCR and our first cable TV hookup at our house, I started doing something that would continue for the next thirty years. I started videotaping and saving certain scenes in movies that I really liked. (I also taped a lot of full-length movies, of course, but these favorite scenes went onto a separate cassette that I could plug in when I just wanted to see the best parts. Or at least what I considered to be the best parts.)

Our three children grew up watching these special collections of film clips — we called them “bits and pieces” because that’s what they were — and I often worried that I probably ruined some great movies for the kids, because when they finally got around to watching the whole feature, they sometimes already knew the ending, or some of the best twists and turns. But I figured that was a small price to pay, for such neat previews. I was following Elmore Leonard’s advice, and leaving out the parts that people skip.

As you might imagine, a lot of these favorite scenes wound up being either openings or endings. But some weren’t. Since my wife doesn’t watch many movies, and since I was the primary user of the VCR and the TV, the only common denominator for these scenes was that I liked them. (It’s good to be king.) As you might also imagine, the content leaned heavily toward gunfights and car chases. In addition, some of the beginning and ending credits sequences didn’t include anything except the music and the credits themselves (Superman is one example) — but since I’m crazy about movie scores, even that was often enough to make them favorites.

Anyhow, I recently looked back through those seven six-hour tapes, and listed some of the scenes that I saved for posterity. Remember these?

Opening credits — Midnight Cowboy, Top Gun, Raising Arizona, Forrest Gump, Once Upon a Time in the West, From Russia With Love, The Ballad of Cable Hogue, A Shot in the Dark, Blazing Saddles, Crossing Delancey, The Big Country, Dr. No, Two Mules for Sister Sara, Superman, Cat People (1982), The Magnificent Seven

Opening scene — Goldfinger, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jaws, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, The Hustler, Romancing the Stone

Final scene — An Officer and a Gentleman, Escape from New York, Cool Hand Luke, Cat Ballou, The Usual Suspects, The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), Back to the Future, Die Hard, Sleepless in Seattle, The Cider House Rules, Silver Bullet, Rudy, Gone With the Wind, Rocky, Dead Poets Society, Wait Until Dark, Lonesome Dove, It’s a Wonderful Life, Blood Simple, Thelma and Louise, Signs, The Silence of the Lambs

Final shootout — Shane, Quigley Down Under, A Fistful of Dollars, The Last Sunset, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, 3:10 to Yuma (2007), High Noon, For a Few Dollars More, Hombre

End credits — Glory, Body Heat, M*A*S*H, Peggy Sue Got Married, Victory, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Monte Walsh (1970), A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum

Car/train chase, The French Connection

“Play it, Sam” scene, Casablanca

The throne room, Star Wars

Breaking the sound barrier, The Right Stuff

Final card game, The Cincinnati Kid

Bank robbery (“Do you Feel Lucky?”), Dirty Harry

Orient Express fight with Red Grant, From Russia With Love

Prisoners’ march, The Bridge on the River Kwai

Rooftop scene, The Untouchables

Escape from Galaxy Island, Our Man Flint

Rescue of Carol Anne, Poltergeist

“Make My Day” scene, Sudden Impact

Final audition, Flashdance

Car chase, Bullitt

“Minimum safe distance” scene, Aliens

Travolta/Thurman dance, Pulp Fiction

Starting up the plane, Flight of the Phoenix (1965)

Final home run, The Natural

Climbing in Monument Valley, The Eiger Sanction

“I’ll have what she’s having” scene, When Harry Met Sally

Desert rescue of Roger’s daughter, Lethal Weapon

Flying, Out of Africa

“I love Kung Fu” scene, Office Space

Fistfight in the apartment, The Bourne Identity

Death of Oddjob, Goldfinger

Chasing the brumbies, The Man From Snowy River

“Is it you?” scene Somewhere in Time

Banjo and guitar, Deliverance

“Seventy-six Trombones,” The Music Man

Arrival of the killers at the farm, Witness

The fruit cellar, Psycho

Final race, The Black Stallion

“Now that’s a knife” scene, Crocodile Dundee

Dorinda’s flight, Always

Chased by the train, Stand by Me

Buffalo stampede, Dances With Wolves

“You can’t handle the truth” scene, A Few Good Men

Defusing the bomb, The Abyss

Death of Reverend Scott, The Poseidon Adventure

“Old Man River,” Showboat

Crop duster, North by Northwest

Church wedding, The Graduate

“Hi, Boo” scene, To Kill a Mockingbird

Chariot race, Ben-Hur

Railroad crossing scene, Close Encounters of the Third Kind

First glimpse of the dinosaurs, Jurassic Park

Motorcycle chase, The Great Escape

Opening credits of TV shows: Hill Street Blues, Dallas, Ben Casey, Remington Steele, The Wild Wild West, Crime Story, Miami Vice, China Beach, The Rifleman, Cheers, Cimarron Strip, ER, The Avengers, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Mission Impossible

Question: If you were crazy enough to save clips like these, what would be some of your favorite scenes? Or would you want to capture any at all? I’ve heard some folks say it’s a disservice to a film to watch part of it, out of context, without watching the whole thing.

And please, don’t let this odd habit of mine give you the impression that I enjoy all movies. Some of them I don’t like a bit. An example? I’ll put it this way:

Never re-watching Love Story means never having to say I’m sorry.

ROAD TRIP (part two)

by Steven Steinbock

Click on picture to see more detail.

In last week’s column I told you about the first half of my epic cross-country road trip from one end of Interstate 90 to the other. Our trip took us through Massachusetts, upstate New York, along the southern shore of Lake Erie, from Toledo to Chicago, then skimming across the southern edges of Wisconsin and Minnesota and then on into South Dakota.

After visiting the Mitchell Corn Palace and Wall Drug, we found ourselves driving toward a big black funnel cloud. I felt as though we were heading right into Dorothy’s tornado. The storm was to the right as we looked out the front windshield. The sun was shining ahead and to the left. But where we were driving, the rain was coming down hard and heavy. By the time we got to Keystone, the storm was behind us and it was time to call it a day.

The town of Keystone, South Dakota, is just inside the Black Hills National Forest. It’s about fifteen miles south of Rapid City, and two miles down the hill from Mount Rushmore. We were in the heart of the country, so it was a perfect opportunity to take a day-long break from our trek.

Wednesday morning Sandra Brannan and her son, Joey, joined us. Sandra is a mystery novelist whose family goes way back in the region. She gave Nate and me a very special behind-the-scenes look at Mount Rushmore. From Mount Rushmore we drove southwest toward Custer where for a time our route was blocked by a herd of buffalo.

Next Sandra took us to the Crazy Horse Memorial. While still a work in progress, this monument to Indian history and culture stands almost ten times the height of the faces on Rushmore. Talk about a story! Designer and sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski had worked on Mount Rushmore before being asked by the Lakota leader Chief Standing Bear to create a monument to the Sioux people. He proposed a likeness of Chief Crazy Horse with outstretched arm sitting atop his horse. Korczak began carving the mountainside in 1948, and the work is being carried on today by his children.

Sandra is a close friend of the Ziolkowski family. She introduced me to Korczak’s widow, Ruth. When she told Ruth that I wrote for Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, the woman lit up with a smile. Nate and I, and Sandra and Joey were taken up the side of the mountain and stood atop Crazy Horse’s arm, just below his face, where we saw the engineering work up close. It was stunning and unforgettable.

There must be a story in there somewhere. It is easy to imagine Korczak, a colorful Yankee of Polish descent, having a falling out with Rushmore designer Gutzon Borglum. Korczak was a defiant, Hemingway-esque individualist, while Borglum was pompous, authoritarian, an avowed White Supremacist and active member of the Ku Klux Klan.

Next week I’ll conclude with our stay in Yellowstone, and our final arrival in the Emerald City of Seattle.

TRUE CRIME VS . FICTION

by Deborah Elliott-Upton

John Douglas

There’s no doubt more than a few true crime stories are out there masquerading as fiction. For those of us who abhor the knowledge some people have little regard for life, why are we still tempted by the daily doses of true crime facts littering the newspapers, news programs and tabloids? I have never seen “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” movie. From what I understand, there are only two reactions to the film: it’s either love or hate, not a single indication of someone lurking in the gray area being undecided. Mystery stories are so much easier on the conscience. We can enjoy them and step away. Somehow, true crime stories often wound themselves into our dreams, creating convoluted twists that wake us with heart palpitations and wanting to keep the lights on a bit.

Or maybe that’s just me.

I think I enjoy reading Mind Hunter by former FBI criminal profiler John Douglas. I say “think” because I have to steel myself into reading his work. Mind Hunter is one of those stories that creeps under your skin and becomes a part of you, as difficult to shake off as clingy wet jeans after being caught in a sudden rain storm. I think it disturbs me because I know Douglas is sharing in his stories part of his experience. I bought his book Anyone You Want Me to Be: A True Story About Sex and Death on the Internet about con artists finding vulnerable people wanting desperately to believe whatever a stranger online says. There really are people out there who do sick things to other people. It horrifies me and at the same time, tantalizes that portion of my brain where I don’t usually like to go. I’m glad other people write these stories because I really do like to read them, but only during the day.

As writers—and especially mystery or thriller writers—we often allow our minds to travel that untaken path where we know we’d never really travel.

I once asked a technician taking my mom’s blood what she’d do if someone with a gun bolted into the room with a filled syringe and told her to inject it into one of us. She paled. My mom gasped and with disgust said, “Don’t pay attention to her. She’s a writer. She doesn’t mean anything by what she said.”

Some thoughts I’ve had that I’ve learned to keep to myself:

• how to rob a store where I shop regularly
• how easy it would be to do someone harm in a darkened theatre before the leading lady’s screams ended on screen
• how damaging it would be to sneak into someone else’s computer and download questionable sites

Is this twisted or just a mark of a creative thinker?

Does the FBI care what we’re looking at online? I doubt we’ve crossed their minds, although they would jump on that information if we were suspected of a crime.

Why are we so enthralled with psychological thrillers? My opinion is we all feel a kinship with Dr. Jekyll becoming Mr. Hyde. Do we secretly wish for a taste of the dark side and is it really that bad? Are we more like Buddy Love in “The Nutty Professor” and just want to be cool, respected and loved? Could we handle it if we turned into a monster that does horrific things?

Why do we love Hannibal Lector or Dexter? There’s something about the insidious genius living inside a person who could do such despicable deeds that appeals to that darkness in our souls.

Do the people who find themselves turning up in four-inch headlines and actions debated on talk shows and likenesses splashed across tabloid covers plan this outcome, or could they not help themselves from the deplorable actions that propelled them into media magnets? Premeditated or crimes of passion, true crime is relevant in the book world. True crime or fiction, the mystery connecting the who, what, where, and why engages our attention throughout the story and makes us consider the differences between right and wrong. It’s a good thing.

WEASEL WORDS

by Rob Lopresti

Last week I happened to quote a Seattle Times article about a beast called a martin. My friend Zeke chastised me for misspelling marten. James replied that I had merely been keeping bad company, since I had accurately copied the Times’ mistake. Then both of them indulged in horrible puns about members of the Mustelidae family.

I, of course, am above such loathsome wordplay, but I decided to discuss those beasties today. Not the animals themselves, but their names, and the related words. Because language is our business at CB, and don’t you forget it.

Zeke was quite correct, that the animal the man in Hoquiam was carrying when he broke into an apartment was a marten, but it turns out a martin can be an animal as well. As early as 1300 it was the name for a type of ape (no one knows which). Before 1700 it was the term for hermaphroditic calves. (And does it bother anyone else that they had so many hermaphroditic calves back then that they needed a word for it? What were they putting in the hay?)

But it turns out that when the man with the marten punched the other man the latter became a martin, because by the 1600s the word also meant “victim.”

Pop (goes the weasel) Quiz

I have actually written here before about the peculiarly human habit of turning animal names into verbs. Many of the weasel family have fallen victim to verbification. See if you can match them up.

Extra credit: Which of those animals is an imposter? It is not a member of the mustelidae family. Answers further down the screen.

Vital questions

To which I don’t necessarily have any answers.

Why have so many of these animals have lent their names to sexually loose individuals? A mink is a promiscuous woman. A stoat is a lecher. And, while the OED doesn’t recognize it, I have heard otter used for promiscuous men. (Remember Otter in Animal House?)

What do they call a wolverine in England? Would you believe: a glutton. Think they used that name when they released X-Men in Britain? “There’s the most dangerous mutant of all! The Glutton!” I’m guessing not.

What’s the difference between a weasel and an ermine? The season. Some weasels (called stoats in England) are brown in the summer but turn white when it gets snowy. At first, people thought they were different animals. I learned about this in W.P. Kinsella’s story “Weasels and Ermines.”

How did badger come to mean “harass”? You might assume it has to do with the animal’s behavior, but there is an alternative explanation. The word used to mean “haggle,” coming from early noun meaning of “trader.” You can see how “haggle” could shift to something nastier.

And speaking of badgers, let me indulge myself by quoting the wonderful Brit Com Yes, Minister. In one episode politician Jim Hacker is being, well, badgered by his daughter because the government is about to destroy a badger habitat.

“It’s because badgers haven’t got votes isn’t it? If they did you wouldn’t be exterminating them. You’d be out there shaking paws and kissing cubs!”

Very like a weasel

Getting back to our title, to weasel is to attempt to get out of something, usually by using tricky language. Hence, weasel words or as I prefer to call them, mustelogisms. I thought the term came from the slippery (or slinky) tactics the beast uses to escape, but Theodore Roosevelt begs to disagree. Teddy was a great phrasemaker (bully pulpit, twilight zone, good to the last drop) but he doesn’t get credit for “weasel words.” It had been in print for a decade before he used it on Woodrow Wilson in 1916. But his contribution was explaining it. He said weasels sucked all the meat from an egg, leaving an empty shell. Which captures the fate of a weasel word, doesn’t it?

The answers, my friend

1.C. badger=harass, 2.E. ermine=make white, 3.F. ferret=search out, 4.D. sable=make black, 5.A. skunk=defeat, 6.G. stoat, sew with invisible stitches, 7.B. weasel=equivocate

The skunk is the intruder (as it so often is). I included it in honor of the polecat. I had thought “polecat” was a nickname for skunk, which it is, but there is also an animal by that name in the mustelidae family (a ferret is a type of polecat). Nobody knows how polecats get their name, but apparently some of them stink, which explains how the name slid over to skunks.

And in conclusion

I got through this whole column on words without a single pun. Frankly, I wasn’t sure I could do it, but I figured there was no ermine trying.

SEXY! THRILLING! TRAILERS GALORE!

by Melodie Johnson Howe

I love the old black and white movie trailers where they wrote in big script across the screen words such as Daring! Sexy! Brutal! Heart Stopping! Spine Tingling! Then the deep male voice sounding oddly like a Presbyterian minister spoke the words as if the audience couldn’t read.

One of my favorites is the movie Sirocco, starring Humphrey Bogart. The male voice-over, sounding like fire and brimstone, says, “Bogart meets destiny in a low-cut gown”

Wait. Is Bogart wearing a low-cut gown when he meets destiny? No problem! They show his female co-star on the screen in a low-cut dress and we know exactly what they mean. SEXY! TROUBLE! DANGER!

Movie posters were even better than the trailers because the frustrated writers who created them could use longer sentences. In this day and age of tweeting and text you might even consider it prose.

The poster for the B movie “Desperate” starring James Brodie and Audrey Long reads like this:

“TORMENT . . . TENSION . . . TERROR! GUILTLESS TWO . . . HUNTED BY HIGHJACKERS . . . HOUNDED BY THE LAW . . . READY TO KILL TO LIVE!”

I’m sure, Dear Reader, you noted that Hollywood loves alliteration and exclamation points. Sometimes Hollywood liked to kill two birds with one stone by subtly reminding the viewers of the movie star’s previous film or the famous writer’s previous book.

JOHN GARFIELD PUTS BODY AND SOUL INTO FORCE OF EVIL

Blood Red Kisses
White Hot Thrills
Mickey Spillane’s Latest H-Bomb Kiss Me Deadly

With the “Brother Orchid” poster Hollywood even tried to get down with the real folk, usually referred to as the audience. Here they attempted to reach out to those from Brooklyn or parts of New Jersey.

WE’D LIKE YOUSE TO MEET BROTHER ORCHID. (Italics mine)

There is so much on this movie poster that they had to abbreviate the star’s name down to Edw. G. Robinson. (I’m glad I hadn’t yet added Howe to my name when I was acting.)

There were many different posters for the movie “Out of the Past” starring Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer. Maybe Hollywood smelled success. Alas the one I’m showing does not have the any descriptive writing on it. In any event here are some examples from ones that do.

IT’S LIKE LIGHTNING KISSING THUNDER WHEN MITCHUM MAKES LOVE TO A GIRL WITH A GUN.

SO BLINDED BY LOVE HE COULDN’T SEE MURDER COMING.

They even quoted dialogue from the movie:

“You don’t need a gun to make me say yes!” (I love this.)

“Don’t try to get rid of me for another woman it won’t work.”

There are many old movie posters and all of them are great. The next time you’re watching TCM take note of the trailers and enjoy them. They don’t make them like they used to.

I’ll end with two of my favorite poster quotes from the movie “The Ride To Hangman’s Tree,” starring a very young actress, Melodie Johnson.

HALF DANCER . . . HALF DEVIL . . . SHE DROVE MEN TO THE WRONG SIDE OF THE LAW.

HER DARING DANCE SET MAN AGAINST MAN AND FRIEND AGAINST FRIEND!

When Bones gets testy with me (rarely happens), I point to my posters just to remind him whom he’s dealing with.