Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Gonna Leave This Town

I'm ready to leave this town...just like in the Professor Longhair song, it hadn't brought me nuthin' but heartache and sorrow, child. I'll spend a little over a week in Oxford, then it's wheels-up to Iraq or Afghanistan; I'm still fielding offers, the most promising of which is in Kirkuk working with the Air Force. Ole Miss is giving me grief on my residency status--and without residency, no scholarship. I'm still awaiting their decision on my status. If, by some miracle, I'm declared a resident and offered the Grand Poobah scholarship, I'll fly back to Oxford in late July. Not sure what I'll do without a scholarship...debt's the last thing I need to deal with a g a i n.

While I truly dislike Sierra Vista, I will miss this house. It's filled with sunlight all day and the big, bright windows and skylights funnel it all in. Still, the house in Mississippi needs no big work, other than paint and an eventual kitchen upgrade. The kitchen is considerably smaller, but then some restaurant kitchens are smaller than the one I have now.

Nothing more to say at this moment in time...just treading water until time to load up and push off for the last time.

Thursday, January 11, 2007

GLM

America, the GLM, or Global Language Monitor, has released its hit-list of Most Politically Incorrect Phrases from 2006. I swear I’m not making this list up; it was in today’s edition of the Stars and Stripes, right on page 2. The definitions and commentary, however, I did make up.

And the winners are:

  • menaissance [ MEN·eye·sans ] n. the return of manliness following the zenith of “metrosexual” fashion. Offensive because any reference to men is seen as offensive by The PC censors.

  • flip chart (plural flip charts) n. visual aid: a visual aid consisting of a large pad of paper mounted on an easel, used to present information. Offensive to Filipinos. Can’t mention them either. You can no longer “flip someone off.” You must now “show them (language Nazi's) your middle finger.” The irony here is that I never even knew the word "flip" as anything referencing a nationality, group, etc. So they actually introduced me to an exclusionary/inclusionary term. Bravo.

  • herstory [ húrstəree ] (plural her·sto·ries) n. 1. history from women's perspective: history as it affects women or looked at from the point of view of women, especially in contrast to conventional treatment of history, seen in feminist terms as having favored men 2. life experiences of woman or women: the study or recording of the life experiences, achievements, or expectations of a particular woman or group of women [Late 20th century. < history, as if his- were "of him"] Offensive because if you can’t reference men, you can’t reference womyn either, without the charge of (shocking!!) bias. I heard this term in the late ‘80’s in a Women’s Studies class, and even then I thought it sounded absurd and angry. So now PC even extends to words created earlier to advance the PC cause.

  • black coffee [blak·COF·fee] n. coffee without cream or sugar. Offensive because black is no longer a color. So “black ice,” (now “non-Caucasian ice”) “Black Friday,” (“Friday of Color”) “little black dress,” (“small, feminine garment that would match clothing worn by Johnny Cash”) they’re all out. Yes, I’d like a cup of non-cracker coffee. Gimme a cup of that ethnic joe. I’d like some coffee of color. I’ll have the non-porch-honky coffee, please.

So I need to send the venerable GLM my own un-PC word, one I invented and bandy about the office on a daily basis because I’m usually the perpetrator:

  • hisassment [his·ASS·mənt] n. Inappropriate remarks or unwelcome advances of a sexual nature directed at the male of the species. Just plain offensive.

Sunday, January 07, 2007

How to Lose Fat

Kinda says it all, doesn't it?