Sunday July 17: Happy Days

If Shakespeare lived today perhaps he would have said: ‘All the world’s an acrostic.’ The challenges of modern life so beautifully mirror the series of clues found in an acrostic. When all these obstacles are surpassed we are presented with an underlying order, the allegorical 'quote'. We tried not to get too caught up in this undoubtedly apt and sound metaphor as we pressed onward.

New York Times Magazine Article:Going for BrokenOur hopes to avoid distraction were quickly dashed when we were made to pause in contemplation of our 42^nd President and in what 'well-locked' escapade he had been involved.  But given that just a month ago The New York Times Magazine ran an article about the decaying state of the Eric Canal, the reference to DeWitt and not Bill was evident.

It took Obama’s 2008 victory for us to finally forget the disaster eight-years prior in Florida.  Despite generally in favor of much of their policy stances, we did not need to be reminded of Nader and the Greens.

My favorite part of the instructions on the box of our croquet set is the line that says set up the two posts at opposite ends of the yard and configure all the wickets in the remaining space.  The dilemma in that backyard game was always whether to take the extra shot or smash one’s opponent (i.e., "sibling's ball") into the neighbor’s yard.  A bisque is like a mulligan that the handicapped player can use at their discretion sometimes during a match.

One of the fun moments in doing an acrostic is when some odd notion of the right answer provides enough letters to help solve the puzzle.  It is why our motto is always guess, guess, guess and eventually the correct answers will emerge.  This was true when we convinced ourselves to answer ‘oversite[sic]’ for the double meaning of vista and miss.  Our conflated guess came to mind perhaps because of that beautiful word: oversight — right out of Dilbert, it of course has two essentially diametrically opposite meanings.   Only much later in our effort, did we correct this to overlook but ‘over’ had helped with a number of fill-ins.

The pieces of this puzzle came together rather quickly.  The reference to Fonzie and Happy Days was a fabulous self-referential link to the source of the phrase ‘Jump the Shark’ because it was the decline in that TV series following that very episode that the phrase originates.