So begins the song Spotify chooses for me after it comes to the end of the album I'd chosen and as I am emerging from the overgrown forest path and looking back to see the sun has finally emerged above the smoke on the lake.
That's a little too on the nose, Spotify. If you're really following me that doggedly you ought to act more nonchalant.
The album that was my choice — the soundtrack for my sunrise walk/run — was "New Morning." I'd picked it because as I drove up there was a "rabbit runnin’ down across the road" — as Bob sings in the title song. Yes, Bob, like Chuck Schumer, drops his G's.I got back home and assembled my coffee-and-peanut-butter breakfast and then got a late start blogging because I became quite involved testing whether Grok would replicate my hypothesis about the progression of songs on the "New Morning" album. Seriously, I'm not going to bother you, the blog reader, with the details of my hypothesis about the alternating 5 themes. I'll just say I was surprised that Grok found "One More Weekend" to be "possibly... sinister." Oh, really?! We — Grok and I — got fixated on the first line "Slippin' and slidin' like a weasel on the run." Grok:
The biggest dilemma you face is not where to pitch the tent, but whether to crack your first beer before you do. I camp most often with a group of friends, and the temptation to leave the practicalities for later and throw ourselves down on a rug for a few drinks and a chinwag is a powerful one. On no account give in to this urge. As anyone who has tried to follow small-print Decathlon instructions in the dark while squiffy can confirm, it is always an error. Remembering which poles go in which slots first is hard at the best of times, so delay the fun until you are fully erect, so to speak.
That's written by a woman, by the way, Gemma Bowes. I don't think a male would indulge in such low humor, but I'm leaving it in my excerpt, having copied it and encountered it after deciding I wanted to blog because of "squiffy." I don't want to seem prudish, so I'll just say I think that kind of double entendre has gone out of style.
Anyway, let's talk about "squiffy" — meaning "drunk." It is in the OED, with the oldest use from a letter written around 1855: "Curious enough there is a Lady Erskine, wife of Lord E, her husband's eldest brother living at Bollington, who tipples & ‘gets squiffy’ just like this Mrs E."
"The U2 frontman, who recently celebrated his 65th birthday, has no regrets keeping the award that he received in January for his humanitarian work in spite of claims that he was morally wrong to do so due to the former president’s track record over Gaza."
According to the OED, "plonker" has meant "A foolish, inept, or contemptible person" since 1955. John Lennon muttered it on TV in 1964. "Plonker" also means "penis." Published examples go back to the 1920s: "Last night I lay in bed and pulled my plonker." I was amused to find that in the OED, but there it was. An older meaning of the word is "Something large or substantial of its kind." You can see how one thing leads to another.
"'Slop bowl' is the term many use for the nebulous mash of ingredients served up at fast-casual restaurants.... TikTok feeds, meanwhile, are overtaken by streams of 'fast fashion slop.' Thousands of users have embraced the genre of the 'Shein Haul' reveal.... Kyla Scanlon, an economic commentator who coined the term 'vibecession,' notes that across different kinds of consumption... people are choosing to minimize thought and maximize efficiency, even when the outcome is a little less expressive (your outfit is the same as everyone else’s), a little less satisfying (your lunch bowl tastes just like yesterday’s) or a little less human.... Some psychiatrists say it makes sense that being confronted with nonstop online slop comes with cognitive downside.... So now some posters and shoppers are trying to edge away from it...."
Sometimes a word helps us perceive and understand and react to a problem. A word can shape or change the problem. Is "slop" accurate? Is it propaganda?
When did people start saying that they need to "feel seen"? I don't remember that from the period when I was growing up — the 1950s and 60s. Was there something else that we said that meant "feel seen"? Or is the desire to "feel seen" something new and perhaps transitory?
I did a "deep search" on Grok looking for the origin of the phrase and the closest thing I found to an answer was that it became a common phrase in the last 15 years, perhaps connected with social media. For example: "21 Painfully Relatable Memes That'll Make You Feel Seen" (Cheezburger).
ADDED: "I need to feel seen" strikes me as such a beta thing to say. I told that to Grok, which I'd accidentally left in "deep search" mode, and I think I got man-shamed:
The user’s observation that "I need to feel seen" strikes them as "beta" reflects a specific cultural lens, particularly within internet slang where "beta" is used pejoratively to describe behavior seen as weak, submissive, or overly sensitive, especially in contrast to "alpha" traits like dominance or stoicism. This perception is rooted in certain societal norms around masculinity, particularly in online spaces where traditional masculine ideals are valorized.
IN THE COMMENTS: Kirk Parker said: "The first recorded usage is in Genesis 16:13." I look it up: "She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: 'You are the God who sees me,' for she said, 'I have now seen the One who sees me.'" "She" = the slave Hagar, mother of Ishmael.
"... an alleged form of rebellion against return-to-office policies. Curiously dubbed 'barebacking,' the NSFW-sounding practice involves forgoing all tech and either gazing into space or — even worse — making repeated, awkward eye contact with other passengers ...."
The NY Post reports, with a link to a TikTok video that seems to be the wrong link. It goes to something on a completely different subject.
I think the Post is getting pranked here, but it is funny to think of protesting in that manner. The person who just wants to be able to stay at home is not the kind of person who invites conflict on the subway. Upping the slang confusion is another tell.
"... praising a business plan to sell literal 'shit on a stick' as 'absolutely brilliant.' The flattery was frequent and overwhelming. 'I need help getting chatgpt to stop glazing me,' wrote a user on Reddit, who ChatGPT kept insisting was thinking in 'a whole new league.' It was telling everyone they have an IQ of 130 or over, calling them 'dude' and 'bro,' and, in darker contexts, bigging them up for 'speaking truth' and 'standing up' for themselves by (fictionally) quitting their meds and leaving their families.... To fix ChatGPT’s 'glazing' problem, as the companyitself started calling it, OpenAI altered its system prompt, which is a brief set of instructions that guides the model’s character."
That calls our attention to something Vance said on Fox News: "If you want real security guarantees, if you want to actually ensure that Vladimir Putin does not invade Ukraine again, the very best security guarantee is to give Americans economic upside in the future of Ukraine. That is a way better security guarantee than 20,000 troops from some random country that hasn't fought a war in 30 or 40 years."
I don't know if that "random" refers to the UK, but apparently some people in the UK are hearing it that way. And the UK is hardly a random country. But "random" is bandied about humorously these days. In America. Do the Brits know that?
Insulting him back, the random Brit who is the source of this quote doesn't seem to know that Americans don't say "wind his neck in." The effort at an insult strikes me as funny because, not being used to the phrase, I'm forced to try to picture it concretely.
The source of the quote is a Former Veterans Minister who served in Afghanistan, and the full quote is: "Vance needs to wind his neck in. Show a bit of respect and stop making yourself look so unpleasant."
Vance looks especially unpleasant in my mental image, where he has an extremely long and thin neck attached to a fishing reel.
"... since Donald Trump took office. They say that evil never sleeps, but apparently tech kajillionaires who have pretty bananapants power over federal infrastructure do, hence Musk’s alleged lil DOGE naps in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. Stripping vulnerable and minority groups of their protections and advocates can really take it out of a guy, not to mention flipping science the fiscal bird! The EEOB is right across from the West Wing, and Musk is said to get comfy at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago when he’s down in Florida, so maybe it’s a matter of proximity and comfort. Ssshhh, he’s right there, he might whisper to himself, gazing out at the windows of Casa Trump, the TV’s soft blue light flickering in the night, his palm pressed to the glass of his own office. It’s okay."
Does she hate Musk? Is she just in the company of people who can't openly love him? I don't know, but — whatever her condition — she's having fun with it.
She's only calling him a "goon" to make a play on the going-to-sleep children's book "Goodnight, Moon."
Here's a history of the word "goon." In 1934, we get Alice the Goon, the character in E.C. Segar's "Thimble Theatre" comic strip:
I'm listening "Resistance, Where Art Thou?," the new episode of the NYT "Matter of Opinion" podcast. At 5:28 in the linked audio/transcript, Ross Douthat says:
From 2016 to 2020, there was a sense that there was a fundamental liberal, or at least center left majority in America that had been unfairly denied its rightful position of power and influence. And so it just made sense to say, we just need to mobilize.... [I]n the early days of 2017, and indeed throughout his presidency, [the White House] was filled with people who were not at all loyal to Donald Trump. Some of whom were just total opportunists, some of whom were sort of, you know, respectable Republican figures who felt like they were there to manage the weird, bizarre phenomenon of the Trump presidency. But those people played a very important role, a kind of feedback loop in driving the energy of the resistance by basically leaking constantly about how crazy things were inside the Trump White House.... [T]he teams that exist in the Trump White House this time have esprit de corps. They have internal loyalty and cohesion. And so whatever is going on... in the kind of Trumpian attempt to remake the executive branch, you know, people aren't interested in just telling Politico and The New York Times all about how horrifying it is on the regular.
By the way, I had a long conversation with Grok about the idiom "on the regular." I won't link to it. Have your own conversation with your own robot.
I also wanted to quote this from Michelle Cottle: "There was a big piece in Politico saying, oh, you know, the Democrats are, are taking the bait by defending USAID, Americans hate USAID. They think that, you know, we give way too much money to people abroad and things like that. And... I, personally... I am much more familiar with the left critiques of USAID and the work that it's done around the world."
The left critiques of USAID. Where's the NYT article about that? When are we going to hear that side of the story? When — if — Elon Musk releases it into the public domain? Who wants to see that and who is desperately afraid?
"In a few short days, supporters of Vice President Kamala Harris, who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, memed chartreuse into an unusually potent political symbol.... 'I will aspire to be Brat,' Jake Tapper said on CNN to one of his correspondents, who had been holding up a slime-green meme printed out on a sheet of paper."
I used the last of this month's NYT gift link allowance on that article. Why? Because I knew it was hard to understand without more explanation, but I didn't want to do the explanation.
And you'll need to go over there anyway to see the particular green in question. It's a color that's connected to this word "brat," which reminds me of a word from many years ago when I was a teenager: "groovy." It was new and cool and precisely expressive of youth for a very short time before it got seized upon by everyone old and it became embarrassing.
From the golden moment before the collapse of "groovy":
Once the TV talking heads and political candidates start using your word, they've stolen it from you. You have to move on or use it ironically or do whatever it is you kids do today when the adults are annoying you.
As for you political candidates, be careful using the word "brat" in Wisconsin. I remember when John Kerry screwed up.
[I]f she has a vision of a shared future that doesn’t resonate with you... exaggerating your feelings in order to preserve the status quo would amount to “breadcrumbing”: leading her on, and preventing her from moving along with her life. The prototype breadcrumber is the manipulative cad who just wants to keep all options open on a Friday night. More typical breadcrumbers, I suspect, are driven not by cynicism but by uncertainty, and by a desire to avoid conflict....
Breadcrumbs. I tend to think of Hansel and Gretel dropping breadcrumbs to mark a path that leads back out of the forest. But breadcrumbs fail as path markers because the birds eat them. But there's also the idea of feeding a person mere crumbs. Isn't that usually seen from the point of view of the person offered the crumbs? You're just giving me crumbs! I don't think I've seen it from the perspective of the person hoping to get what they want by only giving crumbs. So I don't think this is a good buzzword — not unless it's used by the person who's rejecting the offer of crumbs.
Googling, I see that it is, in fact, a well-established term for manipulating someone. Why are people letting themselves be manipulated by metaphorical crumbs? I'm blaming the victim here.
"... and am fully resigned to my status. Sacha, on the other hand, is so sure that he is not an asshole that his 'representatives' have been trying to stop publication of a memoir by the Australian actress Rebel Wilson in which she claims that he is one. It’s classic Hollywood. Just the sort of classy bantz Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn got up to. Indeed, Wilson claims that Baron Cohen is more than just an asshole. She claims he is a 'massive asshole.' Which, to be fair, is no laughing matter. I think I am right in saying I am widely perceived only as 'a bit of an arsehole' (to anglicise the trope).... This story has perhaps gained the traction it has because of Wilson’s initial decision not to name Baron Cohen, but merely to reveal that her forthcoming memoir would contain tales of 'an asshole' with whom she once worked, followed by the later revelation that 'now the asshole is trying to threaten me … He’s hired lawyers … but the book WILL come out,' before finally revealing: 'The asshole that I am talking about in one chapter of my book is: Sacha Baron Cohen.'"
"No, not dickwads — although, I hear you — but dinkwads: the acronym for 'dual income, no kids, with a dog,' a designation going viral on a social media site near you.... I am particularly fond of @MattAndOmar jumping for joy in their pants, waving their pooch’s little arms: 'When we remember we’ll be a dinkwad household forever.' Terence and I jump for joy in our pants all the time. And nothing wobbles, because I am a child-free adventuress, taut of thigh and upstanding of breast, and my beloved is a 6ft 4in man-god with all his own hair and a backside as tight as a walnut. He tosses his hair as we dance, and I toss mine, and Pimlico, our media whippet, tosses hers, and we laugh as only child-free lifestyle gurus can laugh — musically, like the tinkling of so many wind chimes...."
I didn't watch it live for the same reason I didn't watch "Dragnet" when it was on at 9 p.m. on Thursdays in 1954. It was past my bedtime. I was 3.
I'm 73 — 8 years younger than Biden — and I'm in the Central Time Zone. He gave that speech at age 81 at 10 p.m. at night and went on until midnight, and I see he was feisty....
I wasn't feisty. I was lying down in my sleep position — a complicated arrangement involving 4 down pillows — and planning to more or less listen, listen until I entered the world of dreams — a place not necessarily more pleasant that the House chamber (last night I woke up screaming at nonexistent crocodiles) — but a place where I sojourn for 7 hours rebuilding the strength of a body that naturally rises at 4 a.m., maybe 3.
As I say, I am 73. I am not feisty at 9 at night and certainly not at midnight. If something were important enough though — stand here in front of millions and read this teleprompter in a dramatic, masterful style — I'd do it properly. I wouldn't yell irascibly. You wouldn't have to shoot me with drugs. In fact, that would be dangerously risky. I might behave erratically. I might yell irascibly. Yell irascibly for 2 hours? What would people think? Is the press on my side? Give me the drugs then! The press is on my side! They'll say I was "feisty."
Calling an old person "feisty" is like calling an African American person "articulate"....
We know what you mean. You're revealing that you have a stereotype and you're giving this person credit for setting himself apart from it.
But I was embracing the old-person stereotype, embracing my pillows, drifting off to sleep, and not really appreciating the irascible tone of voice. But I got to sleep. I've slept through the night. I did not wake up screaming. I'm well rested and perfectly lucid — I think! — composing these remarks before setting out to commune with the sunrise.
I knew I would have the video of the full speech. What's so special about watching it live? Looking up what was on TV on Thursday at 9 in 1954 — so I could write "Dragnet" in the first sentence of this post — I happened upon this:
Despite hit filmed programs such as I Love Lucy, both William S. Paley of CBS and David Sarnoff of NBC were said to be determined to keep most programming on their networks live. Filmed programs were said to be inferior to the spontaneous nature of live television.
Take away the magic of live television, and what is the State of the Union address? We are perfectly free to watch the entire thing on YouTube the next day. Or never. Or in sliced out snippets — a highlight reel or a collection of verbal slips or biggest applause lines. Or we can just read about it. Did anything happen? Did some grieving mother hear her daughter's name said aloud? Was the name precisely correctly pronounced? Did the President hold up a button? Did he recharge his campaign?
Was he feisty?
***
"Feisty," the OED tells us, is based on the familiar word "fist." It's a punch-in-the-nose concept. Fisty. Definition: "Aggressive, excitable, touchy." We're told it's American slang, originally dialect, and the OED has the quotes to prove it:
1913 Feisty means when a feller's allers wigglin' about, wantin' ever'body to see him, like a kid when the preacher comes.
H. Kephart, Our Southern Highlanders 94
1926
That-there feisty bay mare jumped straight upwards and broke the tongue outen the plow.
E. M. Roberts, Time of Man 152
1965
Luther gets a little feisty after a few drinks, and he began to argue with him.
‘D. Shannon’, Death-bringers (1966) xiii. 162
1968
He couldn't shake her loose—she hung on to his arm, feisty as a terrier.
J. Potts, Trash Stealer xiii. 148
***
Post-sunrise opinion: The morning after, it is possible to see that the SOTU was a campaign speech. Every morning, there was a campaign speech yesterday.
In the comments: I'm getting a lot of pushback on the etymology of "feisty." It's not the fist that is the hand in an aggressive clench? It's a dog, you say? Well, let's go back to the OED. I see I made an assumption. What I was seeing at the OED entry "feisty" was:
I had not clicked on the boldface "fist." But if I had, I would not have gone to the entry for the kind of "fist" that is the clenched hand. I'd have gone to a separate entry, with 3 things together: a fart, a puffball fungus, and a dog:
1. A breaking wind, a foul smell, stink. Obsolete....
2. The fungus usually known as puff-ball.... Obsolete....
3. U.S. dialect. A small dog....
The etymology pointed us to #3, so — no matter how much we might enjoy thinking "feisty" means farty — we must accept that the comparison is to a small dog. Yappy, hopping around, over-excited. Still farty though. You see the connection. It's always the dog.
"Can anyone really judge him in a fair way? Because here’s a guy who has had an uncle assassinated, a father assassinated. No one wants to open up the files. So you must say to yourself, What is the reason for that? You start not trusting governments. I don’t live with this kind of suspicion, because nothing ever happened to me that makes me feel like that. But a lot of things happened to him, so this is where he is coming from. I’m not saying rightfully or wrongfully. I’m just saying I can see why someone like him is the way he is."
The interviewer, David Marchese, had asked "what do you make of R.F.K. Jr.’s anti-vax, conspiracist turn?"
Marchese follows up — evoking the Moynihan memeyou are not entitled to your own facts — "But we can be sympathetic to someone and what happened to them and also say facts are facts."
Schwarzenegger seems unaware of the old meme. He says: "His facts are different. I understand what you’re saying, but there’s people out there who have their own facts."
"Etymology: From obstropulous, obsolete slang form of obstreperous, + -y.... Adjective: (UK, Australia, New Zealand, slang) Ornery, fractious, belligerent, or obstreperous, and hence difficult to deal with.... Quotation: 2010, Gillian Bloxham, W. Doyle Gentry, Anger Management For Dummies, UK edition:
Even today, women who show signs of anger and who express themselves in some assertive way may be labelled stroppy for doing so" (Wiktionary).
[Trump] no doubt workshopped his stroppy mug-shot look in front of the mirror, trying to convey “Never surrender!” as he was literally surrendering. And in another master stroke of projection, he accused the prosecutors pursuing him for election interference of “election interference.”
Using UK/Australia/New England slang is a sign of elitism.
"Why bother dealing directly with all of these people around me and all of the challenging negotiations required to compromise, to build bonds, etc? And we wonder why we're increasingly polarized."
The article doesn't mention dogs. The commenter widened the subject matter quite interestingly, don't you think?
Is the NYT promoting a new word in "phubbing" or is it real slang that already part of the culture and I just never noticed? I see from the "Phubbing" article in Wikipedia that it's a word an advertising agency tried to make happen a decade ago:
She added: “Looking back, the signs are so obvious. But at the time you want to believe it’s real.”
The scam that hit Holloway is the latest example of “pig butchering,” a term that refers to a months-long scheme to “fatten up” victims with fake romance before “butchering” with fake investment advice.
Well, aren't we all "so vulnerable" to a "good-looking" person who offers love? It's an old story, and I would not find it bloggable, but for that slang "pig butchering."
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