Wednesday wordage, Yiddish Edition

The classic, classic definition of the Yiddish word “chutzpah” is murdering your parents and then pleading for leniency before the court because you’re an orphan.  This has been superseded by a new definition provided by Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union and a “loyal supporter of Donald Trump,” in an interview with NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly:

KELLY: You're saying you agree that the situation at the border is a national emergency.

SCHLAPP: I agree that the situation at the border is an emergency. It's a humanitarian crisis, and America needs to solve the problem.

KELLY: And I - and I'm just trying to square that because when we interview members of Congress - Republicans and Democrats who represent the border - they say it's not an emergency.

SCHLAPP: Well, then why did two kids die?

Yup, there you have it.  We killed a couple of kids, and therefore we need to have a national emergency to build the f***ing wall so we stop killing kids.  

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

Wednesday wordage, neologism proposal.

Frustratisfaction?  Satisfrustration?  What’s the word for when your schemes succeed beyond your plans, and you have some new issue, not entirely bad but time-consuming, to deal with?

Over the years we have acquired some animals that have been damaged, whether deliberately or innocently, and have all the signs of PTSD.  And, over the years, we have worked patiently to cawlm them down, win them over, and develop trust and tranquility that had been lost.  It takes effort—when we first got T., I feared that I would never be able to catch her at all.  Trying to touch D like trying to bring together the north poles of two magnets.  The first time I tried milking L it took 45 minutes.  But, there’s things you can do, if you are patient (and if you have someone like the Real Doctor show you how to do them) and can bring some measure of peace to these animals’ troubled minds.

And now, after a few years of work, here we are.  T, even though she is not being milked, gets in the way of the animals coming off the milk stand because she wants attention; I can braid her beard, and she’s fine with it.  D will do anything for a peanut, and has taken to blockading the exit of the milk stand until I give her a good scratching.  L is still a little nervous on the stand, but is mostly just one of the herd.  She will not move off the stand at all until she gets that spot on her shoulder scratched; her eyes, even now open wide most of the time in a look of extreme alertness and timidity, start to close a little, and then almost shut, as her head slowly arches back and her tongue starts to loll out of her mouth, as for a brief moment, from the demons in her head that torment her, she gains respite...

...but it kind of holds up the progress of getting the milking done.

Wednesday Words, pictures edition

Well, it looks as though Prince Valiant has joined the resistance.

I am no longer ashamed to admit that Prince Valiant is perhaps my favorite cartoon in the Sunday Papers, jostling out Frazz and Doonesbury (this ranking is only for newspaper comics, not web comics).  When I was a wee lad, I thought it was just soooooo hokey and dumb and unhip.  It might have been—it was kind of a fossil, going back to the 1930’s or so, and preserved in amber by successors to the original creator.  Heck, it was the favorite strip of the exceedingly callow, Nazi-curious Edward, Duke of Windsor.  But the more I look at it today, the more I like it.  It’s anachronistic, but it is original—every other strip in the paper adheres to more or less the same aesthetic formula, but Val stands alone.

Not only does Prince Valiant follow its own aesthetic muse, but it does so brilliantly.  People talk seriously about graphic novels as art, praising the layout of panels and the interplay of art within panels that drives the story forward or makes a larger point—and Valiant does exactly that, week after week.  The artwork itself is formidable, the colors vivid.  Look at the Sunday Funnies page from a distance, Valiant will stand out.  Look at it a little closer, the panel layout (which is never the same) flows.  Look at the text and the story, it matches the layout.  Look at the details, and they are rich.

Now, thanks to the n-th generation heirs of Hal Foster, Prince Valiant is woke.  The cast of characters is pretty diverse for medieval Europe, and people of non-Euro ethnicities play key roles in the stories.  Women do a whole lot more than faint and wait for the prince—they drive stories, are warriors, are politically savvy rulers of their own kingdoms.  This is the Dark Ages for the modern, multi-cultural world.

The most recent story arc highlights this hipness (the strip still moves in multi-month long stories) It features the Queen of the Misty Isles (Valiant’s spouse, but a queen in her own right, and on her own in this story) facing down a treasonous senator.  The senator, motivated by a hatred of foreigners, attempts to whip up popular support by demagoguery.  He colludes, treasonously—that’s the language in the strip—with a somewhat hostile foreign empire to try to seize power from the rightful queen.  He is thwarted, in part, by the Queen’s political savvy, an Amazon warrior, a boatload of immigrants, and his own two ne’er-do-well nincompoop sons.  Very, very with it!

So, all I have to say is, Rock on! Prince Valiant, Queen Aleta, and the rest of y’all.  Stay woke!  You GO!  And, hey, maybe could you come into our century and get medieval on somebody’s ass...

Wednesday Words, odds ‘n’ ends

Got some of that Prairie Dog Food again, and did a double take on the receipt.

Passed a musical instrument store that was advertising “Amp blowout sale.” No thanks.  Reminds me of a sign I saw in Madison for a “Vacuum cleaner blowout sale.”  Could be worse.  Handkerchief blowout sale?  Tire blowout sale?

Passed a marquee outside a business that said “I look forward to a day when a chicken can cross the road and not have its motivations questioned.”

The Salvation Army store had a sign advertising:

LADIES

BLOUSES

AND 

BOOKS

I’m getting increasingly irked by people using “horde” for “hoard” and vice versa.  I guess I should be grateful that they are not using “whored.”

Wednesday Words, uncomfortable echoes edition

Ok, so if you’re a Jew, then certain words or phrases can make you a little uncomfortable.  And when these words get used, in an offhand, unconscious way, especially by or about government types, then it gets worse.  So, just from the last week:

The president* talks about a class of people “infesting” the country.

A radio reporter talks about the head of the Department of Homeland Security “making the trains run on time.”

The president* wants a new branch of the armed forces, which will be “separate but equal.”

Update, OK, I am now in shock.  The Department of Homeland Security has issued a press release headlined with Fourteen Words beginning “We Must Secure...”. They’re not even trying to hide it any more.

Wednesday Wordage--Ursula K. LeGuin

So, Ursula K. LeGuin died yesterday.  I've read a handful of her books, and definitely need to read more; the ones that I've read were uniformly excellent and expanding--both literary and imaginative, and challenging.

I am a fan of the notion of "canon."  I like the idea that there can be a body of work that is held in common, that everybody can refer to, and that any idea can be deepened by reference to a line or a character from canon.  I can, for instance, complain that my brother is dumping a lot of responsibility on me with regard to my parents' estate--or I can do the same, and say "am I my brother's keeper" and tie in to the whole business with Cain and Abel and guilt and primogeniture and responsibility and sin.

The idea of canon has become a little bit frayed of late, and with some reason.  Until just a few decades ago, canon was very white and very male and very straight and highly Christian.  And, also, very dead.  Whole new genres are out there--TV, movies, Pop music, propaganda posters--and some things really should be part of everybody's reference.  They're not taught in a culture class in school, though they are getting to the point where maybe they ought to be.  I've been a complete outsider in some conversations because of unfamiliarity with "Star Wars" or the works of Bob Dylan.

Science Fiction is another one of these new genres, and while there is no official canon, you can ask a  hundred fans and there are some books that will be almost universally referenced.  A lot of folks will talk about "golden age" sci-fi; Asimov, Doc Smith, Burroughs, and so on.  Well, since I wasn't taught a canon, I approached science fiction all out of order.  I read a bunch of Ursula K. LeGuin's stuff many years ago, along with some other more modern authors.  That was what I accepted as sci-fi.  Then, just a couple of years ago, I realized that people were getting worked up about "golden age" sci fi, so I decided that if I wanted to have a more complete view of the field, I ought to read it.  So, with the help of the local library and Project Gutenberg, I read a bunch of The Classics.

I have to say that it was kind of a letdown.  I remember thinking, all of the time, "where the women at?"  Yes, there were some adventurous adventures and action-packed action, but if you have the impression that sci-fi has the intellectual and social daring of LeGuin and Lem and Ellison, then most of the Golden Age stuff is just pulpy fluff, and not necessarily all that well written.

So here's a fond ave atque vale to Ursula K. LeGuin, and sincerest thanks for making me believe that genre literature is actually literature, and making me disappointed when it fails to be such.

What should I read next?

Wednesday Wordage Euphemism of the year 2018 Already Decided!

Pegasus Airlines, a low-cost Turkish carrier, said in a statement that the Boeing 737-800 aircraft, flying to Trabzon from Ankara, the capital, “had a runway excursion incident” as it tried to land.

Wednesday Wordage, Utopian Edition

Of course, Utopia was imaginary, situated (by its name) nowhere.  Lately I've been attracted to a couple of modern, well-developed and well-imagined no-places.  One, Night Vale, exists in the desert Southwest, in a parallel dimension; it projects into this dimension via a podcast, every two weeks.  The other, Discworld, exists on the back of four giant elephants astride the back of the giant space turtle A'tuin who swims through the stars in an odd dimension of the universe, and was projected into this world by the late, great Terry Pratchett.

I've been trying to figure out what I find attractive in these imaginary lands.  Neither of them is a paradise; both are haunted, both are plagued by some of the same ills--war, corruption, hatred--that plague our world.  What's more, they are afflicted by demons, monsters, and evil of every sort.  People do stupid, cowardly, or hateful things.  Fate is capricious.  People die (Death himself makes at least a cameo in every Discworld story).

Yet, I really like letting my imagination go to those places.  Ultimately, they both have something that is very right, and that is sadly too rare in this less demon-haunted world.  In both, at the end, there is a certain acceptance of the "other."  People learn.  In Night Vale, the mysterious Glowing cloud that controls human minds (All hail!) and rains animal corpses completes a story arc, and is a member of the school board.  In Discworld, everybody of one species pretty much hates everybody of every other species--dwarves hate trolls, humans hate goblins, everybody hates vampires--but the bustling city of Ankh-Morpork is home to all of them, bumping shoulders but not coming to blows (very often).  It's lovely to spend time in these places, if you feel at all different, or wish this world were more welcoming to the "other."  It has become all the more so, since our government has been seized by a party that, for now, is based largely on demonizing the "other."

So, check them out.  Welcome to Night Vale is a podcast, you can get it where you will.  The Discworld is found in a whole series of, what, thirty-some novels; the first three introduce some recurring characters, but weren't really written with an eye towards establishing a whole series--but read the whole lot, they're good.  Better than the news, for sure.

Wednesday Words, Mood matters edition

If you are apologizing, do not use the subjunctive.

Wednesday Wordage Extreme Euphemizing Edition

If you've followed the news at all over the last year, you'll know that Wells Fargo Bank is a criminal enterprise--setting up accounts for clients without their knowledge or approval, and using those to extract money from them and make their lives miserable.  You'll know that they've been doing it for years, and it was essentially official policy, and that people who tried to stop it were punished.  It was only caught last year.  

For historical reasons, the Roseburg Dairy Goat Association has its money at Wells Fargo, and as nominal Treasurer of the Association, I get notifications, etc, from them (we are planning on moving the money to a credit union, or some more reputable bank).  Here is the intro to today's email:

Dear Wells Fargo Customer,
Customers like you have told us they want to hear more about what we've been doing to address our challenges over the past year. 

"Challenges."  

That's a pretty boggling abuse of the language there; I can't even think of anything sufficiently witty to say about it..."Noted bank challenger John Dillinger...". Just doesn't do it.  

Wednesday Wordage Rough 'n' Tough Stuff Edition

German may be difficult for a foreigner to learn, but at least making the move from written word to spoken language is uncomplicated:  if a letter is there on the page, it is pronounced, and only in one way.  English?  Good luck.  A friend of mine had a visitor from Germany who suggested that they go out for some "coffee and duffnuts."  Perfectly understandable, given the myriad ways that "-ough" can be pronounced.

This is a curse for radio announcers, who have to read wire reports and record labels and try to guess at names.  For instance, I have a bunch of albums by Stephen...well, here's a challenge.  How do you pronounce the following?

1.  Hough (Stephen, outstanding British-Australian pianist/composer/blogger)
2.  Gough (Gough Whitlam, Australian Prime Minister 1972-75, famed for wit)
3.  Pough (Richard, founder of the Nature Conservancy)
4.  Brough (a town in Cumbria, England; also, a brand of motorcycles named after a racer)
5.  Blough (a town in southern Pennsylvania)
6.  Sough (a rather poetic verb describing the movement of wind through trees)
7.  Chough (a corvine bird)
8.  Lough (a body of water)
9.  Slough (a body of water)
10. Slough (to shed skin, or the shed skin of a reptile)

Answers will eventually show up in comments, where you are also free to add your own ways to confuse those for whom English is a second language.

Wednesday Wordage Inadvertent Oxymornic Edition

The Real Doctor, explaining why she was printing out the NY Times crossword puzzle, which she does in pencil using her left hand:  "I'm trying to build up my left-handed dexterity."

mixed gratitude

A thank you to James Comey, late director of the FBI, for coming out and plainly stating that the president is a liar.  Not that the president misspoke, fudged, shaded the truth, or spun.  Not that the president lied, as a one-time thing that could be an anomaly.  He said the president is a liar, one who lies, and that lying is essential to his nature.

Why couldn't this be said by any other similar serious person any sooner?  Why was it not something that was in every report about the president before the election?  It is as plain and honest a statement as pointing out that he's got weird hair and wears his necktie too long.

Wednesday Wordage, Occam's Razor Edition

It's been over 100 days that Lord Damp Nut has been my president.  Pretty much every one of those days, I have listened to some news on the radio, or read some in the paper or on this very screen.  About as often, some commentator or analyst or wise person has been interviewed about the latest outre behavior of our president, and the answers have always been pretty wild.  He did this crazy thing: well, perhaps it was a strategic move to keep his opponents off balance.  He said this bald lie: well, perhaps he misinterpreted this actual, obscure, and irrelevant fact.  He proposed this egregious policy:  well, there's no doubt that that will appeal to his base, and strengthen his position for further bargaining.

The commentariat spend a lot of time and effort finding polite and acceptable ways to explain our president's behavior.  There is generally the assumption that he is a rational actor, has some strategic vision, intelligence, and understanding.  A myriad of erratic behaviors and statements have generated an equal number of inadequate explanatory hypotheses.

As a body, the folks who try to explain Lord Damp Nut's behavior on the radio have either forgotten or chosen to ignore Occam's Razor, which urges us to avoid unnecessarily complicated explanations (I know this is not the original formulation, but it will suffice).  All the questions asked of these learned analysts, political insiders, journalists, and talking heads--all of them--can be answered by one statement:  Our president is ignorant, unintelligent, willfully uninformed, a narcissistic pathological liar, and a bigot.  Seriously, I have heard hours of radio where dozens of people have danced around these questions, and seem to be unable or unwilling to point to the elephant in the room, indeed, even adamantly deny the existence of the elephant ("There's no doubt that President Trump is a very intelligent man" is one statement I have actually heard from a pundit, despite all evidence, and which has led me to write this).  It is frustrating.

So let us remember William of Occam and his razor, and let us cut through the next four years of BS. Keep it sharp.

Wednesday Wordage Galloping Edition

I got a call from the Gallup Organization today, asking me some very general questions, and then inviting me to be part of a Select Group that is tracked and polled every two weeks that would provide Reliable Data for businesses and the government and big, important Decision Makers.  I declined.  I have grown exceedingly tired of polls, and feel that we are at a point where they are actively harming the world.

One of the questions I was asked by the pollster was my opinion of how the economy is doing--the possible answers were excellent, good, fair, poor, or bad.  I asked for some clarification, and apparently I--who don't know very much, and certainly less than, say, a businessman--was being asked to evaluate the entire U.S. Economy in one word.  And, worse, this was supposed to be meaningful, and even more horrible, it was supposed to influence big, important Decision Makers.

Is it possible to describe the state of the entire U.S. Economy in one word, other than "complex"?

I will plead mea culpa to being an elitist, in that I really believe that folks who have studied complex problems have more insight into their solutions than folks who don't have much book-larnin' and go by their gut.  Also, probably best to refrain from describing things like the state of the world's largest economy with one word.  So, I politely declined to play in that game.

'Course, they'll probably find one of my neighbors to replace me, maybe the one who writes letters to the editor of the local paper, citing Bible verses to support Donald Trump.

Wednesday Wordage Euphemistic & Epistolary Edition

I have not been able to write the name of our current president along with his title.  I just can't.  I don't like even referring to him.  It's not like Voldemort in the Harry Potter books, with everyone referring to him as "he who shall not be named."  It's not fear.  It's just disgust.

There have been many, many epithets proposed for the twerp (the Scots have been particularly creative in this regard).  Some have seized on one and made it their preferred usage--such as President* or Cheetoh Benito.  But I haven't really liked any of them to make them my preferred usage.  I think, though, I may have found something I can get along with.  It carries a title, is sufficiently insulting, belittling, and is made from the clown's own name, by anagramming.  You can even say it with a mocking intonation, sarcastically aggrandizing him like Voldemort:

LORD DAMP NUT.  

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

In other news, I have written my first angry letter to the editor, about which more later.  An unusual, and public step for me, as it is my habit not to make known my politics to strangers.  But, it is today, and I am going to have to do more.  Thirty years from now, when I am asked "what did you do during the coup d'etat?" I will have to have a better answer than "I wrote a sternly worded letter to the editor."

Wednesday Wordage Two Thousand and Nineteen-eightyfour edition

"Alternative facts."

Wednesday Wordage: [con]fusion cuisine

So-called "Fusion Cuisine" aims to expand our horizons by combining, say, Indian traditions with Norwegian ingredients to produce something wonderful and new, like curried lutefisk.  Or, you can simply blend the words to arrive at something just as likely to be revolting: blending a fiery Indian curry with a Norwegian fish gives you Vindalootefisk.  See if you can get these other masterpieces of fusion cuisine.  Answers will be in comments.

1.  An Italian dessert made with mascarpone--and raw fish
2.  A boozy French chicken dish spiced with hot Indian chilis
3.  A Japanese noodle soup that is actually a Mexican tripe soup
4.  An Indian spice blend flavoring an Italian cured sausage
5.  A classic lobster dish made with crispy corn chips
6.  A breakfast of stale bread and eggs--served on a crispy, flat corn tortilla
7.  Japanese buckwheat noodles formed into a layered Greek dessert
8.  An archaic English sweet drink made from cream and wine, used to make an inflatable candy
9.  A chicle-based candy made into a Cajun stew
10.  Spaghetti for an Italian prostitute, made with French snails
11.  A middle-eastern chickpea dip made into a Greek eggplant casserole
12.  A spicy pizza topping made into tri-colored frozen dessert

Wednesday Wordage Inaccurate Edition

Wednesday Wordage Inaccurate Edition

Twice today, I heard a radio personality stumble around what to call some of the declarations from our president-elect.  In both cases, they settled on "inaccurate statements."  I was a bit perturbed, because the term "inaccurate statement" is itself not accurate to describe most of the statements from Donald Trump.  "The check is in the mail" is an inaccurate statement.  Talk of two million fraudulent votes is something else.

It has been depressing watching the media and others grapple with this phenomenon: a very public person who rouses the rabble with statements that seem to have no relation with reality, with crude fictions appealing to the baser sentiments of humanity.  No one wants to call a public figure a liar, and the media avoided describing Trump's statements as lies, despite the word being appropriate.  But there is an even more accurate word that could have been used--one given precise meaning and focus in a well-known essay by the American philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt.

Bullshit.

A lie, to Frankfurt, requires a certain regard for the truth.  The liar thinks enough of the truth, and his or her audience, that care is given to the lie, its plausibility, and the deception it should convey.  "The check is in the mail" is a lie--it acknowledges the truth that a check should be in the mail, and that the listener wants there to be a check in the mail, and that speaker ought to have put a check in the mail; it is fully in contact with reality, it's just false, and what's more, falsifiable.  Bullshit, on the other hand, has no contact with the reality.  It shows pure, sneering contempt for both the truth and for the audience.  The bullshitter says that it's going to start raining checks in the mail, and that mail is totally unreliable, and there's a conspiracy among those people to systematically steal things from the mail.

So, here is my plea (and I am not without hope that the press will develop a spine; the AP style manual has decided that any mention of the "alt-right" needs to indicate that it is a white nationalist movement.  They should just say that they're nazis, but, baby steps).  The next time our president-elect says something about two million fraudulent votes or Russian troops not being in the Ukraine or that anthropogenic climate change is a Chinese conspiracy, call it what it is.  Bullshit.  Okay, you can't say that on the radio, so maybe "bull[beep]"...but call it out for what it is.  And as important, ask every one of Trump's enablers, yes or no, if they endorse the bullshit, and just how that bullshit tastes in their mouths.

Wednesday Wordage geographical edition

Today's wordage wonders where we are.  Certain words seem to be paired with certain locations, like a duck is associated with Peking or certain window blinds are associated with Venice; each sentence evokes a place this way, at least four times.  The place could be a country, state or city; also the name could not be the same for all the words, but the place is the same (like what we call German, the Russians call Nemetskii, the Italians call Tedeschi, and the Germans call Deutsch).  The key words are in italics. So, here we go.  Answers will appear later in comments.


1.   I went on campus and found a system; the key to the formula was in a poetic ode on an urn, which was full of yogurt.
2.  My host served me salad with dressing and for dessert, some charlotte.  Afterwords we amused ourselves by playing with dolls and roulette.
3.  I took my leave, and decided to go out for some fries.  Unfortunately, I managed to get my cuffs in the dip.
4.  I wanted to see a classic movie, since I was on holiday.  My tastes are pretty catholic, but I have to hold my nose to see anything by Polansky.
5.  "Oh miss, to cut my chard and cheese I need an army knife!"
6.  I can't dance a two-step while eating tea and toast; I need someone to hold 'em.
7.  What a delight! Steaming in a bath while drinking coffee and listening to a rondo!
8.  Enough of this inquisition!  It's worse than the flu!  I must fly--perhaps to Harlem...