When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops

MEN: THE SPORTS SECTION

JIM: I see where Petey Whelan died the other day. They say he had a tumor on him the size of a beach ball.

When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops

ED: No kiddin? That one under his arm? Jesus, it musta...

JIM: It sure did. I can remember the day I first saw it; it was small, like a marble. Then almost overnight it looked like a golf ball. I couldn’t believe it!

TOM: That was the day he showed it to me. By the time I saw it, it looked more like a slightly enlarged handball, maybe just approaching racquetball size. I spent about an hour with him, and as I was leavin’, I glanced at it. The damn thing looked like a te

mean it had fuzz on it or anything. I just mean it was the size of a te

JIM: Yeah. That’s when he went to the hospital. He said on the way over in the taxi it went from a baseball to a softball, and then, in the waiting room, it reached the size of a small, regulation volleyball. Finally, when he got into the examining room, the doctors were so alarmed at its growth they smashed it with a big fryin’ pan, and it temporarily flattened out into an oval shape.

When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops

ED: I remember that. For about an hour it resembled a...

TOM: Yeah. Then it slowly became round again, but it kept on gettin’ bigger. Suddenly, it developed big black spots all over it.

When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops

ED: The soccer-ball stage.

TOM: Yeah. Of course, by that time the situation was hopeless. Pretty soon the thing was up to the size of a basketball, and before you knew it, it had gone right past medicine ball and was headin’ for beach-ball status. They finally had to move him out of his room and put him in the gymnasium.

When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops

ED: Appropriate. How did he die, anyway?

JIM: They tried to operate on him, but as soon as they made an incision all the air rushed out of him. Death by deflation.

TOM: Poor guy. ED: Yeah. TOM: Hey, you know what we forgot? Lacrosse and polo.

SOARING AND PLUNGING IN THE MEDIA

One of my pet pursuits is keeping track of how the news media describe those things in the news that increase or decrease. I can generally rely on the fact that the same verbs will be used repeatedly in the same situations.

One of the first things I noticed is that while certain things skyrocket, others tend to mushroom. Medical costs skyrocket. The national debt doesn’t do that; it mushrooms. And, experts warn, if present trends continue, both of these things will eventually #0 through the roof.

But mushrooming is not the only thing the national debt does; it also balloons. There aren’t too many things that balloon. The a

So, thus far we’ve skyrocketed, mushroomed and ballooned. But let’s not forget snowballing. You know what snowballs? An investigation. What happens is, an inquiry becomes an investigation, and the investigation begins to snowball. And what does it snowball into? Right! A full-blown probe. And if the probe uncovers enough dirt, it could possibly mushroom into a full-blown scandal.

Then we have the case of swelled. During the 1990s, job rolls swelled. By the way, I’ve often wondered if those job rolls are at all similar to the welfare rolls we used to hear so much about. Just between you and me, I’ve never actually seen welfare rolls, but I’m sure that with a little margarine or jelly they re quite delicious. And it’s certainly heartening to see the food stamp program working so effectively.

Getting back to our subject here, I’ve found that one of the best places to keep an eye on these “up and down” words is Wall Street. Financial reporting. For purposes of this activity, I’ll use hypothetical examples of economic activity that don’t actually reflect recent conditions. I can’t keep adjusting this material according to the whims of the economy. And besides, this is about language, not finance.

Just to review: We’ve already skyrocketed, mushroomed, ballooned, snowballed and swelled. Now, as we enter the world of Wall Street, we add a few simpler verbs: climb, surge and jump. “The stock market climbed today as prices surged on news that housing starts had. jumped ten. percent.” Lots of action.

Another big thing on Wall Street is soaring. “Stock prices soared today, as reports showed earnings were up sharply.” Or they may have shot upward. At any rate, upward is good. I remember one time hearing Lou Dobbs himself telling me that the Dow Jones Industrials had vaulted upward two hundred points. And, on the same day, not to be left too far behind, the long bond inched higher.

Then we have the very special case of spiraling. The nice thing about spiraling is that it can go in either direction. “As medical costs have spiraled upward, the quality of medical care has spiraled downward.” And not only do these two medical numbers spiral upward and downward, both of them are actually capable of spiraling out of control.

Spiraling downward brings us to the verbs for things that are falling. For some reason, downward verbs are more colorful than upward verbs. Down

ward is where we discover plunge, plummet and nosedive. You can always tell when a bull market is over, because bousing starts plunge, new-car sales plummet and orders for durable goods take a nosedive. At a time like that, stock prices are usually on the verge of collapse.

Or, instead of collapsing, they may simply tumble, drop sharply or go into a tailspin. And if stock prices are in a tailspin, you can be sure it won’t be long before they find themselves in a dizzying free fall.

Continuing with bear markets, not all days are so dramatic. Occasionally, prices only dip slightly. Dip slightly is the opposite of edge higher.

And before we leave these words for increasing and decreasing, I would like to make special mention of beefed up. I remember reading once that, in anticipation of a visit by Yassir Arafat, security at the United Nations had been beefed up.

Arafat being a Muslim, of course, beef would be the preferred meat. You certainly wouldn t want security to htporked up. I can think of any number of reasons why we wouldn’t want that. And by the way, if you’ve ever seen some of these security people, you know that the last thing they need is more pork. Or beef. Or food of any kind, for that matter.

Beefed up is one of those terms that has no exact opposite. Nothing ever gets beefed down. They never say, “Now that Arafat’s visit has concluded, security at the United Nations has been beefed down.” Doesn’t sound right. Instead, they say scaled back. Always remember, anything that’s been beefed up can be scaled back. Although occasionally, for variety’s sake, rather than scaled back the item may be pared down.

Hiked and mmmed are two more good uup and down” examples. Quite often, during the same session of Congress, defense spending will be hiked while education spending is trimmed. And sometimes, if Congress is in a really bad mood, education spending is slashed, and defense spending skyrockets.

Well, we’ve gone from sky-high to rock bottom and we seem to be winding

down now, so let me add one last item: I think I may have figured out the difference between ramping up and ratcheting up. I’m pretty sure that while ramping up takes place on a continuum, ratcheting up is more a series of increments. But I do find it interesting that, as with the beef situation, I rarely hear of ramping or ratcheting down. As for me, I’m at wit’s end.