The Daily Feather — Pudding First, Meat to Follow

“If you don't eat your meat, you can't have any pudding!

How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?”

Pink Floyd, Another Brick in the Wall

The album’s lead song was the band’s only No. 1 hit in the UK and U.S. Pink Floyd’s only album that sold more copies than “The Wall’s” 30 million was “Dark Side of the Moon.” It was the best-selling double album of all time. It was entrancing when it was released on November 30, 1979, bursting with anger, violence and despair all at once. But hey, I was just a kid. All I wanted to know was what the devil was “pudding”? Demoralized because I was part of the American subculture, too base to speak the Queen’s English, this young Yank was too intimidated to ask. While a purist will tell you “pudding” refers to everything from Plum (Christmas), Black, and Yorkshire to Sticky Toffee, Steak & Kidney, and Pease puddings, the truth is, it’s dessert. Why couldn’t they just make things easier for us plebian New Worlders and translate “pudding” to “dessert”? And for heaven’s sake, a “biscuit” is served hot, with gravy. That’s not a cookie!

Speaking of nonsense, on Wednesday, I was minding my business, writing my Quill tribute to Arthur Cashin and listening to Andrew Ross Sorkin pitch one softball after another to Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. My laptop went flying, however, when these words flew out of his mouth after he’d explained that September’s 50-basis-point rate was meant to send “a strong signal that we were going to support the labor market if it continued to weaken. What happened instead was in the couple of months after that, we got some data revisions, which strongly suggests that the economy is even stronger than we thought.”