Open Thread – Good word
If you like words (and who doesn’t), you might be interested in the site wordsmith.org and its Word of the Day feature. Today’s word was “porcine” – a great word in and unto itself, but extra great when taken in context with its sample usage!
PORCINE:
MEANING:adjective:
1. Of or related to swine.
2. Piggish: greedy; sloppy; boorish.ETYMOLOGY:From Latin porcus (hog, pig). Ultimately from the Indo-European root porko- (a young pig) that is also the source of farrow, aardvark, porcelain, pork, porcupine, and porpoise. Earliest documented use: before 1425.
USAGE:“The lipstick on this pig was thick and expertly applied by a PR machine with a tremendous amount of porcine makeup experience.”
Frank Bailey; Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin; Howard Books; 2011.
Ha!
The National Review reacts to Palin’s latest FB rant (threat):
http://www.nationalreview.com/campaign-spot/273015/sarah-palin-gop-house-freshman-we-still-believe-contested-primaries
* The Planned Parenthood office in Dallas was damaged by a Molotov cocktail thrown at the building at approximately 11 last night. Fortunately, the bottle didn’t make it into the building and the damage was limited to the door and the facades of the adjoining stores.
* The Republicans leaders showed their caucus a clip of a movie featuring Ben Affleck in which he says, “I need your help. I can’t tell you what it is. You can never ask me about it later. And we’re going to hurt some people.” Afterwards, he and a friend beat two men with sticks and shoot someone in the leg. The friend asks whose car they’re going to take. This clip was intended to ‘motivate’ the group. After it was finished, Allen West said he was ready to drive the car.
* Pat Buchanan writes that the Norway shooter is evil, but that his message that we should be terrified of those evil Muslims taking over our white world “may be right”.
And the Republicans continually claim that liberals are the violent.
Oops…meant to type “are the violent ones.”
I just returned from a ten day road trip up north – from Anchorage down the Kenai Peninsula, through the Mat Su Valley up to Denali, across the Denali Highway and back to Skagway via Whitehorse, YT. 1700 miles of road trip bliss, plus lots of murdered bugs. No Palin fans in sight! The Yukon locals and French Canadian tourists I talked to can’t stand her, and I found not one fan in Alaska, either (including family in the Valley who I was a little worried about). The trip was full of treasures – visual, historical, family visits, great folks everywhere, excellent food including lots of salmon – and not one minute was ruined by the Twit. People have gone from asking questions about her, to dismissing her as a flipping idiot and talking about “Flying Wild Alaska” as their favorite Alaskan show of all time. Sarah who?
Love!
“The trip was full of treasures – visual, historical, family visits, great folks everywhere, excellent food including lots of salmon – and not one minute was ruined by the Twit.”
That’s wonderful news! Bet you didn’t have your vehicle “wrapped” for your trip either, eh?
Who? Who? Whoooo?
hahahahaha caw Caw CAW!
(only finished purging 5 of 8 boxes/drawers today–2 recycled, 1 pitched, 1 to give away and 1 to keep.
Found: 1 mouse nest, empty
7 buttons, 5 beads (assorted), 1 safety pin
cast aluminum Monopoly pieces: car and top hat
Mama’s recipe for fudge that calls for caramel sauce instead of sugar
2 wheat pennies and 7 coins from scattered places around the world
Tomorrow is another day, with rain in the forecast, so maybe I can get through another 5 drawers/boxes…
“Bet you didn’t have your vehicle “wrapped” for your trip either, eh?”
You have the Canadian lingo all wrapped up! No wrappers here – completely incognito with a thick covering of Alaskan-Canadian mud and bugs, outside of passenger doors slimed with happy dog slobber – just like any normal road trip car should be! It was heavenly.
Next time you take that same trip, you REALLLLY need someone to carry your luggage, don’t you???
Or maybe a good navigator???
Or someone to keep the windshield relatively clean? Don’t you???
Pretty pleeeeease???? 🙂
You betcha! Windshield cleaners are especially welcomed – always – on these roads! I picked up my new-to-me car in Anchorage, ready to take off for parts known and unknown, and it had no wiper fluid. That didn’t work out so well, in more ways than one. Note to self – always check wiper fluid no matter what.
Martha Unalaska Yard Sign — are you from Unalaska? I went there for the first time two weeks ago and I was blown away by its beauty….I had no idea it was that wonderful. I took over 200 photos in just 2 1/2 days.
I am having a wonderful summer of travel. I have already been to Ketchikan, Kodiak, Unalaska and Cordova. Coming up: Homer, Seldovia, Kotzebue, White Mountain, Barrow, Valdez, Haines, Sitka, Seward, Kenai, Soldotna, Petersburg. It will be my first time to White Mountain and Barrow, I am super excited.
alaskadek – what an amazing summer you must be having! I am not from Unalaska, there is another reason for that name. You are extremely lucky to be visiting all of those places! I see you crisscrossing the state in a dizzying array of flying and ferry legs – are you driving as well? You mention Ktn, Sitka, Petersburg, Haines – perhaps Juneau, too?
I go to Juneau quite frequently for my job. I love it there Well, for that matter, I love all of SE Alaska….but then again, everytime I go someplace outside of Anchorage I fall in love with the state all over again. The diversity of the land is so great…and each element of it has its own appeal to me. But rightn now I am back in home in Anchorage, after a four day trip down to NM to visit my granddaughter (she turned 5) and my daughter. It was a wonderful trip, but still good to be home. I was greeted by two black bears in my driveway last night.
All this travel is not a normal summer for me, but I am enjoying it. Back in the 80’s I traveled all over the state. Now I occassionally get to villages around the state, but generally my travel is limited to Fairbanks and Juneau….so this is quite a treat for me.
As this is an open thread, I’m posting this link for you all to chew upon. Well, if the link doesn’t work, just type “ComPost” into the search engine. The date is 7/27/2011
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/post/the-gops-debt-ceiling-movie-night–the-town-really
The GOP’s debt ceiling movie night — The Town? Really?
(snip)
Let’s just pause for a moment and think about this. They showed a clip from Ben Affleck’s “The Town,” a movie about bank robbers, a group of people generally not recognized for their ability to keep their finances in order. But not just a clip. This particular clip. In the next scene, Ben Affleck and Jeremy Renner go to the home of some dubious characters, break in, and beat them up.
(snip)
Bob Cesca succinctly nails this one:
http://bobcesca.com/blog-archives/2011/07/again-with-the-eliminationism.html
“ThinkProgress reminds us: “In the movie, the characters then put on hockey masks and bludgeon two men with sticks, then shoot one man in the leg.”
And, predictably, Rep. Allen West (R-Woman-Hater) volunteered to “drive the car.”
Good people.
Check your calendars. It’s been how long since a right-wing freakdog went on a killing spree in Norway?”
As one of the comments noted, if it had been a meeting of Democrats who showed that clip, the right wing would be screaming about how violent those evil liberals are.
It used to be that, no matter how crazy some people on each side, got, there were always more reasonable people from that same side who would be a moderating voice. Now, as another comment stated, the Republicans are half crazy tea partiers and half people who are afraid to lose their seat to a crazy tea partier. NONE of them have the courage or integrity to stand up and call out the nutjobs in their midst.
I don’t like to temper the upbeat feel of this open thread with a total bummer, but I’m compelled. Everyone who cares about food crops and biodiversity should read this:
http://healthfreedoms.org/2011/07/25/gmos-aids-of-the-plant-world-invasive-species-council-ignores-infection/
and this: http://www.naturalnews.com/033148_seed_companies_Monsanto.html along with the link-within a link:
http://www.naturalnews.com/files/seedindustry.pdf which is a graphic of how the Big 6 chemical companies have eaten up other seed companies.
Gardeners and organic growers: SAVE YOUR SEEDS!! Share your seeds. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to live in a world of GMO food sameness. I want heirloom tomatoes, crooked Persian cukes, and the thousands of apples (including all the non-sweet ones) we had a century ago. Rant over.
Rant on. I still enjoy a great apple when I can find one, instead of the mushy mass produced things we usually find in the grocery store. And I gave up on tomatoes (except home grown) years ago.
“The lipstick on this pig was thick and expertly applied by a PR machine with a tremendous amount of porcine makeup experience.”
Frank Bailey; Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin; Howard Books; 2011.
there is no doubt in my mind that the statement above was written by our own akm.
I agree, Fawnskin, that well-written words are a joy to read. AKM is an excellent wordsmith who writes with humor and intelligence and soars far above mere mortals. And, may it ever be so!
Absolutely!
I love Word of the Day
Speaking of pork…”entitlement” programs aren’t fatty “pork” that needs to be “trimmed,” they’re savings accounts.
This essay, and the comments following, is the scariest thing I’ve read this morning…alas, I swore off the booze, or I’d be helping myself right now to a shot of whiskey in my coffee.
http://www.ginandtacos.com/2011/07/27/pebble-in-the-sky/
I like descriptive words that come from the animal world (bovine, porcine, equine, leonine, etc.). The usage was impeccable.
Great Word!! Especially love the usage they gave!! The site even has a button you can push to hear the word! Because I admit I wasn’t quite certain how it was pronounced 😉
It was a POOR SIGN for the state of AK when the cookie giving, word salad babbling, woman with the porcine make up job was tapped by McCain!!
LOL I love words!! Thanks for sharing the link AKM!
And I love puns – good one, Ann.
I used to enjoy puns as well…until I started working with language-delayed deaf/hard of hearing primary students and had to interpret them into sign language, which is quite a challenging feat.
A couple of years ago, we had to put up with one of our district’s Teachers of the Deaf (who SHOULD have know better!) who loved using puns just for the agita it caused us poor interpreters. He would sit there and laugh while we struggled to make sense of them for our students. He also loved to create puns using the oral equivalent of the signs, which completely confused the kids because it usually contradicted what the signs actually meant…linguistic damage we would have to go back later and repair.
All of this served no good purpose other than to aggravate us and the kids who were already having enough trouble learning the basics of English (which is really hard when you can’t hear it!). We all realize that learning idioms as well as understanding puns is an important part of acquiring a comprehensive understanding of a language, but that’s much more appropriate for our deaf kids when they get to high school and already have a good basic grasp of the formal language, not in 1st or 2nd grade when they have almost no language to begin with. As a sign language teacher, I start introducing idioms to some of my students at about 4th or 5th grade, but ONLY if they are skilled enough in English to make the leap.
Needless to say, that teacher is NOT a very popular staff member in our district!
However, since you are all hearing adults…pun on! 🙂
“However, since you are all hearing adults reading the words on a computer monitor…pun on!” — there, fixed it for you, leenie17. beth.
–sorry, just couldn’t help it; struck me as too funny to resist. b.
Thanks, beth!
(But don’t we all hear those words in our head anyway? Or am I the only one who hears voices in my head? Uhhh ohhhhh…)
(Oh, yeah — I hear ’em, too. I even hear ‘creatively’… sometimes hearing what isn’t written, at other times mishearing what is. beth.)
Ann, I did not know you were baaaaaad! Love it!
Now if that little piggy would just cry wee wee wee (MEE MEE MEE!)
all the way home
(to any of ’em, all of ’em she finds in front of her).
Or is that what she IS doing now?
Still raining.
NOT complaining.
Today’s project: purge 2 file cabinets (or the equivalent thereof).
Ambitious, eh?
Does it put anyone else in mind of
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler?
(Newbery Medal for excellence in American children’s literature in 1967/68.)
The book has loads of Museum Joy, timeless, and I highly recommend it as a read aloud or read together. The movie, titled The Hideaways, starred Ingrid Bergman.
8 file drawers and/or boxes.
Any guesses how much ends up in the recycling bin or given away?
I’m thinking 50% or more.
Any guesses about the best “buried treasure” I uncover?
We’ll see. Some of those contents go back to 1973, and maybe even before then…
We know what to do if I find any Crazy Glue, eh, jimzmum? heh heh heh
*turning up teh blues music and opening the first box*
B. B. King: The Letter B
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svoPEQHzR7s&feature=fvsr
🙂
Have fun with those files! I did that several years ago across a summer. Oh, the memories. I took a lot of pictures of papers I didn’t want to forget. I loaded them on my computer, and looked at them from time to time. Donated the empty file cabinets to the incoming brand new third-grade teacher.
If you have papers you’d like to record but not keep, a scanner can put them into your computer, then you can recycle at will. Remember to back up to the external hard drive (or another medium) in case of a crash. Health and peace. Caw-caw-caw.
I LOVED “From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs Basil E Frankweiler”! We read it aloud, as a family, on a rained out camping trip. One of the best times we ever had.
Wonderful, wonderful book.
Box office mojo has a great article on Sarah Palins little documentary…
Undefeated-Deflated….
http://boxofficemojo.com/news/?id=3215&p=.htm
Basically it is a box office bomb……
A showing of the Undefeated would be a good place for a nice cool nap on a hot day.
From what I’ve read, the overblown soundtrack, with its explosions and assorted noise, would be far too loud to allow you to sleep. And, anyway, how could ANYONE sleep with that horrible screeching voice coming over the speakers? Ick!
“Proselytization is not a box office draw.” — That about sums it up.
“..also the source of farrow, aardvark, porcelain….” Hmmmmm learn something new every day. Off to work. My regular schedule is a wreck.
Yes, I don’t quite see the connection to those words. Farrow and aardvark sound nothing like porcine and porcelain doesn’t usually look like a pig. Interesting how our language develops, isn’t it.
Hey Pat – I love languages and etymology in general, and am fascinated by the Indo-European links. In most of the I-E languages, the sounds of “f’, “p”, and “v” are sort of interchangable. So – farrow (a litter of baby pigs) and aardvark have that similar varr/farr sound that is related to the parr sound in pork. I don’t quite understand where “porcelain” fits in, but I will research it.
Ah, interesting. Thanks, Mag the Mick.
I going to guess that the prefix ‘aard’ is a variant of ‘erd’ from which the English word for earth is derived; an aardvark would then be an ‘earth pig.’
I looked up the connection to porcelain and will probably never be able to use the phrase ‘bone china’ without being reminded of it. Apparently it was the name of some type of shell whose features reminded people of a female pig’s vulva; the man-made version was made to mimic the shell’s lustre.
Hooray! What a great start to another very hot day. “Porcine” is such a lovely word. It is fun to say, and fairly easy to spell if you happen to be in third grade. The analogy used in the above definition is certainly apt! I just wish the lipstick had been mixed with just a few drops of crazy glue to hush her up! Instead, apparently she snorted it.
I am having to be inside most of the time because of this heat. I am ashamed to admit that Monday I was reduced to actually cleaning out the bottom cabinets in the kitchen. Found nothing horrid, but wondered what I was doing since all the cabinets have doors that close, and so who should care?
I am very proud of our Representative, Jerry Costello. He is standing up and working so hard for us. And, he is a very nice man. Always ready to listen, holds regular meetings, and is so very well educated in the possible solutions that those in his district may need. His local office staff is wonderful as well.
If you have a Representative who is really trying, give them a thank you call or an email today. They need it. They are getting pounded by some pretty heavy hitters.