Word of the Day

[Nick Danger]

A continuation of the original TBD Topic.

New and unfamiliar words and phrases. Sound like you know what you're talking about, even when you don't! Hopefully, we can do this in an intersting way, that will make us smile as well as learn.

[Maricel Evasco]

"merkin" (Word origins - alt.usage.english)
The word "merkin" is one of the perpetual bad puns of the
Internet. It actually means "pubic wig" (such wigs are used,
apparently, in the theatrical and film worlds as modesty devices in
nude scenes). It can also be a contrivance used by male
cross-dressers designed to imitate the female genitals, or, as Eric
Partridge delicately puts it, "an artificial vagina for lonely men".
The OED dates it 1617 in the sense "pubic wig"; the origin is
unknown.

Then "merkin" was coined afresh to mean "an American", because it
sounds a bit like the half-swallowed pronunciation of "American" by
some Americans, particularly President Lyndon Johnson; and the fact
that it had a "naughty" meaning didn't hurt. Punning use of the
word dates back to at least the early 1960s. Bill Fisher writes:
"I'd guess multiple re-invention is going on here. When I was
fooling around with the Orange Blossom Playhouse in Orlando, FL,
about 1963, we were amusing ourselves with trying to change a word
here or there in the play 'Teahouse of the August Moon' -- without
really screwing anything up -- and one guy cracked the cast up one
night when instead of the line 'But ... but ... he's an American!'
he said 'But ... but .. he's a Merkin!' (The cast had been
laughing for a week or two about the definition of 'merkin' that
someone had found in a dictionary.)"

One of Peter Sellers' roles in Stanley Kubrick's 1964 film "Dr.
Strangelove" was U.S. President Merkin Muffley. This gets two
risque' locutions past the censor at once, since "muff" is another
slang term for female genitals or pubic hair (as in "muff-diving"
for cunnilingus). This name was presumably the work of Kubrick or
his scriptwriter Terry Southern. The film was based on the 1958
novel "Two Hours to Doom" (titled "Red Alert" in the U.S.), by Peter
George, pseudonym of Peter Bryant (1924-1966). The novel was
serious -- Bryant had served in the RAF -- and does not name the
presidential character. But when Kubrick filmed it as a satire,
Bryant was so convinced that he then re-novelized the film.

http://stason.org/TULARC/languages/english-usage/103-merkin-Word-or...

[Nick Danger]

ineffable
adjective:
1.Incapable of being expressed


A place where yiou are not allowed to use bad language is ineffable

[Maricel Evasco]

The painting above is surrealistic.
surrealism
A 20th-century literary and artistic movement that attempts to express the workings of the subconscious and is characterized by fantastic imagery and incongruous juxtaposition of subject matter.


How about....Speculative Unrealism
I want to make two points. First of all, I think there is a sense in which the new realism should learn from strong anti-realism's denial of a world outside the subject, or to be more precise, the subject's access to an outside (language). We of course must be wary of the implicit or explicit solipsism of language, if for no other reason, because it betrays a startling political attitude of indifference towards that which is invisible or unknown (or better, whose invisibility is invisible, or whose unknownness is unknown). Yet there is nonetheless a lesson here, one which only comes once we 'take the leap'. While we shouldn't privilege mediation to the detriment of the mediated-immediate, we should nonetheless not ignore the mediation altogether. Rather, the mediation we call subjectivity - our knowledge of, relations with, and actions upon objects - should rather be treated as itself an object, imbricated in the network of objects we call world. The subject, or subjectivity, is itself an object, on the same level as objects, and objectivity should be said univocally of subject and object. The subject is a subject-object. (This is obviously close to the neuro-philosophical position, but I'm not prepared to go any further in describing this relation.)

Second, besides the speculative shift towards object-orientation, there is nonetheless something 'unreal' and non-objectal that must not be neglected. There is a sense in which existing objects, and objectality in general (here including subject-objectality), always bear the mark of that which does not exist. Or rather, reality in general, including both existing objects and non-existing objects (fictions, illusions, potential objects, et cetera), bears with it a certain mark of the unreal, unrealizable. That which could not have existed. The unreal, as I refer to it, is the ancestral. And to specify where precisely my concept of ancestrality departs from Meillassoux, he uses the term to refer to that which is absolutely outside subjective-mediation - facts that are anterior to any access. Yet, if we are to apply his criterion of absolute contingency here, we come upon a strange temporal paradox - while for Meillassoux, everything that exists is necessarily contingent, ancestral facts are, qua ancestral, not contingent, they could not have been otherwise, they must be what they were.

There is, in short, a necessary existence: the past was necessarily what it was, even if it could have been otherwise at the time. The being-otherwise of the past is necessarily foreclosed, left out of reality. In other words, the contingency of the present is grounded upon the necessity of the past - the past in its becoming could have been otherwise, but as past, it can no longer be otherwise. Ancestrality, as I understand it, refers less to anterior - or exterior - facts than to the necessarily lost contingency they bear. It is the unreality of anterior contingency that is, for me, the crucial dimension of ancestrality, and indeed, objectality in general. Each object may be contingent, but with regards to its genesis, the past it carries with it, it bears the lost contingency of that past. While its own past could have been otherwise, it in fact could not have been otherwise so long as that object could be.

So, if we are to take the speculative leap, we must bear in mind the implications of the unreal, unrealized, and indeed lost contingency of what could not have been, so that what is can in fact be. Speculative Realism must also be a Speculative Unrealism.

http://planomenology.blogspot.com/2009/01/speculative-unrealism.html


To be perfectly honest, I don't quite get this definition. lol

[Maricel Evasco]

pucelle: virgin
unseminared: deprived of virility, or seminal energy; made a eunuch
concupiscence: strong desire, passion
choleric: hot-tempered, irritable
spagyrist chemist

[Nick Danger]

pucelle:
A seat where monks who have taken a vow of silence

unseminared:
The description of someone thrown out of a religious training center

concupiscence
The mistress of a physicist

choleric
Someone who is deathly ill

[Maricel Evasco]

The unseminared elf's choleric angst was incited by his concupiscent fantasies of the pucelle spagyrist who worked in the adjoining workshop at Santa's Alchemy of Joy Center.

[Nick Danger]

bestow
1.To present as a gift or an honor; confer.
2.To apply; use.

When your honeybee loses a wing, you call bestow to get it home.

[Maricel Evasco]

Funny Definitions
acquaintance - someone we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to

bathroom - 1 the only place in a government agency where the bureaucrats usually know what they are doing 2 [female-specific, Par.] room used by the entire family, believed by all except Mom to be self-cleaning

bore - 1 someone who persists in holding his own views after you have enlightened him with yours 2 a person who talks when you wish him to listen 3 he who talks so much about himself that you can't talk about yourself 4 someone who is going places, and the sooner the better 5 a guy with a cocktail glass in one hand and your lapel in the other 6 a person who has nothing to say and says it 7 one who, upon being asked how they are, tells you 8 a guy who wraps up a two-minute idea in a two-hour vocabulary

diplomacy - 1 the art of letting someone else get your way 2 lying in state 3 saying, "nice doggy" until you find a large enough rock 4 saying, "go to hell" such that they look forward to the trip 5 the nastiest thing in the nicest way 6 the patriotic art of lying for one's country

diplomat - 1 someone who has the same enemies as you 2 a government official who appeases high-ranking members of third world countries with free parking and a ten cent discount on US oil products 3 a man who can convince his wife she would look fat in a fur coat; cf. "salesman"

experience - 1 perils of wisdom 2 what causes one to think twice before saying nothing 3 a name everyone gives to his mistakes 4 what you get when you don't get what you want 5 the wisdom that enables us to recognize as an undesirable old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced 6 [Emp.] something you can't get unless you've already got it, in which case you probably don't want any more of it

psychiatrist - [Med.] 1 person who'll listen to you as long as you don't make sense 2 a person who doesn't have to worry as long as other people do 3 a person who will give you expensive answers that your wife will give you for free

http://www.opusforfour.com/definitions.html

[wee soozy]

1. Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.

2. Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly

3. Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.

4. Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.

5. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period.

6. Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.

7. Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.

8. Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

9. Hipatitis: Terminal coolness.

10. Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)

11. Karmageddon: It's like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.

12. Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.

13. Glibido: All talk and no action.

14. Dopeler effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

15. Arachnoleptic fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through a spider web.

16. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.

17. Caterpallor (n.): The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you're eating.

18. Ignoranus: A person who's both stupid and an @sshole.

Courtesy of Mensa

[Maricel Evasco]

lol...thx for the laugh soozy....I think I'm going to use Bozone in class this year.
Ms. Evasco aims to keep her class environment BOZONE free or perhaps I shall make
a poster to hang at my door. PLS. HELP KEEP Room 326 BOZONE-FREE !!!

Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.

[Davis]

Soozy, you're a riot!

at the moment all I have is:

Liberative: someone who is either liberal or conservative, depending on the issue or mood at the time.

[KatVoll]

One of my favorite words is yahoo. Used as an noun, you can really insult a person and they probably will just scratch their head and say, "Huh?"