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Monday, January 01, 2007

banned words 2007 list

Lake Superior State University is Michigan’s smallest public university with an enrollment of 3,000 students. It is known for its academic programs such as fisheries and wildlife management, engineering, teacher education, nursing, criminal justice, fire science and business management. Located in Sault Ste. Marie on the eastern end of Lake Superior, there’s not much to do once winter sets in, so on Dec. 31, 1975, former LSSU Public Relations Director Bill Rabe and some colleagues cooked up the idea to banish overused words and phrases and issued the first list on New Year’s Day. The list has stayed the course into a fourth decade.

Through the years, LSSU received thousands of nominations for the list, which is closing in on its 1000th banishment. This year’s list is culled from more than 4,500 nominations received mostly through the university’s website. Word-watchers target pet peeves from everyday speech, as well as from the news, fields of education, technology, advertising, politics and more. A committee makes a final cut in late December. The list is released on New Year’s Day.

So gitmo chipotle-flavored eggnog, curl up with an undocumented alien, and cut-and-run to the 2007 list. It won’t be coming to a theater near you.

Below is the list for 2007. To read all the comments (which are pretty funny in themselves), go to http://www.lssu.edu/banished/current.php (you can even add your own comments)!

GITMO—The US military’s shorthand for a base in Cuba drives a wedge wider than a split infinitive.

COMBINED CELEBRITY NAMES—Celebrity duos of yore—BogCall (Bogart and Bacall), Lardy (Laurel and Hardy), and CheeChong (Cheech and Chong)—just got lucky.

AWESOME—Given a one-year moratorium in 1984, when the Unicorn Hunters banished it “during which it is to be rehabilitated until it means ‘fear mingled with admiration or reverence; a feeling produced by something majestic.” Many write to tell us there’s no hope and it’s time for “the full banishment.”

GONE/WENT MISSING—“It makes ‘missing’ sound like a place you can visit, such as the Poconos. Is the person missing, or not? She went there but maybe she came back. ‘Is
missing’ or ‘was missing’ would serve us better.”—Robin Dennis, Flower Mound, Texas.

PWN or PWNED—Thr styff of lemgendz: Gamer defeats gamer, types in “I pwn you” rather than I OWN you. (I have to admit: I never, ever heard of this. But then, I’m not a gamer.)

NOW PLAYING IN THEATERS—Heard in movie advertisements. Where can we see that, again? “How often do movies premiere in laundromats or other places besides theaters? I know that when I want to see a movie I think about going to a shoe store.”—Andrea May, Shreveport, Louisiana.

WE’RE PREGNANT—Grounded for nine months.

UNDOCUMENTED ALIEN—“If they haven’t followed the law to get here, they are by definition ‘illegal.’ It’s like saying a drug dealer is an ‘undocumented pharmacist.’”—John Varga, Westfield, New Jersey.

ARMED ROBBERY/DRUG DEAL GONE BAD—From the news reports. What degree of “bad” don’t we understand? Larry Lillehammer of Bonney Lake, Washington, asks, “After it stopped going well and good?”

TRUTHINESS – “This word, popularized by The Colbert Report and exalted by the American Dialectic Society’s Word of the Year in 2005 has been used up. What used to ring true is getting all the truth wrung out of it.”—Joe Grimm, Detroit, Michigan.

ASK YOUR DOCTOR—The chewable vitamin morphine of marketing.

CHIPOTLE – Smoked dry over medium heat.

i-ANYTHING—‘e-Anything’ made the list in 2000. Geoff Steinhart of Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, says tech companies everywhere have picked this apple to the core. “Turn on ... tune in ... and drop out.”

SEARCH—Quasi-anachronism. Placed on one-year moratorium. “Might as well banish it. The word has been replaced by ‘google.’”—Michael Raczko, Swanton, Ohio.

HEALTHY FOOD—Point of view is everything. Someone told Joy Wiltzius of Fort Collins, Colorado, that the tuna steak she had for lunch “sounded healthy.” Her reply: “If my lunch were healthy, it would still be swimming somewhere. Grilled and nestled in salad greens, it’s ‘healthful.’”

BOASTS—See classified advertisements for houses, says Morris Conklin of Lisboa, Portugal, as in “master bedroom boasts his-and-her fireplaces—never ‘bathroom apologizes for cracked linoleum,’ or ‘kitchen laments pathetic placement of electrical outlets.’”

posted by lee on 01/01/07 at 03:06 PM
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life and death in the food chain

Happy new year. As I finally crawled out of bed around 1:00 pm, I wondered why the kitties were not around. Saw that they were in the front room amidst the boxes and stuff we’re still unpacking (finished another box of books yesterday) and junk we’re getting ready to send to the Great PC God in the Sky on January 13. Just quietly sitting there. Very weird. But they’re cats, so ...

Let the dog out and took another peek at Twitch and Slink. And this is what I saw:

Well, is it dead or what? (Damn, the flash isn’t going off—no time to fool around with the camera, just shoot ... )

It’s not moving much ... (Damn, the dog is barking to come in, but I want another shot ... )

Slink isn’t quite ready to give up.

By the time I came back from letting the dog back in, Twitch, Slink, and the mousie were gone. Probably upstairs. It’s Stanley’s problem now—he’s the mouse undertaker around here.

posted by lee on 01/01/07 at 12:25 PM
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Tuesday, December 19, 2006

roof is done and it is gorgeous (plus a cat)

Demetrius and his crew just left—the roof is finished! They did a great job, and what’s more, charged us exactly the estimate. Demetrius said it should’ve cost us about $240 more for replacing the rotten fascia, but, he said, he ignored that to compensate for the inadvertent leak, which damaged the bedroom ceiling. Which I thought was really classy. Stanley hadn’t asked Demetrius for anything for that—just told him to let it go (he put it in the “shit happens” category). Stanley is still stunned—he thought all the replacement work and plywood that needed to be put down would probably push things up and extra thousand, but it didn’t. The entire job was $8,100, just as he estimated (it cost us an extra $600 for the red shingles, which we were more than willing to pay).

And they cleaned up—everything seems to be neat as a pin, though Demetrius said there might be some stuff that got under the dumpster (which will be removed in the morning!) I can handle cleaning up under the dumpster. Debris, gone. Gutters cleaned out. I am happy.

So now we have a nice, tight roof. A red roof. Which means that now Stanley can repairs ceilings and walls in the “new” part of the house that were damaged during past leaks. Which means the kitchen can finally be painted! I got my Christmas present early (I asked for a new roof). What was cool, too, was that Demetrius estimated the shingles accurately—no extra bundles of shingles sitting around that we would’ve had to pay for (along with the mark-up).

So, if you need a roof and live in Fairfield County and areas within a reasonable distance of Bridgeport, we highly, very highly, recommend Demetrius Pettway Construction (203) 332-7567.

PLUS A CAT
We went to Animals in Distress in Wilton on Saturday. It’s a cat shelter. We were (I was) ready to try again in our quest to find Twitch a buddy. And we did: a beautiful, all-black, six-month-old cat that we’ve name Slink. Because he slinks—if he got any lower to the floor I wouldn’t need a dust mop. I will get his photo up soon—just don’t have time at the moment.

Animals in Distress was very off-putting, kind of depressing in a way beyond any animal shelter is (at least for me—I want to take them all home). I’m not quite sure why. Maybe it was the kitty litter dust hanging in the air—they get the cheapest litter they can delivered by some pet shop. Everything is coated with the dust—our faces and, I’m sure, lungs were when we left. The volunteers were nice enough, though the woman there could’ve handed me the cats I was looking instead of making me wrest them from her!

We wanted a three- or four-month-old kitten, but the young kittens there, though pretty, were scared and hostile—the place was in no way calm ... more of a madhouse ... and I’m sure that had a lot to do with it. Then I spotted this older black cat, about six months old, and he leaned into me. And Stanley really liked him. So, after submitting to a BS interview (like we would spend 90 minutes in a dust-laden, piss-reeking madhouse if we really didn’t want a kitten), we paid our $100 and adopted him.

I keep telling Stanley that as bad as that place seemed, it’s still a world better for the cats than being in the woods or hanging out at a dumpster.

Anyway, we took Slink to our vet today (A Cat’s Place, affiliated with Strawberry Hill Animal Hospital) to get him checked out. Oh, my. Slink has a slight cold, which we knew. But he also has ear infections in both ears, possibly because he had mites at one time (but not now), and fleas. FLEAS! So it’s costing us an extra $150 to deal with the fleas and the ear infection—we have to treat both cats (the dog already got her treatment). So we’re not too crazy about whatever vet AID is using.

And we don’t want to entrust Slink to whatever vet AID uses for the neutering (some vet in Darien), so A Cat’s Place is going to neuter Slink at the shelter rate for us on January 3, which is very nice of them. Twitch and Ginger have received nothing but top-notch care from A Cat’s Place & SHAH over the past five-plus years, so we want to stick with them for everything.

Slink will have cost us about $450 by next month, rather than the less-than-$200 we’d anticipated—all because AID needs a better in-house vet. Ah well. At least Slink loves Twitch—even if Twitch is still semi-ignoring him. Twitch: too cool to play. At least for now. (And I really, really like Slink.)

posted by lee on 12/19/06 at 02:16 PM
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Friday, December 15, 2006

a brand new leak and carbon monoxide

The company we hired to do the roof started last week. Um, Thursday I think. Friday was way too cold to work and we expected Demetrius and his crew (crew, hah! One guy.) to show up bright and early on Saturday since it was going to be a good day for roofing. No show, no call. Nobody on Sunday. A call on Monday: Demetrius has the flu, got it last week. Almost over it, so he and Adrian (the crew) showed up on Tuesday to continue.

Lots of rotten fascia to replace, lots of old stuff to get off. They worked on the eastnorth side first, which is completely over the original house (as in 200 years of roof). They covered the roof with a tarp before leaving because it was due to rain Wednesday.

Rain it did. In our attic and into our bedroom. We had leaks where we never, ever had leaks before. On to our bed, the television, hardwood floor ... I am so damned glad Stanley had a reason to go upstairs and saw what was happening because usually we don’t go upstairs at all during the day. I don’t, anyway. While Stanley spread towels and looked for the source, I called and paged Demetrius. Who showed up fairly quickly to fix stuff. Seems that the crew had created a sort of dam with the gutter and didn’t overlap stuff or whatever, and the damned up water found a opening and started pouring into the attic (which is really a third floor and not really an attic).

While Stanley has been working on painting the bedroom, we hadn’t planned on doing the ceiling just yet. That’s changed—ugly brown stains all over the ceiling. Ack.

All went well Thursday, with about a third of the roof done. Today they worked on the west side. It’s above my office so it was very, very noisy but even so, I managed to get quite a bit of work done. The cat was fascinated with it all and kept running from window to window to watch. Which was ok except that the path leads over my keyboard. Pain in the ass cat.

Demetrius and Adrian covered the roof again before they left—it’s supposed to shower tonight. Stanley came down and said, “I think they covered the chimney.” He was peeking through the crawlspace ceiling to see how far along they’d gotten and noticed the blue of the top a lot higher than expected. So he went out and checked. Sure enough, the chimney is tarped. It’s a good thing Stanley noticed so we could turn off the furnace before our house was filled with carbon monoxide. Demetrius should’ve told us. I know it doesn’t matter much in the summer, but it’s December. Good thing it’s fairly warm tonight—it’s only supposed to go down to 40 degrees.

Tomorrow we’ll point out to Demetrius that if he kills us, he won’t get paid. We only paid $3,100 so far out of a total of $8,100-9,000 (depending on how many repairs have to be made). They have to finish the west side and then there’s the south roof, which is over the addition. Then put the gutters back up.

They are good about cleaning up each day, and are being careful about not smashing my plants. There are two trees we’ve been nursing since seedling status, a holly and a Japanese maple, and I would’ve been upset if they were damaged. And they are repairing stuff instead of just putting shingles over rotted wood, which is great.

I’m looking forward to having a new roof—we can finally paint the kitchen and fix the ceiling in our office without worrying about brown streaks down freshly painted surfaces during the first heavy rain. Will make the aggravation from the noise and the smell (from removing old tar from around the chimney) worth it.

posted by lee on 12/15/06 at 03:16 PM
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Tuesday, November 28, 2006

sob

Oliver went back to the Humane Society this afternoon. It was really, really hard to let him go since he is such a sweet (to humans) cat, and quite a character.

Twitch is still not able to sit, but the swelling has gone down and it seems to be hurting him a lot less. Stanley says Twitch is taking his medicine much better than he thought he would, not drooling very much at all. The vet said Twitch will heal pretty fast. Hope so.

posted by lee on 11/28/06 at 01:14 PM
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Monday, November 27, 2006

oliver can’t live here anymore

It’s sad: Oliver is a sweet, terrific cat—with people. But he bit Twitch so badly we had to take Twitch to the kitty hospital this evening. Ginger barks and growls at Oliver because he’s been hurting Twitch.

So we have to take Oliver back to the Humane Society tomorrow. We, and our vet, think he will get adopted again very quickly since he is a great cat, very affectionate and beautiful—we just have to make sure that they make clear in his description that he does not get along with other cats or with dogs. Needs to be an only pet. I feel so bad about it because I like him, but it just isn’t working out—and we did get him to be a companion for Twitch.

So, we’ll give Twitch some time to heal and recover from the trauma (this is the first time he’s been hurt—even my sister’s psycho cat didn’t hurt Twitch) and then look for a kitten to adopt. The vet said they might have a kitten when we’re ready—and if not, there are always kitties at the Humane Society.

Expensive lesson, though. It cost us $60 for the fee for adopting Oliver, then $113 this evening for the exam, morphine, rabies booster, and antibiotics for Twitch.

Ah, damn.

posted by lee on 11/27/06 at 03:45 PM
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Thursday, November 16, 2006

oliver

A couple of weeks ago, a new section launched in WestportNow.com: Pets Seeking Homes. The section has photos and little bios of dogs and cats the need adoption from the Connecticut Humane Society in Westport and Westport Animal Control (dogs only, no cats here). It’s my responsibility to post and update this section—and I gotta tell ya, it’s very hard to do this. In most cases, I want to adopt them all myself. Fortunately, Stanley has more sense than I do.

We got both Twitch and Ginger from the Westport Humane Society five years ago, and we’ve been really happy with the beasties.

Anyway, one of the cats needing a home caught my eye (clutched my heart), so we went down to meet her. But she and Stanley did not get along. Not at all. Sometimes pairings are just not meant to be. We went there intending to adopt her, but it didn’t work out. We then looked around at the other cats, leaning toward an adult cat because people always want the kittens and ignore the wonderful adult cats available. Since we couldn’t take them all home, we narrowed it down to two, an adult and a kitten. Rather, I narrowed it down to two and Stanley narrowed it down to one. Fortunately, I really like the one. A five-year-old male orange tabby. A gorgeous boy.

And big. He weighs 17.5 pounds. Not fat at all—just very, very big.

Name of Oliver, abandoned by some guy who didn’t want to be bothered taking care of another creature anymore (“I travel too much.” Yeah, right.) so he abandoned his cat at the Humane Society.

~~I don’t have a picture of him yet, but I’ll try to take one tomorrow.~~ Stanley took some, ~~so maybe I’ll get one~~ here are two of his (click to see bigger photos). I want to get one of Ollie and Twitch together—it reminds me of Laurel and Hardy. Which is why I think Ollie suits him.

Oliver, who doesn’t answer to his name, is nervous. Twitch wants so badly to play with Ollie (that name seems to feel right), but Ollie is having none of it yet. They’re touching noses, and sort of getting along. Ollie would probably be pretty much settled in except for ...

Ginger. Ginger loves cats. Ollie doesn’t care, at least not yet. I think it’s going to take another couple of days before Ollie feels comfortable walking by the dog—he’s starting to, but is still very tentative.

To look at Ollie, since he’s so big, one might assume he’s tough. He’s not; he’s a sweetheart. Definitely likes people. There’s was one point when I was holding him that, if it had been any other cat, my forearms would’ve been ripped to shreds. Not Ollie. It’s weird—he seems to be checking himself. But I’m glad because he is such a huge cat he could do some serious damage.

I’m looking forward to giving him a good brushing, but that won’t happen until he’s comfortable with Ginger being near him—Ginger is like my barnacle. Hopefully soon. Ollie is settling in faster than I thought he would, considering all of the trauma he’s been through since November 6, the day he was abandoned.

posted by lee on 11/16/06 at 08:16 PM
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Wednesday, November 08, 2006

ah damnit, but how wonderful too

Despite Ned Lamont’s loss, I don’t regret a second I spent working on the campaign. I would campaign for him again—this is a man who would be a great benefit to us serving in public office.

Yes, I’m very sorry he lost. Could the loss have been avoided? Maybe. If the Republicans would’ve supported their own nominee instead of throwing him under the bus in favor of Lieberman. If Ned’s campaign hadn’t dropped the ball right after the primary and had continued the campaign they ran during the primary, maybe. If Ned’s ads, both broadcast and print, focused more on what his positions are instead of hammering Joe’s face and name at us over and over, maybe (and yes, I and other supporters voiced this a lot during the campaign—but it’s very hard to tell the choir that the message isn’t reaching the back rows). It was a long shot that he won the primary, and an even longer shot when there were, essentially, two parties campaigning against him.

One thing that will result from this loss is that Connecticut Democrats know now what the Democratic Party thinks about what we want: if it doesn’t toe in with their big plans, they don’t give a rat’s ass what the rank and file wants. We’re not going to forget Dodd’s tepid support, Bill Clinton’s lack of presence, the lack of campaign literature and phonebanking by the party. How dare we select an outsider? Democrats in Connecticut feel betrayed by the national party—and we have long memories. Connecticut Republicans should feel the same way about their national party.

So yes, I’m disappointed that Ned lost; that we lost. But Ned, count me in for your next race. My friend and former colleague, Rudi over at Random Duck, has this excellent analysis of what happened: http://www.randomduck.com/2006/11/07/disappointed-but-not-shocked

As I said, I would do this again. For Ned or for another candidate I can believe in. I esepcially liked meeting other volunteers and staffers—and despite the long hours, I really enjoyed poll standing for Ned and “Line B” (the Democrats) on Election Day. Even if we didn’t win, it was particularly heartening to be among those who, instead of just bitching and moaning, actually got off our asses to try to do something about what’s going on. Wish there were more of us—and I for one don’t intend to be a do-nothing ass-sitter in the future.

DIANE FARRELL
So now we turn to the other Democrat who lost in my Congressional District. Diane Farrell. Who lost her own election. I’m sorry she wasn’t one of the Democrats swept in on the tsunami or whatever the talking heads are calling it. I did vote for her. But I’m neither surprised nor particularly upset that she lost because, despite Chris Shays’ blinders about the war in Iraq (which I think have been removed now) and his support of a couple of other things I disagree with, he is a good and ethical man. It was actually hard for me to vote against him and I wouldn’t have if not for Iraq. And I know a lot of people who feel the same way.

I filled out forms to volunteer for Diane’s campaign (both times), I called her office, I asked for signs and a bumper sticker, and I never heard back from her campaign staff. Not once. (I did eventually receive one robo call from her asking me to “Press 1 to volunteer, press 2 if you can’t do anything for me at this time,” a couple of days before the election.) The only time I heard from Diane was to receive invitations to $1,000-a-seat fundraisers—as if I could afford this. I was never invited to a rally or a picnic or asked to contribute just $25. Her campaign wasn’t inclusive enough to appeal to a broader spectrum of people than the die-hard Democrats. From what I could see, she ran on just two issues: Iraq and transportation. That, apparently, wasn’t enough. The robo calls didn’t help her any—geez those were nasty. But they weren’t enough to cost her the election.

THE NEW CONGRESS
Looks like, as I write this, the Senate is 50-49 (I hope Webb’s lead holds in Virginia so it becomes 51-49). And the House is now Democrat. And a woman is third in line for the presidency (and the woman is NOT Hillary). I hope the Democrats don’t let us down. I hope they immediately start working on getting us out of Iraq. That is the first step in fixing all that Baby Bush has broken.

And Joe, you think you were under scrutiny before? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

RUMMY IS GONE
It’s going to be interesting to see what happens next. Let’s hope this election slapped some sense into Bush, Gates, et al. I wish Cheney would just go too, whatever it takes to get his poison out of our goverment once and for all.

posted by lee on 11/08/06 at 09:21 AM
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Monday, November 06, 2006

einstein at 14 weeks and election stuff

Einstein was 14 weeks old on November 5. ish. So here are a couple of shots of her now (click the image to see larger pictures)—her eyes are really pretty, I think, though she really does look a little demented. As if she is in total control and knows it.

ELECTION DAY
Stanley and I will be poll standing between 10am and 8pm, when the polls close. We’ll be at our polling place, Nathan Hale Middle School in Norwalk, which is great because we live next door, so it will be easy to head home to let the dog out and grab coffee and all that. I toyed with the idea of volunteering for the entire day, but getting up at 4:45am is a lot more than I can handle. Stanley would’ve just checked me in to the local loony bin, whichever one takes our insurance plan.

Poll standing is greeting voters and suggesting they vote Line B, which is the straight Democratic line. We’re putting our money where our mouths are—we’re losing quite a chunk of change taking the day off to do this, but I feel as if we’ll lose even more with two more years of unchecked lunacy in the White House. Maybe the Dems won’t be able to do a whole lot while Bushie is in the White House, but at least they can prevent any more damage. As in checks and balances as envisioned by the founders of this country.

The latest CT senate race poll numbers I saw are Lieberman-48%, Lamont-44%, and Schlesinger-5%. This is from Polimetrix from its press release “Handicapping the 2006 Election: What are the odds of the Democrats winning control of the Senate?” (pdf).

We went to a quick rally Monday evening, at Norwalk headquarters. Even though Ned campaigned all day, he didn’t look tired when we saw him around 6:00ish pm or so—I was amazed at that. Our rally was on WTNH on the 11pm news, but the video isn’t up on their website (yet, anyway).

I just have this feeling we’re going to win—that Ned and Diane will win Connecticut and the 4th District, respectively.

VOTE! It really counts this time.

posted by lee on 11/06/06 at 09:30 PM
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Sunday, October 29, 2006

new york times endorses ned lamont

And Diane Farrell (that quote is on the jump page).

About Ned Lamont, in “The Senate Race in Connecticut,” the editors wrote:

The Congressional elections are very much about America’s problems in Iraq ... Ned Lamont and Joseph Lieberman, have clear disagreements over whether invading Iraq was a good idea in the first place, but grow much fuzzier when the question of future strategy comes up.

Mr. Lieberman ... talks about the threat of Islamic terrorism. Mr. Lamont ... reminds voters what a mess the invasion created. When it comes to the next step, Mr. Lieberman seems to mimic the Bush administration’s proposal to stay the course ... with new tactics. Mr. Lamont is close to the Senate Democrats (minus Mr. Lieberman) who demanded a timetable for withdrawal without being too firm on what that ought to entail.

No one expects legislators to dictate military tactics. But what we need from the next crop of elected officials in Washington is a willingness to face reality, to choose from among difficult options and have the courage to be honest with the public about the consequences. On those points, Mr. Lamont is by far the better candidate. [emphasis added]

... Connecticut’s Democratic voters sent Mr. Lieberman what should have been a jarring wake-up call when they rejected him for Mr. Lamont ... We have been waiting to see what lessons the state’s best-known politician took from his defeat, and from the daily evidence of the deterioration of the situation in Iraq.

We wanted to see a capacity for growth and change in Mr. Lieberman. The country is full of Republicans who now realize the Iraq invasion was a disaster, either in its basic concept or in its execution. The most honorable of them are in agony over what has happened. Mr. Lieberman, who had not only continually defended the administration’s Iraq policy but also attacked Democrats who criticized the president, had more cause for soul-searching than most.

But instead of re-evaluating his own positions, Mr. Lieberman blamed his constituents for failing to notice that he had offered some negative comments about the conduct of the war [emphasis added], too, mainly when he was running for the Democratic nomination for president in 2004. He did not protest when Dick Cheney said that people who voted for Mr. Lamont were giving comfort to “Al Qaeda types.” His only reflection seemed devoted to a re-examination of the rules for getting back on the ballot.

More "new york times endorses ned lamont"

posted by lee on 10/29/06 at 12:57 PM
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