Rubbish Dumps and Garbage Tips
By John Phillips
Well there you go; I especially said that my spoolbox was salvaged from a garbage tip rather than a rubbish dump so that U.S. readers would know what I was talking about, and Robbie wants to know what "on the tip" means. I'll bet they didn't have sanitised landfills when you were a lad, Robbie?
My wife Beryl reckons that kids who don't grow up near a garbage dump, as she did, miss out on a lot of adventure. She and her brothers used to roam over the local tip (dump) and bring home all sorts of treasures to exasperate their parents with. She has a hair-raising story of the three of them dragging old kapok mattresses to the nearby river and setting sail on them. When one began to sink there was a fraternal struggle for possession of the other two, each of which would support only one person. To this day she won't put her head under water while swimming.
This is getting away from proper Digest topics, so here's another query.
I could hardly help noticing that another of my smartarse (smartass?) subject headings has been changed, from "Standard Roll Widths? What a Joke!" to "Measured Widths of Music Rolls". That's a good description of the piece but it doesn't have much zing.
So, was my heading just too long, Robbie? I would be glad to know because I can't help trying to crack weak jokes. Please be assured that I'm not mad at all about what you did -- a wriggle of my bum on my chair when I read the beginning of the relevant digest entirely used up any annoyed feelings - and I'm extremely grateful for your work on the Digest.
Regards from sometimes sunny Tasmania, John Phillips.
[ Editor's note:
[
[ It's very interesting how the language works. In the U.S., the
[ proper (politically correct?) name for a garbage dump is a "sanitary
[ landfill". Of course there are other disposal methods such as
[ incinerators. When a truck full of garbage arrives at a sanitary
[ landfill or incinerator, there is a fee charged for the disposal of
[ the contents of the truck. This fee is referred to as a "tipping
[ fee". I _assume_ that the name comes from the action of the truck.
[ They are dump trucks and one end of them is jacked up by a hydraulic
[ cylinder, thus "tipping" out the contents. Maybe the name comes from
[ somewhere else... I dunno.
[
[ I probably would have left the original title if it would have fit.
[ I personally like a little humor in the Digests, although I like to
[ have the subject lines close enough to the article's contents that
[ you could find it later.
[
[ Thanks for writing!
[ Jody
[ Relief Editor's note:
[
[ It's always been a "garbage dump" to me, and I floated on old kapok
[ mattresses as a kid, too! I didn't know about the tip, and I still
[ am curious why you say "on the tip". (Of course, I don't know either
[ why my aunt from Indiana said, "on the Fritz!")
[
[ Now: about the "Subject Line" -- I treat it like the "Subject Card"
[ at the (pre-computer) library, and so it must tell what the story
[ is about. It's true, there's seldom much zing. The alternative
[ would be a "Title Line", as in a newspaper, and the author or the
[ editor-of-the-day could create cute jokes and puns, just like a
[ zing-y tabloid!
[
[ Your article contains actual measured data, John, the data that is
[ needed by researchers and experimenters. 'Twould be a shame if a
[ search-engine overlooked it. Which shall we have: Subject or Title?
[ In either case the humourous introduction can be in the body of
[ the article.
[
[ Robbie
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(Message sent Thu 2 Jan 1997, 23:46:56 GMT, from time zone GMT+1100.) |
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