Author: Michael Janairo
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ICYMI: #TrumpBookReports meet Middle-earth
Tr-mp in the final debate was bigly horrifying, should’ve been important, and yuge, but he was weak. Sad!
So if he loses, maybe he’ll disappear, but I truly fear that his biggest contribution will be to alter the English language. More and more people are adapting his braggadocious terminology in sarcastic ways — I’m sure you’ve heard it among friends, classmates, and colleagues, who are suddenly saying and/or writing “yuge” about the mundane things. A high school reunion was touted on FB as “it’s gonna be huge. It’s gonna be phenomenal. The other classes all wish they could have a reunion this great, actually.” This mock braggadocio *is* fun, but will it go away when Tr-mp is no longer on TV everyday? Or will it linger, and the sarcasm end, and it will become an embedded and accepted part of language, with its users in a few years forgetting its origins?
For book-lovers, one of the best things to come out of this endless campaign are the #TrumpBookReports on Twitter. Lots of people have written about To Kill a Mockingbird (“I could stand in the middle of 5th Ave & kill a mockingbird and not lose votes” from @LemonsandLaughs), Death of a Salesman (“I prefer the salesmen who DON’T die” by @dreamweasel), and Shakespeare plays (“Hamlet? Such a disaster. Can’t decide to be or not. Bigly indecisive. And Ophelia? Not my first choice.” by @KDanielGleason).
My favorites, though, deal with “Lord of the Rings,” because I could never see Tr-mp reading the books, many of the jokes are very insidery, and it proves Junot Diaz’s theory in his brilliant novel “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” that one of the best lenses upon which to make sense of a dictator’s evil is “Lord of the Rings.” Considering how much has been written and said about Tr-mp as being not only a bully and a strongman wannabe, but also authoritarian, the connection seems apt for this period of the political campaign.
With that in mind, here is a curated selection of #TrumpBookReports featuring “Lord of the Rings.”
https://twitter.com/chelsealindsay/status/789238355653332992
https://twitter.com/CharlieAndyFitz/status/789114469351698432
https://twitter.com/JustinDVaughn/status/789254705931177984
https://twitter.com/BigBluC/status/789254310500700160
https://twitter.com/Studynot/status/789253338378473473
https://twitter.com/mind_butter/status/789252426842906624
https://twitter.com/TMikeMartin/status/789245822693101568
https://twitter.com/mrglenn/status/789242913397932032
https://twitter.com/IdrisAdamjee/status/789228735547346945
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Book review: ‘The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao’
This review originally ran in the Times Union in September 2007.
Wow! Or should I say “Wao”?Junot Diaz‘s long-awaited debut novel “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” (Riverhead Books; 335 pages; $24.95) is the best book I’ve read this year.
The story traces a fuku, or the “Curse and the Doom of the New World.” Oscar, an overweight first-generation New Jersey kid, is way into J.R.R. Tolkien,Japanese anime and science fiction (he’s writing aspace opera). But he and his family are cursed.
His grandfather, a respected doctor in the Dominican Republic in the 1950s, feared his beautiful teenage daughter would catch the eye of dictator-for-lifeRafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina. Trujillo ruled from 1930 to 1961 and was known to rape the daughters of prominent citizens.
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A vision of America: Witnessing divisiveness together
Debate Watch Party (Photo by Andrzej Pilaczyk) How are college kids approaching this election? Where I work, we’ve had debate watching parties open to the public. The communal experience of watching the debates have been eye-opening for students, who say that they value the ability to share the moment with hundreds of others, to see in real life and in real time how others — fellow students and members of the community — respond to the words of the two major party political candidates.
The togetherness, the shared experience, are a vivid contradiction to the divisiveness of the campaigns. They are a moment of hope. More photos are here.
The next Debate Watch Party is at 9 pm Wednesday, October 19, 2016. More info here.
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A bit of info on ‘American Feverfew’
Came across this at the Cornell Plantation botanical garden.
I like the name. “Feverfew.”
My dictionary gives the origin as “Old English feferfuge, from Latin febrifuga, from febris ‘fever’ + fugare ‘drive away.’
It’s also a fun word to type, mostly two fingers on the left hand, until that final “w.” It gives it — “feverfew” — a satisfying rhythm to my fingers on the keyboard.
Here’s some more info about it from the state of Missouri: The name “feverfew” indicates the plant was used medicinally. Some Native American tribes made a poultice of the leaves to use for treating burns. Apparently the plant was also used as a diuretic. Today people plant it as part of a prairie restoration or native wildflower garden.
And here are some citations of “feverfew” from the Oxford English Dictionary:
c1000 in T. Wright & R. P. Wülcker Anglo-Saxon & Old Eng. Vocab. (1884) I. 134 Febrefugia..feferfuge.c1000 Sax. Leechd. I. 134 Curmelle feferfuge.c1425 in T. Wright & R. P. Wülcker Anglo-Saxon & Old Eng. Vocab. (1884) I. 645 Hec febrifuga, fevyrfew.1562 W. Turner 2nd Pt. Herball f. 79v, The new writers hold.. that feuerfew is better for weomen.1597 W. Langham Garden of Health 234 Feuerfue comforteth the stomacke, and is good for the Feuer quotidian.a1646 D. Wedderburn Vocabula (1685) 18 Matricaria, feverfoyly. -
What DJT meant to say (an edited transcript)
I’ve never saidI’m a perfect person, nor pretended to be someone that I’m not.I’ve said and done thingsI regret, and the words released today on this more than a decade-old video are one of them.Anyone who knows me knows these words don’t reflect who I am. I said it, I was wrong, and I apologize.I’ve traveled the country talking about change for America, but my travels have also changed me. I’ve spent time with grieving mothers who’ve lost their children, laid-off workers whose jobs have gone to other countries, and people from all walks of life who just want a better future. I have gotten to know the great people of our country, and I’ve been humbled by the faith they’ve placed in me. I pledge to be a better man tomorrow and will never, ever let you down.Let’s be honest
— we’re living in the real world. This is nothing more than a distraction from the important issues we’re facing today. We are losing our jobs, we’re less safe than we were eight years ago, and Washington is totally broken. Hillary Clinton and her kind have run our country into the ground.I’ve said some foolish things, but there’s a big difference between the words and actions of other people.Bill Clinton hasactuallyabused women, and Hillary has bullied, attacked, shamed and intimidated his victims.We will discuss this more in the coming days.See you at the debate on Sunday.Transcript from NYTimes.com.
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Yes, I took photos of toilet seats in Korea
“Full up” is exactly the opposite of what you want a toilet to tell you.
I know Hello Kitty is popular everywhere, but biscuits? on the toilet?
Yes, it sounds poetic, but maybe “drips” shouldn’t mix with plumbing-related things.
So true.
