R Brickston said:Quoted message said:On Tue, 10 Oct 2006 04:06:49 GMT, R Brickston
rb20170REMOVE.yahoo.com@ said:On Tue, 10 Oct 2006 03:28:44 GMT, Ted Bennett
<[email hidden]> wrote:
>
>> Broke a set of Cinelli Altera bars on my way in to work today.
>> They came OEM on a Cannondale cross bike that has been my
>> commuter for maybe ten months. The bike was offline for a few
>> weeks until I bought a new rear hub because the OEM POS disc hub
>> went belly up
> ^^^^^^^
>> (rusted and pitted bearings and cones after a
>> couple months in the rain). Anyway, I built a new wheel and was
>> riding in to work when my left brake lever seemed to slip -- it
>> was actually the bar failing at the stem clamp and breaking off.
>> I moved my hand before the thing broke all the way and rode the
>> last three miles with one hand. Beats going OTB. Now I have to
>> waste my time dealing with the warranty claim. I guess I'll use
>> a pair of my '70s Cinelli bars until I get something new and
>> better!
>>
>> BTW, as for the hub, I bought of set of close-out Deore cheap-o
>> disc hubs (six bolt and not center lock) from Cambria for $32
>> (that's front and rear). They weigh a ton, but the quality is
>> pretty good at that price point -- better than the set on the
>> bike. -- Jay Beattie.
>
>It would please me if you would use the preferred phrase "[censored] up".
I'v always found this phrase interesting. Depending where you are in
the world, it can mean a positive thing like 'fabulous." Other usage
means somebody's business just went bankrupt.
Dear R.,
For the unhappy meaning of "belly-up," as opposed to bellying up to
the bar, think of dead fish.
For the unhappy meaning of the other phrase, think of which way we lay
out corpses. ("Face up" is more commonly used in funeral parlours.)
Carl, your connection to my comment would seem to be vague.
Dear R.,
Replace my delicate "face up " with the phrase that you found
interesting.
The guest of honor at a funeral parlour lies on his back, breast
upward. That's how we lay out our dead--[censored] up, not [censored] down.
As for the snipped passage in which Huck ponders whether the face-up
floating corpse is male or female, think about why a buxom lady has so
much more trouble floating face down when deceased than her husband. Or
why life-jackets were called Mae Wests.
In a related literary matter, if you go through the works of Hemingway,
you'll find that the dead and defeated in his books invariably lie
face-down. The reason for this symbol is that in Italy in the Great
War, Hemingway saw whole fields of dead soldiers, all lying face down,
even though the odds were that about half of them should have been
lying face up.
The dead soldiers' uniforms had only back pockets, so they had all been
turned over to lie face down, making it easier for the advancing troops
to loot--er, search the corpses for papers containing valuable
intelligence.
See "A Natural History of the Dead":
"The surprising thing, next to their progressive corpulence, is the
amount of paper that is scattered about the dead. Their ultimate
position, before there is any question of burial, depends on the
location of the pockets in the uniform. In the Austrian army these
pockets were in the back of the breeches and the dead, after a short
time, all consequently lay on their faces, the two hip pockets pulled
out and, scattered around them in the grass, all those papers their
pockets had contained."
Then look at how many of Hemingway's characters end up [censored] down in
death and defeat.
Ernest was a bit contrary.
Cheers,
Carl Fogel
