1829 Virginia Lit. Museum 30 Dec. 459 Mosey, to move off. 1836 Public Ledger (Philadelphia) 2 Dec., You'r not going to smoke me. So mosey off. 1838 J. C. NEAL Charcoal Sketches i. (1850) 17 If your tongue wasn't so thick I'd say you must mosey; but moseying is only to be done when a gemman's half shot. 1870 ‘M. TWAIN’ Curious Republic Gondour (1919) 57, I hain't got time to be palavering along here{em}got to..mosey along. a1877 N.Y. Tribune in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (1877), I'll get a room nicely furnished, and my wife and I will jes mosey along till the election trouble is over. 1885 ‘C. E. CRADDOCK’ Prophet Great Smokey Mts. xiii. 233 Hurry 'long, D'rindy,..you-uns ain't goin' ter reel a hank ef ye don't mosey. 1902 W. N. HARBEN Abner Daniel 59 Now I must mosey on down-stairs. 1918 Punch 27 Mar. 206/1 Her funnel's caked with Cape Horn ice and blistered in the sun, She's moseyed round above a bit, and, poor old ship, she's done. 1935 H. L. DAVIS Honey in Horn iii. 21 In the fall bears sometimes moseyed in to feed. 1961 C. MCCULLERS Clock without Hands v. 111 While Mr Malone made up the Coca-Cola, Jester moseyed over to the scales and stood on them. 1974 D. RAMSAY No Cause to Kill II. 134, I thought I'd mosey on over to the liquor store. 2000 Denver Post 26 Nov. C6/2 The hunters moseyed back to the woods for the afternoon hunt.

1758 E. RAPER Jrnl. 18 Dec. in Receipt Bk. 20 Nothing but Uncles and Apothecarys, muzzed at home. 1779 F. BURNEY Diary 11 Jan., If you but knew..who I shall see to-night, you would not dare keep me muzzing here. 1794 J. WILLIAMS Parental Didactics 18 And that high royal corps snug and sublime, Who muz majestic in the court ycleped Crane.
3. trans. To render muzzy or confused; to befuddle. Cf. MUZZLE v.2
1786 F. PILON He would be Soldier IV. i. 51 And a choice companion he is; only apt to get muzz'd too soon. 1788 J. WOODFORDE Diary 14 Jan. (1927) III. 3 He returned about 3 o'clock, quite muzzed by liquor. 1794 J. WILLIAMS Shrove Tuesday 6 When the nocturnal orgie'd muzz'd his brain. 1865 Sat. Rev. 17 June 727/1 A certain judge was in the habit of muzzing himself by plenteous libations. 1882 H. BRADSHAW in G. W. Prothero Mem. (1888) viii. 259 A very heavy cold on me..muzzed my head. 1909 ‘Q’ True Tilda xx. 281 Mother says it comes of muzzing my head with books. 1973 ‘G. BLACK’ Bitter Tea x. 165 Drugs don't seem to have muzzed you.

Thence to:
MUSE, v.[< Anglo-Norman and Old French, Middle French muser (12th cent.) prob. < an unattested Old French noun *mus face (see MUZZLE n.1). Cf. Old Occitan muzar to gape (12th cent.; Occitan musar), Catalan musar to dream away the time, Italian (arch.) musare to idle, loaf around (13th cent.), to gape, wonder (c1300), (of an animal) to hold the snout up, sniff about (15th cent.), post-classical Latin musare to stare, waste time (1311 in a British source).
The widely divergent sense development in Old French app. has its origin in the description of different facial expressions: the sense ‘to ponder, reflect’ (c1170; cf. senses 1, 2) is perh. orig. descriptive of the contemplative look of a person deep in thought; the sense ‘to waste time, idle, loaf around’ (c1170, but prob. earlier: cf. musart absent-minded, foolish (1086)) is perh. orig. descriptive of a gaping, staring look; likewise the Anglo-Norman sense ‘to gape, stare, wonder, marvel’ (c1180; cf. sense 3); and the spec. sense ‘to play the bagpipe’ (c1120; cf. MUSE n.2) is perh. orig. descriptive of the puffed-up cheeks of the bagpiper.
With sense 4a cf. French regional (chiefly Walloon) muser to murmur, hum, howl. With sense 6 cf. Old Occitan muzar to wait in vain (12th cent.).
In sense 7 perh. partly after Italian; cf.:

&c. &c.

Or to:
MOSEY, a. and n.
3. regional (chiefly Eng. regional (midl.). Confused, bewildered; out of sorts; fuddled through drinking alcohol; foolish, stupid.

1887 T. DARLINGTON Folk-speech S. Cheshire 257 My yed's a bit mawzy. 1887 T. DARLINGTON Folk-speech S. Cheshire 257 This puthery weather mays me feil räther mawzy. a1903 H. KINGSFORD in Eng. Dial. Dict. (1903) IV. 168/1 [S. Worcestershire] I fils mausy like to-dahy, I rickons as it be the weather. 1922 J. JOYCE Ulysses 152 And that other old mosey lunatic in those duds. 1995 J. SIMS-KIMBREY Wodds & Doggerybaw 195/1 Moosy, moozy, not very bright. Befuddle-brained.

¹ Roberto di Zimmermanni: My late, great friend Gerry Denn was very keen on both Mozart and Bob Dylan; and stoutly maintained that the latter, had he lived in Mozart's day, would have changed his birth-name from Robert Zimmerman to this.

² Fashes: afflictions; troubles, from OFr. fascher (Fr. fâcher) but (as my Scottish Grandmother used to say) “Dinna fash yersel’ aboot it!”

³ kryptonidal---appertaining to hidden nests; quite possibly a coinage and almost certainly a nonce-word if not an actual nonsense word.

⁴ This is probably the true explanation for the apparent shaking of the barley by the wind.

The title refers to the (purely British?) saying ‘I don’t fancy yours much’. Etymologically speaking, there are these two blokes who are out for the night, and see two girls across a crowded bar and of course start to talk about them. One (the alpha, or would-be alpha, male) says “I don't fancy yours much,” implying that he considers one of the girls much more attractive than the other, with the further implication that should they manage to arrange an assignation with the girls he is claiming that one: then by extension to similar choices and thence, finally, to general disapprobation.
And since flights of fancy now just lead to the jet-lag of fancy...
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¹ You know, one day I should do an essay on the fact that ‘bunch’ is the only extant American collective noun and that ‘whole’ is its only intensive

² Dare I say it’s becoming like that notorious DARE program, which, it’s widely accepted, has practically no (or even a negative) effect on the problem it’s supposed to address, but has far too much money and far too much inertia involved in it to stop it.

³ it was like something from a remake of Total Recall

The title is a ref to Daisy Ashford’s (or should that be Ashferd’s?) The Young Visiters for no very good reason.

¹ “opine” not, of course, ‘An amino acid whose molecule contains a guanido group’; but either a nouning of the verb, or a back-formation from opinion, or just me getting off on apocope with a side order of Little Orphan Annie.

¹ “...port” interestingly the alcoholic beverage, and the absence of that which has driven me to it, have some etymological connections since the wine derives from the Portuguese port of Pôrto from Lat. 'portus' as does the 'port' part of passport

________________________________
The Power of the Media
Wow! Two hours after this was first broadcast I had the passport in my hand.
And (since I don't believe in coincidence) it was obviously all because of the power of the media.

¹ "...propensities": this is le mot juste when you consider as its etymon the Latin 'pendere' to hang.

² 'Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres'---Cæsaris Commentarii De Bello Gallico.

³ 'My first thought was, he lied in every word,That hoary cripple, with malicious eye'---Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came

The title is from the well-known children’s song 'wanna go riding in my Car, Car'.
The words (as I learned them) include:

Horn goes ‘Beep! Beep!’
Horn go-oes ‘Beep! Beep!’
The horn goes ‘Beep! Beep!’
Riding in my car. ...

Breaks go-o ‘Screech! Screech!’ ( X 3 )...

Pedestrian goes ‘Squelch! Squelch!’ ( X 3 )
Run over by my car...

Policeman goes ‘’ello, ’ello, ’ello!’ ...

Magistrate goes ‘Tut! Tut!’... etc.
It can be extended or interpolated ad libitum

Glossary:
¹ licence: that’s ‘license’ to you Mercans
² torch-enhanced: that’s ‘flashlight-enhanced’ to you Mercans
³ pounds, shillings and pence: that’s ‘dollars and cents’ to you Mercans
⁴ tyres: that’s ‘tires’ to you Mercans
⁵ dual carriageway: that’s ‘divided highway’ to you Mercans
⁶ divided highway: that’s ... Oh! Never mind.

⁷ f___: Taboo usage presents a difficult dilemma to the more sensitive broadcaster; after all I’m reporting speech, and doing so accurately as far as I remember (see the opening para of the essay), and further I think the fabled F-word works artistically in context: but, chicken as the broadcasting industry is, I felt i just HAD to de-uck this for the on-air version ’cause, of course, we need the eggs. You can hear the whole thing in all its fucking glory on-line. [Let your mouse dwell for a moment or two on Rowie's ear, above next to the title.]