That Old Chesnut: Red herrings: probably not actually related to fox-hunting or whatever

Cuter than Benedict Cumberbatch?

Hey kids, do you ever wonder why people talk about deliberately misleading clues as "red herrings"? No? Okay, move along then. Anyway, now that it's just us nerds left, let me talk to you about ye olde* red herring. So people eat fish. Which is objectively gross and fishy, but whatever, especially in olden times, they couldn't go to the store and buy mac and cheese, so they had to take what they could get. Also, people would dry and smoke meats and fishes and such in order to keep them from rotting immediately because, you know, there were no refrigerators back in the day. Apparently some of these processes turn herrings red. Because usually they are like this:

I would be depressed too if I were a dead fish.

Also, these smoky salty processes make the herring not just red, but take on quite a distinctive odor--apparently one above and beyond the horror that is just regular "fishy." According to Michael Quinion, the semi-folk etymology of the figurative sense of red herring--something deliberately meant to throw you off the correct scent--involved stories of hunters trying to train their horses or hounds or something. It's not interesting, but mostly probably never really happened, but was basically invented in an 1807 story by "radical journalist" and pamphleteer (best job title EVER) William Cobbett, who claimed to have, as a child, used red herring to distract his own hounds from the trail of a hare. Apparently the idea caught on though, and people starting throwing around "red herring" as a synonym for something that is intentionally misleading. Which is all to say that I wrote this nerd post as my own red herring to make people think I still care about things besides caffeine blogging. So TAKE THAT! Distracted yet?

*Oh, I'm sorry, have you been pronouncing it "ye?" Guess what, that y has just been confused with old-timey lettering that used a thorn for "th" sounds. It was spoken as "the" all along, you silly geese!

If Pluggers could afford cable, their kids would find out about "Intervention" and try to get them on the show

For reasons passing understanding, I continue to search high and low (but mostly on internet newspaper sites) for ever more evidence of Plugger prescription drug addictions. Because after "Pluggers are poor/cheap" "Pluggers are old/fat" and "Pluggers vote Republican" comes "Pluggers have been scouring the latest news stories about Michael Jackson's addictions, trying to pick up tips on how to score" as a main theme. Anyway, a few new items have recently come to my attention: I consulted our good friends at the best-selling Canadian Oxford Dictionary about the definition of "paradox":

paradox noun

a seemingly absurd or self-contradictory statement which, when investigated or explained, may prove to be well-founded or true. a statement that is actually self-contradictory, absurd, or false.

I think by "paradox," Bob Elkins and Chief Addict Plugger Gary Brookins really mean "dilemma":

dilemma noun

a situation in which a choice has to be made between two equally undesirable alternatives.

As in, Mrs. Lady Chicken Plugger is forced to either see a doctor who has already refused to keep writing her prescriptions, or she will have to wait to get her fix until Dr. Johnson gets back in town to give her the hookup. What a paradox dilemma! Now that we've learned the correct word, here is what appears to be another dilemma. Except not! See, Pluggers are so high all the time, it doesn't really matter which ones they take when. If it's the "night" pills they can either just pass out for eight hours or quickly pop the "daytime" pills to perk them up when they realize they have to drive the kids to soccer practice. Pretty much any day's panel in this comic should be summed up as: "How high can I get without losing the ability to obtain more drugs for later?" No dilemmas, no paradoxes. And Gary Brookins, just because words with x's in them are fun, doesn't mean you can just throw them around willy-nilly. Consult the Canadians next time. They know what they're talking aboot.