The Fourth, and Other Things

Yesterday - the day, that is; the night was a different matter - was a sluggish one for me; I achieved very little, though I did hold the ritual viewing of 1776. The night... I anticipated the far-away fireworks of the early evening. I did not anticipate the much closer and (therefore) much louder and brighter fireworks show put on by one of my nearby neighbors, which began around 10 PM. This was so situated that every flash was visible through the blinds of my bedroom window. Needless to say, Gracie was very much upset by all of this, and given her propensities, when Gracie's upset, the whole household is upset. They finally shut down around 11 or 11:30. I was still awake at 1 AM.

Despite this, and despite the continuing heat (EHW in place until Saturday at 10 PM), I planned to go onto campus today to meet with a student. However, he was having computer difficulties, and his e-mail cancelling reached me about half an hour before I would have had to leave. I gratefully decided to stay home.

Today was even less productive than yesterday. Tomorrow, I will probably have to pay a visit to Kohl's, to replenish my diminished stock of pants. I hope I'll get a decent night's sleep....

Tonight's Movie

Tonight I watched my tape of "The Kennel Murder Case", a 1933 mystery starring William Powell as Philo Vance. It's a pretty good movie, but the audio on the tape was in bad shape; I had to crank up the volume twice, the second time to the max. If I want to keep the movie in my collection, I'll probably have to buy the DVD.

One thing struck me. Towards the end of the movie, several people used the word "suspect" - the noun, that is. All of them pronounced it with stress on the second syllable; in my experience, the noun is stressed on the first syllable, and the verb on the second. (This isn't an unusual pattern; cf. "project", "object", and - a variation - "defend/defense".) Was the word regularly pronounced that way in the '30s, or was it simply not yet familiar enough, so that the director (or whoever) thought it was pronounced that way? (Compare its memorable pronunciation in "Casablanca", less than a decade later.)

Is a puzzlement.