How Many Varieties Has Heinz?

It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it. No one else has volunteered, so I’m the man.

Ready? We have to discuss the word “variety.”As long as I can remember, which is about 65 years, the Heinz company has promoted its products with the phrase, “57 Varieties.”

Wrong. Heinz has only one variety. The company’s product line has great variety. It has fifty-seven separate products in its variety.

In order to truthfully have 57 varieties, it would have to have six flavors of catsup, which would make one variety numbering six, seventeen flavors of mustard, which would make one variety numbering 17, and so on, until 57 varieties were reached. It only has one variety of catsup. It can not possibly have 57 varieties.

Go to the grocery store. Look at the indoor signage. You’ll see something like, “Featuring six varieties of apples this week.” Wrong. The store has one variety of apples, numbering six.

See, here’s how it works. “Variety” is a singular noun connoting a number of items. Hence, the hypothetical grocery store would have one variety of apples, one variety of eggs, one variety of potatoes.

I have a variety of children and grandchildren. Believe me, they are various. There is variety among them. But I do not have eight varieties. Gadzooks no, Lord help us all. I have one variety.

Webster says “variety” means the state or quality of being various. It means a different form of some thing, condition, or quality as in “a variety of cloth.” It means a collection of varied things as in “There is a variety of items in the basement.”

Another loss

I heard it, I swear I heard it. Someone said, “I lost a lot of money last night. I didn’t know the one guy was a card shark.”

Wrong. He was a “card sharp.” Now I grant you, it sounds reasonable enough to call somebody a “card shark.” But dammit, that’s not the phrase. It’s “card sharp.”

Assembly vs. congregation

I do hear it at church, sometimes even from the clergy. There will be a reference to the “congregation” when what’s really meant is the “assembly.”

Admittedly, according to Webster, I’m on thin ice with this one. However, I submit: “A man was shot in a bar and curiosity seekers congregated.” Or, “the people assembled for Mass.” They became an assembly, and I wouldn’t use the word “congregation” to describe them.

A congregation is formed at a fight, a fire, an unusual spectacle, a car crash. An assembly is formed at church.

The word assembly just fits better to describe what we do at Mass. We assemble. It’s just more orderly to assemble than to congregate.

Besides, I myself wouldn’t want to be identified as a Congregationalist. See? There’s the crux.

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Is it “upmost” or is it “utmost?”

Webster says “utmost” is something situated at the farthest point or limit, the most extreme or distant. Utmost is of the highest degree, the extreme limit. I did my utmost to win the argument.

Webster also says “upmost” is . . . uppermost. Case closed.

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When I show up at church on a Sunday, if I am assigned an extraordinary duty, I go to the back of the nave where there’s a little clipboard with names on it and I “log in.”

But we’ve probably lost that. What I do when I go to the server to sort my e-mail is I . . . “login.” So do I log in or login? For myself, I’m staying with log in, two words. But I am a big loser.  (editor's note:  according to google blogger spell check, "log in" is correct.)

The local newspaper is especially unmindful of the following:

When it’s time for him to go outside, I put the dog out in the back . . . yard. I do not put him in the . . . “backyard.”

See, here’s how it goes. When the words “back” and “yard” are combined, they are used as a modifier only. This would be the case in “backyard barbecue” or “backyard swimming pool.”

We don’t put the child in the “backseat” of the car. We put the little ankle biter in the . . . back seat. It’s not so difficult to understand, but I am pretty sure it is lost. All gone away, into the morass of jumbled communications.

More on “conversion”

Bear with me please. I know I hammer this subject too much, but I am inspired.

Though I evangelize unceasingly, I hold out no hope that I will be able to persuade anyone to “convert” to the Catholic Church or to Christianity.

Rather, my prayer and my persuasive abilities could more reasonably be expected to succeed if I point out to an individual that he already owns, that he already is, what I am talking about. I am not asking anyone to change who he is, to become something he is not.

My prayer is that each individual will realize and make use of what is already available to him at birth. So far as I am concerned, inside each and every individual human being lives a ready made Catholic waiting to be released.

A man needn’t “convert.” He must realize, to actualize, to set free, who he always was, who he has always been. Most importantly, he must become who he can become, to seek to achieve his highest potential. You don’t change or convert who you are, you become who you are.

O.K., here’s my O’Henry of the week: It’s a sentence lifted entirely out of context from Archbishop Charles Chaput’s column this week:

“Conversion is an unwelcome message for the proud and self-satisfied.”

Gulp. Uh-oh. Well, as Chuck Berry once wrote, “Meanwhile, I was still thinkin’. . . "

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Word of the week: Impasse. It’s from the French. It means a passage open only at one end: a blind alley, hence a situation from which there is no escape; a difficulty with solution or a deadlock. I am at an impasse with the concept of “conversion.”