Tag Archives: Words

The Baboon Congress

Rise and Define!

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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!

The Baboon Congress

Machinery on the Mississippi

105 Comments

Today’s guest blog is by Sherrilee.

My father was proud of his intellect and his vocabulary. When I was a kid, my sister and I would try to stump him by picking out random words in the dictionary to see if he knew them. He was better at this than most, since he had studied Latin for law school and could weasel out the meaning of almost any Latin-derived word. We quickly learned to look for words with their origin in Greek – he wasn’t as good at those.

When I was in junior high, my dad decided that he didn’t like the words “get” and “got”. He thought they were “lazy” words and that it was a sign of intelligence if you could use other words in their place. If you slipped up and used “get” or “got”, he would said “What?” until you replaced the little offender. This led to some hilarious conversations when my younger sister decided just to use the word “obtain” all the time, even if it didn’t make sense. “Do you think we’ll obtain rain this weekend? or I’m going upstairs to obtain a sweater.” Finally in college I decided that I didn’t have to play anymore either and my dad had to give up trying to enliven my language.

So, it was these memories that I was thinking of when I happened upon Kickstarter.com. In response to the Mark Twain professor who is bringing out an n-word free Huckleberry Finn, the Kickstarter group is raising money to print an edition of Huckleberry Finn with the n-word replaced by the word “robot”. If you pledge a dollar or more, you get a hard-copy version of this book when it is finished. I coughed up the dollar immediately and just the fun of getting the e-mail updates has been worth the price of admission.

If you could get rid of a word, which word would it be?

Uncategorized

Tower of Babble

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I know the espionage news is serious, but I can’t help thinking about what a strange word we’ve added to our vocabulary.

“Wikileaks”.

It sounds funny every time I hear it. And when I hear a funny word, I immediately want to use it in a sentence. Or better, a headline. But you know how it is with headlines. For a truly historic one to emerge, conditions must be right.

For instance, if a 1990’s talk show host got an exclusive interview on Twitter with Julian Assange, it might be called:

Rikki Lake’s Wikileaks Tweets

If the interview was altered and delayed for seven days due to illness:

Sickly Week Tweaks Rikki Lake’s Wikileaks Tweets

If Arab royalty became annoyed by the sudden changes:

Sheiks Piqued As Sickly Week Tweaks Rikki Lake’s Wikilealks Tweets

But if Ms. Lake sent her technical staff to calm the disturbance:

Geeks Speak To Piqued Sheiks As Sickly Week Tweaks Rikki Lake’s Wikileaks Tweets.

And if those emissaries had been recklessly eating fudgesicles before the meeting:

Sticky Cheeked Geeks Speak To Piqued Sheiks As Sickly Week Tweaks Rikki Lake’s Wikileaks Tweets.

If tangential observers darkly predicted unsatisfactory results, thus annoying the pocket protector wearing ambassadors:

Oblique Critiques Freak Sticky Cheeked Geeks Who Speak To Piqued Sheiks As Sickly Week Tweaks Rikki Lake’s Wikileaks Tweets.

Although those unkind observations about the work of such resourceful techno-wizards might draw an attack by angry pecking birds of prey, who show no reluctance to cover their antagonists in rivers of their own blood:

Eagle Beaks Wreak Icky Streaks Over Oblique Critiques That Freak Sticky Cheeked Geeks Who Speak To Piqued Sheiks As Sickly Week Tweaks Rikki Lake’s Wikileaks Tweets.

But I digress.

Does the rain in Spain stay mainly on the plain?

Uncategorized

Heading Off “Facegate”

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On my list of things I wish I had done twenty years ago, getting a trademark on the word “awesome” ranks first as the most awesomely awesome thing I could have done, but somehow didn’t. I still hold out hope that there is at least one brilliant no-real-work-required idea that will magically funnel billions into the family bank account, but for that to happen, the legal mechanism to strike word-gold needs to remain in place. That’s why I’m thrilled at the news that Facebook has received preliminary approval from the U.S. Patent Office to trademark the word “Face”.

This should slow the momentum of shameless online mojo-stealers like Faceplace, Facesite, Faceweb, Faceworld, Facedepot, Faceforum, Facespot, Facepamphlet, Facemeet, Facechat, Facedate, Facebin, Facefriend, Facetalk, Facegab and Faceplant.

I don’t know if any of these online places actually exist, but it doesn’t matter. They’re all name ideas I had just after I read the article that told me it’s too late to successfully establish website names like this. So yes, this is a necessary move. Without big government intervention to require creativity, we would soon find ourselves trapped in a fanciful, faceful future when it comes to naming websites. In the virtual world, few letter combinations are more powerful and evocative than F-A-C-E. And people would not be shy to use it because we are, as a species, inclined to take the shortcut.

If only the Republican National Committee had shown the foresight to trademark “gate” as a suffix to describe any embarrassing, unlawful political activity. “Face” has the same discouraging potential.

But what are the long-term implications?

With online use of the word “face” primarily reserved for one commercial entity, a handy, everyday substitute word is needed to describe the forward side of your skull. Something already in use, perhaps?

I nominate “Mug”.

Mug is short and memorable, and it sounds down-to-Earth in an approachable, friendly way. Mug is a great equalizer. While it is possible to have a beautiful and even a gorgeous face, neither of those descriptors will sit comfortably alongside “mug”. Loveable, yes. Lovely, not so much. And an added bonus – for those with delicate features, “porcelain” works either way.

“Mug” already has some common face-related uses, as in “mug shot” and “mugging for the camera”. And “mug” could easily be dropped into existing song lyrics to replace the newly protected F-word. “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Mug”, for example, is a perfectly suitable fix. Although “Let’s Mug The Music and Dance” takes on clumsy new meanings, perhaps as an apt reference to Bristol Palin’s performance on Dancing With The Stars.

There are other difficult wrinkles to be worked out. Surgeons who make a living performing face lifts would have to come up with a good alternative to “Mug Lift”, which sounds less like a surgical procedure and more like a beer drinking competition.

If you could “own” one word in the English language, which one would you choose?