Shameless Autumnal Self-Promotion

GUUUYYYYSSSS I'm still living and doing comedy things. I've got some more movie live-blogs in the chute that need illustrating, but I'm going to try to get caught up while I am unemployed (sort-of-mostly-on purpose). But in the meantime, here's a correspondent piece I did for Minnesota Tonight back in August on Minnesota's labor movement. Can you guess which parts were my contributions? (The energy drink and Newsies jokes, duh. Also the shirt and signs because I'm AN ARTIST.) The show is on hiatus until January, but things I helped write or am in and also other stuff that is fine I guess will be continually posted on YouTube in the off-season, so subscribe and shit!



In case you've forgotten, the Beard and I are still doing our podcast, Couple's Book Club (also on iTunes, Google Play, and Stitcher). We're reading our hero, Detective Lieutenant Joe Kenda's book I Will Find You for our next episode and have some special guests booked for the hate-read we have planned for episode 10.

KENDAAAAAA

My last Harold show with my group House of Whimsy (as featured in the Star Tribune--a photo of our group made the print version, which I bought two copies of) is tonight, Saturday, October 28 at 8pm at HUGE Theater. COME SEE US, WE ARE HAVING SO MUCH FUN. BTWs, this is an improv show.

I'm also writing for and will be performing in a sketch revue called "Strike This!" at Strike Theater two weekends in November (10-11, 17-18), so keep an eye out for that. I'm very excited about what we've got going on and obvi one of my sketches is energy drink-themed. LYLAS! Have a great fall!

Vice Presidential Blogging: Schuyler Colfax

That's a pretty good beard.

America's Most Seventeenth Vice President, one Schuyler Colfax, Jr., was born in New York City in 1823. In old-timey disease tragedy news, Colfax, Sr. died of tuberculosis before Baby Skysky was born to his wife Hannah. Apparently Colfax came from distinguished stock as his grandfather was a bodyguard of some kind to GWash during the Revolutionary War. Growing up, Schuyler lived with his mother and grandmother, who ran a boarding house. He ended his formal education at age ten to start working, just like today's Republicans advise to avoid getting all childhood-obese. When Schuyler was thirteen,which is officially the worst age anybody can be,* Hannah remarried and the family moved to Indiana. Young Schuyler was interested in politics and as a teenager wrote articles, advocated for the Whig Party, and became friends with Horace Greeley--who contrary to popular belief, was a famous abolitionist and newspaperman, not a professional Benjamin Franklin impersonator.

Greeley could've been raking it in.

Anyway, Colfax became editor of the South Bend, IN Free Press at age nineteen, and bought the paper within a few years, renaming it the St. Joseph Valley Register. Fancy that! He married childhood friend Evelyn Clark in 1844. They had no children when she died in 1863. He dived into actual politicking in 1848, as a Whig Party convention delegate. He also participated in the 1849 Indiana State Constitutional Convention. He ran for Congress for the first time in 1850 and lost. But! He picked himself up and was elected to the House in 1854 as an Anti-Nebraska candidate (he was against the Kansas-Nebraska Act). In that downtime, Colfax become one of the founders of the Rebekah Degree (basically the lady branch of the Odd Fellows). You know who was a Daughter of Rebekah? Eleanor Roosevelt! Our lesbianest First Lady (until Hillary Clinton, amirite?)! As an anti-slavery politician, Colfax found his way to the Republican Party after the Whigs collapsed, serving several more terms in Congress. He served as the Speaker of the House 1863-69, though I'm pretty sure you didn't have to be an Orange-American to achieve that position back then. As Speaker, Colfax announced the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which outlawed slavery. Huzzah!

Colfax got recruited to run as Ulysses S. Grant's veep in 1868. Two weeks after the election, he was remarried to one Ella Wade (some Senator-or-rather's niece), with whom he had his son Schuyler Colfax, III, because who could let a legacy name like that die out? As far as I know, he did nothing of note as VP. Unfortunately (fortunately?), during his time in the House, Colfax and pretty much every other Congressman took money from those shady grafters at the Union Pacific Railroad. He was implicated in the Crédit Mobilier Scandal in 1872, and was replaced by Henry Wilson** as VP on Grant's reelection ticket in 1872. What is the deal with the Crédit Mobilier scandal, you might ask? Well, so you don't have to read the whole Wikipedia article, I will summarize (probably pretty inaccurately):

So, like, in the mid-1860s, the U.S. government thought it might be a good idea to set up a transcontinental railroad and chartered the Union Pacific Railroad to make it happen. High-ranking Union Pacific officials were skeptical that they could ever make money off of running a railroad, so they hatched a nefarious plan: they secretly set up "Crédit Mobilier of America," a supposedly independent construction company they were contracting to do the actual railroad-building work. However, it was basically a sham company set up to line the pockets of railroad tycoon types. How it worked was through a system of indirect billing and blatant fraud: "Crédit Mobilier" would invoice Union Pacific for construction costs, who would in turn invoice the federal government the same amount plus "overhead" costs. But since Crédit Mobilier was Union Pacific, there were no overhead costs, and the extra government cash went to the secret shareholders AKA Union Pacific's executive fat cats. Congress got tangled up because Congressman Oakes Ames was set up as head of Crédit Mobilier in 1867. He used his political influence to sell his fellow Congressmen Crédit Mobilier stocks at discount rates, in addition to blatant gifts and bribes to keep Congress from auditing the whole shady business. Whether Colfax or most of his colleagues were really aware of the larger scam is unclear, but this is just your hourly reminder that corporate sponsorship of Congress is not exactly news.

I believe that's Colfax front and center and Uncle Sam wants all these congressdudes to commit hari-kari for ripping off the government. Or something. (Source)

But anyway, Grant dumped Colfax. After he left political life, Colfax was a successful lecturer. Gotta replenish the 'ol coffers! In a tragically hilarious turn of events, he was basically killed by the Minnesota winter. He's buried in South Bend, IN and numerous towns across the U.S. of A. are named for him. His grandparents' home in Wayne, NJ, the Schuyler-Colfax House, originally erected in 1695, is a museum currently owned by the Wayne Township. So that's a thing. Also, Bill Raymond plays Colfax in the recent movie Lincoln, which I saw and had opinions about here.


*Until they are nineteen and in college and think they are some hot shit, that is.
**Though Wilson also took money in the scandal, I guess? Somehow James A. Garfield, also implicated in the scandal, wormed his way out of it well enough to be elected president in 1880.

That Old Chesnut: Razin' and raisin' stuff and also raisins

So I do a lot of crossword puzzles. I also do jigsaw puzzles, but we're talking about word puzzles right now, you guys, don't distract me. Certain words that I am pretty sure are not real outside of Crosswordland come up over and over again in puzzles. Words like "eft" (baby salamander) or "anil" (indigo plant). See what I'm saying? Sometimes crossword creators are like, "Goddamnit, I need an 's' here" so they use a British spelling of something, like when Brits write "realise" or "amasing"* but say them like us 'Mericans do with a voiced alveolar fricative (z). And since they call the letter that often goes with that sound "zed," which is clearly way more fun than "zee," I do not know why they don't spell more words with it. SRSLY, Britons, WTF? Anyway, it's time for a homophone party up in here. GET READY, NERDZ!

But anyway, "rase" comes up a decent bit in crosswords (four very useful letters), which is the (a?) British spelling of "raze," according to crosswords. According to our friends at the OED, the verb "rase/raze" which now basically means to tear down or level something originally came into English from Latin by way of Anglo-Norman, where the verb raser meant to shave or cut off. Like that thing you do with a RAZOR. GET IT? I like the idea of a bulldozer "shaving" a building to the ground. From the same root comes the modern word "erase," which originally only applied to writing, but has now been extended to any kind of deliberate destruction to the point of disappearance.

TO RAZE. Credit Lisa Dutton/Toledo Blade.

But seriously, why does "raze" sound so much (as in the, same as) "raise"? Are they related words? 

To raise something or somebody up has, (unlike "raze") deep Germanic roots. It apparently comes from an Old Scandinavian word that means to erect a stone monument or some such other act of building. There are so many different definitions of what it means to raise something, and debates about whether one should use raise or rear when talking about children or animals or crops or whatever, but trust me, British people, without a doubt, you don't get a "pay rise" here in the Land of the Free. Also, apparently early common usage of "raise" can be found throughout the Wycliffe Bible, which is in Middle English and unfortunately has nothing to do with this guy. In Middle English, raze and raise would not have rhymed, they would have been more like [ra:z] vs. [reiz] or [reizə],** respectively. But these vowels largely merged during the Great English Vowel Shift, so now it's just confusing for people trying to learn to read. Take that, illiterates (and kids and foreigners)!

TO RAISE (THE ROOF). Screenshot credit: Friends of Ebonie.

But lastly, how are these verbs related to raisins? These days, we usually mean dried grapes when we talk about raisins.*** "Raisin" originally meant (and can still sometimes mean) a cluster of grapes or a grape. This word comes from any variety of spellings of an Anglo-Norman or Old French meaning grapes or whatever. It was for many centuries a homophone of "reason," but in the last few hundred years, the first syllable followed the pattern of the earlier Great Vowel Shift and became the diphthong it is today. Fun fact: this process is also called "vowel raising." What? BOOM.

These are raisins.

EDITED TO ADD: The folks at Oxford set me straight: -ize and -ise are both correct in British English. Sorry to spread lies/z about you, Britain.

*I made this one up.
**Do not quote me, I am not a Middle English scholar.
***Either that, or a sweet 1980s claymation R&B group.

Energy Drink Review: Max Velocity Cherry Limeade

Oh hey guys, I'm trying another Max Velocity flavor and finally getting around to fooling around with Codeacademy. I'm on the basic HTML lessons, which are pretty straightforward because a) it's easy and b) I've already figured a lot of the basics out from messing around with the code on this here blog. But I'm kind of enjoying it? But it could be the Max Velocity Cherry Limeade flavor, what with its taurine and B vitamins making me cheerful.

It's the red one.

FLAVOR: I have to say that if I had to choose between which of the "natural" flavors this drink claims to be, it's more cherry than lime. However, there is also tinge of citrus to it, so basically it just tastes like all the cheap energy drinks ever. Which is fine! But not as exotic as the flavor makes it sound.

EFFECTIVENESS: I've had about 38% of the drink so far, and I can already feel it. It's making me feel like a super-basic coding cheetah (MSPaint image possibly forthcoming, let's so how I feel here in a bit). Turns out I'm too lazy, but the energy boost was a-OK and whatnot. I've lost interest in writing anymore about this now.

RECOMMENDED.

Here, go take this charming and silly Halloween quiz from Kate Beaton. You're welcome.

James Madison: Jefferson II, Basically

At long last, a write-up of one of my few remaining presidents!

Just chillin' with T.Jeffz and preventing "excessive democracy."

James Madison, Jr. was born to a wealthy Virginia planter (shock, shock) in 1751. He was the eldest of twelve children, but since it was old-timey times a bunch of them died as children but whatever. J-Madz, Sr. planted tobacco and his wife Nelly Conway was the daughter of yet another planter. As a young boy, "Jemmy," as the future prez was called then, had a private tutor from Scotland. Apparently Jemmy was good at Latin and was a good student. No word on whether of not he was good at the caber toss.* Eventually Madison went to the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), where he was a big, big nerd and did lots of debate, and was good at languages. He studied the law, but not to be a common everyday lawyer, but for public policy reasons. He served in the Virginia State Legislature in the late 1770s and at some juncture became Thomas Jefferson's protege.

He worked with Jefferson on the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, because that's what all the cool kids were doing, and then served as the youngest delegate to the Continental Congress 1780-83. He became a delegate to the Virginia Statehouse in the mid-1780s, but became fearful of "excessive democracy" among state and local governments and was especially freaked out by Shay's Rebellion. Once a lot of people were like, "Hey this whole Articles of Confederation thing isn't working out that well," Madison was instrumental in organization what would become the Constitutional Convention. Madison was totally going to rein in those (other) rascals in the state legislatures now. His Virginia Plan became a template for the Constitution itself, though he compromised on sharing sovereignty between state and federal governments. Oh hey, thanks for the Electoral College! Haha, just kidding, everyone knows that it is officially the stupidest way to elect someone (besides caucusing, of course).

Then came the fight for ratification! And for the first and only time, Madison teamed up with Hamilton and Jay to write what would eventually be gathered together and called The Federalist Papers. At one point, Maddy debated Patrick Henry over the Constitution, who I am legally obligated to refer to as a "fiery orator," and didn't completely suck, which was surprising since Madison was usually really, really shitty at public speaking. Anyway, Madison, who by this time was managing his father's plantation Montpelier, which had lots of slaves, was totally cool with the 3/5 Compromise. Remember how he was, like, BFF with Jefferson? And then Madison wanted to be in the new federal government, but then Patrick Henry totally tried to gerrymander him out of out, but Madison beat out his future Secretary of State James Monroe for one of Virginia's seats in Congress anyway.

Dolley M. basically made up the role of First Lady.
Uh, you're welcome, Hillary Clinton.

In order to avoid calls for a new constitutional convention, now-Representative J-Madz was like, "Fine, let's make a Bill of Rights or whatever." Not exactly anti-federalism, but opposed to the Federalists, Madison helped found the first (Democratic-)Republican Party with Jefferson. Jim and Tom then were like, "Hey, this 1790s Patriot Act is bullshit, states should totally be able to declare it unconstitutional." Oh, states' rights-ers. Never too early for you to show up! But then at the ripe old age of 43, Madison got his bro Aaron Burr to introduce him to a special lady and he FINALLY got married to Dolley Payne Todd, a young widow with a son, whom Madison adopted. In 1801, Madison, Sr. finally kicked the bucket, and the future president officially inherited his plantation, along with 108 slaves. But don't worry, Jemmy never hit the slaves himself. Supposedly he didn't even have anybody else hit them. But we all know that slavery was really actually not so bad, anyway.

James Madison served as Jefferson's Secretary of State and helped negotiate the Louisiana Purchase and carried out an incredibly unpopular foreign trade embargo during the Napoleonic wars. Elected to the presidency as Jefferson's handpicked successor in 1808, Madison basically wanted to stick with whatever Jefferson had going on. This included opposing the Bank of the United States, but he ended up re-authorizing it when the U.S. had another war. Did you know that wars cost money? Between various trade issues, the British kidnapping American sailors for their navy, and Britain arming Indian tribes in the Northwest Territories of the U.S. (supposedly against the French?), Madison basically had to fight them in a stupid, pointless war. The War of 1812, everybody's favorite historical footnote. But at least lots of Indians were conquered by American heroes like our friend Tippecanoe. Americans at the time claimed they won the war and got all patriotic, while Canadians still gloat over their supposed victory. Then Madison ushered in the Era of Good Feelings, where the U.S. started focusing more on emotional and spiritual violence against Native Americans (AHEM, "civilization" projects). Which has worked out super-awesome for everybody.** And Dolley Madison was beloved and was the best hostess the world has ever known, blahblahblah.

ANYWAY, most of Madison's coolest stuff happened before his presidency. After he was president, he was kind of in debt and stuff (just like Jefferson again!) and lost his mind a little bit over his terrible finances. Despite hanging onto all his slaves (one of his few actual assets), Madison thought like many others of his time that slavery should probably be ended and free blacks shipped "back" to Africa. Madison also got really paranoid about his own legacy and would go back through his records, changing information and even editing letters written by other people to reflect his version of history. Which is...sketchy, to say the least. Anyway, J-Madz died in 1836 and his plantation, Montpelier, became a big-deal historical site. He also got a lovely city in Wisconsin named for him, as well as the location that would eventually become known as New York's Madison Square, and he was on an old-timey $5000 bill, which I would not ever want to have to carry around anywhere because it would make me awfully nervous.

But so, way to go, James! Thanks for the not-so-racist parts of the Constitution!

*'Cause his teacher was Scottish, see?
**Okay, well, most things have worked out pretty well for white people, so I guess I shouldn't be so dismissive.

Things I read, things I'm doing

I read all of the internet every afternoon between doing the Lord's Work. I see interesting stuff sometimes.

Guys, Wonders and Marvels is both wonderful and marvelous. So much fantastic and strange historical nerdery! I particularly enjoyed this post by Jack El-Hai about how a) people used to watch kangaroos "box" for funsies and b) a tragic elevator accident made people realize that maybe this was not such a good use of our precious kangaroo resources. Fact: several years ago, I was buying a new pair of Adidas Sambas (the world's greatest shoe, probably) and was slightly chagrined to learn that they were made of kangaroo leather. But then I consulted the internet and found out that kangaroos aren't endangered or anything and I no longer felt guilty. True story.

In crypto-anthropod news, apparently a hot Siberian summer sent the local Yeti population to seek cooler climes farther north. Highlights of this article from the Voice of Russia include a description of one encounter where, sadly the Yetis "'did not answer our greeting,' one of the eye-witnesses, Vitaly Vershinin, said." Yetis can be such fucking snobs, you guys. Don't take it personal, Vitaly. Also, one expert's description of the alleged humanoid creatures: "They use neither instruments of labour, nor clothes or fire, but they are sufficiently intellectual. Besides, they are well known for their paranormal capabilities." I for one can't wait to find out what kind of intellectual/paranormal contributions Yetis and their Samsquanch cousins can make to human society. It's really only a matter of time before Bobo catches one, right?

In a post on his WaPo Wonkblog last month, Ezra Klein takes on the issue of poverty and "personal responsibility." Being poor is soul-suckingly depressing, it is hard, and it is expensive. And oh yeah, it requires you to be personally responsible for nearly every aspect of your day-to-day life. Can't put food stamps in an off-shore account, bro.

Sadly, I will not be live-blogging tonight's town hall presidential debate. Which is probably the best for both my sanity and my liver. But I WILL be attending a Chip Coffey event here in St. Paul! Will seeing the fantastically no-nonsense bescarfed psychic in action convince me to believe in an afterlife? I suspect that my ambivalence will be confirmed, but that Chip will be charming. I'm going to try to make myself ask for a picture with him when I get my book signed. We'll see if I can follow through.

Also, remember when this happened? I bought a few more flavors (they're only $1 a can!). I'm drinking the pomegranate berry flavor Max Velocity right now and it is delicious and awesome.

The end.

UPDATE: I just wanted to send a link love over to Blair (the blogger formerly known as B.), the blogmistress/curator of STFU, Parents a collection of majestic parental overshare and self-righteousness. She recently un-anonymized herself and people be hatin' on her for apparently not being attractive or child-having enough to qualify for internet snarking. This is misogynist bullshit, obviously.

That Old Chesnut: Debunking

Do you guys watch ghost hunting shows? I do! I watch them! I watch all of them! They look for "scientific" evidence of the paranormal. Other shows I enjoy look for evidence that this evidence is fake! Like Syfy's Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files (currently airing) or NatGeo's superb series Is It Real? (2005-2007) which I have been watching the fuck out of on Netflix Instant. There's a lot of debunking going on on these shows. But where did the word "debunk" originate? I will tell you because that is what this old Chesnut does in That Old Chesnut! And the etymology is way more nerdy-fun and fascinating than I even expected.

1. First thing's first: "debunk" was coined by American writer(/sometime banker) William E. Woodward in his 1923 satire of the American business world, Bunk. Debunking involves taking out the nonsense, disabusing people of false notions, and knocking the undeserving off of their pedestals. In short, taking the "bunk" out of things. But WHAT IS BUNK, you guys? And where did this term come from?

2. "Bunk" is a shortening of "bunkum" (humbug, nonsense). But did you know that this word is just a phonetic spelling of "buncombe," which has explicitly political connotations? No, you did not know that.

This term has nothing to do with the popular military strategy of sabotaging the enemy's bunk beds so they will all collapse on each other in the middle of the night.*

3. During the 16th United States Congress (obvs), debate raged over the "Missouri Question" which turned into the Missouri Compromise (How'd that agreement work out for you guys, eh?). Right before they were FINALLY going to call some kind of vote in the House, Rep. Felix Walker of Buncombe County, North Carolina decided now would be a good time to give a speech regarding Buncombe and the whole Missouri situation. And he would not SHUT UP. Everybody was like, "This is not adding substantively to our political discourse!" and "Enough about Buncombe, bro!" And then "buncombe" became a synonym for meaningless political talk; claptrap,** if you will (you will).

4. Example: Ann Romney claims she and Oven Mitt were "poor" when they first got married because they lived in a basement apartment and ate lots of tuna fish (ew). But turns out this is BUNKUM, meant to make the Romneys appeal to not-billionaire voters. Gross canned fishy-fish predilections aside, clearly their "struggles" were a little bit fake because of the Romney family investments that allowed them to not even have part-time jobs during college. This Atlantic Wire piece clearly DEBUNKS these bald attempts at pretending not to be the richiest richie riches ever.

And now you know.

*I just made this strategy up. Here's another one our armed forces should totally use, for freedom.
**Also, "claptrap" comes from olde-timey stage performers' and speakers' crass attempts to trick or "trap" their audience into applause. Cool, eh?

That Old Chesnut: Mayday!

Look, I made an incisive political cartoon in MSPaint. You're welcome.

Some people think our pal Oven Mitt Romney's campaign is all, "Mayday!" since that awkward Libya incident and then that one video of him being like, "Poors think they should have food and shelter. Fuck those guys because they are almost as bad as I am at paying taxes" came out. So I thought I would explore the etymology of "mayday" for all y'all.

Back in 1923, some British radio dude decided it was high time he and his pilot compatriots flying back and forth across the Channel come up with some kind of emergency distress call lingua franca nonsense. He decided upon "mayday" which supposedly derives from "m'aider" which is like "Help me!" in  Frenchy French, but is easy for English speakers to say because it doesn't have any funny diacritic marks or whole ends of words you're just not supposed to pronounce. But anyway, you have to say it three times in a row, or else it doesn't count. You know, like Beetlejuice. AND there are all sorts of other Frenchy urgent radio announcements you can make from your boat or your plane* that I don't care about.  But anyway, don't fake that shit. The Coast Guard will fine the fuck out of you for that. Good thing for M-Rom$ there's no coast guard in the Cayman Islands.**

THE MORE YOU KNOW!

*Governor Bishop Romney, this means you.
**This is almost certainly a false statement.

The Wizarding World of Harry Plugger*

Okay, when I saw this in the newspaper, I totally thought that chicken plugger-lady was talking about Voldemort, not "Valumart." Also, those are some cheap-ass paper towels. Don't blow your nose on that shit, it will get chapped. But since Voldemort doesn't have a nose, we can't really expect him to the know the difference, I suppose. I hope there are no allergies in Wizard Hell or wherever he's gone now.

*If you don't start behaving yourselves, I WILL start photoshopping Pluggers/Harry Potter mashups.

That Old Chesnut: Red herrings: probably not actually related to fox-hunting or whatever

Cuter than Benedict Cumberbatch?

Hey kids, do you ever wonder why people talk about deliberately misleading clues as "red herrings"? No? Okay, move along then. Anyway, now that it's just us nerds left, let me talk to you about ye olde* red herring. So people eat fish. Which is objectively gross and fishy, but whatever, especially in olden times, they couldn't go to the store and buy mac and cheese, so they had to take what they could get. Also, people would dry and smoke meats and fishes and such in order to keep them from rotting immediately because, you know, there were no refrigerators back in the day. Apparently some of these processes turn herrings red. Because usually they are like this:

I would be depressed too if I were a dead fish.

Also, these smoky salty processes make the herring not just red, but take on quite a distinctive odor--apparently one above and beyond the horror that is just regular "fishy." According to Michael Quinion, the semi-folk etymology of the figurative sense of red herring--something deliberately meant to throw you off the correct scent--involved stories of hunters trying to train their horses or hounds or something. It's not interesting, but mostly probably never really happened, but was basically invented in an 1807 story by "radical journalist" and pamphleteer (best job title EVER) William Cobbett, who claimed to have, as a child, used red herring to distract his own hounds from the trail of a hare. Apparently the idea caught on though, and people starting throwing around "red herring" as a synonym for something that is intentionally misleading. Which is all to say that I wrote this nerd post as my own red herring to make people think I still care about things besides caffeine blogging. So TAKE THAT! Distracted yet?

*Oh, I'm sorry, have you been pronouncing it "ye?" Guess what, that y has just been confused with old-timey lettering that used a thorn for "th" sounds. It was spoken as "the" all along, you silly geese!

That Old Chesnut: Regarding Chancellor(-y)

Friends, you thought I had forgotten about everybody's favorite new blog feature that I promised I would do more than once, didn't you? Well, I have not forgotten! I have thought of writing another post often, but then I would not have an idea for a post and also I am lazy so even if I had had one, I probably would've just drank more of whatever type of beverage was most inappropriate for that time of day and watched more Korean dramas (currently viewing Creating Destiny*). BUT ANYWAY, I got a part-time job recepting in the afternoon. I have to answer the phone a lot, which I pretty much hate, but it's not so bad, since it's mostly nice-seeming religious people performing Jesus**-themed tasks. So maybe I will do a lot more blogging since it's kind of boring and heaven forbid I actually work on that article I'm supposed to be revising or doing dissertation research or studying for my prelim exams or whatever. Also, Facebook is blocked on this network, so that narrows down time-wasting activities.

This is an extremely long prelude to a talk about the origins of the word chancellor and its friends! Guys, so a chancellor is a lot like a fancy secretary now. Or sometimes Hitler.*** Or, like, an ambassador or other high-falutin' official representative. According to the venerable OED, "chancellor" originally comes to English from Latin (by way of French, as per usual), "in the Roman Empire, the cancellarius was a petty officer stationed at the bar (of lattice work) in a basilica or other law court, as usher of the court." This lattice work was known as the cancelli, which refers specifically to "the latticed screen between the choir and the body of the church." Who knew? Not me!

Look at that sweet cancello. Photo by Giovanni Dall'Orto, via Wikimedia Commons.

So the office--the position itself or the paper-pushing location--came to be known as a chancellory or a chancellery (or sometimes a chancellary). The -ery version seems to be the most common spelling today. But do you know what else, sometimes British people are lazy with their tongues (heh), and "chancellery" became "chancery" in many instances. Hence, the entire "in chancery" plot from Dickens' fabulous Bleak House (I highly recommend both the book and the 2005 BBC miniseries).**** If a case is "in chancery," it's being considered by the courts or is stuck in legal bureaucratic nonsense, basically. So chancery is a fabulous British-sounding old-timey word that may or may not have come up in my new job. It all has to do with lattice work.*****

*In case you wondered, that synopsis says the Han family moved to Canada. This is false, they live in Sydney, though the daughters do sound American or Canadian when they speak English, not Australian.)
**Regular Jesus, not Sexy Gay Jesus, unfortunately. Not so into the gays here. At least not officially.
***I'm trying to be more like the History channels and the Military channel and a lot of cable by talking about Hitler as often as possible on this blog now.
****In Chancery is also the title of the second book in Galsworthy's Forsyte Saga, which I own but haven't read--though I do recommend the 2002 miniseries, obvs, if you like depressing shit in fabulous early twentieth-century costume, and I know you do because you probably also watch Downton Abbey.
*****You caught me, I just got a job welding metal latticeworks!

Education via the Teevee

Some people might say, "Lauren, spending eight or so hours a day watching TV surely cannot be good for you." And I would say, "FALSE! Sometimes I learn shit!" Here is some of it:

1. Tonight Isaac put on some Nazi show (there is always a Nazi show on some channel, it is an American law) about Hitler's "inner circle" and then promptly took a 1.5 hour nap on one of the couches (Yes, we have multiple full-size couches, what do you think we are, animals?). I was basically playing Fitz the whole time, but I was listening since Fitz does not require much intellectual strain. Not only did I learn about how Hitler loved him some adolescent ladies (a disturbingly high percentage of whom at least attempted suicide after getting involved with him), but that he was LITERALLY somebody's creepy uncle. Geli Raubal was the eldest daughter of Hitler's half-sister. Though there is no direct evidence Adolf and Geli ever had a romantic relationship, he sure treated her like they did. An abusive relationship, that is. She moved in with her uncle in Berlin at 19 apparently pretended to go to medical school for awhile. When Hitler found out she and his chauffeur were planning to marry, he fired the chauffeur and basically started treating Geli like she was a prisoner in her own home. She couldn't go anywhere on her own, despite the fact that Hitler would be gone for long boring periods of time doing political stuff, and anyway in 1931 she shot herself in Hitler's apartment. AWKWARD.

It's totally normal for 19 year-old girls to want to hang out with their fascist uncles all the time, right?

Hitler was apparently distraught. Then he probably came up with a way to blame Jews or queers or something for her suicide and quickly got together with Eva Braun, who was actually like 21 or something really old compared to most of Hitler's exes. Was he really doin' it with his niece? Responsible historians would probably consult more than one random TV documentary and Wikipedia and say we can never know for sure, but I am not responsible. I say even if they weren't doin' it, Uncle Adolf totally wanted to.

Pretty much just like this. Fabulous image found here.

 2. Later on, I learned about phlogiston on the Science channel. What is phlogiston? you might ask. Well, besides my new band name, it's a fake element or something that 17th- and 18th-century alchemists believed was in stuff, but was removed by/caused fire. Or whatever, just read the Wikipedia article. I mostly just enjoyed how many times the British scientist host guy said "phlogiston" in one hour. I also love that olden times people believed in that shit and kept thinking they were proving phlogiston existed when they were actually, like, discovering hydrogen or whatever.

Do YOU like learning stuff from TV? I have some suggestions for you since TV is my life! This may or may not be a multiple-choice situation:

a) If you like that history of science stuff, you must watch historian James Burke's Connections. Only the original ten-episode 1978 run is worth it in my opinion, but he did do two later series of the same name for TLC in the '90s or something that just aren't as good. Connections is delightful and British and nerdy and James Burke wears the same awesome white '70s suit in every episode. My dad suggested I check this out, and my nerdy little soul was not disappointed.

b) Are you more into history-history? Then you should check out Medieval Lives. Written and hosted by former Monty Python-er and apparent history nerd Terry Jones, this 2004 eight-episode series takes on the middle ages in Europe (mostly England). Each episode focuses on one iconic medieval character type ("The Knight" or "The Peasant") and presents fascinating as well as absurd and humorous facts about how middle ageans actually lived. With cheesy costuming and skits, obviously. I heard about this one from the lovely and talented Kate Beaton's Tumblr.

c) Or are you too cool for learning? Are you into fake, IRONIC education instead? Then you should DEFINITELY check out Look Around You, a 2002 spoof of British educational films from the '70s and '80s. Each fantastic ten-minute episode has a scientific theme. Watch while the "facts" and "experiments" build in absurdity. Seriously, it's so good. I haven't seen the second series from 2005, which apparently takes a different set of films on because it's not on Netflix. So I can't tell you anything about that. But watch series one. You will laugh so hard, you won't care about how confused you are. Netflix recommended this to me for obvious reasons.

Apparently I only like educational shows from the UK. Go figure.

New Blog Feature: That Old Chesnut

Guys, do you know what I love? The old saying that calls old sayings "that old chestnut." It is pretty much the best thing ever. You know what else I love? Etymology. Could you possible guess a third love of mine? That would be the fact that my name is Chesnut (don't fuck with me autocorrect/every person ever who has tried to copy my name from one form to another and just seems to think I've misspelled my own name). I've told people that one day I'll have another blog called That Old Chesnut, but let's be honest, it's nowhere near as flashy as Blonder and Thinner. So anyway, I'm going to just use it for a new blog feature. Guys, name pun nerd party time has arrived! Where does that old saying/word/syntactical structure/strange spelling or whatever come from? That Old Chesnut will find out for you! Or perhaps I will just look through my giant book of Americanisms and pick out old-timey slang that amuses me and post it here. Get excited!

This is good information to have.

For this feature's inaugural appearance, I will of course be exploring the origins of the phrase "that old chestnut." According to Ye Olde Oxford English Dictionary, this usage of chestnut is considered slang and is defined thusly:

A story that has been told before, a 'venerable' joke. Hence, in extended use, anything trite, stale, or too often repeated.

The origin is hazy, though in the 1880s, American newspapers made up plenty of folk etymologies. The OED does cite an anecdote from the 1888 volume Reminiscences of J.L. Toole; related by himself, and chronicled by Joseph Hatton, which apparently you can just read online. Apparently Toole was a famous English actor/theater person with many, many memories that needed to be written down. I have no idea what the context of the following story is since the OED doesn't give page numbers, but will copy and paste that shit nonetheless:

'When suddenly from the thick boughs of a cork-tree—’‘A chestnut, Captain; a chestnut.’ ‘Bah! booby, I say a cork-tree!’ ‘A chestnut,’ reiterates Pablo: ‘I should know as well as you, having heard you tell the tale these twenty-seven times’.

So quit telling the goddamn chestnut story, Captain. And quit trotting out the same old arguments, and don't you dare tell the Shania sandwich story one more time. Not THAT old chestnut!

They don't actually wash the lions, you guys.**

There is an atrociously large gallery of more sparkly hugging animals and lots of sexy Native appropriation where this came from. You're welcome.

Inspired by a conversation in my history class last night where a discussion arose regarding the origins of the phrase “seeing the elephant” in both California gold rush and Civil War battle contexts (meaning finding out the gold rush was a sham and experiencing battle for the first time, respectively), I put my nerdgear on and went to work. I'm cross-posting this from my class' blog (it's not public) because I was so proud of the results! Anyway, so I came home and consulted my giant red 15-pound volume of Americanisms* to see if I could track down a satisfactory etymological tale. This tome identified the colloquial expression “To see the elephant, to get a sight of the elephant, to see the sights, to gain experience of life” and had a quotation from as early as 1835 (Mathews 550). While this does not clear up this specific saying’s exact origins, the volume also pointed me toward the esteemed Oxford English Dictionary to the phrase “to see the lions,” which means basically the same thing. Under definition #4 of “lion,” the OED says “a. pl. Things of note, celebrity, or curiosity (in a town, etc.); sights worth seeing: esp. in phr. to see, or show, the lions . †In early use, to have seen the lions often meant to have had experience of life… This use of the word is derived from the practice of taking visitors to see the lions which used to be kept in the Tower of London” (emphasis added because of awesomeness). Of course, my nerd curiosity was not sated so I looked into this phenomenon further!

If someone hands you this invitation on Friday, do not try to actually go!

The OED’s earliest reference for going “to see the lions” is from 1629, but a recent(-ish) finding of lion skulls shows that lions were part of the royal menagerie kept at the Tower as early as the thirteenth century! (That link is to a fascinating article from NatGeo News including osteoarchaeology for all my fellow Bones fans out there–highly recommended.) Also, apparently inviting people to the “washing of the lions” at the Tower was a classic old-timey English April Fool’s joke long after the animals had been moved to more modern zoological parks!

*A Dictionary of Americanisms: On Historical Principles, 4th ed. Mitford M. Mathews, ed. Chicago: Chicago UP, 1966.
**And if they did, they'd do it more than once a year. SRSLY.

Girls and Giftedness: A Personal Narrative AKA I am a smart lady and prefer the company of other smart ladies, so what?

To you, smart sarcastic lady friends! Making life worth living since (at least) 1994.

 

Via Jezebel, I finally made myself check out this story that's been floating around the webernets about how some people are alarmed that there are more girls in New York City schools' gifted programs these days. As in, more girls than boys. Like 12% more, according to Sharon Otterman's NYT piece. I mean, maybe it's because I went to liberal arts college where the lady population was pushing 60% or maybe because I'm a man-hating feminist, but I can't really bring myself to care. Oh no! Girls succeeding! Must be something wrong! Because, I mean, wasn't it like, not that many decades ago that these gifted programs were probably dominated by boys--if they existed at all? And don't they admit that before they put the current testing in place, gender equality required that different (easier) standards be applied to boys?* I know there are issues with standardized testing being used to measure any sort of real-life intelligence, particularly with children who haven't even started kindergarten, sure. I also really resist the idea that little girls are somehow innately more advanced verbally and better at sitting quietly, though the statistics do APPEAR to show this to be the case.** Whatever the reason, though, more girls are testing into these programs.

Maybe one day I'll have a son and care more, but I can't say that some smart little boys having to hang out with a majority of girls doesn't really sound all that detrimental to me. But see, that's what I don't get about all this Christina Hoff Sommers nonsense about wars "against" boys. I also don't really believe that teaching methods really have changed that much since the pre-feminist era. I think classroom teachers have always valued kids who sit still, pay attention, have good verbal communication skills, can work well with others, etc. The fact that girls are now surpassing boys academically in the early years probably has far more to do with not being told how stupid girls are all the time than with any radical change in approach by teachers.  Yes, I do think it is problematic that boys are more likely to be diagnosed with behavioral and/or learning disorders, to not finish school, etc. There really should be no measurable gender difference when it comes to these things, and I'm not denying that these issues deserve attention and solutions. But not at the expense of girls.

Because guess what? I was one of those well-behaved, advanced-reading little girls and not only did our school district's gifted program help make easy, easy elementary school bearable, it also put me into contact with lots of other awesome, smart, weird little girls--some of whom I'm still friends with today. That's where I learned that female friendships beyond the fourth grade could be about more than playground boyfriend dramas and more about making up crazy stuff together. Sure, there were boys at EXCEL (a once-weekly pull-out program for third through sixth-graders) but there were always at least a few more girls in each class. For the most part, the boys were pretty socially awkward. I don't remember ever having a crush on anybody from EXCEL, though I had plenty on boys from my regular school. By the later years, fifth and sixth grade, we mostly just ignored them. I started to build up a group of girl friends who were AWESOME. We spent our recesses enacting commercials for ridiculous fake products or dressing up in wigs and costumes and holding meetings of the "Grandmas' Club." Or during class, when we were all probably high off of all the rubber cement we used to put together or own newspapers, we made up elaborate stories about how I was dating Albert Einstein or we'd (mostly) good-naturedly make fun of our one friend who was still wearing patterned leggings in sixth grade. In some ways, we were just the most socially adept kids there, so we gravitated towards one another. But at an age (pubescent, I suppose) when girls at school and on the soccer team and even at church were getting meaner and meaner to each other, we found in one another a place where we could just be silly and too smart for our own good and being at the top of the EXCEL social ladder (not that there was much of one) meant that nobody would be making fun of us. (Though we may have made fun of some of them behind their backs. There were a lot of WEIRD kids, there, people.)

At the height of our EXCEL group's awesomeness, I was rejected by my former best friends back at my regular school. I had other friends, don't get me wrong, but it still hurt. I started hanging out with other nerdy smart kids from my own school in the library during recess, avoiding all the interpersonal dramz of the other kids and playing Scrabble and helping decorate the seasonal bulletin boards. Though I did morph into a big bitch during seventh grade like I'd been infected by a virus on my thirteenth birthday, I always stuck with the nerdy kids. By eighth grade, I'd embraced an unabashedly weird and nerdy persona--wearing my parents' old clothes from the basement, putting tootbrushes in my hair for decoration and pretending with my one friend that we were aliens from another planet with X-Files character nicknames. (I believe I was "Chupacabra.") Anyway, I acquired guy friends along the way (a number of whom eventually came out), though most of them didn't stick. I didn't really date until college, but in some ways I didn't really mind. Sure, I wanted a boyfriend and had crushes, etc. But I also developed a core group of wacky, smart, hilarious girl friends whose company was better than anybody else's I knew.

This is all to say that while it is unfortunate that there may be boys falling through the academic cracks, there's not actually anything wrong with there being more girls in a gifted program. Learning to develop strong female friendships that were far more focused on fun than on boys in a low-pressure social environment like EXCEL was for me (as I remember it, anyway--Julia and others may beg to differ) completely integral to my eventual feminist awakening. I long knew that I preferred the company of ladies, especially a certain type of quirky, smart lady, but it wasn't until I became a feminist that I realized a big reason we were friends was not just because of our devastatingly awesome levels of sarcasm, but because we were all girls who knew what it felt like to be the smartest person in the room, to resent other girls who sacrificed being interesting for being attractive, because we were all little proto-feminists and we didn't even know it. I've lived in a few different places in my life, and I always feel most comfortable once I've established a network of awesome lady friends. Ones who I can be relaxed around, mock movies with, and compete to be the funniest, not the sexiest. A girl-heavy gifted program experience was an early lesson that girls didn't have to all be the same, and we certainly didn't have to be, you know, "that girl."


*OMG, AFFIRMATIVE ACTION. BTW, Jarzen has feelings about "special rights" that shall be conveyed in video form very soon. As in, as soon as I get around to editing it.

**Obviously, I know girls mature faster by the time puberty hits, but I can't help but wonder that perhaps this apparent disparity of studiousness between genders at ages 4-6 could be caused by parents and caregivers encouraging certain behaviors. If a boy roughhouses and a girl wants to read a book, those activities are praised or at least tolerated. The other way around, adults start getting nervous and give off signals that the behavior is perhaps gender-inappropriate, even if they don't explicitly say so. This may turn what could be a small difference in general gender-based temperament (still skeptical on this one, but then again, I don't have kids which apparently disqualifies me from having opinions about parenting or children or the cultural representations thereof) into a very real gap by the time they start school.

I'm coming out... about David Lynch

No, I don't sleep at night anymore, David Lynch. Thanks for asking.

Guess what, people? I've officially decided I don't like David Lynch. I'm not saying I won't ever give his work another try, but I'm not going to pretend to get it or even want to do so. David Lynch sucks. I've seen a good bit of Twin Peaks, and it was weird and fucked up, but I always meant to get back to it. I saw Blue Velvet, and kind of wanted to cry a lot about the fucked-up-ed-ness of it all. Especially naked Isabella Rossellini in the front yard. And I saw Mulholland Drive, which was like, WTF? I heart me some Naomi Watts and whatnot, but seriously. You're really just fucking with us now, right? And then recently Isaac and I watched Inland Empire. DAVID LYNCH HAS STOPPED TRYING. I have a certain appreciation for people who push beyond the formulaic in film. It's not that I'm anti-art or whatevs. I just feel like David Lynch is only successful because people who are too smart for their own good think they should learn to appreciate or embrace his non-linear storylines or characters switching bodies or S/M creepiness or Kyle McLachlan showing up over and over again or long, drawn-out, nonsensical monologues and/or flashbacks or maybe parallel universes or maybe just people wearing donkey (rabbit?) masks, sitting in silence. I felt this way for awhile. I was like, "I don't really get the appeal of David Lynch. I mean, somebody has to push the envelope, but do I have to watch it? Because it just makes my head hurt." This was before Isaac rented from the Netflix gods Eraserhead. NEVER SEE ERASERHEAD IT IS TERRIBLE. If you want to be scarred for life by creepy snake/fetus baby things that get killed by the main character in long, terrifying, gory death scenes, then go for it. I'm just saying I hated it, and would have broken up with Isaac over making me watch that if, you know, I wanted to break up with him or something. Also: the title refers to a stupid tangential dream sequence that I also hated. What I'm saying is: just because I'm smart and can think critically doesn't mean I have to like David Lynch. He is an asshole who wants me to have headaches. FUCK YOU, DAVID LYNCH. FUCK. YOU. PS: See my sister's review of Lynch's 1984 film version of Dune. She is smart and probably hasn't been traumatized by Eraserhead yet.

Wikipedia failed me, so now you get Pluggers

Can you believe I thought of a controversial American historical figure to write a post about, and the 'Pedia let me down with a completely inadequate entry? PSHAW, people. I was required to shake off my hangover and go get three books from the library to research him instead. Though perhaps for the next few days I should really read the two books and write the paper for class Monday, continue working on PhD applications, and work in some thesis reading if I've got spare time. And/or watch a bunch of Buffy episodes with Isaac because the Pop Culture Library has the complete series and we busted through season one in three nights. Anyhow, in the meantime, until I get to my nerdy self-assigned research project, here is some Pluggers: Two possible explanations here: 1. Baby Pluggers (shudder) don't know what alligators are because the global warming their grandparents don't believe in has caused the sea levels to rise and completely wipe out their natural habitats in Florida. OR 2. The kid suspects his grandfather of smuggling something large and conspicuous under his be-alligatored shirt. Also: WTF lack of question mark, Gary Brookins? Do Lil' Pluggers not understand how voice inflection helps convey meaning? Answer me, goddammit!

Random Meanderings

Here are some things that I like and/or are interesting right now: I have the digital TV converter with a crazy Christmas-tree-kinda-shaped antenna-receiver thing my dad bought for me because he knows about electronic gadgets and I get SEVEN separate PBS stations. Four from BGSU and three from Toledo. Only one completely overlaps (the "Create" channel, which often shows my BFF tour guide who may or may not awesomely run for Congress in the next few years). Awesome shows I watch all the time are History Detectives OMG yes and also NOVA: scienceNOW hosted by the man my friend Cynthia has described as looking like a "really smart Muppet," Neil deGrasse Tyson who loves wearing that sun/moon/stars vest. Senator John Kyl is a (duh) douche. But Debbie Stabenow rocks. (Ezra Klein, WaPo) At the blog Not Always Right: Funny and Stupid Customer quotes, I can relive my customer service days without having to slit my wrists but mostly just pity the people who must put up with that crap to pay the bills. May I never have to have one of those jobs again but you never know with academic funding and blahblahblah so DEAR GOD, PEOPLE SUCK.

Pluggers. You know the drill.

Dear Gary Brookins and also contributor "Bill Fountain" whose family is constantly ripping him off: OKAY. Pluggers have drug problems. Strung-out Plugger wives and ungrateful Plugger children steal small bills from their poor blue-flannel-collared family patriarchs in order to feed their addictions. We GET IT. You can at least buy a nice energy drink with that remaining $3. Also, try using an ATM (they give out big, shiny Andrew Jacksons!*) and then hiding your money somewhere no Plugger would ever find it. Like in the vegetable crisper.** Love, Everybody SEE: All previous Pluggers posts. *I just realized I have never written about America's Most Democratic President Except for Maybe Jefferson on this here blog. On the to-do list. **I just like that word, crisper. Crisper. Crisper. The initial k and the s-p consonant cluster really make the word itself sound crispy. All those voiceless consonants are crisp. KRRRISSSSP, I tell you! So much delightful aspiration. /linguistic nerdiness

James A. Garfield Extravangza Part 2: wordz n pix

Here are some extraneous facts that did not make the final cut of the video and some pictures of our tour of the James A. Garfield National Historic Site in Mentor, Ohio. A super-sassy volunteer old lady gave us a kickass tour of the house. Highly recommended, but no sweet gift shop like the one at the Grant House. (frowny face) We drove there in torrential downpours and also BTW Cleveland is ugly. FACT: The Garfield museum featured a large mural comparing Lincoln and Garfield. They were both born in log cabins, see? Also, bearded. And assassinated. And the biographical video we watched suggested that the American public was more distraught when Garfield died than when Lincoln died and that Garfield was pretty much awesomer than Lincoln except for that he died too soon for us to find out. I find this hard to believe. I mean, Garfield was like a genius or whatever and had a better beard, but we're talking SAINT ABRAHAM "FREED THE SLAVES" LINCOLN here. Blasphemy, people.

Me & Ka$h reliving the magic of the 1880 front-porch campaign.

FACT: Part of the reason James and Lucretia bought their house at Lawnfield was because James thought his five sons were getting too soft living in DC or whatever and should have the experience of manly farm life like he did in his log-cabinning childhood.

Yes! We are here! See? Look at the sign! And the rain!

FACT: JAG is the only person to ever be elected to the office of the President directly from the House of Representatives.

This blurry photo of the I-Man features the sweet window in the crazy awesome library which had a crazy (like, actually crazy) concrete and iron vault that Crete had built to store Garfield documents and such. Technically this was the first presidential library, but it wasn't open to the public until after the Garfield family stopped living in the home in the 1930s. So Grant still wins.

FACT: In 1886, the U.S. Mint issued a $20 gold certificate featuring Garfield's face.

Awesome windmill Crete had put in in the early 1900s to pump water into the house. Genius!

FACT: An old sandstone statue of Pres. Garfield was donated to his alma mater Hiram College earlier this year, but was mysteriously decapitated in the night after being officially dedicated! The head and the beheader are still at large.