Tuesday is for FUN FACTS!

Somewhere in my youth or childhood, I used to send emails full of fun facts to people I secretly loved. Since I secretly love everyone who reads my blog (Hi, Amy and Mari!), I am going to continue to tradition.

DID YOU KNOW? - 1/5/10 - Languate Edition

1. Yiddish, French, and the American Northeast (maybe elsewhere?) all share the fun feature of having a word that describes a comeback that you come up with too late. For the fFrench, it's "l'espirit d'escalier" which means something like "staircase cleverness." In Yiddish (at least according to Saul Bellow) it's "trepverter" which, like most Yiddish words, certainly means something. In New Hampshire, they call it after-wit.

2. In South Africa, kids watch Takalani Sesame instead of Sesame Street and they enjoy Kami, an HIV-positive monster, instead of Elmo. "Takalani" means "be happy."

3. The word "boycott" comes to us from Charles C. Boycott, a former British soldier who helped an Irish politician , Charles Parnell, test out some land reforms. Boycott bought out an estate and refused to lower rents to tenants. Parnell had his supporters give Boycott the cold shoulder and, unable to maintain his estate, Boycott fled. Parnell had initially wanted to call his new move "ostracization," but he thought that word might be too big for his constituents to wrap their tiny feudal minds around.

4. The name "Thomas" means "twin."

5. Kofi Annan means "born on a Friday."

6. Afghanistan means "Land of the Afghans." Now picture the blanket.

7. Today is the 12th day of Christmas. This isn't really part of this whole "language edition," but Did you Know?

8. The Pekingese lapdog, a Chinese breed, was bred to fit inside the sleeves of a man's robe and is one of the oldest dog breeds in the world. To keep them small (no more than 7 pounds, usually around 3 or 4 pounds) the Chinese employed methods such as feeding the dogs rice wine, squeezing newborns tightly for hours at a time, or putting the puppies into wire mesh waistcoats.

9. According to a surprisingly in-depth wikipedia entry on laps, lapsitting may occur in every day life between relatives, couples, and friends of all sexes. Although lapsitting is more common among women than men. Thanks, Wikipedia! The democratization of media is making big strides, guys!

10. Okay, so we've gotten a little far off the language trail. I leave you with this: In 1937, Paramount released the first (and, to my knowledge, only) all-Black western musical called Harlem on the Prairie. It was very successful.

Cheers!

Dick Cheney ruined my day yesterday and I’m afraid he’s going to ruin my New Year’s Eve unless I say something about it. So here it goes.

Dick: please shut up, just for a little while. I’m not trying to stifle your free speech, but I always do my best to stifle idiotic speech when I hear it, so for the good of your party (and for the good of your certainly exhausted lesbian daughter who I’m sure has made a litany of her apologies for you) just shut. Up.

Your insistence that President Obama “is trying to pretend we are not at war," is complete nonsense, and not in a Lewis Carroll kind of way. I’m talking Snidley Whiplash, mustache a-twirling.

Just a real quick gloss of the facts. Remember when Obama, on the campaign trail, talked about the two wars we were fighting? Remember when, in his inaugural address, he talked about how America is fighting against a “far-reaching network of violence and hatred”? Or when he committed 30,000 new lives to Afghanistan? Or, wait, Dick, did you hear about the missile strikes in Yemen and Somalia and Pakistan, countries where our country isn’t even technically at war?

Our country and our president are bravely and openly fighting on two fronts, and covertly bombing civilians on three. You know that the major beef from his fiercest critics on the left is that instead of distancing himself from the wars that you and your president started, he’s embraced his war-time presidency with a disconcerting blend of clubhouse meetings and high-flying Nobel-accepting rhetoric. As the White House said, maybe Obama doesn’t feel the need to do a haka toward the Middle East, but he’s hardly pretending we’re not at war.

And if you’re complaint is that it took him too long to directly address the event, then why didn’t you similarly question your former boss’s commitment to war when he spent six days waiting to refer to Rich Reid the Shoe Bomber obliquely and in passing? Remember that guy, who did exactly what this Nigerian guy did, but in his shoe instead of his undies?

Obama treated this like what it was: a fluke; a dumb, dangerous, scary mistake that could have ruined a lot of Christmases but, thank God, didn’t. Any other response would have only stoked panic and made people leap at their shadows.

I know you’re not an idiot, you know this stuff. At the end of the day, you’re just lying. Schoolyard style. You’re using Politico the way Sarah tweets: to broadcast directionless dissatisfaction with this administration. And unlike most, I don’t think it’s because you’re evil, it’s not because what you’re saying is somehow secretly true, it’s not because you’re a racist or dumb or mean. Well, maybe mean.

My theory, and I think it explains a lot of your bluster lately, is that your feelings are hurt. Eight years spent having similar lies, half-truths, and gloats spread about you and George W. really got to you, didn’t they? Republicans spent a long time listening to the media like a buzzing fly that won’t land and now that your time holding the flyswatter has expired and the shoe bomber is on the other foot, you’re all relishing the chance to give as good as you got.

And that’s totally cool. I think it’s a great idea, actually. A power-sharing two party system like ours only works because the two groups hold one another accountable, and our nation has a long held tradition that this is accomplished through petty recriminations and bullying. These are the very engines of America.

But, seriously, you don’t have to lie about it. Obama has enough missteps (health care, the state-owned GMAC deal, a vice president that holds his cards much farther from his chest than you ever did, and the non-presence of a lot of key campaign issues, like education and gay rights) without you having to invent any. Going after Obama for not fighting a war that he is plainly fighting makes you sound desperate and dim.

But of course you have to feed the beast of the 24-hour news cycle, and I get that, too. While Bush 2 allows the punchlines to fade into a dim haze of ‘00 nostalgia, like Furbies and the Goo Goo Dolls, so that he can remake himself as the chummy grinning statesman, you’ve decided to scramble to remain relevant. That’s not easy in this technological age and it’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks. All of that makes sense.

That’s why I want to end with some thoughts about becoming a more effective voice of dissatisfaction. I don’t want to condemn you. I rarely agree with you and sometimes I think you’re a beard and an accent away from being Alan Rickman in Die Hard, but this is a representative democracy, you have a lot of clout, so people will listen to you. I just wish that you, and a lot of people like you, could focus on being constructive agents of criticism instead of manic bloodhounds forever falling off the scent.

So, in closing, some take-aways for you and your GOP brothers (and sister Sarah):

1. Start a Twitter account. Here in 2009, you can talk your crazy garbage in an environment that was made for talking crazy garbage. The traditional news media is going the way of the dodo bird and instead of riding it into the ground, you should change horses.

2. Stop indiscriminately blasting Obama for every move. Be specific, be clear, and expose consistent errors. Crap about death panels and ignoring war only inflames gun-toting hicks to start talking secession. Be an opposition party that tries to hold the president accountable, not drown him. Help Obama help America.

3. Be a gentleman. Karl Rove published an only 50% snarky op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today with some advice for the Obama administration, which is the most constructive thing any major GOP figure has done since November. Just because the Dems were a bunch of jerks during your tenure doesn’t mean you can’t class it up a bit. Be the bigger man: bring some statesmanlike conduct back to Washington.

You can help Obama govern. Yes, you can.

Welcome

I'm not sure exactly what this is for, but probably rainy day activities. This includes puzzles, quizzes, fun facts, and inspirational theorizing.

Additionally, if I were you, I'd look forward to pictures.