NTMP 101: Uranus Chocolate Fort

A deadly wave of nacho cheese

New-To-Me Phrases, February 18, 2024

Ladder fuels * Broflakes * Hard loft * The Great Molasses Flood * Umarell * Open book bar * Like Medieval Times, but for cheese

Photo by ANGELA NEWMAN on Unsplash

Hello there! Another week, another batch of phrases. It’s a good system.

I want to let you in on a little NTMP secret: Almost every week, at some point I wonder if I’ll have enough phrases to fill a newsletter. And then I’ll find like three things in a row. Since 2018 I think there’s been one or two weeks where I’ve found one or even no phrases. The words provide. Always.

This week, we have asshole trees, the best-ever wedding favor, a very gouda Midwestern icon, and more.

Let’s get to it!

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The Phrases, With Context

1. Ladder fuels

I’m still making my way through The Last Fire Season, a memoir about the 2020 wildfires in California written by Manjula Martin. Because clever phrasing is the province of memoirists, I’m not surprised to have found a few already.

Here’s context for this one (emphasis mine):

In mixed forest habitats like the one I lived in, bay trees were notorious fire spreaders. If left unmanaged, they grew tall and fast to compete for sun, and in a wildfire scenario served as ladder fuels that allowed fire to climb from the forest floor into the canopy, where it could move uncontrolled and kill even large, fire-resilient trees.

I find the social and natural alchemy of wildfires fascinating, and one of the biggest takeaways from this book so far is that the people indigenous to our country knew how to live with the reality of wildfires. Not in a “magical Native American” sort of way, but in a “land management by people who knew what the fuck they were doing” sort of way. The OG residents understood how to tend the land in ways that mitigated against megafires occurring. When colonizers showed up, when we weren’t depleting entire areas of timber, ores, and wildlife, we applied a hands-off approach in order to preserve certain wild spaces to keep them pristine, which turned out to be ecologically harmful, as we’re seeing today. This form of land management went on for decades, and despite changes in policy to account for fire, that earlier forestry mismanagement is still a major factor in western wildfires today.

2. Broflakes

As Matt Bernstein pointed out on Instagram, who would’ve thought that the homecoming king and queen of America, a straight white couple where the man is a football player and the woman is a country-pop singer, would invoke the wrath of conservatives, who are big mad about Taylor and Travis?

I keep wanting to bang on the side of the America like an old TV on the fritz.

::bang-bang:: “Is this thing on?”

Anyway, through all of this we (via NTMP reader Mel) got a new-to-us word—broflakes:

All joking aside, to my readers who are fans and who are either from KC, have loved ones there, and/or live there now, I am sorry for your pain in the wake of the shooting during the post-game parade. We don’t have to live like this, and we shouldn’t have to live like this. I honestly think it’s going to take a constitutional convention started by citizens to force Congress to act on gun control and enact campaign finance laws and enshrine voting rights, and I’m here to tell you I am ready and willing to be in that fight. Let the broflakes stay home and whine about it.

3. Hard loft

I learned this phrase during the Artspace meeting I attended in my town last week—I wrote about that here. I did not know there were different types of lofts, but there are at least two: hard lofts and soft lofts. (I like the rhyme in soft loft, like, a lot.) Are there fluffy lofts? Mushy ones?

The definitions I found tend to vary in some of the details, but in general a hard loft is developed from an existing commercial or industrial building like a warehouse and a soft loft is built from the start as a residential unit. The concrete, metal and exposed brick common in hard lofts are thought to be the the source of the name.

4. The Great Molasses Flood

Someone asked Sharon McMahon for ideas for a school report about events during the 1920s and she suggested this topic.

According to Wikipedia, in 1919 a huge storage tank filled with 2.3 million gallons (!) of molasses (?) exploded (!!), creating a wave of molasses 25 feet high¹ (!!!) at its peak that moved at 35 miles per hour (!!!!), killing 21 people and injuring hundreds (!!!!!).

This event is also known as The Boston Molasses Disaster, which I think has catchy assonance, but a molasses flood is definitely more descriptive and memorable. One Boston Globe headline called this event a “deadly wave of molasses,” which, I’m sorry, made me giggle. Don’t sit with me at memorial services, okay?

The rescue and cleanup efforts are fascinating to read about, as is the negligence of the company that owned the tank, which “leaked so badly that it was painted brown to hide the leakage. Local residents collected leaked molasses for their homes.” 👀

Here are more images and newspaper articles, courtesy of Boston Public Library.

5. Umarell

I love the meaning of this word so very much. You can literally picture it once you hear the meaning. But I also really wanted to share this short video with you about an act of love humorously rendered in the form of DIY construction by Brendan Leonard at Semi-Rad, a Patreon I support because I enjoy his writing and videos.

In the video, Leonard explains that an umarell is an Italian expression describing “a retired man who stands and watches construction sites, typically with his hands clasped behind his back.” While the word itself translates from Italian as “little man,” according to Wikipedia, its current meaning was coined in 2005 by a Bolognese writer describing this behavior.

6. Open book bar

NTMP stan Rebecca sent this one - this tweet from a Vancouver bookstore speaks for itself here:

7. Like Medieval Times, but for cheese

My friend Dennis Lee wrote about his trip to Midwestern Mecca Mars Cheese Castle—a familiar sight for Chicagoans and suburbanites heading north—in his Chicago foodie newsletter, The Party Cut. Dennis describes the cheese store/restaurant just across the Illinois/Wisconsin border as “like Medieval Times, but for cheese.” This is perfect, except there’s no jousting unless you want to start some.

Dennis also wrote the cover story for this month’s print issue of Bon Appetit, about the best hot dogs in Chicago. 🌭🎉👏🏻

Bonus Bits

1. The airport Chex Mix tracker

Found via Lyz Lenz at

Men Yell at Me

, a comedian started tracking the price of Chex Mix at different airports in her Notes app and tweeted about it, inviting others to join in. (Using Apple Notes for stupid shit like this is literally one of my favorite things.) And there’s a spreadsheet!

I’m flying soon, so I’m going to add to the spreadsheet, assuming my plane doesn’t lose a door or I don’t die of terror when maggots drop on anyone from the overhead compartment during the flight. 😫 #nope

Dear universe: No more scary or gross airline news for the next three weeks, please and thank you.

2. Celebrate this stealth move by a bored copywriter/sentient AI 😎

That’s it for this week! Remember to keep making it weird, and stay furiously curious.

1. A plaque at the site says the wave reached 40 feet high (!!!!!!)