So clueless

Ah, some Web sites can be so clueless.

Interestingly, my google alerts for "epicaricacy" are becoming much less frequent these days. Is there anything we can do about this? How about a word of the year designation?!

Not much of a change

We need some news about "epicaricacy!" Can't Obama or Palin or someone use it in a speech? Not much has changed, though I did find that it's included in that wonderful Urban Dictionary. Maybe it had been, and I've just forgotten.

Sorry. Not much more than that to report...and I did promise not to talk politics for awhile.

Shellacking

Yep. The Republicans are dancing and feeling epicaricactic (we really do need an adjective for that concept. Neither "epicaricacy" or "Schadenfreude" have one.)

I will give up politics now for awhile. The other side won, but the tide will turn back again. No worries on that.

So...where did the word "shellacking" come from? Interestingly, when looking it up in the OED, it is chiefly U.S. Don't they use it in England? In the OED it was first cited as meaning a "beating" in 1931. I wonder if eventually this citation of "shellacking" will be included in the OED.

Voting day in the U.S.

Today is the big day. There will be epicaricacy from one side...I hope it's not mine!

Political epicaricacy...again

I don't know about the rest of the US, but here in Chicago we are experiencing horrible incivility, with both parties, in this campaign. When the elections are over, I am sure both sides will experience epicaricacy. But I hope they also experience severe remorse at how they've handled themselves.

I did find the following comment by a Democrat at a get-out-the-vote rally rather funny...sad, but funny. The politician is a state senator, and I agree the person he was ranting about (a Republican nominee for Governor and an ex-state senator) is to the right of Rush Limbaugh, but still, a little civility is in order, people! Here's what the state senator said at the public rally:

"I've never served served with such an idiotic, racist, sexist, homophobic person in my life. If you think that the minimum wage needs to be three dollars an hour, vote for Bill Brady. If you think that women have no rights whatsoever, except to have his children, vote for Bill Brady. If you think gay and lesbian people need to be locked up and shot in the head, vote for Bill Brady."

He refused to apologize, saying, "If he can show me that he votes differently than what I said, I will apologize. But I know he can't say that. I know he can't." Somehow I don't think Brady said that gay and lesbians should be shot in the head, do you?

For now...the billionaires have their epicaricacy

There was an insightful article in the NY Times by Frank Rich today: Link

While the Tea Partiers are describing themselves as "grass roots," clearly they aren't. From the article: "In a typical example just three weeks ago, the influential publication National Journal delivered a breathless report on how the Tea Party functions as a “headless” movement where “no one gives orders.” To prove the point, a head of the headless Tea Party Patriots vouched that “75 percent of the group’s funding comes from small donations, $20 or less.” And then: "Last week the same Tea Party Patriots leader who bragged to the National Journal about all those small donations announced a $1 million gift from a man she would identify only as an entrepreneur. The donor’s hidden identity speaks even louder than the size of the check. As long as we don’t know who he is, we won’t know what orders he’s giving either"

Let's face it. These Tea Partiers are a bunch of media savvy Republicans who want Bush's tax cuts to continue and don't want Obama to increase taxes on the miserably rich. They need their billions to live on. To hell with children with no health care or with the homeless elderly. They're taking care of their kids and their relatives. They deserve it all. What self-centered fools they all are. Here's one example, though he doesn't have billions; still, he can't live on more than $250,000 per year with a family of four.

For now, the Tea Partiers and Republicans are laughing epicaricacially. But just wait. When they get in and don't do anything, the tide will turn. This is American politics doubled in spades.

The Transfiguration of the Commonplace

A friend recommended Arthur Danto's "The Transfiguration of the Commonplace: A Philosophy of Art," which is a scholarly book about the age-old question: What is art? It's a typical philosophy book that gets down to agonizing detail on questions, but I've picked up some insights, such as art being a mirror of reality. Perhaps that's why some of the more ugly or plain contemporary art (like Tracey Emin's Unmade Bed or the plain black canvas surrounded by a frame that I've seen at the Art Institute) have crept into the art scene. So far, and I am not finished with the book, I haven't quite figured out why one piece like that is art, and why another isn't. To be continued...