UMBRELLAS UP!

All the lonely people — Where do they all come from? Lennon/McCartney

Evil grows in cracks and holes and lives in people’s minds Terry Jacks

Elbows up! Gordie Howe

My Mother didn’t say that. She said elbows off the table. She said ”don’t put anything bigger than an elbow in your ear.” How is that even physically possible?

She said “ Close the damn door. We’re not heating all of Vancouver.”

She said “Boys are simple. Girls are sneaky.” My Mother was wise that way.

But back to Elbows Up. We had an election is Canada, so this slogan of Elbows Up is very top of mind. Apparently, the slogan came from Gordie Howe-Mr. Hockey-perhaps the greatest hockey player of all time, now that Wayne Gretzky has reduced himself to shilling pharmaceuticals and lunching with billionaires at Mar-A-Lago. Alas, poor Wayne. Even Ovechkin has surpassed him.

Here on the wet coast, the more accurate slogan should be Umbrellas Up. Except of course when walking under an awning. Walking under an awning with an umbrella up is very bad manners. Umbrellas Up for rainy days, but parasols up for sunny days.

Do people say parasols up? U-boat captains say periscopes up. The combination of words that we employ is very important to advance better communication and make the world safe for democracy.

Collocation is the proper word for choosing the most appropriate combination of words. As a writer, my vocation is collocation, that is, the selection of words. There are so many words to choose from. Years ago, while taking a course on copywriting, I bought a book called Word Menu, from Random House, which purported to be a revolutionary all-in-one Dictionary, Thesaurus and Almanac. Bibles are reference books, right? Unfortunately, reference books about words have become a bit of a dinosaur, more useful for collection of dust. For our younger readers, a thesaurus is not a dinosaur, just as a thespian is not a lesbian. I mean they could be. They could even be They. Oh to be young, and gay and in love with words.

While the phrase “open an umbrella” may be more common than Umbrellas Up, it seems the correct collocation associated with opening an umbrella would be the phrase “to put up an umbrella” as in:

It started to rain, and she stopped to put up her umbrella. She also had to put up with her boyfriend who was a real jerk. He preferred crashing at her apartment, so she had to put him up as well as putting up with him.

In the parlance of insurance, an Umbrella policy is designed to provide protection against catastrophic losses. The one guarantee is that when catastrophe strikes, everyone loses.

In hockey, “the umbrella” is a formation on the power play in which the defense and one wing stay close to the blue line and pass the puck among themselves until another attacker is open by the goal.

Another meaning of the word umbrella is having the function of uniting a group of similar things. Recently, the jilted Canada, sought refuge and friendship with the UK, and EU, and began work to revitalize the Confederation. Empires fall and empires rise, just as umbrellas open, and umbrellas go up. Stocks can also go up, but lately, they just go down.

In the Rumble in the Jungle, Muhammad Ali used his patented “Rope-a-Dope” strategy to win against the stronger George Foreman, by dancing around him, and using the ropes of the ring, to tire out his opponent. Similarly, Donald Trump is using his Dump-a-Trump strategy of tariff implementation, followed by tariff freezing to manipulate the stock market, enabling his Billionaire Buddies to clean up, while Joe and Josephine Q. Public lose their savings, pensions, and to be honest, their future.

As we can witness in the suave photo above, John Steed was a firm believer in the power of the umbrella, using it as a weapon of choice on his 60’s show The Avengers. Steed was a secret agent of an undefined British intelligence unit. His now famous bowler and umbrella did not appear until the 15th episode, The Frighteners. In the final season of the original series , Steed was taking orders from an obese man in a wheelchair known only as Mother. Steed’s umbrella, with its distinctive whangee handle, was no ordinary umbrella, as it contained a concealed sword.

Steed seldom drew the blade, more often using the umbrella itself to strike or hook and opponent. Not to be outdone by James Bond, other specially-equipped umbrellas included one with a sound recorder, one with a tip that emitted knock-out gas, one with a camera hidden under the handle for covert photography, and even one that contained measures of whiskey. Umbrellas Up indeed.

When we dream of carrying an umbrella, our dream denotes that trouble and annoyances will beset us.

When we see others carrying umbrellas, it foretells that soon we will be asked for money.

When we borrow an umbrella, we risk having a misunderstanding, perhaps with a warm friend. A warm and dry friend, who sans umbrella, will become a very cold and wet former friend.

When I began writing this post, it was a rainy day. My girl had gone to work, and I was home recovering from a weekend of trade shows. Trade shows, if you have not experienced this strange form of performance art, are the business equivalent to a music festival. Except instead of performing your allotted 30-60 minute set on stage X, you must perform all day. For approximately 7 hours, and I am not counting the set up hours, and the tear down hours, or the many hours pre-show organizing all the event details.

You need a great deal of stamina to be on your feet all day. Said the man who sits on his ass all day. The ubiquitous They say that sitting is the new smoking. They can cite many medical studies to prove this point, but it all comes down to butts in chairs, or butts snuffed out.

Speaking of snuffing butts, we still have the “rental dog”. My brother-in-law is coming to pick her up today. Scarlet the Rental Dog does not like to snuff or sniff butts. She barks at all other dogs, exhibiting classic small dog behaviour. Small dogs get barky when around bigger dogs, sounding off to show off. To say, stay off my lawn! Who invited you to piss and poo on my lawn? The indignity!

Today is a bright sunny day. Time to put the sun umbrella up and start complaining about the heat. Don’t worry, there is still much to complain about. No shortage there.

Even the short dogs are complaining.