For those of you who dream of the entire country going red, check out the photo I've attached to this column.
I grabbed a red onion from the cupboard Thursday morning for breakfast and, as is usually the case, was unable to transport it to the cutting board without losing a piece of onion skin detritus on the floor.
"What's this?" my eagle-eyed wife asked a couple of hours later. It was no so much a question as an admonition. I swear, red onions instinctively shed their skin just to annoy housemates.
"Why, that's the continental United States!" I remarked, looking at it upside down. (I might have added "continental" to my response just now.)
Sure, Florida and Maine are a little bulky, and Texas isn't perfect, but it even has the stub of the Baja Peninsula off San Diego as a bonus.
I've written about this phenomenon before, and I'm sure you've all experienced it while gazing at clouds -- especially now that recreational marijuana is as ubiquitous in Illinois as Cheerios are on the floor of a minivan.
Seeing things like the map of the United States in an onion skin or a heart in a blood droplet or a smiley face in a green pepper -- turning random things into meaningful ones -- is called "pareidolia."
People have made plenty of money selling likenesses of Jesus on grilled cheese sandwiches and the like, so maybe I'll try my luck on eBay.
Election aftermath
With rampant sleeplessness and adrenaline and Diet Coke hangovers from election night, it's a good bet we'll make an occasional gaffe in characterizing a race.
I'm not talking about calling a race incorrectly, mind you. But the day after the election, when everyone is mopping up from the uncertainty of the night before and running on fumes, we might wrestle with word choice.
Here are a couple of examples, courtesy of election Czarina Michelle Holdway:
• "Candidate X won by a margin of 15,000 to 12,000 votes."
No, Candidate X won by a margin of 3,000 votes, the margin being the difference between the two totals.
• "Democrats swept six of nine races ..."
No. Democrats won six of nine races. If you sweep it, you win them all. Isn't that right, 2005 White Sox?
Prying eyes
Reader Bill Dearhammer wrote me on Nov. 2 to say "I just noticed a Norton 360 ad on my computer. It reads 'Keep prying eyes out.' As you say each week, write carefully."
I scratched my head, thinking Bill didn't know the phrase "away from prying eyes" or that he thought "prying" was misspelled. So I asked for clarification.
He responded that I was just looking at the sentence the wrong way. And then it all became clear.
"My first read had 'prying' as a verb," he wrote. "And only two days after Halloween."
Ouch!
Write carefully!
• Jim Baumann is vice president/managing editor of the Daily Herald. Write him at jbaumann@dailyherald.com. Put Grammar Moses in the subject line. You also can friend or follow Jim at facebook.com/baumannjim.
The Link LonkNovember 08, 2020 at 07:25AM
https://www.dailyherald.com/news/20201107/grammar-moses-did-the-whole-country-go-red-or-am-i-seeing-things
Grammar Moses: Did the whole country go red, or am I seeing things? - Chicago Daily Herald
https://news.google.com/search?q=Red&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
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