instant gratification

alright, so i've read a lot of romance novels and today i was inspired to begin holding im conversations in romancespeak. here, for your reading pleasure, are some snippets (as well as something a bit more risque i quickly threw together for an erotic fiction gathering). i heard it from a friend that march 3rd is national romance novel day...perhaps you should grease and flex your writing muscles so that i might have a firm adversary for a sparring match.

"away"
pummelled only by the blows of his indifference raining down on her like so many unspoken words, she gathered his silences close to her like a mantle against the rising winds. afterall, wasn't hiding only part of being seen...

"brb"
was his retreat irrelevant, a storm brewing on distant horizon...a backdrop for some battle fought on a far off land with enemies she knew nothing about? a challenge he faced alone because he let no one in, he was without allies but armored to such an extent it took her breathe away each time she crashed against him. or was this a response to the intensity of the seige she had waiting, an ambush on an unsuspecting heart? one thing was for certain, his air of abstraction thinly masked the mustering of a powerful strength. a strength that had withstood her advances for many moons, shattering her own defenses all while lighting within her a secret longing...the longing to join forces and follow him into the darkening night.

"ttyl"
finally, the torrent of her gentle protestations pierced the thick veil of distraction he lingered under. a light of understanding dawned in his eyes like a ray breaking through slowly dispelling clouds. but was it too late he wondered as his softly shining eyes--those icy depths she'd plunged into so many times searching for currents that might lead to warmer waters--traced the outline of her back in the dim glow of the doorway.

"btw"
words flow from my molten core like the stirrings of desire he sparked each time he placed his quill firmly to the pad. the delicate but insistent scratch of its inked ball sent lightning bolts of recognition through her spine, which carried the electric current of his penned thoughts to that dark and mysterious place deep inside her...that jungled shore where drums still beat an ancient rhythm. a rhythm older than words and yet one he accessed every time he spun that seductive web of language around her. a web that caught her in sticky tendrils where words spun in deadly circles that frenzied the drums until the waters overflowed their banks, wetting her thighs and rendering them as silken and as inescapable as the gossamer strands still clinging to her mind.

and now for the hardcore stuff

"geography lesson"

i'd begin by running the tip of my tongue along the coast of sweden, starting at the border with finland and slowly licking up to linger at stockholm. repeat. then i'd swirl past oslo and lower my mouth, gently placing my upper lip against the seaward side of norway and taking both countries into a warm moist kiss. my tongue just can't get enough of stockholm. in my excitment i might just engulf the entire peninsula until my lips land firmly at the base, i mean border of norway, sweden and finland.

i think that's how demark is made, but i can't be sure. we don't learn very much about these things in school.

to gladiate

someone asked me if i am a gladiator, being cheesy i wanted to reply, "no, but i gladiate"...i.e. i like to make people glad...did i really need that i.e.?

anyway, i wanted there to be an etymological relation between gladiator and glad. alas. what you see here is the beginnings of a false etymology. someday i will get a few more degrees and i will spread my false etymologies to the WORLD. or maybe, just maybe, to the moon.

glad
O.E. glaed "bright, shining, joyous," from P.Gmc. *glathaz (cf. O.N. glaor "smooth, bright, glad," O.Fris. gled, Du. glad "slippery," Ger. glatt "smooth"), from PIE *ghledho- "bright, smooth" (cf. L. glaber "smooth, bald," O.C.S. gladuku, Lith. glodus "smooth"), from PIE base *ghlei- "to shine, glitter, glow, be warm" (see gleam). The modern sense is much weaker. Gladden is O.E. gladian "be glad, make glad" + -en. Slang glad rags "one's best clothes" first recorded 1902. Glad hand "the hand of welcome" (often used cynically) is from 1895.

gladiator
1541, from L. gladiator, lit. "swordsman," from gladius "sword," supposedly from Gaul. *kladyos (cf. O.Ir. claideb, Welsh cleddyf, Breton kleze "sword"), from PIE base *qelad- "to strike, beat."

gladiolus
c.1000, from L. gladiolus "wild iris," lit. "small sword," dim. of gladius "sword," so called by Pliny in reference to the plant's sword-shaped leaves. The O.E. form of the word was gladdon.

if we extrapolate!

let's meditate on "slippery," "smooth, bald," "to shine, glitter, glow, be warm" and ease into thinking about the wild iris and the little sword, then let's remember that vagina comes from sheath. [follow that link or face the tiger].

yes. i am a gladiator.

p.s.
glade
"clear, open space in a woods," 1529, perhaps from M.E. glode (c.1300), from O.N. glaor "bright" (see glad). Original meaning would be "bright (because open) space in a wood" (cf. Fr. clairiere "glade," from clair "clear, bright;" Ger. Lichtung "clearing, glade," from Licht "light"). Amer.Eng. sense of "marshy grassland" (e.g. Everglades) first recorded c.1796. this means i waxed.

p.p.s.
ye olde friendster profile once upon a time read:
"Gwendolyn is blended with natural fragrance oils to create uniquely inviting fragrances for your home. Gwendolyn is available in a variety of fragrances that were...Created by Nature. Captured by Gwendolyn."

signs of life?

miracles and tourniquets

i was really struck by the convergence of headlines this morning, especially after thinking all weekend about this image:

let me go home, let me go to him.

if you were trapped under 150 feet of mud, who would you want working up above?

Enthusiasm wanes for people power
MANILA It was 20 years ago this month that Corazon Aquino coined the term "people power" to describe the thrilling popular uprising that drove Ferdinand Marcos from the presidency of the Philippines.

In its iconic image, nuns knelt in the paths of huge tanks as hundreds of thousands of people massed in the streets of Manila with prayers and songs and courage to face down a dictator.

"A new life starts for our country tomorrow," said Aquino, who took office as president when Marcos fled to the United States on Feb. 25, 1986, "a life filled with hope and I believe a life that will be blessed with peace and progress."

It is almost painful to look back today at that moment of celebration and optimism. After two decades of continuing political turmoil - partly fueled by repeated attempts to recreate people power - this nation of political romantics seems to have sunk into a mood of weariness and disillusionment.

A new term has been coined for it: people power fatigue.

"I'm not getting emotionally involved any more," said Sheila Coronel, the country's leading investigative journalist, who was among those who faced the tanks 20 years ago. "It makes me too angry."

"It was miraculous," said an American diplomat who was in the streets during the people power uprising against Marcos. "But you can't live on miracles."

i'd like to believe in miracles, but maybe they only come into play when you've lost your arms and legs and all you've left to live for is to see the person you love one more time before you die. or perhaps they keep you breathing for four days under a mountain of mud. i'm more concerned with what happens when the people with two arms and two legs digging stop believing.

Philippines Rescuers Hear 'Signs of Life'
GUINSAUGON, Philippines - Rescue workers refused to give up hope of finding survivors in an elementary school buried by up to 100 feet of mud, digging into the night Monday after detecting what the provincial governor called "signs of life."

Sounds of scratching and a rhythmic tapping were picked up by seismic sensors and sound-detection gear brought in by U.S. and Malaysian forces.

"To me, that's more than enough reason to smile and be happy," South Leyte Gov. Rosette Lerias said. "The adrenaline is high ... now that we have seen increasing signs of life."

Still, it was hard to imagine survivors under the wet muck nearly four days after a mountainside collapsed and covered the farming village of Guinsaugon, killing up to 1,000 people. No one has been pulled out alive since just a few hours after the disaster Friday morning.

you can read more about the complications associated with arterial tourniquets. you can also make all the anagrams you can out of tourniquet and leave them as a comment.

i have ongoing, growing appreciation for the arcade fire. wake up:

something filled up my heart with nothing, someone told me not to cry. now that i'm older, my heart is colder and i cannot see that it's a lie. children, wake up. if the children don't grow up, our bodies get bigger but our hearts get torn up. i guess we'll just have to adjust.

school of love

it has become apparent that i have to learn people today. i hope this makes up for my being so unthankful this past thanksgiving.

so it's valentine's day. if this holiday makes you feel a little crappy, you probably are inclined to complain about its commercial whorery. in which case, isn't this a pretty easy holiday to dismiss? ignore it. it's not like you have the day off of work, or you're supposed to make resolutions, or you have to eat a turkey. even people who do have significant others agree that the greeting cards, flowers and chocolates are ridiculous. this is not a system we have to buck against folks, why let it spoil your mood? also, if you go out and you're alone it screams that you're single and everyone else who is out is also available (like my brilliant red feather idea). this could be good for you.

i'm not even going to write about the history of this holiday [though i recommend you read up on flogging and maybe check out the great romance of the Trumans]. in fact i was almost going to just lie to everyone and insert the history of sweetest day in its place, as that holiday originally attempted to get people to think about those less fortunate and a little outward focus goes a long way on days like this.

i'd be a hypocrite* if i yelled at anyone for being moody, but i can tell you it will hurt my feelings to see you sad and angry today. so let's think outwardly, if need be you can think about me instead of you. it is, afterall, the two week mark to my birthday - february 28.

since, you asked, i am having a GREAT day. my boss brought in dunkin donuts, a lady down the hall gave me some chocolates (really though, the chocolate manufactured for valentine's day - distinguished by its heart shape and red foil packaging - may be made from the waxy substance sucked out of sawdust-stuffed puppets...i think we call those souls.), another coworker became a grandmother at 12:45am, boys on the internet are sending me random messages in spades [won't use that phrase again], my birthday is clearly approaching, i've got a hot date tonight, this woman applying for a scholarship left me a valentine's day voice mail for my customer service, i'm going to alaska in a week. thank you for asking.

your life can be just as good, because i am your friend, and it's likely i will do a little bit more for you than you do in return [with some notable exceptions, you know who you are and i will send you a little card in a few minutes full of rainbows and midi notes - you love rainbows and midi files! i love you].

"There is no remedy for love but to love more."

~Henry David Thoreau

*c.1225, from O.Fr. ypocrisie, from L.L. hypocrisis, from Gk. hypokrisis "acting on the stage, pretense," from hypokrinesthai "play a part, pretend," also "answer," from hypo- "under" + middle voice of krinein "to sift, decide" (see crisis). The sense evolution is from "separate gradually" to "answer" to "answer a fellow actor on stage" to "play a part." Thus hypocrite (c.1225) is ult. Gk. hypokrites "actor on the stage, pretender."

**warning - for mature audiences only. you know the other day someone told me how that infamous duct-tape photo brings out my eyes. it's my opinion that the favorable response to that photo has more to do with the smile under the duct-tape. it would seem unexpected. one time, when i was orally pleasuring a man, he said something that made me want to laugh. i didn't, but i did smile. i would imagine unmistakenly feeling a smile when someone's mouth is on you, is nice. just remember, whenever you can, to smile.

they call us dreamers

they call us dreamers - a pictorial

Bird Ate My Donut showed me this today. Click on the word this before continuing, it is essential to this posting.

1909: On the left is J.T.C. Moore-Brabazon, who earlier the same year was the first British pilot to fly in Britain, in his personal French-built Voisin aero plane. On the right is a pig in a wicker basket behind a sign that says "I am the first pig to fly."


1959: Project, Launch Vehicle Little Joe. Pigs were eliminated as Little Joe flight test subjects when studies disclosed that they could not survive long periods of time on their backs. However, McDonnell did use a pig, 'Gentle Bess,' to test the impact crushable support, and the test was successful.

1983.

a little birdie

it's time for some updates. i know i want to keep this darn blog merely INFORMATIVE, but i just wanted to tell you a few things and since evidently you lose blog traffic if you don't post often enough. i have to try and keep you coming back.

1) it is thursday, february 2. happy birthday timmy! timmy is that very tall man in idaho who has a new baby girl. also, happy birthday to laurie, don, allie and jon again.

2) i could be seeing andrew bird in milwaukee tonight. that would be great, but it is not happening alas. i have some obligations. i like obligations. and i will go to milwaukee tomorrow night, it is also my sincere wish that andrew bird will not die and i will therefore catch him some time in the future.

3) i will be playing badminton tonight. i need someone with a camera to take a picture of my awesome t-shirt, made by team captain norah. i just went to look up what our standing is after last week - hell yes we're still firmly in second place. raw! a funny bit - when i went to look for my league website - the chicago metropolitan sports association [incidentally, i not only belong to a gay and lesbian badminton league, i belong to the first gay and lesbian badminton league in the country] - i googled "CMSA" and came up with this: www.cowboymountedshooting.com. ooo la la.

4) i'm collecting so much delicious information on whales and squid for my february postings on whales and squids.

5) i will easily compile my 29 things list well in advance of my birthday...

6) i have the technology identified to begin cataloging my books read and movies watched.

7) i have old dreams new again.

grasping at fins

good things, like enlarged pelvic muscles and grasping fins in the males of a species, come in small packages. i think when you live in acid and lack a protective head skeleton, you realize what's really important in life.

AP Wednesday, 25 January 2006, 06:32 GMT BANGKOK, Thailand - Scientists have discovered the world's smallest fish on record in an acidic peat swamp in Indonesia, with a see-through body and a head that is unprotected by a skeleton, researchers said Wednesday.

Mature females of the Paedocypris progenetica, a member of the carp family, only grow to 7.9 millimeters (0.31 inches) and the males have enlarged pelvic fins and exceptionally large muscles that may be used to grasp the females during copulation, researchers wrote in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, published Wednesday by the Royal Society in London.

"This is one of the strangest fish that I've seen in my whole career,' said Ralf Britz, zoologist at the Natural History Museum in London, who helped analyze the fish's skeleton. "It's tiny, it lives in acid and it has these bizarre grasping fins. I hope we'll have time to find out more about them before their habitat disappears completely."


The previous record for small size, according to the Natural History Museum in London, was held by an 8-millimeter species of Indo-Pacific goby.

The new fish was discovered on Sumatra island by fish experts Maurice Kottelat from Switzerland and Tan Heok Hui from the Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research in Singapore. They were working with colleagues from Indonesia and with Kai-Erik Witte from the Max Planck Institute in Germany.

"You don't wake up in the morning and think today we will find the smallest fish in the world," Kottelat told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from his home in Switzerland.

He said the record of finding the world's smallest fish was not important, preferring to focus on what he said was "scientifically significant."

"What's important is finding a complete vertebrae in a body so small," he said.

Kottelat said he first came across the fish in 1996, but originally misidentified it as a member of an already existing species. "But then we realized this one was different."

According to the researchers, the fish live in dark, tea-colored water with an acidity of ph 3, at least 100 times more acidic than rainwater. Swamps like this were once thought to harbor very few animals, but recent research has revealed that they are highly diverse and home to many species that occur nowhere else.

Peat swamps are under threat in Indonesia from fires lit by plantation owners and farmers as well as unchecked development and farming. Several populations of Paedocypris have already been lost, researchers say, according to the Natural History Museum.

Associated Press writer Bradley S. Klapper in Geneva contributed to this report

possible segues: size does matter...; in other news...; are there plenty of fish in the sea...; the dangers of holding on loosely...

BBC Tuesday, 17 January 2006, 14:38 GMT
By Richard Black
Environment Correspondent, BBC News website, Darwin

Whale sharks spotted off the coast of Australia are getting smaller, researchers have said.

In a decade the average size recorded by observers has shrunk from 7m to 5m.

Whale sharks, the world's largest fish, are caught for food in some east Asian countries and Australian researchers suspect this is causing a decline.

"Now, if you consider that the sharks probably aren't sexually reproductive or mature until they're 6 or 7m long - that's a very worrying sign."

Whale sharks (Rhincodon typus) are filter feeders, eating small marine organisms such as krill.

They can live for up to 150 years, attaining lengths of more than 15m, and are believed to reach sexual maturity around the age of 30.

Under the IUCN Red List of threatened species, they are categorised as "vulnerable" to extinction.

"Whale sharks, like many other shark species, are highly vulnerable to over-exploitation due to their long lifespan and low reproductive rate," commented Callum Roberts, of York University in the UK, who has researched whale sharks extensively in the Caribbean.

Finding migration routes could help pinpoint areas where they are being caught.

"Many of the people doing the fishing are just local villagers with no other option," said Mark Meekan.

Longer term objectives of the Aims programme include finding out more about the life cycle of the whale shark.

The biggest mystery concerns breeding and reproduction; males and females live in largely segregated communities, but must come together somewhere to breed.

patent your brain

or face the realization that your brain could also belong to some dude that's from berkeley and who sports a ponytail.

consider yourself warned!

nick has my brain.

Passion and Etymology

Disclaimer: I seem to be kind of harsh on linguistics lately. Please don’t think I have anything special against it, or against linguist bloggers. Some of my best friends, as the saying goes, are linguists who blog, and I adore Language Log. But….

Arnold Zwicky at Language Log has an interesting post on the “etymological fallacy.” It involves a quotation in which someone talks about the historical connection between passion and suffering (in the context of encouraging people to differentiate what you’re passionate about from what you like):

This does not mean that pursuing a mission is always pleasurable: we do not agree with the pop psychology view that equates meaningful work with fun. Indeed, the etymological root of ‘passion’ is passe – or ‘to suffer.’ We are aware that pursuing a noble mission is often painful…

Zwicky replies:

The noun stem passio:n- originally would have meant ‘suffering’, and indeed passion is still used in this sense in the very specialized context of the sufferings of Jesus (The Passion of the Christ, passion play, etc.). But early on—the OED Online draft revision of 2005 lays out these changes in some detail—it developed not only an ‘undergoing’ sense (‘fact or condition of being acted upon’) parallel to that of patient and passive, a sense that seems to have gone out of fashion some 500 years ago, but also a separate extended sense, a generalization from experiencing pain to experiencing any sort of intense feeling or emotion, especially love or sexual desire (_His voice was husky with passion_), or, in another direction, enthusiasm or zeal (_a passion for astrology_), or, in still another direction, anger or rage (_a fit of passion_).

The result of all this semantic radiation, generalization, and specialization is that modern English passion has a variety of senses—among them, love or desire, enthusiasm or zeal, and anger or rage (all attested from the 16th century on)—that are not directly connected to one another and have nothing in particular to do with suffering.

Now, let’s begin by granting that we shouldn’t all suddenly stop using “passion” the way we did yesterday. It still gets to mean infatuation, and so forth, and it still gets to be used in “passion play,” and we don’t have to find a way for those two usages to be identical. This is what I take Zwicky to mean by “not directly connected.” But should we also suppose that there is no continuing interaction between these different meanings of the word? I don’t know about you, gentle reader, but understanding a tiny smidge about, say, early Christianity, has had a non-trivial impact on the way I use the word, the way I think about it, and the situations in which I would apply it, and I’m willing to guess I’m not the only person writing in the English language today for whom this is true. In that case, there’s really nothing at all wrong with someone pointing out that there’s a difference between passion and liking, or, even, referencing the etymology in the process.

Of course, one could come back with a claim that we’re all laboring under an etymological fallacy, and this is quite possibly the case, but it’s also a reality of how we really use the word. (And don’t we all know by now that wishful prescriptivism about how to use words in the face of how people really use words is a bad, bad thing perpetrated by bad, bad people? There’s a hole in my reasoning here, I know, and I’ll get back to you on that.)

There’s also, perhaps, a point to be made regarding the original expansion in meaning. Zwicky calls it “a generalization from experiencing pain to experiencing any sort of intense feeling or emotion,” which I’m sure is true, but I had the impression—and feel free to heap invective on me via comment or email if I’m wrong here, as my classical education is almost as inadequate as my linguistics education—that there was also an implicit connection, in the context of ancient psychology, between intensity itself and suffering—that at the heart of romantic love and other “passions” is already a kind of suffering or dis-ease. And even if I’m not historically grounded here, I think we can do some perennialist psychology and just say there really is such a connection, trans-historically, biotch. To quote Roy Orbison:


Love hurts
Love scars
Love wounds and mars
Any heart not tough
Or strong enough

To take a lot of pain
Take a lot of pain

If this is so, and if there was some intuitive connection at work in the original process by which “passion” acquired new meanings, what’s wrong with reminding people of the historical connection?

Note: To return to that earlier hole (orig. “whole”—Nicklexia strikes again) in my reasoning, I was conflating “possibly spurious claims regarding historical linguistics” with “usage”, i.e., suggesting that when someone makes a claim about, say, the meaning of a word, their claim is itself a real linguistic phenomenon which descriptivists are honor-bound to take seriously as such. In doing so, I probably overstate my case somewhat. Attacks by linguists on false or misapplied etymologies are more on the nature of sometimes excessive, sometimes justified, fact-checking by specialists.

But, in this case, it’s a little different from, say, bitching about how you can hear TIE fighters go by in Star Wars, where the obvious response is, “Yes, you’re right, but lighten up, man, it’s a space opera.” (Note: I’ve been on either side of that one plenty of times, so don’t think I’m innocent of nitpicking.) Or, more linguistically, the recent rant in Languagehat on NYT’s bad instruction on the pronunciation of “quipu,” which is wholly justified.

But spurious etymologies really are, sometimes, really part of how people really use language; it would obviously be insane to say either that (a) we must all use only correct etymologies, or (b) we must all never talk about etymology again. The etymological fallacy is, in a certain sense, just another linguistic phenomenon, even though it’s also an intrusion on the hallowed ground of linguistical expertise. Anyone who’s engaged in any kind of study of religion is familiar with the proliferation of spurious etymologies and place- and personal name etiologies; we don’t have records of language that go back too much farther than the sacred (and wildly unsound, etymology-wise) texts of the Judeo-Christian and Hindo-Buddhist worlds, (which were typically composed by the best-educated and most historically conscious members of their communities) so, while it may or may not be the case that “The persistence of the Etymological Fallacy among intellectuals is in some ways deeply puzzling,” it’s certainly not in the least surprising, and to say otherwise is to demonstrate a certain disregard for the history of intellectuals and ideas, as well as writing and, probably, speaking.

And while it’s become fashionable in some circles, especially on the internet, to bash the somewhat loose way of religious teachings with facts (obviously I’m not talking about Language Log here), the practice of enriching language with meaning through creative historical linguistics is probably indispensable to many sacred paths, and I would be hard-pressed to reject those paths, or the vitally important contributions they’ve made to human thought…(Though certainly I’ve been known to say some unkind things about translations of the Vajracchedika, known as the “Diamond Sutra” throughout much of history, including the present.)

p.s. i didn't want to edit all of that so there's a lot of hyperlinks missing from nick's post. go follow the link already.

29 things

my birthday is coming up. i will be turning 29 on february 28th. last year was my golden birthday. to gear up, i've decided to compile 29 things about me in the more than 29 days between now and then. it's like 43things or allconsuming, but actually it will be exactly different. i won't put any links in my list. the buck will stop here, once i begin here that is. right now, we're still in the prologue so i can send you there.

content (v.)

1418, from M.Fr. contenter, from content (adj.), c.1400, from L. contentus "contained, satisfied," pp. of continere (see contain). Sense evolved through "contained," "restrained," to "satisfied," as the contented person's desires are bound by what he or she already has.

29 things

1. my sun sign is pisces. i've recently decided to never ever again read my horoscope as it's slowly transformed to something that invokes dread. i'm presently experiencing a deep need to feel as if all things are less pivotal. that said, i think i'm going to be blogging a lot about ocean creatures in the month between now and my birthday.

wordlets

twice in as many days, i've noticed my mind mashing words. namely:

"still talk" > stalk
"shallow wallow" > swallow

that's about all.

i did go try to look up the etymology of the word shallow. i didn't find anything exciting but i did for some reason hit upon this list of standard english words which have a scandinavian origin [remember to track my ongoing scour of scandinavia]. you can view the full list at http://www.viking.no/e/england/e-viking_words_2.htm, and let me thank scandinavia in general for these:

Abbreviations: E = English. ME = Middle English. SE = Standard English. Ice = Icelandic. Swe = Swedish. O Swe = Old Swedish. Dan = Danish. Nor = Norwegian. Scan = Scandinavian (in general). Fr = French. Du = Dutch. vb = verb. n = noun. adj = adjective. advb = adverb.

balderdash (n) Poor stuff. Scan. Originally meant a poor or weak drink. Dan balder (noise, clatter) dask (to slap, flap). Compare with E slap-dash.

brunt (n) Shock of an onset. Scan => ME brunt (an attack). Ice bruna (to advance with the speed of fire, as in battle) from Ice bruni (burning, heat). To 'bear the brunt of something' is used in contemporary E with the meaning 'to take the main weight (or first shock) of some occurrence or action'.

cock (n) A pile of hay. Dan kok (a heap), Ice kökkr (lump, ball), Swe koka (clod of earth).

dairy (n) Scan => ME deyerye (a room for a deye, i.e., a milk-woman or farm servant). Ice deigja, Swe deja (a maid, dairymaid who was also a bread-maker. The original sense is 'kneader of dough').

freckle (n) A small spot of skin colouring. Ice freknur, Swe fräkne, Dan fregne (a freckle).

froth (n, vb) Foam on liquids. Scan => ME frothe. Ice froða, Dan fraade, Swe fradga.

dastard (n) Scan => ME dastard, where -ard is a Fr suffix. Ice dæstr (exhausted, weary). The original sense of the word is sluggard.

kidney (n) Scan. Corruption of the ME kidnere, kidneer. Ice kviðr (womb), Swe qved (womb) anotomically inappropriately combined with Ice nýra, Dan nyre, Swe njure (a kidney).

muck (n, vb) Filth, dirt. Ice myki (dung), Dan mög (dung). Dialectal in E but has now passed into SE usage. The verb form 'to muck (about)' means to behave irresponsible, to mess with things; the associated adjective is mucky.

pap (n) A teat, a breast. O Swe papp (the breast), changed in modern Swe to patt. Also Swe dialect pappe. Associated with E pap (an infant's soft food).

quandary (n) An evil plight. Ice vandræði (difficulty, trouble), O Swe wandräde (difficulty).

rigmarole (n) Scan and Fr-Latin. A corruption of ragman-roll, originally meaning a deed with many signatures, a long list of names, and hence a long, stupid story. Literally 'a cowards' roll'. Ice ragmenni (a coward) roll (list).

rump (n) Ice rumpr, Swe rumpa, Dan rumpe. Originally meant the bulk of the body without the head but now in SE indicates the buttocks, the 'rear-end' of a person.

thrust (n, vb) Ice þrýsta (to thrust, press, compel). Allied to the SE threat/threaten.

thwart (n, vb) Transverseley, transverse. Ice þvert (adverse), Dan tvær (transverse), Swe tvär (across). As a noun in E it is used mainly of transverse panels across a ship or boat, including seats, with the associated maritime term 'athwart' standing for 'across'. In its original maritime usage it probably indicated a part of a ship's architecture which prevented (thwarted) the ingress of water or the movement of cargo. The SE verb 'to thwart…something' means to prevent something happening or put some obstacle in the way, as in 'they thwarted his plan to become president'.

trist, tryst (n) An appointment to meet. Scan. Properly, a pledge. From traust (see trust).

want (n) Lack, deficiency. Scan => ME want. First used as an adjective signifying 'deficient'. Compare with Yorkshire dialect usage of a verb form in, for instance, 'the grass wants cutting', where 'want' stands for 'needs' or 'requires', whereas the SE would be 'the grass needs (or requires) cutting'.

whim (n) A freak. Ice hvima (to wander with the eyes, as of a silly person), Nor kvima (to whisk about, to trifle). Compare Swe dialect hvimmerkantig (giddy in the head) allied to Nor kvimsa, Swe dialect hvimsa, Dan vimse (To be giddy, to skip about). In modern SE the meaning is a sudden desire or notion to do something without a great deal of thought, as in 'she did it on a whim'.

rock the cock

did you know i joined a badminton league? i did. it's through cmsa, i am now joining the chicago lesbigay community. HELL YEAH.

time for me to shine. really shine. like a bright star.


thanks, evan, for the totally rad e-card. now show me your bandy tits!

scandalous scandinavia

i'll admit it, i'm presently obsessed with vikings. subsequently, i've been reading up on scandinavia. yesterday, i was strangely fascinated when i noticed that scandinavia's wiki was under dispute. mini-modern-marauding? i felt i had to share this news, spread a bit of passionate interest in information to the world, and so i told um maybe three people to go look at the page. wouldn't you know it, the very next day they settled the dispute and removed the under-dispute tag on the wiki. i seem to be an agent of peace and accord, but you can review the history of this small war on the talk page.

even more moving than the heated debate on finland, was my complete revelation that scandinavia is unarguably shaped like a penis.

the more we get together

please stop hurting.

rebus loves me this i know

i went to sea in search of vikings

King of Chalices ~ The Fey Tarot
"With maturity, emotions do not vanish but become more removed and deeper. Just as waves in the sea are more difficult to see** when the sea is deep, so are the great emotions of the king. They run deep but envelope every fibre in his body."

sans maturity, that seems to be more of the same*. perhaps i should set my sights higher.

mountain men?

http://www.hikeclub.co.uk/

*"Originating in the 1830s, hunting dogs in the United States were often fooled when chasing after small animals like raccoons. The small creatures would climb up one tree, then jump to another...leaving the hound to mislead his master into thinking they were in the right place." it appears that barking up the wrong tree is a truly american slang, only in the united states are our dogs this easily confused?

**"Please slow it down/There’s a secret magic password/That you only notice when you’re looking back at it/And all I wanna do is turn around/I'm going down to sleep on the bottom of the ocean/Cause I couldn’t let go of the water at the setting sun/Cause I couldn’t let go of the passing moment gone." white daisy passing, rocky votolato.

the bees knees

bees do not have knees. go look up that expression for me, gentle reader. share it with others via a comment.

i am eating hot chocolate so-called because it is supposed to be hot and it is a chocolate bar. it's nothing compared to some chili chocolate i brought home from montreal. i want that chocolate--chocolate so hot i could only take one small bite a sitting, and i needed to drink water. that's the kind of chocolate that burns one into feeling they have a heart still.

i'm listening to my favorite artist, ill lit, right now. i must share my favorite words. now.

and you've got your endurance, make sure that it's working.
stay a little longer, show her you're worth it.
the list of understandings and
arguments is inside.
well, every hip girl i know these days likes
suicide.

i was beat with an elder stick, crooking my neck but i grew it thick.
there's always fog at this height.
with all the ghosts you swear
you need the ones condemning who you'll be. i'll be the one setting them
free but you can't tell them from me.

break yourself, it won't hurt a bit.
even always cold, you're never used to it.
and all the weather's for you to help you adore her.

i miss your understanding.
and all we have is this time.
you told me everything
that i believe will save me tonight.

i can't think of a line ... except maybe that andrew bird one ... that hits me harder than "break yourself, it won't hurt a bit". i am not sure why, it doesn't seem that complicated nor half as pretty as the elder stick lyric, another favourite. but i guess i want more people to break themselves.

the heartlock

Jonathan: maybe you're looking for the wrong thing from men.
Gwendolyn: i guess.
Jonathan: obviously you need physical contact from people. so first and foremost, take up wrestling.
Gwendolyn: k
Jonathan: secondly, you need people to talk about their feelings, so join a support group for wrestlers and the people who love them.
Jonathan: finally, you need some mental stimulation. so start a scrabble club within the support group for wrestlers and the people who love them.

todd, you're brilliant...

i wouldn't give a fuck but the love here is such a long walk

preface: this post is not at all educational or entertaining. if you visit bluestockingism for such things (and i really hope you do), please come back soon.

it's thanksgiving and although i am not sitting alone in a cold, dark room all day, i am struggling to remember to be thankful. aww, winnie the cat just made himself more comfortable and stretched a paw over my thigh. this is one reason i think there could be a god--moments of self-pity inevitably interrupted by the smallest of graces.

i'm sad today. i don't have any sense of family much anymore, and it makes me feel very lonely. someday i'll sit down and write my "i'm not all shits and giggles" post about some of the issues in my family, but not today. today it suffices to say holidays where everyone goes off to be with their families make me feel a little empty inside, and i begin to miss not only this family that isn't working out but everyone through the years that felt like family. i'm tired by things that end or fail.

i'm tired of things that fail to meet expectations. i have to say i am thankful that in a few minutes i'll be going out to dinner with my friend Allstar (the one with the bird in her apartment, for you regular readers). i love Allstar. both of us have had lives where people from a very young age have not met even the most basic of expectations, and we learned to take care of ourselves and of others. yet, people can still let us down. sometimes i think it would be wise to switch to being one of those people without expectations and who can't ever be let down, but i haven't figured out how to achieve that without giving up something i feel quite integral to my sense of self -- caring. in the meantime, i try to live up to and exceed the expectations of anyone that bothers to form some real ideas of how i can contribute to their life. Allstar has some good ideas of how i fit in, and i of her. so i have a best friend again, and i appreciate the opportunity to try hard.

so here's to my cat and to Allstar (and to evan for writing, and to everyone of the regular crew who i know had a passing thought of me today, and to the person i'll brave the cold for, and to the stranger who called to make sure i wasn't sitting alone in a cold, dark room): happy thanksgiving.

told you so friday: i am not polish

people often try to tell me i am polish, they either tell me that my facial features or my last name marks me as polish. my father is named stan, and i have never really met anyone named stan who is not polish. but ever since a very lovely polish girl, who came from poland to chicago, once gave me a facial and told me i wasn't polish-looking i've always scoffed at these attempts to pinpoint my rich and complicated ancestry. it's not my nature, however, to scoff without really knowing. so how rich and how complicated is my ancestry?

it seems natural to begin this quest through a simple process of elimination combined with an examination of what i do know about my family. hmm, i don't really know much about my family since my paternal grandparents died before i was born and my dad doesn't talk about his family or um anything really. my mother says we have a genealogy in the basement somewhere but it's buried amidst the piles of her obsessive-compulsive disorder and she won't let me go digging. she says it says we're prussian. fuck...prussia hasn't existed for a really long time and it was very, very big. so let's go back to poland. wait, where is poland*? for a better answer to that question than i could ever give, might i suggest you check out a copy of "A Polish son in the motherland: an American's journey home" by my colleague Leonard Kniffel from your local library.

let's try this again. my last name is a Variant of eastern German Prillwitz, a habitational name from places so named in Pomerania and Mecklenburg. if you check out that link you'll see how in 1920 my clan was concentrated in ... wisconsin! given that right before the turn of that century 1 out of 3 mecklenburgers emigrated, it would seem likely some of my relatives were part of the mass exodus.

did you see how my ancestors were known as mecklenburgers? we shall now briefly detour back to wisconsin to talk about burgers, because you know i can never go too long without thinking about my belly. read a whopper-sized history of the hamburger here, or just skim the excerpt below:

1885 - Charlie Nagreen of Seymour, Wisconsin, at the age of 15, sold hamburgers from his ox-drawn food stand at the Outagamie County Fair. He went to the Outagamie County Fair and set up a stand selling meatballs. Business wasn't good and he quickly realized that it was because meatballs were too difficult to eat while strolling around the fair. In a flash of innovation, he flattened the meatballs, placed them between two slices of bread and called his new creation a hamburger. He was known to many as "Hamburger Charlie." He returned to sell hamburgers at the fair every year until his death in 1951, and he would entertain people with guitar and mouth organ and his jingle:

Hamburgers, hamburgers, hamburgers hot; onions in the
middle, pickle on top.

Makes your lips go flippity flop.

The town of Seymour, Wisconsin is so certain about this claim that they even have a Hamburger Hall of Fame that they built as a tribute to Charlie Nagreen and the legacy he left behind. The town claims to be "Home of the Hamburger" and holds an annual Burger Festival on the first Saturday of August each year. Events include a ketchup slide, bun toss, and hamburger-eating contest, as well as the "world's largest hamburger parade."

i am proud to have called wisconsin home, i imagine the hamburger is too. and maybe this foolish quest for my roots need go no further, might i be satisfied with my kindred, meaty brethren and ketchup slides?

no. i want to tell you more about mecklenburg. actually i just want you to read that history because it will tell you about the university in 1419, the adoptions of many different official religions, the numerous divisions and reunifications of my motherland, and the land lendings and occupations. but what is the best part about mecklenburg? this!

Mecklenburg was occupied in the sixth century by the Wends, a Slavic people. The Mecklenburg dynasty was established in the 1100s when the Wendish ruling family accepted Christianity and German domination.

i rule!

from now on, please address me as mare vendicus. i own finland too. i wanted to find myself and instead i found an empire.

* i'd intended to skip sharing polish lore, since as you now know, i am not polish. but i was reading about poland and this guy casimir (the last king of a purely polish state and the adopted last name of someone ... pole ... where was i ) and the polish people in general, when i came across this gem: "Their women, when married, do not commit adultery. But a girl, when she falls in love with some man or other, will go to him and quench her lust. If a husband marries a girl and finds her to be a virgin, he says to her, "If there were something good in you, men would have desired you, and you would certainly have found someone to take your virginity". Then he sends her back, and frees himself from her. " ouch, that's a double-edged sword if i ever!

can you hear what my watch is saying?

well shucks, that did not work. i am having a bad day and i wanted to talk to someone. it seemed briefly like it could be a good time.

guess what! i think i finally have a missed connection that applies to me. i doubt me in particular because i usually ride the bus. but i am wearing the same pants as last night and they are jeans, how sensible is that.

big butt blonde girls - m4w - 30

---

Reply to: anon-108175459@craigslist.org
Date: 2005-11-01, 3:42PM CST


Each and every delicious one of you.

To hell with the skinny executive wannabe too-perfectly-made-up Clark/Division snobs, the bitchy bovine Depaul girls getting on at Fullerton, the hipster queens at Belmont with their gigantic sunglasses -- no thanks.

No, it's you with the shy eyes and slightly unsteady walk, thick gorgeous thighs longing to be caressed straining against the sensible pants you were wearing last night (you have no idea how hot you made me) blonde hair cute sweet open face begging to be kissed.

You know who you are. Bring that big butt over here and say hello.

this is in or around red line

too close for comfort

too close for comfort was a television show from 1980-1983. an actress from the warriors (our halloween costume inspiration, see below), who in the warriors had "a mattress strapped to her back", starred in this television series. the series also featured the cosmic cow. check out bob's comment on cows.

later that night, the high hats grow in numbers!

we were the baddest gang in town for one night, but now it's time for something even scarier! this marks the official end of scary disclosure week. it's been great and i think i will definitely be a more reliable blogger henceforth. i feel safe in saying once a week. but to provide a fittingly stunning conclusion to sweepsweek, i've decided to do something a little scary and a little special.


today's special was also a television show during my formative years (1981-1987). it was in fact my favorite childhood show of all time. i will at some point in the future explore my fondness for movies, shows and books about mannequins come to life. for now, my point is served by mentioning that i loved muffy and muffy loved cheese and i love cheese and this is most likely why my leg is not broken (also note sam has a cat named penelope). today's special was canadian, and speaking of broken...

i have a new friend, his name is ed. ed is funny, this is demonstrated by his saying the following: "i was concerned though that you saw my red button....and that it was actually a red wall with a red circle and a line through it." you might not get it, but trust me that it is brilliant. ed has someone that he wants back, and i hope that he gets her and that she treats him better too. in my humble opinion, people do not tell each other often enough they are being idiots when they are walking away from something good. we tell each other this when we are holding onto something bad or someone who doesn't want to be held onto, but who's there on the other side saying "hey don't be a dingbat, look at what you've got!" wendy, that's who. so girl, you should think. ed has some work to do, but i think he's willing to try. people who try are in my good books.

ed is imperfect, as we are all. he had a zine made about him to immortalize his transgressions. it is called "goodbye ed" and the author has a cat named wendy. if you read "goodbye ed" and your name is wendy you might feel very odd when the narrator remarks mid-zine "wendy, whatever should i do?". you might scream out, "holy heck, this zine is talking to me!". you might think it's like that time in the voyage of the dawn treader (your favorite in the series) when the painting comes to life, or like that time when you were reading house of leaves (your favorite novel to date) and you noticed three times that "pieces" was substituted for "pisces" and you felt the author?narrator?house? wanted to tear your piscean self to pieces*, or like that time in south park when cartman pitches the idea for the crab people...alright that last instance isn't relevant, it just allows me to link to metareference and to segue into a discussion of a certain cancer.

"Cancer is a class of diseases characterized by uncontrolled cell division and
the ability of these cells to invade other tissues, either by direct growth into
adjacent tissue (invasion) or by migration of cells to distant sites..."

everyone who is smarter than i might know that cancer is actually the same basic disease whereever it strikes a body and that we call cancers "heart cancer" or "breast cancer" simply on the basis of where the disease is first discovered and diagnosed in the body. i learned this when i researched cancer after precancerous cells appeared simultaneously in my dojo and under my armpit.

i've been obsessed with a cancer for many years, and some new cancers too that strike up the same old disease. it's like the time my sophomore year of college when i kept getting stung by bees. that was the only year of my life i was ever stung by a bee and it happened three times over a couple of months. each time i was stung anew, the site of the old sting would react as well leaving a track of swollen parts. i welcome a medical explanation or refutation of this phenomena.

last night i spoke for forty minutes with a cab driver while sitting outside of my house after a day visiting with ed. i saved $4 on the fare as a result of sharing banter. in my case, i guess talk does come cheap. the conversations of the day and evening left me with a complicated mix of emotions. ed's discussion of his obsession of course encouraged me to think of my own. then i met a cab driver who insisted post-dialogue, that i was "smart, hot, a role model for all the women of chicago." i asked him to share this PSA with the men of chicago, or of the world (dum dum dum). keep in mind this cab driver thinks that hillary clinton is the hottest woman alive. the cab driver was nice and he asked me out. i was not interested. good thing too as he doesn't believe in love or marriage. i do.

the cabbie, a non-native speaker, endeared himself to me completely when he talked about how "putting all his eggs in one basket" really hurt him when "things started to go south" in that relationship. i love idioms you might notice. he said he never wanted to be hurt like that again. it seems i have heard this information from men before. i have also heard from men, quite a few men, that the only woman they've ever really loved was someone who was 1) suicidal/really screwed up/abused/abusing drugs, and 2) sexually unresponsive. interesting. it seems i have so little hope for love on so many counts. i'm not bitter at the moment, i just do wonder sometimes if i am too keen on being happy (note not necessarily happy, but aspiring to it), healthy (in terms of sex at least, i should eat less hotdogs and jump around more), and an equal in economic, intellectual and emotional wealth. rubbish, i am not paying attention to the right sorts i presume.

more important than that, as i can't really help being who i am and i don't think it seems at all smart to try to be more screwy, i don't want to be someone who stops trying because i've been hurt. i have been hurt 4.5 times now. i have little inclination at the moment to get to know more about people because i am scared. someday i need to get over this. in the meantime, i will let other people get to know all about me...because scary disclosure "week" was ONLY THE BEGINNING.

muhahahahahahaha! happy halloween,bonhomies.

*if you read the wiki on house of leaves, you'll notice under "typographical and spelling errors" that the pisces mistake is listed and that it does indeed occur three times. when i wrote my comment above i had not yet searched wikipedia for the novel but recalled the three references from memory. they honestly scared the shit out of me. i also from memory recall the inclusion of the definition of uncanny.