Sometimes I only realize I’ve slipped deep into economics jargon when everyone at the table stops talking and looks at me funny.
I’m not a big fan of specialist lingo in general, but often it does express in a few concise yet polysyllabic words what takes paragraphs or even books to explain sans those terms.
Consider the recent standoff in Oregon between militia members and federal officials. While that was ongoing, wags in the blogosphere and the hip end of the media started referring to the militia members as “Y’all-Qaeda.” Attentive readers may have noted that none of the militia members came from the South—the only part of the United States where “y’all” is the usual second person plural pronoun. To the best of my knowledge, all of them came from the dryland West, where “y’all” is no more common than it is on the streets of Manhattan or Vancouver. Why, then, did the label catch on so quickly and get the predictable sneering laughter of the salary class?
My partner is from that general area (dryland West) and you know how often I’ve never heard her say “ya’ll?”
All the time!
(These glorious rhetorical constructions don’t come free. Oh wait, yes they do.)
About HRC though — if her presidency is as amateurish as her campaigning, we are in deep trouble.
Seriously, has an assured win ever been managed so poorly? She basically had to do absolutely nothing to win the presidency in a walk. Instead she bought a couple of revolvers and a speedloader and began merrily shooting herself in both feet.
She’d’ve been better off not campaigning at all than this mess that’s all her own doing.
Has there ever been a worse-campaigning Democratic front-runner?
In the future, linguists and lexicographers will put her face beside the phrase “snatching defeat from the jaws of victory” in idiomatic dictionaries.
I watched the Argentinean movie Relatos Salvajes tonight.
Very good. If you like Poe translated into the modern, you’ll enjoy this film. None of the stories are Poe’s directly, but his influence drips from the tales like blood only you can see.
There aren’t nearly enough anthology movies out there, and this is a fine one. Recommended.