MY HOLIDAY POST

Right away, you all are saying “What holiday?”, unless you think I’m silly enough to make a big deal out of Presidents Day, or something.

Let me explain.  It will take a while, but it will eventually come around to the political stuff that is the main theme of my blog.  Patience again, dear reader.

If you do much browsing among a large collection of bookmarked sites, as I do, you naturally see an awful lot of writing from mid-October to early January that relates to “the holidays”.  It gets pretty old, and gets especially lame when you read those blogs where people like to post about their personal lives.  (There are a few such blogs that can be entertaining, but they’re a small minority.)

Some time in January, it lightens up and you think:  “Finally, we can get back to business!” but soon Valentine’s Day approaches, and all those sites feel obliged to say SOMETHING about it, and all their commenters….

JUST A WORD, BEFORE IT HITS THE FAN…

Hardly anyone seems to have read my last post, but that’s ok.  I’ve learned to expect that when I try to treat a serious matter and refer people to source material.

(WordPress stats don’t tell me WHO clicked on something, only HOW MANY clicks there were on something.  From that, I can draw some conclusions.)

This will be another one like that:  Just some things that I need to make sure you all have a CHANCE to understand, if you care to read.  There’s nothing I can do for people who won’t read.

Is everyone tired yet of watching the Republicans campaign for Obama?  Thought so.  Time to think of more serious candidates.  Many of my readers are Greens, and unless you’ve been occupied with other things, like, oh, your actual life, for the last week or two, you’ve heard that Roseanne Barr has decided to run for the Green nomination for President.  Like most things that happen to us, this
presents a mixture of opportunities and dangers:

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(1)  Any kind of celebrity mentioning the GP in the media serves to inform a whole lot of people that we exist who didn’t know it before.

People definitely need this.  You wouldn’t believe how many times we’ve been asked:  “Greepeace?” by people who have “Green Party” spelled out right in front of them on a big banner, because the latter phrase is unrecognizable.  Imagine going to a place where your name “John Smith” is so impossible for the natives to get their heads and mouths around that they decide to call you “Hotchkiss”.  That’s the level of non-communication that Greens usually have to start from in explaining themselves to noobs.

THE SMALLEST CURRENT COIN

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“The man was in such deep distress,”
Said Tom, “that I could do no less
Than give him good advice.”  Said Jim:
“If less could have been done for him
I know you well enough, my son,
To know that’s what you would have done.”

………– From The Devil’s Dictionary

I wrote a little earlier about the “Occupy” movement, but it was only a snapshot of what I seemed to be seeing at the time.  Don’t take it too seriously.  I haven’t participated enough to be comfortable saying much about it.

…but you know I’ll say something anyway, right?

EVERYTHING YOU SAY IS WRONG, CHAPTER IV

Judging from the number of clicks at different times, my most popular posts are the  language rants.  So let’s play to the gallery a little, for lack of a better idea right now.  There are lots of other people writing about important things much better than I.  Check my Recent News Links page for that.

In case you’re new here, this is a series.  Here are the previous entries:
http://kitchenmudge.wordpress.com/2011/06/18/watch-your-language/
http://kitchenmudge.wordpress.com/2011/07/05/a-good-whine-i-believe-ill-have-another/
http://kitchenmudge.wordpress.com/2011/08/17/hes-doing-that-again/

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Beginning with the most obvious errors:

“I don’t have a clue what this word means, but I’ll use it anyway, and even make up a nonexistent word that sorta sounds like it.”

“on tenderhooks” or “on tinderhooks”

LAUNCH OF THE CARNADA

In thinking up the title for this rant, I simply wanted a word based on “canard” (French for “duck”), but with the epic failure of “Armada” incorporated.  As it happens, “carnada” is the Spanish word for “bait” or “chum”, which suits my purpose perfectly.  Thank you, language gods.

I recently flew, which I do rarely, and got reminded of something I’ll call Mudge’s Fourth Law:

“The loudest voice at the picnic is a child squealing about nothing, while we whisper that the tuna salad is rotten.”

It was demonstrated thus:

When the gate from which your flight is leaving changes, or the flight is rescheduled, or there’s something that you really ought to hear about boarding instructions, the way it is announced is very likely to be unintelligible.

New Blood

Back during the Arab Spring, I asked my readers to speculate about what it would take to get a large number of Americans to say:  “It’s time, it’s up to me.  This is more important than my favorite tv show or surfing for funny videos.”

Comments were sparse, but I mentioned then that people need to feel the oppression in their daily lives.  We’re now in the “American Autumn”, as it’s been called, and something has begun that’s far from a revolt, but there’s no end to it in sight right now.

(See my Recent News Links for articles about the movement in general.)

The idea of “Occupy…” is to say “We’re going to sit here, violating the law if we need to, but still sit here, until you respond.”  It  mimick’s Tahrir Square in that way, but doesn’t yet have the mass response that
would make law enforcement difficult and mess with the economy in a general strike kind of way.

Critics have complained that the demands are not articulated, and there are no “leaders” to represent them.  In a tactical way, that can be a good thing.  “Leaderless” means that there’s no head for the enemy to chop off.  Having no set demands means that you’re
turning the tables on the Man. 

Award Time

I’ve been given the Liebster Award by Olga.  This is one of those awards that are simply ways for bloggers to acknowledge and  recommend each other.  There was a time when I wanted to be careful about advertising my blog, afraid that I’d have to constantly police it for spammy comments, but I see that WordPress does a pretty good job of filtering out the spam.

So, seeing no harm in the Liebster, I thank Olga and go on with the requirements, as she quotes them:

The Liebster is designed to bring attention to blogs with fewer than 200 followers.

The rules:

•    Thank the blogger who gave you the award by linking back to them (I did so above.)

•    Reveal your top 5 picks and let them know by leaving a comment on their blog.

•    Post the award on your blog.

•    Bask in the love from the most supportive people on the Internet

A little note of caution about these “awards”:

The most common one seems to be the “Versatile Blogger” award, which asks recipients to turn around and recommend FIFTEEN other blogs.  This sounds really excessive to me, and naturally leads, chain letter-like, to the same “award” coming around to the same people again & again.  But for this moderate “Liebster”, I’ll take the excuse to just point out
some good stuff to you all.