The Baboon Congress

Rise and Define!

102 Comments

As we head into what is, for many, a busy holiday weekend, Jacque takes the controls for a guest blog that is both a challenge and the beginning of an ongoing project.

To allow time for careful thought and reflection, this post will remain front and center until early Monday morning. The comments you recall and the new contributions you make will eventually become a permanent feature of our baboonish space.

For sometime now I have been threatening our blog-iverse with a Trail Baboon Glossary.

Barbara in Robbinsdale and I have been putting our e-heads together to gather a joint list of terms that seem quite unique to our on-line world.

Most of you know I am trained as a social worker. One of the topics that social workers study in both undergraduate and graduate training is the behavior and development of groups and social systems. It is my expert opinion that TB qualifies as both!

There is a process that groups follow which is fairly predictable.
Stages 1 and 2 are listed below:

1) Gathering as a Group, then defining the group as an Entity – the Trail Baboon on-line community

2) Forming Emotional Connections and Bonding as an Entity — this is typically the equivalent of a couple’s honeymoon. A particular culture is formed, including a language that distinguishes the group.

Well, we certainly have formed a Trail Baboon language that distinguishes the group. And it is long past the time that we define the terms so that we can move along into our next (uncomfortable) stage of development. Should we stall out on this developmental task, all kinds of disappointments may follow. Prepare yourselves, dear Baboons, because the next stage is:

3) Emergence of Conflict within the Entity.

Oh, my. What will we, as timid, conflict-avoidant Midwestern Bloggers do with this? If we were calloused New Yorkers we would just verbally blast each other and say “Gedoverit.” But we are not. So let us get on with naming the terms and defining them so that we can move on up our developmental group ladder. Defining terms might provide a containable venue for conflict over definitions. And it certainly is better than those traditional conflictual topics: sex, politics, religion.

I don’t want to talk about any of them.

So here is the list, but I know there are many, many more. The task this weekend is to pull up the unique terms that have appeared here, then define them for an ongoing feature – A Baboonish Glossary.

Lurkitude, or “In Lurkitude”
Idiotocracy
Cheapatude
Babooner
Cleaver
Baboonimonics
Or is it Babooninomics?
Credit card Camping
E-mail Pack Rattery
Non-Fiction Situation
Suspension of Belief and/or
Suspension of Disbelief

Take a moment to define any or all of these terms, nominate something already said but not listed, or coin something brand new!

Postscript from Dale:

You might have a dim recollection of something said once in the comments and nothing more to go on than that. Fair enough. Unfortunately, the “search” box in the upper right corner of our front page looks at main posts only, not the voluminous and always enlightening comments.

If you would like to search for a term in the comments, this is the easiest way to do it that I know of:

Go to Google and enter “site:daleconnelly.com” in the search box, followed by the term you seek. Here’s a screen shot of what you get for “lurkitude”.

Like hunting for Easter Eggs in our soggy back yard, you will find some treasures and some other stuff. Share the things that delight you, and have a wonderful weekend!

102 thoughts on “Rise and Define!”

  1. Morning all!

    Prumpers – pah-rumpers — singers of The Little Drummer Boy
    Scroogitude

    From a holiday shopping conversation last year

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  2. Joke-a-sphere: where all the good jokes that you can’t remember have gone. (I think this was one of Jacque’s)

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  3. Holy cats, Dale, that search thing is kind of creepy! I’m not so sure I am altogether ok with the infallible memory of the blogosphere. What good is a prodigious personal memory if Google can trump you every time?

    That said, is it cheating to do the Dale/Google search for “Baboon Dictionary”, I know things have been tagged with that in the past.

    And, um, Jacque, we do talk about sex, politics and religion, we just don’t throw things 🙂

    tim, from yesterday-for artistic purposes, all Peeps are good Peeps-I find the bunnies are best for character work as they have such nice, open faces, but for actual consumption, it is the little yellow chicks, as those drawn out pointy beaks are a unique treat once they are nicely dried out and crispy (as properly aged and cured Peeps are). This is just my opinion, since tim asked, and in no way intended to incite the dreaded

    3) Emergence of Conflict within the Entity.

    hmm, why didn’t the formatting copy along?

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    1. MiG – I agree about the character of bunny peeps… when I look through all the various peep diorama galleries out there (and there are a lot!), my favorites are always the bunny peeps. Any enjoying the dioramas and the exploding/vacuumed peeps is the only way we enjoy peeps here – the gelatin thing!

      Can’t wait to see what folks come up with — I have the day off. This means, of course, that I have a to-do list that is about 3 kilometers long! I’ll check in later to see what everybody remembers!

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    2. Oh, and NO, it’s not cheating to search, to help our memories out. As Anna said once “I’m getting to the point where I can hide my own Easter Eggs.”

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      1. May have to try that this weekend…(and perhaps list where I have hidden the ones for Daughter so we don’t find them weeks from now, partially consumed by the dog).

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      3. Perhaps just “Easter Egg” as something easily lost or forgotten – or as shorthand for that “brain fade” moment of, “why did I come in here?…” (“Easter Egg” is also something that gaming developers and sometimes people that put together DVDs will put into the interface – something unmarked that you can click on to see something or get something new…)

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  4. So we are being monitored by Google already? Jeepers.

    Actually I lost my innocence about the internet a couple of years ago. A friend’s husband was going to have a colonoscopy. I said, “You know, you might want to hear about mine. It didn’t go so good.” And she said, “You can say that again! I’ve read all about it on the internet.” I had thought I was posting that story to an intimate and limited group, silly me. So the stuff we publish here about Clyde bringing the cows home and parents having conflicts with teenagers about dress standards . . . all that stuff goes into the vast bowels of the internet where it might be retrieved and read by space aliens several centuries from now after we have cooked the planet and there is no more life on earth. Me, I’m maybe going to be more circumspect.

    In spite of which, Jacque, I plan on talking about sex, politics and religion pretty much every day. I have more good stories there than about most other topics.

    Do we GOTTA fight? If so, I’m gonna frustrate the bejeebers out of you guys. Everything I ever learned about fighting I learned when I was four years old and my dad told me the story of Brer’ Rabbit and the Tar Baby. In fights, I’m Tar Baby all the way, and nobody has fun fighting with me.

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    1. if you’re gonna get gressive i’m gonna get gressive (leave it to beaver)
      why would talking about democratic jewish girls cause problems?

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      2. Okay, Steve. I will hold my punches. I don’t want to get into any sticky situations now that I know that there is a tar baby among the baboons.

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  5. I’m too Lutheran-Minnesotan for a good fight…can we skip that part? Unless we can have a polite disagreement about something like the placement of semi-colons.

    Will think on entries for the dictionary. Not feeling cleaver this morning.

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      3. Barb, did I ever tell you about mine when I turned 60? And about what happened next?

        Maybe we shouldn’t go there. Sex, politics and religion are topics that can add pepper to a discussion. Colonoscopies (semi or whole) are conversation stoppers. People stop talking while they try to handle the visuals, and there goes your lively debate.

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  6. Good morning to all,

    Great idea, Barbara and Dale. I think this will be very interesting. Also, I think that some conflict within the group has already taken place. The conflict has not been displayed very openly because this is a blog. I think blogs really aren’t a good place for major displays of conflict which seems to be generally understood on this blog. Friendly displays of conflict might be okay.

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    1. We do disagree at times – we just do it civilly. I think other blogs are much more “conflictual” than ours…

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      2. I don’t do much visiting of other blogs. From what I hear some of the conflict on blogs that are not so civil might be extremely fictional and well into the area blantant lies.

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      6. well, given the dearth of good old intellectual debate in politics, having been mostly replaced by advantage going to whoever can have the most outrageous point at the greatest amounts of decibles (junk thought), yup, a delicious bit of real conflict sounds mighty tasty about now.

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  7. Rise and Shine Baboons:

    Morning all. It is Artistic License! I know, I know, I know we talk about religion, sex and politics. I’ve even expressed my views. It just is more civil than most venues, unless our trollish MB is involved. Besides, my task was to write an interesting and engaging blog entry, so I used some artistic license. You don’t really want to read Social Worker stuff without it.

    No we don’t HAVE to do conflict or a fight. Since this blog is based in Minnesota, I figured from the beginning it would be muted and render us all to hand-wringing.

    Mostly, I want what I always want with the blog or TLGMS–to have some fun and entertainment.

    Define away…

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  8. I think I was the one who came up with Idiotocracy. Idiotoracy, I believe, is best defined on this blog as the type of politics practiced by Michele Bachmann. Heavy duty political discussions are usually avoided here in my opinion. However, there seems be a lot of agreement that Bachmann’s politics tend to fit into a category which could be called Idiot Democracy or Idiotocracy.

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    1. i keep thinking that the repubicans would be cmmiting suicide if they chose bachman or pawlenty as their candidates but they may well do it without even consulting me.
      i screwed up last night. i had pitching for one of my duaghters that went to 30 and i figured id go to claudia schmidt after. i stopped at dairy queen in the baseball tradition to reward a heroic effort by my daughter and when i called the ginko to see how much longer claudia schmidt would be going i was told she had just taken her break and would be back for one more 45 minute set and that was it for the night. silly me i believed her. it wasn’t until laying in bed at 10pm i realized by looking at dales link that there was a 930 show the person answering the phone obviously wasn’t aware of. i hate it when i get messed up by well intentioned wrong people. she was probably a presbyterian green party girl (see how i keep referencing sex religion and politics?)

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  9. Morning!

    I’m on my way to a Finance Committee meeting to defend my budget for next year along side several others defending their budgets.
    When I return I’ll let you know who got the biggest whumping! Or the last low blow anyway….

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    1. can’t you make cuts in the stuff you were never going to use anyway? they said thats what the majority of the 38 billion the bipartisan agreement came up with was. the stuff that just keeps getting plugged into next years budget because if you don’t you will lose it. politics is for people of one sex or the other who either agree or disagree on religion

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    2. Afternoon–

      On the budget front we’re told our operating budgets will remain the same and in fact I was luck enough to score some extra money for a special project. So there’s my Easter Egg for the weekend.

      My lovely wife picked up some tie dyed plastic eggs to hide on Sunday. (For our daughter–not me). We’ve always hidden plastic eggs so forgetting where they are isn’t such an issue. Tradition claims one eggs must be hidden in a shoe.

      Have a great weekend!

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  11. I’d like to nominate babawesome – Donna’s invention, I believe.

    I also like TGITH’s neoreligion Vishnuverheer. Perhaps this is one of those religions for which Barbara’s Husband clips coupons. I hope so, anyway.

    Does the term have to be unique to the Trail, or can it be something co-opted for a different use? If it’s allowed, I think pizzle rot as an exclamation of frustration might qualify. As in, “Oh, pizzle rot, my italics didn’t shut off.”

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    3. Pizzle Rot – my first thought, it was a newly discovered STD. Whew! But now, Tim has me confused (what else is new?). Is pizzle rot also slang for urban blogging ballerina?

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  12. I also think there should be an acronym addendum for TGMS, RH and such things. Generations from now, who will remember our glorious origins?

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  13. What fun! Baboons are wonderful. The weather service has kindly replaced our winter weather advisory with a winter storm warning and graciously predict 5-9 inches of snow. I will think a while about definitions and see what I can come up with.

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    1. so, is it better to just be getting the advice, rather than to be told straight out that you are getting the storm?

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  14. i don’t have the tech savvy expertise that is required here but this is a wonderful to the baboon glossary that will need to be listed and referenced and maintained by jacqye and bir in order to accommodate all the ongoing newphumisms we create and discover as we go.

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  17. I’m humbled by the collective intelligence of the Baboon Congress. I’m not worthy, no not at all worthy. I’m off to mutter incoherent phrases to myself for the remainder of this gray and funky day, in which the only sun shining is on this friendly and nonconflictious Trail…

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    1. Krista, I think all of this is very nonflictious and there might be some hand wringing if some how you have been moved to feeling not worthy. I suspect you just being excessively Minnesotan when you say you are not worthy and maybe you are also being cleaver in baboonish way.

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  18. Bipartispasm. Definition: Against their willful desire, they suddenly find themselves experiencing muscle-like brain contractions that influence cooperating and compromising for the common good. Word from Dale, definition from Jacque!

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  19. Rise and Define Baboons:

    We are at Day 2 of the Baboon Definathon, having survived the mere mention of conflict yesterday. Barbara compiled a lovely list to start with before leaving to see her mother in Iowa. I will add to it today since we already have found more Baboonish Vocabulary floating out there in the ether.

    I am headed over to church to assist with the decorations for the big day tomorrow. While the decorating is a lot of fun, Easter is not a favorite Holiday for me–it always seems so confused and unclear to me: the pagan symbols of fertility (bunny), fertility rites (equinox) mixed in with a Christian figure and the idea of the Phoenix–new life rising from the ashes. Then add the candy and the egg hunt, and you get ideological mush. What is one to make of this? What would some alien think if he/she needed an explanation?

    I’ll think about the flowers. That is the easy part.

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      1. Well, sorta, yeh. I also tried to make the point to a Christian Conservative that Easter was about Reincarnation, as is the second coming. This did not go down well.

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      2. When I was a kid, the family would gather at my grandparent’s house on Easter. My cousins, brother and I would have a grand time searching all over their house for foil covered chocolate eggs (the little ones – difficult to find). At some point one of the adults decided that the playing field needed to be leveled a bit as the age gap from youngest to oldest spanned 7 years. The way to do this was to provide hints in the form of clucking – if an adult (you can’t call someone a grown-up, I think, if they are clucking like a crazed chicken) saw that one of the five children was near an egg, they could commence clucking. This sent all of us scurrying around madly where we were until we heard a squeal from elsewhere in the house (or found an egg). If more than one adult was clucking, well, then they mayhem was cranked up that much higher. It was silly, it was fun – but when I was Daughter’s age, I couldn’t figure out what clucking had to do with the Easter Bunny. Bunnies don’t cluck, Easter or no – they eat carrots and twitch their noses. Bugs Bunny did not cluck. Nor did Peter Cottontail. Bunnies do not cluck. So why cluck for eggs left by the Easter Bunny?…Didn’t occur to me until I was, ahem, much older to put together eggs, chickens, and clucking – so firm was the notion in my head that chocolate eggs came from a bunny (which is also, perhaps, apt…).

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  20. I was wondering about suspension of disblief. Apparently it is something theatre people talk about and came from Ben with a modification by Barbara in Big Lake. I think Dale is a master of using suspension of disbelief and it works for him because he creates believable suspensions of disbelief. In other words, we know what he is making up is not true but we believe that he has suspensed disbelief in a believable way.

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      1. I checked suspension of disbelief using the Google search Dale showed us. I had a suspension of memory. It was actually Ben and Joanne in Big Lake. Somehow I decided that there should be one more Barbara and she should replace Joanne as the person in Big Lake. Sorry about that.

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  21. has anyone mentioned cleaver? being especially creative in a Baboonish way.

    also being “Cliffy” is the TB way of saying someone has overdone it on the explanation of the facts, or ???? other examples.

    Dreamy just goatswaggled me (outwitted me physically) again. almost pulled my arm off whle i was trying to prevent her from running in to Alba’s area to smurf up her grain. my fault for continuing to hold on – she tricked me and now my shoulder is feeling pizzlerotted.

    good weekend and a gracious good day to You All

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  22. I’d like to extend my gratitude to BiR, Jacque and Dale, and all the Baboons, for collecting the Baboonisms into one comprehensive Baboonary. This is surely a great Work which will last for all ages. Future Babooners will have an amazing reference to turn to when stumped about the origins of bipartispasm and pizzle rot.

    I caught up on reading about cashiers, cashews, coupons, conflicts, religions, Peeps and idiotocracy yesterday afternoon. I’m truly in awe of the collective Baboontelligentsia…

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    1. Why, Krista, you have such fine taste. Your appreciation of the import of our Work is sublime yet creative in its expression! The fact that you write such fine English must be Shakespearean channeling since it is the Bard’s birthday.

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  23. For those who may be interested in attending Dean Magraw’s show at the Bothy Folk Club in Mankato: I gave the wrong date when I originally posted it. Dean Magraw will be performing at the Bothy Folk Club in Mankato on Saturday, May 7, at 7:30 p.m. Bothy Folk Club performances are at the Mankato Eagles Club, 708 N. Riverfront Dr., Mankato. Use the entrance on the south side of the building (Rock Street). Admission is $12 members/$15 non-members. (This nonconflictual event is affordable for even the most economically challenged Babooner!)

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    1. Thanks for the correction, Krista. That date doesn’t work for me. I would be interested in attending a Bothy Folk Club preformance at some other date and will let you know if I can arrange to come to one of these.

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  24. It has not yet been used in context, but I would like to nominate “babooniquette” as it seems we have adopted a fairly gracious set of manners that is related to, but different from, traditional “netiquette” (e.g., a tendency to avoid all caps when writing…or in tim’s case, any caps at all, an understanding of how to agree to disagree by simply being nonconflictious, etc.). Babooniquette does not require that you know which spoon to use at the dinner table (or that you use any spoon at all), but it may require that you at least hum along to “You Are My Sunshine” when it is played.

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    2. I don’t know much about traditional “netiquette” because I hardy use any of the various internet places where this is used. I guess Babooners do use some of the abreviations used over the internet such as OMG or LOL. I had to be told what these mean the first time I saw them. I supose the tendency to make abreviations of names like BiR comes from internet lingo.

      I think we are a combination of some new internet conventions and “old school” communcation. The “old school” might be not using too much short hand for words which you see among people who text on their cell phones and who use twitter and generally using complete sentences. The Baboon Glossory is our own invention.

      Of course, there is tolerence for some typos and other writing errors which is good because I am not good at editing my own writing to get rid of these. One of us, and you know who I mean, really doesn’t worry too much about errors which allows me to not be too worried about my own errors.

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  25. Morning all –I’m so glad to wake up to SUN! We started our celebrations yesterday with an egg hunt for the kids ranging between 18 months and 20 years (the rule is that once you graduate from college, you’re done). We did have to remind the older kids that the eggs just sitting on the grass were to be left for the babies. And this year there were golden eggs with money inside. You were only allowed one $5 egg, so if you found another you had to put it back. Turned out well… all the teenagers ended up with at least $5. But the real fun was watching the little girls squeeling as they found egg after egg and filled their little buckets.

    I’ve enjoyed seeing all our words and phrases and I agree about adding babooniquette (is that how we spelled it?). Hope everybody gets to celebrate the day in a way that makes them happy.

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  26. Just had a thought. (Anna, I almost used my “dots” there and decided for you today I will forego the ellipses.)

    When was the blog where we assigned values to our names? I think that was when timism was born. Those would be fun for the dictionary as well!

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  27. Good morning! We are off the church for the whole morning, since, as choir members, we have to sing at all three services. Boy, a sermon gets old the third time around. We had Easter dinner last night, so today will be nice and relaxing once church is over. I hope the bunny left lots of eggs and candy for all the baboons this morning.

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  28. OK, Babooners, here’s what we have so far. Please feel free to add and edit. In some cases, I have no definition yet.
    ————————————

    Babawesome – Awesome in a Baboonish way.

    Baboondipity – An interesting coincidence occurring in Baboonville.

    Babooner – One who participates by writing and/or lurking on Dale Connelly’s Trail Baboon Blog, formerly known as Radio Heartland’s Trial Balloon Blog.

    Babooninomics –

    Babooniquette – A fairly gracious set of manners adopted by Babooners that is related to, but different from, traditional “netiquette” (e.g., a tendency to avoid all caps when writing…or in tim’s case, any caps at all; an understanding of how to agree to disagree by simply being nonconflictious; etc.). Babooniquette does not require that you know which spoon to use at the dinner table (or that you use any spoon at all), but it may require that you at least hum along to “You Are My Sunshine” when it is played.

    Blogosphere – The world of bloggery.

    Brain fade – The moment characterized by the question “Why did I come in here?”

    Cheapatude – Extreme thrift, as in “We have resorted, in our retired cheapatude, to making our own cards with Steve’s photos and just writing inside.”

    Cleaver – Especially creative in a Baboonish way (not to be confused with the ordinary clever).

    Cliffy – The TB way of saying someone has overdone it on the explanation of the facts. Other examples welcome.

    Conflictious – 1. A cross between “litigious” and “conflictual”, possibly making you a candidate for a session with BMB (See acronyms). 2. A delicious conflict.

    Credit Card Camping – Camping by staying in motels or B & B’s along the route, as in “I’m no camper! We did credit card camping”.

    Delurk — To fully participate by writing on the blog after a period of lurkitude, as in “Nice of you to delurk, Connie.”

    E-mail Pack Rattery – Hoarding of emails, as in: “I have countless personal notes from friends that I can’t throw away.”

    Goatswaggled – Physically outwitted by a goat.

    Huh? – I am completely at sea. Please repeat or clarify the last several posts.

    Idiotology — Aberrant political thought, as in, “I am afraid that much of current political discourse has sunken to the point where a lot of it can be described as “idiotology.”

    Idiotocracy – The type of politics practiced by MB (See Acronyms).

    Interwinkle –

    Ishda, Freda (?sp), Uffda –

    Joke-a-sphere — Where all the good jokes that you can’t remember have gone.

    Junk thought – Thought at the most outrageous point at the greatest amounts of decibels.

    Lurkitude — Reading the blog from one step back, but not writing and participating; giggling, chortling, guffawing, and belly laughs optional.

    Non-Fiction Situation –

    Pizzle rot – An exclamation of a Babooner’s frustration, as in “Oh, pizzle rot, my italics didn’t shut off.”

    Prumpers, or pah-rumpers — Singers of The Little Drummer Boy

    Scroogitude – Behaving like Ebenezer.

    Self hiding – The ability to hide something from yourself, as in “I’m getting to the point where I can hide my own Easter Eggs.” See also Brain fade.

    Semi-colonoscopy — The study of the correct placement of semi-colons.

    Suspension of Belief and/or Suspension of Disbelief – A fudging of facts used in many situations, particularly by theater people.

    Thurgery – Any surgery taking place on a Thursday.

    Uff da, Fei da, Ish da – I remember my grandfather talking about the progression from uff da to fei da to ish da based on milking cows – ish da being what you experienced (though it hovers near a fei da, definitely an ish da if you got splashed).

    “Whobody” mail – that mail from people you know and like, as contrasted with “anybody” mail, the junk and bulk mail which gets largely ignored.

    Whumping – Sound of a baboon in the process of losing a conflict over finite resources.

    Vishnuverheer – A neo-religion practiced by vacationers and post card senders.

    ACRONYMS:
    BMB – Billy Marty Barry
    BSOR – Bathtub Safety Officer Rafferty
    DC – Dale Connelly
    MB – Michele Bachman
    RH – Radio Heartland
    TB – Trail Baboon
    TBB – Trail Baboon Blog
    TLGMS – The Late Great Morning Show

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      1. Actually, I may ultimately compile a separate page for Ish da, etc. – there are so many fine examples if you got to
        site:daleconnelly.com ish da

        The following is what was being referred to above in the definition: “she was standing nicely. then i got complacent and BANG! goathoof in bucket. 2 quarts of milk ruined and bucket contaminated. boogers…”

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    2. Babooninomics-that came up in a discussion about how Baboons spend money. I believe it referred to “don’t spend what you don’t have.” I think Jim in CG coined it.

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  29. Ooh, and this was supposed to be in there:

    timism – An ambituity in which you are not sure whether there was a typo, or an intentional misspelling, as in “My favorite timism of the week is “Talk snout dysfunctional …” (See Dec. 23, 2010 TBB for rich, complete discussion.)

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  30. One more that for some reason didn’t catch:

    Bipartispasm–Against their willful desire, politicians suddenly find themselves
    experiencing muscle-like brain contractions that influence cooperating
    and compromising for the common good.

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