words Archives - Page 5 of 8 - Ramblin' with Roger

September rambling #1: chugging cognac, and Flowers on the Wall

If you work in a brick-and-mortar retail establishment, and if you tell me when I ask if you have something that I can only get it online, then you have lost me forever as a customer at said brick-and-mortar retail establishment.

The $80 Million Fake Bomb-Detector Scam—and the People Behind It.

How the Photography of Dorothea Lange and Ansel Adams Told the Story of Japanese American Internment.

John Scalzi on Hurricane Katrina, and poverty. “Being Poor,” Ten Years On.

The Truth of ‘Black Lives Matter’: “They are NOT asserting that black lives are more precious than white lives.”

Mr. Frog linked to Here’s How New Texas Public School Textbooks Write About Slavery.

No, Mount McKinley’s former and new name, “Denali,” does NOT mean “Black Power” in Kenyan. Or Swahili. Denali means “the great one” in the local Athabaskan language of Alaska.

Question: Why must we still talk about race? Answer: Twelve. And I Am a Racist.

Steve Cutts is a London-based illustrator and animator who uses powerful images to criticize the sad state modern life and society.

Is thyroid cancer the ‘good’ cancer? It doesn’t feel that way when you get it. Mentions Times Union blogger David Kalish.

How Jeb Bush’s Tax Cuts Suckered the Media.

Teen Boy Will Be Charged As Adult For Having Naked Pics of a Minor: Himself. If I hadn’t seen it on CBS News the day before, I would have thought it a hoax.

Tennessee mom calls Henrietta Lacks book ‘pornographic,’ seeks to have it banned in school; author Rebecca Skloot responds.

Damned Lies and Employment Statistics. “Yes, some ‘real’ unemployment rate is roughly double the official 5.1%. But there’s nothing sinister about that.”

1927 news report: Donald Trump’s dad arrested in KKK brawl with cops.

Women, Don’t Make That Bicycle Face.

Don’t Hate the Phone Call, Hate the Phone.

TV host John Oliver has become America’s social justice warrior, and he reminds us how little most of us know about geography.

My friend Steve Bissette wrote, and I totally agree: “Sure bet: If you work in a brick-and-mortar retail establishment, and if you tell me when I ask if you have something that I can only get it online, then you have lost me forever as a customer at said brick-and-mortar retail establishment. It’s not peevishness or pique, it’s just how it is.” Chuck Miller had a similar experience: Panera Bread and kiosk mentality.

I’m a Mom, Not A Martyr.

Becca Sunoo goes to Nantes. She’s the granddaughter of a couple at my church.

See how the Obama logo can work for Trump with some simple changes in color and rotation. Kudos to Matthew Gordon @ratheironic

10 Insulting Words You Should Know.

What time is it, Oxford Dictionaries? How about almost ‘beer o’clock’?

Phantom vibration syndrome is common among those who use electronic devices.

A Woman Chugged an Entire Bottle of Cognac Rather than Give It to Airport Security.

A FEW MINUTES WITH… Booker T. Jones.

Weird Al 15-11. SamuraiFrog’s descriptions are great.

A History of Chris Christie’s Complicated Relationship With Bruce Springsteen.

From 2002: Art That Shook The World: The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds, part 1 and part 2.

Music! Fisherman – The Congos.

Mark Evanier is listing the twenty top voice actors in American animated cartoons between 1928 and 1968. So far: Sterling Holloway (Winnie the Pooh); Mae Questel (Betty Boop, Olive Oyl); Jim Backus (Mr. Magoo); Pinto Colvig (Goofy).

Six-degrees of separation from Robert Crumb.

Why Craig Ferguson Really Left Late Night.

Muppets: Jimmy Dean and Rowlf and Flowers on the Wall; if you don’t know the original to the latter, it’s here.

Download Jim Rockford’s Answering Machine Messages as MP3s.

In honor of Labor Day: Americans Celebrate 10 Millionth ‘Bring Yourself To Work Day’.

DO NOT wash your hair in the shower!!

GOOGLE ALERT (me)

The original creators of any given comic book character or title always had the purest vision and did the best work on that character or title. Is that always the case, though? Plus What are the five most affecting graphic novels?

Dustbury reminds us of the anomalies of the Billboard charts when it comes to black music.

GOOGLE (ALERT (not me)

Australian golf: The eighteen-hole winner for Saturday’s Roger Green trophy “was Rick Bennett with a score of 59 net from Andrew McGrath on 61 net.”

G is for things beginning with G

I suppose I could have gone with gray.

Leslie, part of our ABC Wednesday team, posted this on Facebook. I’m lazy enough to stretch it into a whole blog post.

“The last name game: Use the first letter of your last name to answer each of the following questions. They have to be real places, names, things, nothing made up.”

1. Last name? Green.

2. An animal? Giraffe. I could have gone with one of these, but it was the first thing I thought of.

3. A boy’s name: George. The obvious choice, other names notwithstanding. My wife and daughter’s distant relative is Prince George of Cambridge. Plus, for some sort of linguistic reason, it is the name I’m most often mistakenly called.

4. A girl’s name: Gina. The first name that came to mind, as opposed to these.

5. An occupation?: Ghostwriter. I think I could do that. Here are other options.

6. A color? Green. I suppose I could have gone with gray. Actually, I couldn’t.

7. Something you wear? Glasses, because I do. I almost went with gloves, which I also wear a good deal of the time. Or galoshes, which I think is a funny word. Some other choices.

8. A beverage? Green tea. Since I don’t like gin, all my obvious choices had two words – ginger ale (drink it when I’m sick), grape juice (reminds me of Communion), grapefruit juice (drank in lieu of orange juice in the 1970s). More ideas.

9. A food? Green grapes. Grapefruit, graham crackers, and green beans were contenders. Other options, though adding “grilled” to food I think is a bit of a cheat.

10. Something found in the bathroom? Germs. Literally, the only thing that came to mind. Hadn’t thought of these.

11. A place? Greenland. There are, of course, tons of these, so I limited the list to countries. I first thought of Greece but settled for my homeland. Here are other countries.

12. A reason you’re late? Gridlock. Again, my first consideration. From this roster, the best ones start with the word “got” … a flat tire, in an accident.

13. Something you shout? Gadzooks. Seriously, the initial thing that came to mind, and there are plenty on this list that I have said far more often, including gosh, groovy, go away, get out, get away from me, goal, golly, Gesundheit, and good grief.

14. Something you hate? Greed. Didn’t find a list I liked. Gossip is another option. I suppose the universe of G things might apply.

15. A band? Green Day. There are lots of them, and Genesis, the first book in the Bible, actually came first to mind. Or the Go-Go’s, who I saw perform a few decades ago. Or something from this compendium. But let’s pretend that I’m as GREEN obsessed as I feign to be.

A song from those three groups, the ones I most associate with each group:

Genesis – The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway

The Go Go’s – We Got the Beat

Green Day – American Idiot

ABC Wednesday – Round 17

E is for epiphanot

Apparently, epiphanot is a made-up word. By that, I mean not yet broadly accepted in dictionaries. But it is a good one, and used widely, though I hadn’t heard of it until Uthaclena shared it with me.

The Urban Dictionary cites the definition above, then uses a quote from the movie Animal House to make the point.

The Collins Dictionary has this definition pending: “[facetious] a false or underwhelming epiphany.” It seems in keeping with the generally agreed-upon meaning and shows its derivation, and by extension, its pronunciation, presumably with the emphasis on the second syllable.

Verbotomy has a somewhat different take: “n. An out-of-body, or out-of-brain, experience which occurs when faced with a demanding intellectual challenge. v. To lose your train of thought while trying to demonstrate your intellectual prowess.” I think this is less in keeping with my understanding of the word.

ABC Wednesday – Round 17

V is for veeblefetzer

In Don Rosa’s 1997 story “An Eye for Detail”, Donald Duck goes to work in Uncle Scrooge’s veeblefetzer factory.

What DO you call that thing which is, you know, that, er, doohickey, a “thing that’s too unimportant to have a name of its own, or whose name you have for the moment forgotten”?

One word is veeblefetzer:

A word usually used facetiously as a placeholder name for any obscure or complicated object or mechanism, such as automobile parts, computer code and model railroad equipment.

A 19th-century Yiddish language slang word with limited usage is generally accepted as the origin. In German, the verb weben means to “weave”, while fetzen means to “rip” or “shred”…

[In the 1940s] Alfred J. Gross… invented the walkie-talkie… He was the father of Citizens’ Band radio, and for his “handle” he used the pseudonym “Phineas Thadeus Veeblefetzer”.

A few years later, Harvey Kurtzman brought the word into popular usage in his comic book Mad…

In other words, we’re talking whatchamacallits, such as:
Aglet – the piece of plastic covering the ends of your shoelace
Ferrule – the metal band that connects the pencil eraser to the end of the pencil
Tragus – the little piece of cartilage that sticks out at the front side of your ear.

ABC Wednesday – Round 16

P is for phraseology

Arthur turned me on to the Anglophenia posts.

There is a movement at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, which I once visited, to “bring a collection of old school words back into the modern-day vernacular.” They are:

Caterwaul – A shrill howling or wailing noise.
Concinnity – The skillful and harmonious arrangement or fitting together of the different parts of something.
Flapdoodle – Nonsense.
Knavery – A roguish or mischievous act.
Melange – A mixture of different things.

Obambulate – To walk about.
Opsimath – A person who begins to learn or study only late in life.
Philistine – A person who is hostile or indifferent to culture and the arts, or who has no understanding of them.
Rapscallion – A mischievous person.
Subtopia – Monotonous urban sprawl of standardized buildings.

Caterwaul and philistine I use as often as possible, myself.

Arthur asked: “But who’s championing the case of the words we should lose?”

Why, Lake Superior State University, ALSO in Michigan, is! LSSU put out its 40th Annual List of words to be banished, among them “bae,” “cra-cra”, “curated,” ”skill set,” ”takeaway”, and “polar vortex.” The only one that really makes me crazy is cra-cra, meaning crazy, and like terms that are no shorter than the original word, and sound foolish.

I do agree with the complaint about curate: “It used to have a special significance reserved mainly for fine art and museums. Now everything is curated. Monthly food and clothing subscription boxes claim to be finely ‘curated.'”

More phraseology

7 Lost American Slang Words.

The Daughter found it humorous that “monosyllabic” has five syllables. There’s one thing which we all — regardless of language — may have in common. One syllable, that is.

Flammable Versus Inflammable – What Is the Difference?
***
Arthur turned me on to the Anglophenia posts:

How To Speak British
How To Insult Like the British

Untying the Not describes the “Wicked Bible.”

15 unique illnesses you can only come down with in German

ABC Wednesday – Round 16