Happy Gnu Year

Five and a half years after my first brain tumor and 2.5 years after my second one, I learned that my brain is stable (yep), which means that I have no tumor growth. Yea! That makes this a happy gnu year, or happy new 6 months (until the next MRI) anyway.


There are no fireworks (I'm not a fan of fireworks since they usually mimic bombs, and scare the neighborhood dogs--and veterans, I'm guessing). There is no countdown on t.v. I will not attempt to stay up until midnight--on the East coast. Though the rest of the world's not drinking champagne, for me this is the most joyful kind of gnu year.


Because it's my New Year, and I am amused by the word "gnu" (Why is that g there? That's a conundrum for the Cowboy Poet to sort out), I wanted to learn something about gnu (or is it gnus?)

Wickedpedia says that gnu is just a weird word for wildebeest. Because the gnu is itself such a bizarre looking creature, gnu seems to me to be a better name than wildebeest. You know, because it looks like it looks.

Ann and I saw thousands of wildebeest, or gnus, when we were on the Serengheti two years before my brain surgery (in the year 2 BBS).

Our safari group rounded a dusty bend in our jeeps and witnessed a river of these odd looking animals dashing one way, then having some one gnu at the front of the line get spooked, and all of them turn around and charge back the other way, a gnu river now flowing upstream. It was like watching a waterfall begin to fall up.

I went to Wikipedia (my favorite source for all things unimportant) to see what Wikipedists had to say about gnus. I was surprised to read:

GNU ⁱ/ɡəˈnuː/^[1] is a Unix-like computer operating system developed by the GNU project, ultimately aiming to be a "complete Unix-compatible software system"^[2] composed wholly of free software. (Wikipedia)

First, I have to admit, I misread the sentence, and thought that this was a Unisex-like computer. Well, that got my attention. I didn't know that computers were sexual, and then what would it mean to be Unisex-like? Okay, so I re-read, and I was wrong about that.

I kept reading, and came to the section on Harvesting Gnus. Intriguing. I read:
Wildebeest are killed for food, especially for biltong in Southern Africa, which is dried game meat. Biltong is a delicacy and an important food item in Africa.[4] It has been found[by whom?] that the meat of females is more tender than that of males, and that meat was the most tender during the autumn season.[9] Wildebeest are a regular target for illegal meat hunters because they are relatively easy[vague] for hunters to kill. When preparing the wildebeest, the carcass is usually[weasel words] cut into 11 pieces. The estimated price for wildebeest meat is about US$ 0.47 per kilogram.[21]

So of course I started wondering who was making all of those comments in brackets. Some relative of Mr. Spellcheck, I'm guessing. The voice is pedantic, wanting to know who found the meat of females more tender than that of males (isn't it always that way? Duh.) Then I got to "weasel words." I don't know what that means, but it doesn't sound very nice. And my mama always told me, "If you cain't say anythin' nice, don't say anythin' atall."

That's all the news on gnus for now. Happy gnu year to you, too, whatever the newness is in your life.

The words, they are a'changin'

Our words change with our times. My church friend and her daughter told a story today of their recent experience in a drug store:

Customer (to a young woman who is a checker at the drug store): I'd like to buy a telephone. Can you tell me where to get one?
Checker: I don't know what that is. Ask the guy on  the floor. I'm sure he can help you.

Customer (to the guy on the floor, another young one): Excuse me, can you tell me where to find a telephone?
Worker: A what?
Customer : A telephone.
Worker: I don't know what that is.
Customer (holding her thumb to her ear and her pinkie to her mouth): You talk into a receiver like this, and someone talks back to you.
Worker: Oh, go down two aisles on your left.

This conversation reminds me of a conversation I heard in an elevator a few years ago. Two teenagers were talking, and I eavesdropped from the middle of their conversation:

Teenager #1: What's a record player?
Teenager #2: It's something about this big (she illustates the size of a breadbox with her hands.) Back in the day, people listened on records to music.
Teenager #2: (nods): What's a record?
Teenager #1: It's this plastic round disk that musicians recorded their music on. Sort of like CDs, only bigger.
Teenager #2 nods, and I get off of the elevator.

Then there was the first time that I felt significantly older than my high school students. Before class, they were quizzing each other for their American History test.
Student #1: Watergate.
Student 32: Some guys broke into a hotel room and stole some secrets.
I interrupt: "No! No! Watergate!" I open my eyes in surprise, and I gesture dramatically. "Watergate! It wasn't dull! It wasn't a history lesson! It was real life drama every night in front of the color t.v.!"
The students look patiently at me though I've interrupted their quiz. Sure that my outburst is over, Student #1 says, "Vietnam."

The words, like the times, they are a-changin'.

Neologisms

I have studied four foreign languages, and though I know some words in each language, I'm not fluent in any of them.

In middle school and later in college, I studied French. I remember, "Bonjour" and "Il ne marche pas" (It doesn't work--I used that one a bit when I travelled on the trains in France.) I also remember, of course,"Je t'aime," the most important romantic expression in the most romantic language. I also recall some monologue about going to the post office for "timbres," which I believe are stamps. (My twin friends Ellen and Donna, now in their 50s can still recite a monologue from their high school French class.)

In high school, I studied Latin, which is still a dead language to me.

For the past twenty years, I've studied Spanish, and at one point my Spanish was good enough to explain artificial insemination to a couple of Salvordan men curious about how lesbians get pregnant. I remember stumbling, though, on "turkey baster."

In those same twenty years, I've studied Teenspeak, which is different for every generation because each generation has its own technologies and concerns. In the sixties,  Simon and Garfunkel were "feelin' groovy"; in the seventies, "Stairway to Heaven" was cool at the end  of a dance; in the eighties, maybe Phil Collins was bad in that good way, and in the nineties Pearl Jam rocked the house (to read my high school journalist's headlines, you would think that everything rocked); in the 00s the Dixie Chicks emerged, and so did Brittny Spears (maybe that was the decade of the belly buttons.)  I'm not sure who is dirty or foul or filthy or whatever means groovy now.

Teaching in the suburbs in the 1990s, I learned suburban Teenspeak, so I learned that "rims" were wheels and "kicks" were sneakers.

When Ann and I first moved to the urban Central District in Seattlle, we didn't speak the teen language here. One afternoon about fifteen years ago, we walked past an animated discussion among teen boys in a nearby driveway. Because we knew from the suburbs that "kicks" were shoes, we had a context and could infer that when they talked about "Jordans," they were talking about sneakers, but though we knew the main topic and we could translate their enthusiasm, we had no idea what they were saying.

In the 2000s, teenagers in my LA class argued about whether "fo'shizzle" was offensive or not and whether it was appropriate for school. Some insisted that it was and others that it was not. It was a fiery discussion, yet another discussion among teens where I really didn't know what they were talking about.

Perhaps this will be my era of adult neologisms. Last week, my friend Jerry told me about a son who "catastrophizes." This is my favorite new new word. (That's not a typo...I mean new new since I think it's new to both me and the language.)

I should use it in context so that you will understand it: Fox News, all T.V. news, it seems, catastrophizes daily events, looking here and yon for the most explosive fires, the cutest kitten stuck in the tallest tree, and the car crash with the worst dents in the most cars."

If you're not sure about "yon," ask your Grandpa--or any Southerner.

Bureaucracy at its Best

I know bureaucracy. After all, I've tried for the last three years to get the City of Seattle to put a handicapped parking sign in front of my house. Each call requires an hour, and each call has the same effect, which is no effect.
I had a similar experience with Direct T.V., only I called six times. Also, they finally responded when I contacted a lawyer.

I've also applied for part time disability with an insurance company. I called my friendly contact Giovanni four times, leaving messages asking for information about the status of my paperwork, until on the fifth call he by mistake answered the phone. When I asked how I was supposed to get information when he wouldn't return my calls, he commented that I had only called once. I kind of lost it.

Kind of like once when I got exasperated with an administrator in a school district's central office who wouldn't process paperwork because she was planning her daugher's wedding. I blew a gasket that day. The assistant superintendent kindly pulled me into an office and asked me to tell her what was wrong. I felt like a snivelling child, or maybe a crazy woman. And maybe I was. Both.

Lately, however, bureaucracies been working for me, so maybe I can't always assume that bureucracy has a negative connotation.

For starters, my doctors at Group Health are the best. They call me back when they're supposed to; they're nice to me; their system works for me.

Also, I've needed to call on my auto and home insurance lately, and my provider has been fabulous: they're Pemco, and if you're insured by anyone else, you should switch to them.

Last June, I was in a terrible car accident, and I got the ticket even though I stll don't think it was my fault. Both the other driver and I went to the emergency room, in separate ambulences. The other driver got a lawyer who just happened to be following the ambulances to the hospital and who sued me, or tried to. I'm not sure what happened. My fairy goddess Germaine at Pemco intervened and the case has been settled. Whew.

Then just before Christmas, some not very nice people broke into our house by breaking out two windows and helped themselves to my grandmother's pearls and such. My new fairy goddess, Muriel at Pemco, didn't find my pearls, but she did take care of our bills quite quickly.

So sometimes, even bureaucracy is a beautiful thing. Maybe that's why both bureaucracy and beautiful have that "eau" thing going on.

Maryeau

Don't cliticize me!

Cliticize doesn't mean what you think it means. It means to use only a part of a word and to substitute an apostrophe for the rest. In "I'm," for example, 'm is a clitic.

I learned this from Roy Blount, Jr's, book, Alphabet Fruit. Reading the book is more like reading a narrative Oxford English Dictionary, where etymology is especially interesting and amusing. (If you listen to public radio, you may know Roy Blount, Jr. as the cowboy poet.)
I'm learning other good words, too. "Oology" means just what it looks like: the study of eggs. "Ugly" was an old Icelandic word meaning fear.
I also learned from the cowboy poet that google was named for the term "googol." A googol is a large number equal to (i.e., a 1 with 100 zeros following it). Written out explicitly,

10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000.

The term was coined in 1938 by 9-year-old Milton Sirotta, nephew of Edward Kasner (Kasner 1989, pp. 20-27; Bialik 2004). Kasner then extended the term to the larger "googolplex." It should be noted that "googol" is indeed the correct spelling of the term, so the spelling "Google" refers to the internet search engine, not one with 100 zeros.(http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Googol.html). The Cowboy Poet comments that "Google" is friendlier than "googol." He's a poet because he thinks of things like that.

"You" is, according to the Cowboy Poet, the most common word in English, and "I" is the second most common. He doesn't say what the least common word in English is, but he does point out that English is the only only language in which "I" is capitalized. (unless, of course, you're quoting ee cummings.)

I get irritated with sporscasters, and so does the Cowboy poet. Recently, I've noticed that sportscasters say, "All of a sudden" all the time, even in contexts where that's clearly not true, as in this basketball sportscaster's comment: "All of a sudden, your team is behind by twenty."

The Cowboy Poet criticizes sportscasters (and I would add others) who misuse, "hopefully," and put it any ol' place in the sentence. My poet man says, "Maybe that doesn't bug you, but it bugs me."

The best thing about this comment is his Southern accent, which extends the "u," sort of like, "It buuugs me." Or maybe a googol of u's.

It buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugs me, too, Roy.

P.S. 17 Words, words, words

Sarah Palin coined "refudiate," the 2010 word of the year. I wonder if she knows the word "malaprop." Oxford University Press has defined the word refudiate as a verb “used loosely to mean ‘reject’.” Somehow, I suspect she meant "repudiate." Just one letter off, after all. She probAbly confused repudiate with a similar Russian word, which she heard frrom her front porch.

I like some of the other contenders better. Waywordradio.org reports that "mama grizzly", "starwhacker", "vuvuzela" and "meme" were other possibilities. I like "immappacy", which is formed by analogy with “innumeracy,” and means the inability to understand maps. I wonder what the word for the tendency to get lost even with a map is.


You may not know that "Mama Grizzly" is the name of Sarah Palin's reality t.v. show. According to newsweek.com, "A mama grizzly is a conservative woman with 'common sense,' as Sarah Palin puts it, someone who 'rises up' to protect her children when she sees them endangered by bad policies in Washington. She is fearless, and that, in combination with her femaleness, makes her scary—a new kind of political predator. She will take on any foe and, the implication is, rip him or her to shreds."

I can't figure out what a starwhacker is, but I found contexts on the innernets that suggest that it has to do with computers, private body parts, and violence. There's a whole site called "Starwhacker," and all the people there seem to know what it is, but I don't want to spend my time there.

"Vuvuzela", the famous South African blowing horn, seems to be a more g-rated andl lyrical word.


Grant Barrett on his site livejournal.com explains that the word "meme" was coined by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. The word seems to mean Internet phenomena like viral videos, image macros, catchphrases, and web celebs. Or maybe starwhackers.

Grant talks about another “Word of the Year” contender, "Obamacare". I am guessing the word has a negative connotation, which reminds me of the first Bush's ability to turn the word "do-gooder" into an insult. This seemed ironic to me since he also hallucinated about "a thousand points of light." I think those thousand points of light were do-gooders. I would like to be a do-gooder, and I appreciate "Obamacare."


I love words. Some of my favorites are "balloon" (a very happy word), "conundrum" (I remeber fondly the Dublin cabdriver who used "conundrum" repeatedly in our ride from the airport--he was a poet and a philosopher), and "dappled" (my favorite word in 9th grade--I haven't grown up much, I guess). I also like the word "Oregano", which is why it was our dog Tripper's middle name. (He was called Tripper because as a puppy he would hump our legs, tripping us as we walked. Not so poetic, maybe. ) I also like the words "nasty" and "tasty".

I've been asking friends about this, and they roll their eyes, then immediately know a word or two. Pea likes "damper", an excellent word. Chris has two good ones: "petticoat" and "blink". Jane has a lot of good ones, like "expeditious", "cacophony", "purple", "Oskaloosa" (her home town) and "lavender". She also like words that make her laugh, like "rubber" and "trick" (she says she was thinking of bridge.) Carrie likes "yogurt", "sunshine", "beep", "doodle", and "ostensibly", all excellent words. My mom likes "fiddlesticks", which is her favorite four-letter word and "abide" as in "I cannot abide that man."

There are also nasty words, like "puce" (that's the worst) and "vomit" (nasty word even if you didn't know what it meant.) Carrie dislikes "slacks", "backpack", "chick", and "felt". I dare you to write a sentence with all those nasty words in it.

Jane says she doesn't like words that have unpleasant sounds like "petunia" or "wash".

Jane also thought of a new category: names. She wrote, "There are some names that I won’t say I don’t like, exactly, but that I sure am glad my parents didn’t name me: Donald, Matilda, Geoffrey (though I do like Jeffrey), Lois, Myrtle !!, Gertrude !!!, George, Celia, Petunia, Candy, Penny, Theodora, Gordon (which was ALMOST the name of my youngest grandson, but I saved him from that fate eight days after he was born, two hours before his bris. Someday he will be properly grateful.) I want any readers to know that none of my prejudices about names were formed by knowing someone by that name. I just don’t like the sound. I have known people I liked a lot by most of those names."

I would add "Dick" to that list of undesirable names. It just makes me uncomfortable.

"Smegma" made Jane's list of words she likes AND words she doesn't like. "Smegma" seems to be on her mind. When I was first teaching,  a group of freshman boys kept calling each other "Smegma." I made them look it up in the dictionary. After that, they came in from lunch every day to look words up. I think they all ended up going to Harvard. Inquiring minds.

Last night at at the UW women's volleyball match against Stanford, it occurred to me how accurate the word "ponytail" is. All those women have long hair pulled back in a band, and their hair does in fact look like a pony's tail. I started thinking of other words that are perfectly accurate: jump rope, for example. In this category, my friend Jane likes "shellfish", "stargazer", and "bluebird".

When the dog bites
When I step in turds
When I'm feeling mad,
I simply remember
My favorite words
And then I don't feel
So bad.

Mary

P.S. 12 Eighty-six synonyms for complain

Synonyms: "criticize, grumble, whine, whinge, carp, find fault, nitpick, nag, moan, murmur, object, knock, protest " (encarta.msn), "recoil, plain, quetch, give up, kick, strike up, kick back, animadvert, speak out, sound off, opine, speak up' (synonyms.net), "beef, bellyache, bemoan, bewail, bleat, carp, deplore, find fault, fuss, grieve, gripe" (dictionary.reverso.net), "accuse, ascribe, attack, bemoan, bewail, bitch, carp, cavil, charge, contravene, defy, demur, denounce, deplore, deprecate, differ, disagree, disapprove, dissent, expostulate, find fault, fret, fuss, gainsay, grieve, groan, grouse, growl, grumble, impute, indict, kick up a fuss, lament, lay, look askance, make a fuss, nag, object, oppose, protest, refute, remonstrate, repine, reproach, snivel, take exception to, wail, whimper, whine, yammer" (thesaurus.com).


Antonyms: "applaud, approve, be content, be happy, commend, praise, recommend, sanction" (thesaurus.com), "praise" (encarta.msn), "chirk up, cheer up, cheer" (synonym.net),

Eighty-six synonms for complain and 12 antonyms.

Mary

P.S. All about me.

Ani Defranco forgot the words to the song she was singing at The Vancouver Folk Music Festival several years ago. Amusingly, she strummed her guitar and sang, "All about me. More about me. More about me." Likewise, when I went to Michoacan, Mexico as a volunteer for a health project in my twenties, I knew the adventure would be more about me than about the people I was going to help.

This is my way of saying I'd like to write again. I remmber now that this blog is not for you, really. It's for me. In my commitment to write a daily entry and in my delight at all the positive feedback, I had forgotten that the blog is really for me. It is of course also about you and this community and our connection. True. But I forgot that it was born from my need to put words to my experience and to send those words out to those who, graciously, listen.

After a fare-thee-well and a month's hiatus, I'd like to come back. I find myself writing entries in my head that only fade to black and I'm sorry to have lost them. So I'd like to write to you again, but this time I'll remember that the writing is as much about me as it is about us, and I'll ask your forbearance as I write when I feel compelled instead of each day.

Word? Mary

Summer #15: My Sistah Jenn, the Logophile

Summer #15: My sister Jenn is a logophile, too, though she often mispronounces her favorite new words. She keeps an excellent list of new words on her computer. You can tell a lot about a person by reading their vocabulary list. OUr favorite word for the week was Schadenfreude, pleasure derived by someone from another person’s misfortune; joy in the misery of another. Here are some of my other favorites:

Estivate – aestivate; estivation – summer sleep; a state of animal dormancy similar to hibernation
Steatopygia – behind (as in rear end) fat
Empyreal – formed of light or fire
Sybaritic – fond of sensuous luxury or pleasure; self-indulgent
Palaver – prolonged and idle discussion
Pellucid – translucently clear
Bounder – a dishonorable man
Sequacious – lacking independence or originality of thought
Sedulous – showing dedication and diligence
Tumid – swollen; figurative (especially of language or literary style) pompous or bombastic
Cwm – a cirque (a half-open steep-sided hollow at the head of a valley or on a mountain, formed by a glacial erosion), esp. one in the mountains of Wales, [a useful word for Scrabble]
Polymath – a person of wide-ranging knowledge or learning.
Pilose – covered with long soft hairs
Hypnagogic – of or relating to the state immediately before falling asleep
Violaceous – of a violet color
Insouciance – casual lack of concern; indifference
Dysphoria – a state of unease or generalized dissatisfaction with life
Bumptious – self-assertive or proud to an irritating degree
Limpid – (of a liquid) free of anything that darkens; completely clear; (of a person’s eyes) unclouded, completely clear; (esp. of a writing or music) clear and accessible or melodious
Protean – tending or able to change frequently or easily; able to do many different things; versatile
Roman a clef – a novel in which real people or events appear with invented names
Jolie laide – a woman whose face is attractive, despite having ugly features. Pretty-ugly.
Coup de foudre – instant mad love
Friable – easily crumbled

Although she has an excellent vocabulary and a law degree and is a very smart person, Sistah Jenn doesn't really have the patience for Scrabble. We played a game at the beach, and at the end she told me, “You shouldn't use a howitzer when a hand grenade will do.” Today, I shared Sistah Jenn's wisdom with my father when he was playing my twelve year-old nephew, to no effect. Jack did use the word “tinea,” very impressive in terms of vocabulary but only six points on the board. When Jack had to go play tennis, I agreed to finish his game for him. True to form, Dad beat the pants off of me, though when he was way ahead he let “wifey” pass. Scrabble generosity.
 
My friend Rose and I once played what I thought was a friendly game of Scrabble, until I noticed that she was blocking my moves, clearly playing more competitively than I had thought we were playing. I went out with a seven letter word on a triple word score. Howitzer. Don't tread on me.
 
Mary