2948 What The Fuck Is A Dance Card?

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The page title is a little tongue in cheek but I suspect there are a lot of younger readers who actually don’t know what a dance card is because they haven’t been relevant to our society for a very, very, long time. I will explain for those of you who can’t put it together from context clues. I expect there are still a few very fancy places that still use them. It’s the kind of thing southerners seem like they would be really into, especially if they raise horses and have gala balls. If you know you know… Anyway, a dance card is literally a little card that you schedule dances with specific people on so that a formal dance occasion has some structure and you don’t have people stuck without a partner. Some of them are more like little books with many “cards” in them. It’s actually pretty straightforward, but I will be half a century old in a mater of weeks and I have never seen one in real life. I only know of them because of reading about them when I was younger. My guess is that the kind of people willing to tolerate my brand of webcomicing are also the kind of people who would like to read about old things. So you may already know about something like this, but not everyone reads about the same old things. Being ignorant of something isn’t a moral failing generally. Sometimes things fade from regular life and nothing keeps them in the cultural zeitgeist anymore. I couldn’t even tell you the last time someone has said “dance card” in my presence. It used to be a common saying. You have probably noticed that I tend to pepper my work with odd turns of phrase that are regional or archaic. That sort of thing is true to my life because I like peppering my own speech with the same kinds of things. In my old friend groups, over time, everyone would adapt to each other’s mode of speech and my contribution were odd turns of phrase, old slang, and that sort of thing. I have a very forceful personality and it naturally influences people even passively.
I’ll give you an example. At one point in time instead of saying “I’m sick of your bullshit.” I said “I am far tired of your bullshit.” to someone. It isn’t exactly an incorrect way to say that. Far is not orders of magnitude different from very in its extended meanings. You might say something is far, far, away. You might also say something is very far away. My friends at the time thought the turn of phrase was amusing and adopted it as an in joke until it just became common parlance. All new phraseology basically starts out this way. There are so many common idioms we use regularly that didn’t exist at all when I was little. New ones pop into culture all the time, like rizz. Also some things fade away. I haven’t ever heard anyone say 23 skidoo in context over the course of my entire life outside of old cartoons. I have heard a little kid say six seeeeeeven though, and it is functionally identical. Language is alive the same way culture is. Contribute to it with a fun turn of phrase sometime. I hope it eventually makes its way to my ears, even if I might not like it when it does. XD

In other news I have a home apnea thing to do tonight. I’m hoping my doctor set it up with some sort of scheme in mind that won’t result in me having to pay a lot of money to do it, or to replace my current apnea machine. That is the kind of thing he’s always trying to do. In fact his various schemes are often elaborate ploys to save his patients money. I was actually surprised that there were still doctors in the world who did things like that. I have lost a lot of faith in the medical profession generally over the last couple of decades, but I always seem to run into these altruists that help maintain some level of faith not only in medicine, but humanity in general. In any case my bi-pap has been operating outside of its operational lifespan for about 5 years now. Its effectiveness has pretty clearly diminished over time. Maybe this little adventure will result in something positive. The girl who gave me the test kit was surprised when I told her I sleep from around 8 AM to around 5 PM. For some reason she had to give it a definitive start time instead of just having me turn it on. I don’t really sleep that long usually. I just tend to sleep in a six hour range that starts and stops within those ranges right now. It’s just been me and dad for most of the last three months or so, which causes my sleep schedule to shift so that I sleep when dad isn’t in the house so I’m awake when he is. Plus I naturally gravitate to wanting to wake up at about noon if left to my own devices. Given the choice I prefer to slink around in the dark when it’s not so hot, even in winter.

Anyway, I’m approaching being ten minutes late to post this page, so I’ll leave it at that. I hope the week so far has been good to you. Please take note of the various support links peppered about the page if you appreciate what I’m doing with this whole thing. On Friday we can get together again to see what these fictional people are doing. I look forward to meeting you then. Until that glorious moment arrives, remember to startle predators by flapping your arms to look big. Especially at the office.