"My mother put her hands on my shoulders, looked me straight in the eye, and gave me her best motherly advice:  "don't screw it up, Alton"

from The Cardturner by Louis Sachar

A "Brazen Act of Plunder"

"Every few years, the Congress of the United States of America voted generous price supports for a handful of millionaires in the great state of Florida.  The crop that made them millionaires was sugar, the price of which was grossly inflated and guaranteed by the US government.  This brazen act of plunder accomplished two things:  it kept American growers very wealthy, and it undercut the struggling economies of poor Caribbean nations, which could't sell their own bounties of cane to the United States at even half the bogus rate."

from Strip Tease by Carl Hiaasen

I love Carl Hiaasen; his books are wacky, risqué, and are a call to protect the environment .

more on sugar subsidies here
http://www.coha.org/u-s-sugar-subsidies-and-the-caribbeans-sugar-economies/

No ID Required at Gun Shows

"Make no mistake:  I'm all about guns! I just love the legal incongruities our national discourse has spawned, like I can buy a shotgun any time of day without the slightest background check, but if I need something for my sniffles, it's six forms of  ID and complete school transcripts.  The government essentially created a system where if I want to clear a head cold, the easiest cure is to blow my brains out."

From Striptease by Carl Hiaasen

last year Oregon required ID to buy nail polish (because acetone is used in the preparation of meth)  this requirement was later removed, but most states still require ID to buy cough syrup, drain cleaner, and supermarkets keep baby formula behind cabinet doors.

"That's another danger I see in the lives of our aging parents:  

Their worlds are have become so small that they can't tolerate anything 

they haven't seen before; 

and only associate with people 

just like them.

I'd as soon avoid that."

Starboard and Larboard

The Vikings called the side of their ship its board, 

They placed the steering oar, the "star" on the right side of the ship, 

thus that side became known as the "star board." 

.... And, because the oar was in the right side, 

the ship was tied to the dock at the left side. 

This was known as the loading side or "larboard". 

Later, it was decided that "larboard" and "starboard" were too similar, especially when trying to be heard over the roar of a heavy sea, so the phrase became the "side at which you tied up to in port" or the "port" side.

from http://www.navy.mil/navydata/traditions/html/navyterm.html

this also explains why people who fall off ships go "overboard"

image from bbc.co.uk

Hunky-Dory

The story is that it came from a street named "Honki-Dori" (or Huncho-dori) in Yokohama, Japan. Since the inhabitants of this street catered to the pleasures of sailors, it is said the street's name became synonymous for anything that is enjoyable.

The problem is that the term came from a song that became popular during the US Civil War and 

"Japan was not opened to foreign ships until Commodore Perry's visit in 1854.

It seems somewhat doubtful that the Yokohama theory holds water. More likely, hunky-dory was already a slang term when American sailors first had shore leave to Huncho-dori Street."

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1495/whats-the-origin-of-hunky-dory

Snarky

Snarky means:

crochety, snide, snappish, sharply critical, cutting, sarcastic, impertinent, or irreverent in tone or manner.  Doubtlessly, this includes most people (at some point) when dealing with humans.