:: The Freewheelin' Reader ::

:: 6.4.05 ::

Once again, The Washington Post has published the winning submissions to itsyearly contest, in which readers are asked to supply alternate meanings forcommon words.
The winners are: 1. Coffee (n.), the person upon whom onecoughs.
2. Flabbergasted (adj.), appalled over how much weight you havegained.
3. Abdicate (v.), to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.
4. Esplanade (v.), to attempt an explanation while drunk.
5. Willy-nilly(adj.), impotent.
6. Negligent (adj.), describes a condition in which youabsentmindedly answer the door in your nightgown.
7. Lymph (v.), to walkwith a lisp.
8. Gargoyle (n.), olive-flavored mouthwash.
9. Flatulence (n.)emergency vehicle that picks you up afte r you are run over by a steamroller. 10. Balderdash (n.), a rapidly receding hairline.
11. Testicle(n.), a humorous question on an exam.
12. Rectitude (n.), the formal,dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.
13. Pokemon (n), a Rastafarianproctologist.
14. Oyster (n.), a person who sprinkles his conversation withYiddishisms.
15. Frisbee tarianism (n.), The belief that, when you die, your Soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.
16. Circumvent (n.), anopening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish men

Frisbee tarianism is my favourite.

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Dad sent me this one:
Offshoring a sign of economic progress

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Sarah & RW are putting a bunch of their books up for grabs.
Here's the list, though it is a little old. Contact me if you want any and I'll pass it along.
"a stack of books that we haven't been able to sell, but which are still interesting and (in most cases) in relatively good shape (some have scant underlinings and notes... if you take a book, you have to promise not to mock us for our undergrad/grad musings).

Rather than tossing them in the garbage and feeling bad about it, I thought I would compile a list to see if anyone wanted to take any of them off our hands. If you see anything you like--or someone you know might like--just drop me a line and it's yours. Also, first come, first served."

1. Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake. Penguin pbk edition ca. 1974. Some slightly odd stains on inside front coverage. OK condition.

2. Mick Jackson, The Underground Man. A hardcover novel with a very interesting fold-out dust jacket. Description on inside front flap talks about “powerful emotional intensity” and a man who builds tunnels beneath the estate of a slightly eccentric Duke. Can’t say I remember much else about it.

3. Funny boy, Shyam Selvadurai’s first and much-acclaimed novel about growing up in Sri Lanka. I remember it was an enjoyable read. This is the hardcover version (first US edition).

4. A hardcover edition of Dickens’ American Notes (in a slipcover).

5. The Telling of Lies by Timothy Findley. Mass market copy in a distinctly dodgy condition, but it is signed (to me, by the way!), and it was a great mystery. Won the 1989 Edgar Award.

6. Timothy Findley’s Famous Last Words. Mass market edition. A ripping good yarn. So-so condition (I read it hard and didn’t care two damns for the spine while I was doing it!).

7. Bakunin on Anarchy. Bought used, but in remarkably decent condition (except for a few tears on the back cover).

8. Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Artists (vol.1, 2). Penguin trade editions in really decent shape—except that I bought them used for school so they have nasty yellow and black used stickers on the spine.

9. The Island of the Day Before by Umberto Eco. I made it through The Name of the Rose, but this doorstop halted me in my tracks. Any takers for this hardcover edition…please?

10. Rethinking popular culture (1991). Just screams textbook doesn’t it? Well, you’re right (Thanks to Professsor Tritschler for making us buy this recommended textbook and only reading about three essays from it). Decent collection of essays including the following titles: “The Dream World of Mass Consumption”, “Notes on the Balinese Cockfight”, “Sport and Social Class”, and “Movies of the Week”.

11. Lady Chatterley’s Lover with a weirdo film tie-in cover ca. 1982.

12. Robert decided to keep this one.

13. To Kill a Mockingbird, a rough around the edges mass market edition.

14. The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford. Nice Vintage International trade edition that deals with two wealthy couples that meet each year at the Bad Nauheim spa in the years leading up to WWI. Apparently contains lots of hatred, deceit, infidelity, and betrayal. The cover blurb is attributed to Graham Greene, who describes it as “ one of the 15 or 20 greatest novels produced in English in our century.” The marginalia are attributed to Robert Hickey, who describes it as "a book I had to read and have already purged from my memory."

15. John Le Carre’s A Murder of Quality. A really good mystery set in one of England’s leading public schools. Features Le Carre’s George Smiley character.

16. Homer’s The Odyssey. Harper Perennial trade edition (1991). Translated by Richmond Lattimore.

17. Milton’s Paradise Lost, a "new" edition edited by Merritt Y. Hughes.

18. Poet for Sale, a novel by Lewis Vella. Apparently Vella is also the author of Mutant Migrant. The first line of the back cover description reads as follows: “Poet for Sale is a tender, vicious account of a street writer on the verge, trying to survive in modern urban society.” I have no idea why we own this book…(signed by the author, who was selling copies out of his van in front of Lee's Palace before a Ben Folds Five concert.)

19. A really nice Phaidon hardcover (unfortunately without the dust jacket) of the works of Fra Angelico. Really nice quality color plates. I’d keep it, but I haven’t opened it in years.

20. English Romantic Writers textbook (2nd ed.) Features works by Blake, Robert Burns, Mary Wollstonecraft, Wordsworth, Sir Walter Scott, etc. A nice collection of works for those interested in the period.

21. A used mass market edition of Sussana Moodie’s Roughing It In the Bush. Useful for those interested in roughing it in the bush.

22. A penguin edition of Brideshead Revisited with a sort of psychedelic cover. Not at all useful for roughing it in the bush.

23. The classic Erwin Panofsky text: Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art.

24. An Anthology of Pre-Raphaelite Writings. Pretty much just what its title would suggest.

25. A slim book of photographic art by Sally Gall, an American photographer called The Water’s Edge. Lots of beautiful dreamy landscapes. A little Vaseline-y with the lack of hard edges. Dust jacket is in rough shape.

26. The Women Who Knew too Much: Hitchcock and Feminist Theory. By Tania Modleski. Some pretty daunting Kristevan readings of Hitchcock's work, but offers some convincing arguments.

27. Some post-colonial stuff: Black Skin White Masks, by Frantz Fanon.

28. Modern Perspectives in Western Art History. Not much to say about this one. Just a bunch of 20th century essays.

29. The Importance of Being Earnest. A Dover thrift edition, unabridged.

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Oh Yeah!
Now this is the head-bashing type hunting I've always dreamed of.



Isn't there a less mobile animal they could wack at? I think it would be great if they could only wack the seal while they were under water. Good luck with that!

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A program in Senegal, which has led 1,527 villages to stop circumcising girls, is becoming a regional model.

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More than 1,000 African journalists have formed an online network to raise the profile of water and sanitation issues in the context of poverty reduction efforts, including progress towards the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. The Water Chronicle will begin publishing later this year.

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This sign pretty much sums up the state of the US right now I think.



It sure is a damn mockery...they're just too dumb to recognize that it's common sense and decency that they're mocking.

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"People will think you brilliant only if you tell them what they know. To avoid being thought brilliant, avoid knowing what they know. Write to discover to yourself what you know."
- Laura Riding, poet, Anarchism is Not Enough (University of California Press)

I can't stop picturing this woman as anyone other than a young person whom had been told they are profound, or thinks that they aren't profound and thus attempts to act with some profundity.

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Coke: The New NikeBy
Michael Blanding, The NationThere's a new corporate hood in town. It goes by the name of Coke. It's got a lot of college students angry, and that means boycotts. Students all over the world are gearing up to take on the soda giant, which stands accused of complicity in the murders by paramilitaries of union members at the company's Colombian bottling plants. -- Hannah Lobel
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050411&s=blanding

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