] kac [ weblog ]

Just received from my good friend Walter Rittman; thought I'd share it with the rest of you word-lovers...! -]kac[

The Washington Post has published the winning submissions to its yearly neologism contest, in which readers are asked to supply alternate meanings for common words.

The winners are:

Coffee (n.), the person upon whom one coughs.
Flabbergasted (adj.), appalled over how much weight you have gained.
Abdicate (v.), to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.
Esplanade (v.), to attempt an explanation while drunk.
Willy-nilly (adj.), impotent.
Negligent (adj.) describes a condition in which you absentmindedly answer the door in your nightgown.
Lymph (v.), to walk with a lisp.
Gargoyle (n.), olive-flavored mouthwash.
Flatulence (n.) emergency vehicle that picks you up after you are run over by a steamroller.
Balderdash (n.), a rapidly receding hairline.
Testicle (n.), a humorous question on an exam.
Rectitude (n.), the formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.
Pokemon (n.), a Rastafarian proctologist.
Oyster (n.), a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.
Frisbeetarianism (n.), The belief that, when you die, your Soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.
Circumvent (n.), an opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish men .

Posted by Kerry at 2:44 PM | Permalink

HE PROVERBIAL "THEY" SAY often, "the truth hurts", but then again, "no pain, no gain". They also say "the truth shall set you free" and also "freedom is power" (knowledge is also power, which devines through another permutation of hypothetical syllogism that knowledge is truth, which is none-too-heady logic!).

Yet, in a global mindset that allows for these tenets, why is the world so afraid to be honest with its people? Beacuse they won't have power over them. Yet they choose to risk alienating the people who are smart enough smell their BS; who, in their numbers alone, should be as powerful, if not more so, than the supposed "powers that be"!

Continue reading ""You Can't Manhandle the Truth!"" »

Posted by Kerry at 12:26 PM | Permalink

N THE EVENT THAT I do produce my own offspring, and any number of them happen to be female, I will have to sequester them from the outside, media-obsessed, "flaunt-it-if-you-got-it" mentality of the "women" of today who presently serve as role models to our young girls. Gone are the days of the empowered, intelligent, fighting-to-NOT-be-objectified, professionally-minded, demanding to be respected women of yesteryear, their struggles to be presented and accepted as equals in smarts, strength, and character, seemingly long forgotten.

In the 70s, 80s and 90s, America's young women--really, all youth--had female role models of mental and emotional maturity to look up, to respect, to admire, and to aspire to. Conversely, in this, the new millenium, 16-year old girls are only too grateful to have their daddies pay Paris Hilton up to $15,000 to have Miss Hilton appear at their daughters' sweet 16 party. Young women used to sing about "roaring" to be "heard"; now they boast about their "hips" and "humps". They used to fight--metaphorically--for equal rights, equal standing, equal treatment, and equal pay; now they fight--literally--for the attentions of an overaged, former rap star/jester named Flava Flav!

Posted by Kerry at 8:32 AM | Permalink

N THE HEELS OF its very popular All-TIME 100 Movies and All-TIME 100 Novels, TIME Magazine this week has launched its All-TIME 100 ALBUMS. Arguably the most contentiously subjective list of the bunch, the archive of albums has inspired as much reaction from TIME readers and TIME.com subscribers for who it mentions as much as for who it doesn't.

Anyway, the list is broken down by decade, going as far back as the 50s and up through, obviously, the first half of our present 00s (ironically enough, the most recent addition, The Essential Hank Williams Collection: Turn Back the Years, which came out last year, is from an artist whose heyday was some 50 years ago). There are other such surprises--two Radiohead albums and no GnR!--and more not so much--usual supsects Beatles, Rolling Stones, Michael Jackson--and an opportunity to write back to the TIME music editors about any other personal, salacious indignations the All-TIME 100 Albums list has assaulted upon you!

Continue reading "The All-TIME 100 Albums" »

Posted by Kerry at 10:22 AM | Permalink

HAVE, ACCORDING TO Friendster, MySpace & Flickr, some several hundred friends, 75% at the very least of which I have never met, nor will I ever meet! Half of that 75% I haven't corresponded with since adding them as a friend--or being added as their friend--and the other half I consider not so much friends than complete strangers I have absolutely no obligation to whose "interestingness" has afforded me the curiosity enough to know them by their real first name, not just their screen name. And although most seem like most genial folk, none of these "friends" would I ever let apartment-sit, lend money to, or seek support from in a time of crisis.

Most of the remaining 25% of my online friends, the ones I do know, or at least have met, I must be honest, are social acquaintances. But they are welcome in my home at almost any time, and there is very little I wouldn't do for them. I enjoy our common interests, respect our differences and appreciate their personality and, on most occasions, wisdom. These are my real friends, not the hundreds of people who have checked out my profile at least--and often, only--once, but the people who I depend on on a regular basis, whether for a shoulder to lean on or just someone to do shots with!

But most people, especially the younger set who seem for the most part to not know any better, don't seem to be able to discern the difference and have long misappropriated the definition of the word "friend", usually and often to mankind's detrition. The fault, for once, lies not within society itself, always a redefining evolution of mores and practices. No, the fault lies in the most innocent and innocuous of modern conveniences: the Internet.

Continue reading "Whenever I Call You Friend..." »

Posted by Kerry at 2:24 PM | Permalink

A video I made--my first!--for a recent song I composed, produced and perform on, as it appears on YouTube (Hi, Google!!):

To see the music video in all its higher-resolution glory, CLICK HERE!

Posted by Kerry at 9:19 PM | Permalink

PRESIDENT
Vice President

s1. George Washington (1789-1797)
spacJohn Adams (1789-1797)

s2. John Adams (1797-1801)
spacThomas Jefferson (1797-1801)

s3. Thomas Jefferson (1801-1809)
spacAaron Burr (1801-1805); George Clinton (1805-1809)

Continue reading "Things We Should Know (or Forgot to Remember) | U.S. Presidents" »

Posted by Kerry at 7:21 PM | Permalink | Comments [1]

ODAY IS WORLD PIZZA Day! Not to be confused with INTERNATIONAL PIZZA DAY, which is July 1st. I guess it's kind of like the difference between Miss Universe and Miss Galaxy (there actually is a Miss Galaxy pageant).

From webindia123.com:

The city of Naples, Italy Tuesday prepared to kick off its 11th annual Pizzafest with the first ever World Pizza Day.

But to know if a pizza tastes as it should, it's better to try it at least once in Naples so you can compare it with those being produced elsewhere, he added.

SOME INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT PIZZA:

Continue reading "World Pizza Day" »

Posted by Kerry at 3:56 PM | Permalink | Comments [4]

S A MEANS FOR its faculty to better identify with its incoming freshman class, Beloit College has provided its teachers with a Mindset List for that year, and has done so every year since 1998. This list will help professors "connect" with their students by realizing and understanding how they grew up and what they grew up with, historically, culturally, technologically, etc.

They release this list to the public at the end of every August, so that the rest of us can feel like old fogeys. The incoming class of 2010 was born in 1988, the year I (would have) graduated college!

To give you an idea, the big songs of 1988 were "Need You Tonight" and "Never Tell Us Apart" by INXS, "Roll With It" by Steve Winwood, "Wishing Well" by Terence Trent Darby, "Wild, Wild West" by Escape Club", "Father Figure" and "Monkey" by George Michael, "Fast Car" by Tracy Chapman, "Man in the Mirror", "Dirty Diana" and "The Way You Make Me Feel" by Michael Jackson, "Red, Red Wine" by UB40, "Kokomo" by the Beach Boys, and, believe or not, "Welcome to the Jungle" by Guns 'r' Roses!

And now, The Beloit College's Mindset List for the Class of 2010!:

Continue reading "Beloit College's Mindset List for the Class of 2010" »

Posted by Kerry at 8:18 AM | Permalink

DENIS' EPIPHANOUS DISCOVERY OF A JEWISH FIRST-BASEMAN INSPIRES HIM TO CALL OUT MEL!

Thanks to Malibu Kutt for giving me the inside track on this!!

And while we're at it, I present to you...

CANDID CRITIC'S TOP TEN MOVIE TITLE REJECTED BY MEL GIBSON

The Top Ten Movie Titles Rejected by Mel Gibson, as tallied by my good friends at CandicCritic.com

10.) Payback with Interest

9.) The Man Without a Talis

8.) Lethal Latkes

7.) Maverickberg

6.) Mad Max III: Beyond the Bitter Herbs

5.) Braveheart: Buying At Retail

4.) Bird on a Kibbutz

3.) Manishevitz Sunrise

2.) Mad Max II: The Road Moil

1.) Angry Mordechai

Posted by Kerry at 4:10 PM | Permalink

DNAN HAJJ HAD BEEN a Middle East-based freelance photographer for Reuters for 10 years. Then he got busted not once, but twice for doctoring Beirut war photos. His defense was that he was trying to clean up random dust and scratch marks off the original image, but after the second photo, of an Isreali F-16 fighter plane, was proven to have the number of flares dropped from said plane increase from one to three, as argued and proven on may websites, including The Shape of Days, Reuters decided to pull all of Hajj's photos from wherever they were being used.

To add insult, it turns out that Mr. Hajj is presently being looked into for staging photos of supposedly greif-stricken victims and for receiving two paychecks--under two different names--for the exact same photos.

Now, to most, this behavior borders on criminal; the one aspect of media that shouldn't be doctored at all is the news. However, for those who have been paying attention, the signs were there all along. Every thing we consume for information, education or edification has been, and is still being, doctored for palatability, or, when it comes to the news, acerbity. For the news, it's Shock & Awe: Criminal Invent; for everyone else, though, it's just business as usual.

Posted by Kerry at 5:07 PM | Permalink

T IS AUGUST 1ST and VH1 Classic--not MTV or MTV2 or VH1--is replaying the very first 24 hours of MTV to celebrate its 25th anniversary. Yep, MTV is 25 years old and, at 40, I am old enough to remember when it played nothing but very poorly produced videos of great songs by great or soon-to-be-great musicians.

That's how I know I'm old, when I'm having a conversation with a 29-year old woman who doesn't remember life before cable, and doubts the veracity of my claim that MTV's only programming back then was just videos--no reality or award shows, not even MTV News!--and that for the first few years, never even showed commercials! She didn't know that VH1 stood for Video Hits One!

Continue reading "That Was MTV, That Was Me..." »

Posted by Kerry at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments [2] | TrackBacks [1]

HAVE BEEN TRYING TO incorporate "Deadwood-speak" into my daily vernaculations, much to the interest or amusement of absolutely no one, so was I ever glad to find that my colleague and fellow lover of language, LEXIPHANE, not only also shares my love for this HBO series--much so for its script's florid and melliflous pentameters, interspersed with every word George Carlin warned us about 25 years ago--and has found another fan who has made a short film, entitled Deadwood Pancakes, available on YouTube.com, celebrating and parodying the vocal stylings that we adore and will sorely miss when the series bows out for good in a matter of weeks.

In the interest of full disclosure, I couldn't get this video to play in either of my browsers, which is why I'm glad and grateful Lexiphane transcribed the best part of the video:

Continue reading "Language Not Dead on Deadwood" »

Posted by Kerry at 6:45 PM | Permalink

AM KNOWN AS A Jagermeister drinker, something many folks hope I would have outgrown by now. Not so much. I started drinking Jager 20 years ago, before it was even marketed to college kids. My roommate at the time, Dieter, a German-American, bartended at the German restaurant his family owned, called the Heidelberg.

After I finished bartending during the day, I'd take my friends and customers over to the Heidelberg and hang out at the bar there while Dieter would ply his trade while plying us with shots of Jager for hours. Obviously cheaper then, especially for a German restaurant, the real benefit for Dieter was that he could go shot for shot with his customers and still have enough presence of mind to count out the register at night.

I adopted this philosophy and, to this day, realize that, more so than any other liquor, I maintain the greatest (although not great) frame of mind when drinking the stuff, as opposed to former favorites tequila and vodka, which made me more prone to blackouts.

The obvious rumors have been that Jager, at one point, used to contain opium, which it did, that Germans used it for medicinal purposes, which they did and still do, and that it contains deer blood, which snopes.com refutes thusly:

Continue reading "Deer Hunters" »

Posted by Kerry at 8:45 AM | Permalink | Comments [4]

HIS WAS ON THE Today Show this morning, so it must be news: there is a new category of men that harkens back to the old qualities of men. This new type of man eschews prettification rituals such as pedicures and exfoliation. This new man has been agressively marketed to via, as I have mentioned before, meat-lovers pizzas and burgers, and sport-loving beer-drinking.

This new man has no idea of new hair care products nor has he a care in this season's shirts are about stripes or solid colors. This new man could not care less about earth tones, fusion cuisine, or 2-button versus 3-button blazers.

This new man, who woman are admitting they are finding the most attractive these days, is not a new man at all, but the old man. Out are the examples of David Beckham and Jude Law and in are present representations Russell Crowe and James Gandolfini.

Yes, gone are the days and incarnations of the Metrosexual (and my self-proclaimed "ghettrosexual" nights); today's epitome of desirable testosterone production is the "new" man, and he is called, the Retrosexual.

What I find most amusing about this development is that, by its very definition, the Retrosexual would be the very last person interested in any of this--"Don't define me, feed me!"--and would find no compliment in being labled as such.

But that would never stop the purveyors of pop culture from trying to spot, if not create, the next b ig thing. So here is a list of some future incarnations of men that we should all be on the look out for:

Continue reading "Retro Grade" »

Posted by Kerry at 4:40 PM | Permalink

HERE IS PRESENTLY A widespread epidemic afflicting our country. And like many epidemics before, it was finally realized a little too late. There have been random, small outbreaks occurring for decades, but because it was undetected, heck, unknown, for so long, it has been allowed to innocuously fester and grow at such an exposnential rate that at present day, many of its victims are anaware they suffer from its effects, having been exposed to it since they were very young.

Most have, in the past, been able to rid themselves of it by adulthood. But in this far more viral day and age, where exposure threatens at almost every turn in and outside the home, it is scant hope to believe we can save ourselves from this disease without consequential long-term and possibly terminal repurcussions.

The affliction I speak of is MMDS, or, scientifically, Mere Mortal Depressive Syndrome. Or should I say "scientifictionally"? Either way, it appears that, in greater numbers, people of all demographics are turning more and more of their attention to superheroes.

Continue reading "No "Supe" for You!" »

Posted by Kerry at 5:40 PM | Permalink | Comments [3]

No way.... Way...!

Sometimes something happens so shameful, it adds a brick of anxiety into the pit of my stomach. I recently discovered this past Sunday while perusing the New York Times that Jimi Hendrix -- yes, that Jimi Hendrix -- opened -- yes, opened -- for The Monkees -- yes, THOSE Monkees!

Continue reading "Last Train to Forest Hills" »

Posted by Kerry at 11:57 AM | Permalink

JOE BIDEN'S OFF-THE-CUFF REMARK ABOUT INDIANS AT 7-11s AND DUNKIN' DONUTS...!

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Posted by Kerry at 10:42 AM | Permalink

First, the RAZR, then the ROKR and the SLVR. Stay tuned for the BREATHLZR!

LG Electronics has heard my drunk rantings and the has answered the prayers of many objects of other people's affections by introducing the LG4100, a breathalyzer-integrated cell phone.

According to Erin Calabrese's article in The New York Post:

"Upon blowing your ... breath into the sensor, it determines if your blood-alcohol content is over the .o8 limit with the same technology used by the police."

If the "breather" is drunk, the cell phone's screen shows a car crashing into pylons.

The article doesn't clarify whether the cell phone will prohibit the user from making outgoing calls is he or she is drunk. The caller can, however, "...turn off access to selected numbers after a specified time of day" -- a drunk-dialing feature I've been campaigning for for years. However, my version would guarantee you couldn't call or text anyone if you're drunk, the downside being, of course, not being able to dial 911 if you are drunk and happen to get into an accident.

South Korea has sold almost a quarter of a million of these phones and LG plans to make them available stateside shortly.

Hopefully, they will next offer (read, make us pay for) a service that will block calls and text messages from particular callers. It would be like a Friends & Family plan; I'd call it the Exes & Stalkers plan.

I know I'd be on a few other girls' list, but even that possible misfortune would save me money....

...Money I could be spending on drinks...!

Posted by Kerry at 2:03 PM | Permalink | Comments [5]

My very good friend, Dave, shares a love of words and language with me, as do some of my other compadres. I've been drunk enough to mangle some words, at time to great effect, but every once in a while, sober, I find the need to "invent" a word to better express an idea. Usually this word, I find, is so necessary, that I make it a personal agenda to use this word as often as possible to introduce it to every day, public use (a recent example is uniquity, as opposed to the clumsy and too pedestrian uniqueness).

On his website, Lexiphane.com, Dave has come up with a new word himself--one I plan to infiltrate into to my day-to-day dialogue--and you should go his article on Lexiphane.com to see what it is. I think it is a good one:

fauxmantic, fo-MAN-tik, adj.: describing behavior giving the false impression of romantic intimacy where none exists. "His fauxmantic tendency to touch her knee during conversation at the party deterred other men from interrupting them, as they assumed the pair were a couple."

Variations are acceptable and highly useful. "She fauxmantically (adverb) whispered in his ear to drive his ex-girlfriend crazy." "He was a born fauxmantic (noun) who nonetheless always wound up going home alone."

Let him or me know what you think!

Posted by Kerry at 7:33 AM | Permalink | Comments [1]