The Acerebralists™ Are Still Among Us

I own a great book (thank you, Jane) called “The Superior Person’s Book of Words”, by Peter Bowler (1985). It’s very funny and has definitions (or explanations) of a bunch of great and, almost always, actual words that describe things perfectly. Not quite Ambrose Bierce, but chosen to effect an air of superiority when the occasion calls for it. Words like

CONTRADISTINCTION n. Why say “in contrast with” when you can say “in contradistinction to”?

There’s another great entry for

EREPTION n. Snatching away. Do not confuse with EREPTATION (creeping forth). Snuggling up to your beloved at the drive-in, you say, “I sense an ereption coming on,” and suddenly snatch the M&Ms from her lap. If it transpires that she has put the M&Ms somewhere else, you will be compelled to perform an ereptation.

The whole book is like that. It’s great. On the back cover can be found this:

ACEREBRAL a.Without a brain. A word for which there would at first sight appear to be no use, since no entity to which there would be any point in applying the term could in fact possess this attribute. (There would be no point in speaking of an acerebral windowsill.) However, recent researches into the central nervous system of the wire-haired terrier have conclusively demonstrated the need for such a word.

I then (technically improperly, I think) applied a suffix to indicate a person who practices or is concerned with something (“-ist”), and came up with

ACEREBRALIST™ n. A person who

I Worry ‘Bout It

Time for another parody, what d’ya say? This one was inspired by a friend of mine, Frank, who said he really liked this song. Frank may actually help me record some of these things (I’m the hold-up, not him; stage fright); so this is for him. I hope you all enjoy this one about arguing with political opponents, or anyone who you think hasn’t a clue what he or she is talking about, but insists it’s right anyway. I’m sure some of us won’t agree who needs to hear it. (I know who I think needs to hear it. 🙂 )

I Worry ‘Bout It
Original Words and Music “Opus 17 (Don’t You Worry ‘Bout Me)” by Sandy Linzer and Denny Randel, 1966
Additional Lyrics by Wayne A. Schneider, 2013

Ahhhh, I can see
This ain’t no fun for me-
You’re only showing in your heart no empathy

Not All Libertarians Are Alike

Before I begin I must say that this post would not have been possible without the aid of a great website called The Political Compass. I intend to quote directly from their website both to promote the website itself and to help educate all of us (including myself.) I hope they don’t mind.

From the website:

There’s abundant evidence for the need of it. The old one-dimensional categories of ‘right’ and ‘left’, established for the seating arrangement of the French National Assembly of 1789, are overly simplistic for today’s complex political landscape. For example, who are the ‘conservatives’ in today’s Russia? Are they the unreconstructed Stalinists, or the reformers who have adopted the right-wing views of conservatives like Margaret Thatcher?

On the standard left-right scale, how do you distinguish leftists like Stalin and Gandhi? It’s not sufficient to say that Stalin was simply more left than Gandhi. There are fundamental political differences between them that the old categories on their own can’t explain. Similarly, we generally describe social reactionaries as ‘right-wingers’, yet that leaves left-wing reactionaries like Robert Mugabe and Pol Pot off the hook.

Senator Randal Howard “Rand” Paul has been in the news lately because he hired someone who once made a living as a despicable character to work for him to be his director of new media. Senator Paul defended the hiring of Jack Hunter, saying that whether or not Hunter expressed white supremacist views in the past doesn’t matter because he himself (Paul) has never seen Hunter express any of those views. This is pretty weak because

A No-Politics Saturday

I decided I wanted to take this Saturday off from Politics. I don’t even know if the usual Saturday morning MSNBC shows I kind of sort of watch are on, but even if they are, I won’t be tuning in. This decision made me wonder what I did on Saturday mornings when I was a kid, and then I remembered those as cartoon mornings. And two of my favorites were