The Word Detective explains that the phrase probably originated with the Irish “seibin,” which is a small mug. “Shebang” first appears during the Civil War to describe a hut, shed, or some other kind crude makeshift shelter for soldiers. At about the same time “shebang” started being used to mean a vehicle and a rented coach in particular. “Shebang” has also been used to describe a disreputable tavern or hotel that is also called a “dive.” Today it is most commonly used to describe the entire thing or matter.
Author Archives: RF_Alum
Wasp
This is a book I’ve always remembered reading with fascination as a youngster. I recently obtained “Entities, the Selected Novels of Eric Frank Russell” on an interlibrary loan that included that novel. The book was written in 1957, the year I began my junior year in high school. A review on Amazon says it is probably Russell’s best known novel. It is the story of James Mowry who is asked to be an agent behind enemy lines in Earth’s war with the Sirian Combine. He is asked to be like the wasp in the car that stings the driver and causes the car to crash. The novel was nominated for the 1998 Prometheus Hall of Fame award.
Terry Pratchett said he couldn’t imagine “…a funnier terrorists’ handbook,” although I didn’t see that much humor in the book. The central theme is that an enemy can be greatly harmed by psychological and guerrilla warfare by a small, deadly protagonist. I think the book is pertinent because of the huge impact being made on the U.S. and the world by relatively small groups of terrorists dedicated and willing to die for a cause (which is why I’m breaking my usual habit of reviewing nonfiction books).
The introduction by Jack L. Chalker describes Russell as being a science fiction/fantasy writer preceding WWII. Russell worked in the British office of naval intelligence section call XX, or double cross. His group, which included the author of the future “James Bond” books, Ian Fleming, was to think of inexpensive ways to harm the Japanese and Germans and diminish their military capabilities. He put together the book as a blueprint for wartime terrorism. It is interesting that the Japanese secret police was called Temperikai and that the author named the secret police of the enemy planet Kaitemperi. Continue reading
Cloud Nine
It is universally accepted that the expression means that someone is blissfully happy, but there are debates about the origin. Askville writes that it was popularized by the Johnny Dollar radio show in the 1950s when the “…hero was knocked unconscious and transported to Cloud Nine.” Many think, or have thought, that the origin was the U.S. Weather Bureau which rates Level Nine as the very highest cumulonimbus clouds. Another theory is that it is derived from Buddhism in which “In the ninth stage the seeker reaches when all his acts are unselfish…” Then there is Dante’s Paradise in which the ninth level of heaven is the closest to the Divine Presence. If that doesn’t confuse you sufficiently, contemplate that the number nine turns up in other expressions with disputed origins such as “dressed to the nines” and “the whole nine yards.” Is searching for origins fun, frustrating, or interesting?
Truman
This book written by David McCullough is absolutely amazing. My wife had been telling me for years that it was something I would completely enjoy, but I had put off reading it because of the 992 pages. I learned that she was right when I finally got around to reading the book.
I understand the book rejuvenated the reputation of President Harry S. Truman after he left the presidency in near disgrace with an approval rating in the low twenty percent range because of the general disapproval (disgust) for the Korean War. I wrote a personal review of the book that had in excess of twenty-five pages, which should be a good indication of what I thought about the book. I promise to maintain my pledge to hold reviews on this site to two pages.
The Amazon selection for the most useful positive and less positive reviews is a good place to start. For the first category, it says in part, “For most of the 1,000 or so pages it read like a novel, a real page turner…” A three star review says, “While it is OK for a historian to like the subject of a biography, he should not love him. David McCullough likes Harry Truman a bit too much.”
I need to add that I began reading this lengthy biography with a personal bias. My father was an ardent Roosevelt Democrat, and he said on many occasions that Truman was one of the greatest presidents. I was fascinated with that assessment in my youth when I was struggling with understanding anything at all about politics, mostly because my Dad seldom if ever said anything like that about FDR. Why, I asked myself, would my Dad love FDR, but would so frequently talk about Truman being a great president. This book answers that question. Ann Coulter also answers that question in one of her books. She is critical of every Democrat president. She says of Truman that he was wrong about many of his policies, “But there is no doubt he loved his country.” Continue reading
Green with Envy
Yahoo Answers has an explanation that the “…Greeks believed that jealously was accompanied by an overproduction of bile, lending a yellowish-green pallor to the victim’s complexion.” A seventh century B.C. poetess described the face of a stricken lover as green. Shakespeare’s Othello mentioned that jealously “…is the green-ey’d monster…”
PT 109
This famous book was written by Robert J. Donovan, and I happened upon the fortieth anniversary edition in the library. The first two sentences of the front cover convinced me I should read it. “In the early morning darkness of August 2, 1943, in the waters of Blackett Strait in the Solomon Islands, the Japanese destroyer Amagiri (Japanese for “Heavenly Mist) sliced an American PT boat in two, leaving its crew for dead in a flaming sea. The boat’s skipper was a gaunt, boyish lieutenant from Boson named John Fitzgerald Kennedy.”
I found myself having difficulty remaining interested in the somewhat lengthy Foreword, Prefaces, and even the early chapters of the book. I’m certain they contributed to setting up for the easy to read and interesting parts of the book. The early chapters certainly made it clear that JFK’s experiences were similar to those of most sailors and soldiers who were in the South Pacific in World War II. There were the easygoing days, weeks, and months of training, watching, waiting, and being bored while trying to make an uncomfortable life more bearable. All of that certainly came to an end as JFK and his PT boat were assigned to a forward position. “For months war had seemed comfortably distant most of the time. Now the air was heavy with it. Uneasiness and fear lay just below the surface everywhere.”
Any doubt JFK had about why he and his comrades were in the South Pacific would have been eliminated when he say a large billboard on a hillside that had been ordered to be installed by Admiral William R. Halsey. It said:
Kill Japs. Kill Japs.
Kill More Japs.
You will help to kill the yellow
bastards if you do your job well.