I have heard these used in the wild.
brokeback – adj. Informal neologism meaning characterized by homosexuality. Usage: “Dude, Clay Aiken is so brokeback, it’s painful.” I first heard this one on one of the local hip hop radio stations, although I forget the context.
“I wish I could quit you…” – Humorous non-sequitur. Inject it into serious discussion for maximum effect. First spotted by Phillip on Fark.com.
The image search for “tiananmen square” on the left is from Google.cn, the image search on the right is from Google.com.
It’s almost so bad, it’s funny.
You may remember a mention I made over a year ago about bottlefeeding a newborn calf who had lost his mother. During my visits to Oklahoma over the past year, I watched him grow from a wobbling baby into a solid young bull. He went from tugging on the bottle to shoving you out of the way while you tried to pour feed into his trough. As he grew, he became more standoffish; glowering from his corral like a sullen teenager.
Two weeks ago he was “put up”, which is to say slaughtered and butchered. And last week we had him for dinner.
After eating the same animal you helped raise it leaves you with a feeling of ambivalence. I understand now why primitive people honored the animals they hunted. They lived with an intimate connection to the natural world.
When I was a vegetarian, I thought I could buy my way out of the world’s cruelty. If I could just stop eating meat, I would somehow store up some credit with the universe. Nevermind that I wore leather shoes. This moral fiction provided a way for me to avoid the pain of reality; that I am a fleeting bloom of life like everything else in this bloody world.
Gospel of Thomas, saying number 60: “They saw a Samaritan carrying a lamb going into Judaea. He said to his disciples: Why does he carry the lamb? They said to him: That he may kill it and eat it. He said to them: So long as it is alive he will not eat it, but if he kill it and it become a corpse. They said: Otherwise he will not be able to do it. He said to them: You also, seek for yourselves a place within for rest, lest you become a corpse and be eaten.”
Kyle and I met up at Highland Lanes last night to bowl a few frames. Every Wednesday, Highland Lanes here in Austin has unlimited bowling (including shoe rental) for $5 a person. Incidentally, have you ever looked at the word “Wednesday” and thought that n shouldn’t be there? Why is it there? Turns out that Wednesday is named after the Norse god, Odin otherwise known as Woden or Wotan.
Unlike many of the other days of the week, this day did not correspond roughly with the Roman designation for the day. (The Roman’s named Wednesday for the messenger God – Mercury – In Romanian, the day is still known as miercuri). The early Scandanavians and Germans believed that Odin was the chief God of Asgard and as such deserved to have a day of the week named for him. The Anglo-Saxons used the word, Wodnesdaeg.
Do you know where your surname comes from? Usually surnames are derived in a few standard ways, and up until a couple hundred years ago they were not fixed as they are today in our modern era of bureaucratic record-keeping.
Occupation surnames Before we had surnames, you might have been known by what you did in the community, like “Robert Stockbroker”.
Patronymics, using your father’s name as your surname This was popular in western europe until surnames became fixed, which is why it is popular today in western culture.
Toponymics, or place names Most people have surnames based on where their ancestors came from. This is actually the type of surname I have since at least one of my ancestors probably came from a place named Sybaris (destroyed by their neighbors) hence my surname, Sivori, or “one from Sybaris”. Other examples include:
Descriptive surnames Let’s say you have red hair. In the old days, you may have had the last name of Reid, Ross, Rossi, Roth, Rousseau, Russell, etc. all of which describe you as being red or having red hair. Other examples include:
I’m fascinated by the life of the truck driver. As an occupation, it is the modern equivalent of what being a sailor used to be three hundred years ago. Long stretches of time away from home and hearth, a crusty disresgard for landlubbers, and a life spent in unfamiliar places in the society of other rootless nomads. Instead of islands and ports, truckers have truckstops and loading docks. Like ships, their trucks are made for long distance and for living. At a modern truckstop, you will find all the modern necessities of life. When I stopped into the “Flying J” truckstop in Waco, I was amazed at how specialized the facilities were. There are private rentable shower rooms, sit-down telephone booths for private conversation, WiFi internet access, laundry facilities, DVD rental, and even a television lounge where you can sit and unwind (see photo to the right). You could live your life entirely on the road, especially these days with the Internet and cell phones. The only challenges as I see it, intense boredom and the need to sit for long periods of time.
The idea behind “Buy Nothing Day“:
For 24 hours, millions of people around the world do not participate — in the doomsday economy, the marketing mind-games, and the frantic consumer-binge that’s become our culture. We pause. We make a small choice not to shop. We shrink our footprint and gain some calm. Together we say: enough is enough. And we help build this movement to rethink our unsustainable course.
Yeah, man. Right on.
Today be the first cold day of the year! I’ve been experimenting with “indoor roughing it”, which has led me to forgo indoor climate control in favor of clothing control. I woke up very cold this morning, and had to get up every few minutes to readjust my blankets. Brrrrrr.
Something about cold weather brings out my inner caveman. My mind retreats inward, the senses sharpen, my skin dries and thickens becoming less sensitive, and I get a strong impulse to stop shaving. There has to be DNA memory. I am feeling wild. It reminds me of that scene in “American Werewolf in London” where he has the dream in the forest after being bitten by the werewolf. In the dream, he’s naked and hunting down a deer with his bare hands.
When I was last in Oklahoma, Jody, her mom, and I went out to feed the “calves” (in this case, yearling bullocks who have yet to be castrated). At this age, they’ve bulked up around the neck and shoulders, on their way to becoming true bulls. This particular morning was cool and the young bulls were feeling their oats, butting each other with their hornless heads trying to dig in and push each other back.
I screwed up and let an unbred heifer into the same pen as the young bulls, and the reaction was immediate. Within a few seconds she had a train of bulls following after her their heads raised, eyes rolled back, and upper lip lifted to catch the seductive scent trailing behind her.
It’s a mirror of our own world. The center of it all is the same: survival and perpetuation of the species. Everything else we have serves to take up all the time we used to spend just surviving and procreating.
Notice how the following statements differ in meaning. This has bothered me.
The news was all over this morning about Bush’s new pick for the Supreme Court, Samuel Alito. Like everyone else, I don’t know anything about him aside from his support for spousal notification with regards to abortion, which is likely to create a lot of controversy. Ideological considerations aside, it is interesting to me that there would be two Italian-Americans on the Supreme Court if he is confirmed. We are legion.
On the McLaughlin Group on Sunday, John McLaughlin put forth the compelling theory that Bush withdrew Miers’ nomination to swap in a more ideological Conservative so that he would have the motivated support of his base in the event the Plame-gate damage gets worse.