States' Politics

There are rumbles about Al Franken running for election in 2008. The Times has a piece on it, but I admit I was less interested in Al than in this description of Minnesotans:

Then again, Minnesota is a place of enormous, and not easily explained, contradictions. A place where lions of the Democratic party - Hubert H. Humphrey and Eugene J. McCarthy - once strode the earth, it takes voting very seriously, with a 79 percent turnout in the 2004 general election. Yet in 1998 it elected a professional wrestler to run the state. Minnesotans, who show up in droves at the state fair to marvel at seed art and butter sculptures but also show up en masse at the legitimate theater, are their own darn thing. So frequently cast as droll practitioners of the art of common sense, they have displayed some fairly atavistic tendencies, electing Mr. Ventura out of nowhere as both a slap and a jolt to the system. In their own quiet way, they remain mad as hell and are not going to take it anymore.

It's nice to see a citizenry so invested in the system. (For the record, I get the same warm fuzzies from Vermont, land of the Independent, Jim Jeffords.)

The Funniest (and Furriest) of the Funny Pages

A website that nicely sums up the impact Calvin & Hobbes had on comics, and why, 10 years after the end of its run, it's still lamented.

Sample excerpts:

If you think about it, Calvin was really quite an anomaly in popular entertainment -- not just in comics, but in anything, be it movies, TV, etc. He has no friends, and no extracurricular activities; the only people he ever sees are his parents, who he has a strained relationship with, and Moe, Susie, Rosalyn, and Miss Wormwood, all of whom he detests and all of whom detest him. The only person he ever has any real interaction with exists only in his head.

And

Huge kudos to Bill Watterson for graphically murdering a guy in the funny papers.

Word of the Moment: Billingsgate

No, not the latest US political scandal...

billingsgate n.

Foul, abusive language.

[After Billingsgate, a former fish market in London, England.]

Words of the Moment: Mountebank, Wowser, Yclept

A three-fer fer yer yap-holes!
Love the first two, don't think I'll ever find a use for the third (esp. since I'd never remember how to say it!)


mountebank n.

1. A hawker of quack medicines who attracts customers with stories, jokes, or tricks.
2. A flamboyant charlatan.

[Italian montambanco, from the phrase monta im banco, one gets up onto the bench]

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wowser, n. (Australia & New Zealand)

A person regarded as obnoxiously puritanical.

[Possibly from dialectal wow, to howl, complain, of imitative origin.]

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yclept, v.

A past participle of clepe.

[Middle English icleped, from Old English geclepod, past participle of gecleopian, to call : ge-, verb pref.; see kom in Indo-European Roots + cleopian, to call.]