The Secret of NYM

William Safire died over the weekend. He was an intelligent, eminently reasonable conservative, noted for deftly defining the subtle nuances of our language. Despite his right of center views, he worked for years at the New York Times, an alleged tool of the liberal establishment. Apparently he enjoyed being their lone ranger. In fact, Safire was hired to be and long enjoyed a career as The Times' resident contrarian, according to Charles Osgood on the radio this morning. Among his many skills as a journalist was a column for the Times Sunday Magazine entitled, appropriately, On Language. Thankfully, others have taken up the banner and will continue his penchant for interesting discourse detailing the ways we use and abuse the American version of English. Like I do. 
     Just yesterday, there was a column about phantonyms. A phantonym, according to Jack Rosenthal, who was pinch-hitting for Mr. Safire, is a word that looks as if it means one thing, but actually means another. For example, he points out that:
     Penultimate does not mean ultraultimate. It means next to last. 
Presently does not mean now but in a little while. 
Enervated does not mean energized, but weakened. 
Fortuitous does not mean fortunate, it means happening by chance. 
     Which got me to thinking about some words and phrases I'm familiar with:
     Donkey Kong was supposed to be Monkey Kong, but the Japanese translator screwed up. 

     A**hole has been a term of endearment for so long that its use as a flatulence expulsion release mechanism is now lost to history. 
     And people mistakenly think that to nail something means to hammer a long steel rod into a hole. Oh, wait, maybe that one hasn't changed. 
     Over at Cracked.com you can read about nine more words that don't mean what you think. Even better, unlike the New York Times, a family reading device, Cracked is pure unadulterated internet, so they give their "phantonyms" a "dick" rating. As in how big a dick are you if you insist people use it the right way? For example Cracked offers up the seemingly innocuous word, "deceptively."
     People think it means:
Nobody is sure.
     Actually means:
Nobody is sure.
     Specifically, we're talking about when the word is used with some other adjective. Like if somebody says, "The turd pool is deceptively shallow," does that mean it's deeper than it appears, or not as deep?
     If you're not sure, don't feel bad. The American Heritage Dictionary asked their word experts and they said they had no f**king idea, either. So ... nobody knows. 
    Dick rating: 10 [over a picture of Bill O'Reilly]. 
    Go read the whole article HERE with no asterisks where swear words should be. Author Tim Cameron deliberately includes plenty of girls with big boobs, and hilarious photos of guys who are world class "dicks."  Tom Cruise rates a "7."
     Frankly, for its laugh factor, Cracked's version beats the New York Times to death, and makes me wonder if the guy at the Times stole the idea, since the Cracked article was dated 2007, while "Phantonym" just appeared yesterday. But I have to say that "Phantonym" is truly one of the great made up words of all time. Up there with Watron -- a gender neutral word for someone who takes your order and brings your food and expects a really big tip. So I'll give those New York swells a pass on this one. 

Separated at Birth

Tom Berenger and Marlon Brando

or

James Dean and Brad Pitt

 

Gerry Butler? Wasn't He The Lead Singer of The Impressions?

From what I've read, Gerard Butler would prefer that Americans not call him "Gerry." However, among his friends and family across the pond or down under, I understand "Gerry" is his preferred appellation. Bummer. The unlimited use of his warm and fuzzy sobriquet is granted to entire nations of people with suspect teeth and woolly accents, but woe to anyone born in the USA. Apparently he doesn't like our accent. Especially what it does to the sound of "Gerry." I guess, for some reason, we Americans do not pronounce "Gerry" in the style to which Gerard has become accustomed. Therefore, we are instructed never to use "Gerry," however correctly, when referring to him while in his presence. Well, fark me.

We, who have made "Gerard" rich by our willingness to watch him sing with the entire right side of his face occluded by a Tupperware lid; we, who have watched, unflinching, as he led a parade of 300 Latexed loins into the battle of Speedo Rock; we, who have dispatched both of our nation's remaining virgins and a couple of thousand volunteers to kneel at the altar of his manhood; we, who are getting mighty tired of this sentence, have been relegated to communicating with him using the more formal, and some might say, off-putting, Gerard.

Does this mean I shall be required to say, "Yes, Gerard, I have made reservations for two at Spiaggia"?

I can live with that.

NOTE FROM MRS. L: I have been informed by a knowledgeable commenter [see Shamrock] that I have this story exactly reversed. So you can call Gerard "Gerry" all you want. It's pronouncing Gerard that Americans get all screwed up. The Scots say "Ger-id." We say "Ger-arrrrrrrrrd." Apparently that sounds like nails on a chalkboard to Mr. Butler. However, Shamrock points out that if you're female, young, and really goodlooking, Gerry doesn't mind so much what you call him. Or something like that. One wonders who this Shamrock really is.

Trader Joe's Pretzel Slims, I'm Your Bitch

This is a shameless plug for a product that doesn't care whether I like it or not. Trader Joe's makes a sweet snack called Pretzel Slims. Ho-hum I thought, when my stepma brought home a bag a couple of weeks ago. [I've been staying at her house while mine is being swept for bugs.] She often goes on shopping forays to one of the many fine boutique grocery stores we have in the area. Some people buy clothes, she seeks out unusual foods. Today, for instance, she brought home artichoke antipasto and a jar of ratatouille. She thought the antipasto would taste good on pasta or on potato salad. I thought the ratatouille would taste fine right out of the jar with a spoon. Meanwhile, the bag of Pretzel Slims sat forlornly on the counter. I figured they were just more of the bulked up, excessively crunchy, cracker-like pretzels that come wrapped in waxy chocolate with all the taste and texture of stale breadsticks dipped in Hershey's fondue. Not interested. Ultimately, whether out of boredom or curiosity, I finally opened the bag and tasted one of the Pretzel Slims. Did I mention they're from Trader Joe's? My tastebuds went on full alert. Wait a minute, these are crispy and delicately thin. Not fat and doughy. Sure they're shaped like pretzels, but they manage to be so unpretzel-like at the same time. And the dark chocolate doesn't have any unpleasant waxy build up -- it actually tastes like the real thing. OMG, these are good. Just a hint of salt to remind you that there was a pretzel in there once. Now I can't stop eating them. And I can't stop telling people how good they are. Today my stepma brought home FOUR bags. I finished one bag all by myself. Then she said I could take a bag to work for show and tell. Is this a great country or what? 

The Next Mia Hamm

When she was just five, this future soccer star was very particular about her hair. It had to be in a ponytail just so. Not too high. Not too low. And no loose strands. She didn't like anything in her eyes when she was running down the field. Her shirt had to match her socks or she wouldn't play, which created a couple of difficult soccer fashion moments when she could only find one yellow sock and the other clean one was orange. Back then her idol was David Beckham until she found out he was a boy. She immediately switched allegiances to Mia Hamm even though Ms. Hamm had retired and was having babies. This was okay since she was used to women in her family multi-tasking. So getting her law degree while playing on the national team would be no biggie.  
     All right, that's enough speculating about the future. Would you please excuse our young hotshot because she'd like to play dolls before dinner?

Serena Is Anything But Serene

Last night Serena Williams became the poster girl for PMS. There, I said it. I outed my sex for the monthly hormonal stupidity that turns huge numbers of females into festering boils of rage, for which we continue to refuse to accept any responsibility. 
     Serena has already told the world that she has very difficult periods, in particular, menstrual migraines. And where there are menstrual migraines, PMS poisoning can't be too far away. I know, TMI.
     Serena has had a history of strange physical collapses during tournaments, where she suddenly seemed to lose focus and no longer be competitive. To the point where I began to wonder if her cycle might be engulfing her in a physical and mental ring of fire.  
     Unfortunately, as one gets older, the PMS only gets worse. The symptoms aren't just about anger, screaming, and threats of violence under stress. Anybody can do that. The final component must also include self-destruction. The immolation starts with the full and complete knowledge that what you are about to do or say to another person will put your job, life, relationship, car, bank account, or game, set, and match at risk of Armageddon. The last nail in the PMS coffin is to ignore the voice in your head yelling at you to get a grip. It's hard for unaffected people to understand, but when the PMS demon takes over, nothing matters except burning down the house. Even when the consequences are abundantly clear. 
     Otherwise, it's not true PMS; it's just a bad day. 

                                             [nydailynews.com]

     In her match last night against Kim Clijsters, Serena, last year's champion, was losing. Clijsters, who won in 2005, came into the tournament unranked, unseeded, and feeding a new baby. She took the first set, 6-4.
     Serena was serving in the second set at 5-6, 15-30 [the server's scores are given first].  She was serving to tie the score at 30 all. She had already made twice as many unforced errors as Clijsters. Serena faulted on her first serve, missing the service court entirely. Then she got called for a foot fault on her second serve. Now the score was 15-40 with Clijsters one point away from taking not only the set, but the match. 
     It is worth noting that foot fault calls are almost unheard of at Serena's level. Especially in a Grand Slam tournament. Ironically, Venus Williams, before she was eliminated, was also called for foot faults several times. I remember that each time she just looked over at the linesperson and glared. 
     But last night, when Serena got called for a foot fault on a key point in a key match, she lost her bearings in a bizarre display of anger, screaming like a madwoman at the lineswoman, apparently threatening her.   
     She'd already had a warning about racket abuse. When she lost the first set, she broke her racket in a show of frustration. For PMS aficionadas, once the bad girl behavior starts, it only escalates. Too bad the chair umpire couldn't call her over and broach the subject, "Excuse me Miss Williams, are you going to be on the rag anytime soon, because your behavior reeks of PMS." 
     Meanwhile, Serena was penalized a point for threatening the lineswoman and thanks to that point, a very confused Kim Clijsters won the match.  
     At the press conference Serena didn't say she was sorry, nor did she confess that she might have made a mistake. Nope, she said that her temper used to be worse. Earth to Serena, your other outbursts were nothing compared to the amplitude of this one. 
     Of course, having made my usual opinionated statements to advance my cockamammy theories, none of them does much to explain John McEnroe's verbal assaults on the umpires and linesmen when he was playing. Not to mention Jimmy Connors.
     But I've never let the facts get in the way before, so why start now?

Unsupervised Playtime

 

I was playing with PhotoBooth and it has a comic book feature that I thought was cool.  Somehow I turned on the flash and I don't know how to turn it off, because the colors in the picture are much better without it. With the flash on I don't look comic book-like, I look like I just dipped myself in flour. If you've got a MAC and you're familiar with PhotoBooth, gimme a clue how to shut down the flash thingy.  

Who Let The Dogs Out?

For the past couple of weeks I've had a pile of books on the table by my bed, in various stages of being read. For the most part, they are books about dogs: A Big Little Life [Dean Koontz], Dogs Never Lie About Love [Jeffrey Masson], My Dog Tulip [J.R. Ackerley], The Art of Racing in the Rain [Garth Stein], A Good Dog [Jon Katz], Puppy Miracles [Brad and Sherry Steiger], and Merle's Door: Lessons from a Freethinking Dog [Ted Kerasote]. All but one are memoirs or anecdotal compilations. Several are written by notable authors with distinguished credentials as novelists, psychoanalysts, and professors. 

     The Art of Racing in the Rain is the only novel, and it is written from the dog's point of view. I tend not to read fiction, and the last thing I would ordinarily want to read is a book with a canine narrator. ["Bow wow," he said, wondering if the tail was wagging the dog.] Surprisingly, I managed to set aside my preconceived notions about storytelling and actually enjoyed having Enzo tell me his, um, tale. 
     I liked A Good Dog, an absolutely unsentimental description of life with a neurotic border collie who would have been medicated and locked away had he been human.  Puppy Miracles is a series of anecdotal vignettes about people's precious pets that cries out for better grammar and judicious editing. Merle's Door, one of my favorites, is about life with a remarkable dog who chose his owner, a well known canine activist, outdoorsman and award winning writer, as he was about to embark on a wilderness river trip. 
     There are three other books in the pile: Animals in Translation [Temple Grandin], which was written by an autistic woman who overcame her disability to become a cattle, pig, and chicken whisperer;  Dewey [Vicki Myron with Brett Witter], the true story of a nearly frozen kitten, jammed into the book return at a library in Iowa, who became an international celebrity; and, Loving Frank, by a former reporter, Nancy Horan -- not a dog or a cat story, but a fictionalized version of the not so clandestine love affair between the mythic and supremely self-absorbed Chicago architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, and the wife of one of his clients, Mamah Borthwick Cheney. 
     Of course, in keeping with our canine/feline theme, you could say that Frank liked to "cat" around on his wife and he "dogged" Mamah until she left her husband to be with him. You could also say that what happened to Mrs. Cheney, in the end, shouldn't have happened to a dog. After leaving her husband to be with Frank, Mamah was ax murdered, along with her children and some of Wright's associates at his Wisconsin home, Taliesin, by an insane former employee. The sordid story has been the subject of books, an opera, and I would imagine Nancy Horan's version will be optioned sooner rather than later, with Betty White and Matthew McConnaughey attached. Okay, Gerard Butler and Carmen Electra. 
     I haven't finished all the books; I'm about half way through most of them. I choose one to read depending on what kind of mood I'm in. My stepmother keeps finding me more to read, since she has an extensive library which grows every time she stops at Borders or Barnes and Noble. I guess they have an irresisitable 2 for 1 table by the cash register. 
     So what prompted me to share what books are sitting on the table by my bed?  
     You got me. 

Niece and Nephews Alert

 

  

  

Pictures of children are wonderful. Ah, how they capture a moment in time that can last forever in the viewer's imagination. And yet, these snapshots are so deceiving, because the only photos we ever get to see are the good ones, taken when the precious, wecious, little sweetie pies are smiling and happy. Obviously, the problem with happy, smiling pictures of little kids is that they can lull you into thinking that having three young children under six years old is no big deal. A walk in the park, as it were. One can easily forget that this halcyon moment of peace and tranquility probably lasts no longer than a New York minute. Until the exhausted parent taking these particular photos saw a soft spot on the pavement and decided to lie down for only a second. . .one tiny little second. . .you kids just keep playing, I'll be right here. . .don't worry, it just looks like my eyes are closed. . .z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z.

Reading Between The Lines

I got the following in my email from a friend of mine. I have wanted to do something similar to the president's school speech myself. How could I not, after listening to the right wing wackjobs who complained the president was attempting to brainwash their children. But my friend did it before I did, so I'll post his version. I think you can tell which is the president speaking and which is my friend. If not, I can't help you. Actually, nothing can help you.

The President: Hello everyone – how’s everybody doing today?

That's a personal question, children, and you don't have to answer it.

When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years.

HE ADMITS IT! HE ADMITS IT! And Indonesia is RIGHT NEXT TO KENYA. (Teachers, please remove all maps and globes from the classroom at this point.)

Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it.

Or not. Seriously, who the hell cares?

Every single one of you has something you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer.

That's not true. Many of you will be good at nothing. Trust us, kids, we've watched you grow. Most of you will drift through life as directionless failures. Then you'll become senators.

No one’s born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work.

Hard work is for suckers. There's two ways to be succeed in this world. One, get your dad to do it for you, then claim the success as your own. Two, win the lottery. In fact, borrow money from your dad to spend on lottery tickets. You're not made of money.

But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world – and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities.

Given that most of you won't, you can see why we think it's a waste of time and money to give you dedicated teachers and good schools. I mean, no sense pissing money away. Oh, and it's your fault.

Maybe you could be a good writer – maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper – but you might not know it until you write a paper for your English class.

Don't knock yourself out on it, though, because intellectual endeavor is for liberals and communists.  But the three most nonsensical essays will be published by Regnery Publishing. Any of you proving to have exceptional illiteracy will be made Fox News anchors.

You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it’s good enough to hand in.

Are we getting through to you yet? Knowing the "right" answer to something is hard. But if you just believe whatever the hell you want, you're done. Boom, pencils down, recess time. Isn't that just a hell of a lot easier for both you and us?

And no matter what you want to do with your life – I guarantee that you’ll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You’re going to need a good education for every single one of those careers.

Except military, from now on. Hint-itty-hint-hint, kids.

The story of America isn’t about people who quit when things got tough. It’s about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best.

That's why Sarah Palin is the Best American To Ever Walk The Planet. If you call it "moving on", it ain't quitting.

So today, I want to ask you, what’s your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country?

Our bet? "Thanks for not making torture an indictable offense!" Seriously, kids, we can't thank you enough for that.

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.

OK, that's just shameless pandering now. That's like something HitlerStalin would say. (Teachers, please remove all history books from the classroom at this point...)

I've Been Wondering. . .

Is it just me or is that Roger Federer 
playing tennis in Nike wing tips? 

[Source: The First Post, UK online magazine]

Sleeping Baby Alert

This is one of my nephews. The younger one. His name is Nick. I think he looks like a Nick. No way he could pass for a Nicole. He is 20 months old. His dad was able to get this picture because he is sleeping. I'm certain this is the only way to secure a decent photograph, since he moves so fast when he's awake that any image tends to blur. Sort of a Michelin baby on speed. At rest.