Lackhead.org

Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in hand, totally worn out and screaming “WOO-HOO what a ride!”

– Clinic 2316 from Top Tips For Girls

Now one of Clinton’s Laws of Politics is this: If one candidate’s trying to scare you and the other one’s trying to get you to think; if one candidate’s appealing to your fears and the other one’s appealing to your hopes, you better vote for the person who wants you to think and hope. That’s the best.

– Bill Clinton, 2004

Huh, given the tenor of Hillary Clinton’s campaign these days, I have a feeling this new Clinton is writing her own rules. Me? I support what Bill said back in 2004, which is why I am not voting for fear-mongering Hillary.

-c

Greetings sportsfans!

Lackhead here. I haven’t posted in a long time, mostly due to being overwhelmed by my upcoming trip to Tours, France, and spring climbing season. I’m sure the entire Interwebs have missed my virtual smiling face these long weeks (should that be “has missed”? Is “Interwebs” plural?). I have toyed with doing a Friday News Roundup, collecting links that I’ve stumbled upon in my week’s journey, but is anybody but me really interested in why McCain is a neocon? Yeah, thought so.

But, whilst traipsing across the Intertubes this morning, I read a post by Steve Benen, one of my blogo-faves, noting yet another LABCAR (”Ludicrous Assertion by Bush, Contradicting All Reality”):

First, the majority of our defense spending is devoted to the war in Iraq. Dick Cheney’s palaver notwithstanding, Iraqis did not “actually attack our homeland.”

Bonus points that he put the period within the double-quotes (grammar counts). I had come across palaver before, and I could certainly piece together a meaning from context, but I decided to look up the definition anyway:

unctuous

1. talk intended to deceive, charm or beguile; flattery
2. loud and confused and empty talk; “mere rhetoric”

Lo and behold, I could have found this definition under “modern media.” sigh Oh right, I was going to steer clear of contemptuous and depressing commentaries about today’s society. Anyway, I think it is a good word and a handy one to have in the ‘ol tool belt these days. Nota bene- it can also be used as a verb, meaning “to dole out the palaver” if, like me, you have a soft spot for self-reference.

And thusly, I return to blogitudinal tendencies. I should get in form before going over to France, so that I can bloviate online about my trip!

Until next time,

-c

PS- thanks, mcq, for the following quote:

The major problem — one of the major problems, for there are several — one
of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get
to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.

To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who most want to
rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize
the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President
should on no account be allowed to do the job. To summarize the summary
of the summary: people are a problem.

And so this is the situation we find: a succession of Galactic Presidents
who so much enjoy the fun and palaver of being in power that they very
rarely notice that they’re not.

And somewhere in the shadows behind them — who?

Who can possibly rule if no one who wants to do it can be allowed to?

– Douglas Adams. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Bienvenue mes amis francaises!

While I’ve been studying French, I’ve taken to writing up small little sheets of paper that summarize a particular grammatical lesson. These papers are usually the backs of old worksheets, or other random half-used papers I’ve had lying about. Over the past year this motley melange has grown into something requiring its own manila folder for containment and organization purposes, and this past weekend I took to doing something about cleaning this particular mess up. I started off with just the verbal forms, and viola, now I have Chad’s handy-dandy French Verb Summary (pdf).

This file is a tad longer than I imagined it would be, but I filled it in with example sentences which beefed out the volume a bit. Here’s a quick run down of what it covers:

• être/avoir auxiliary usage (overview of compound verb formation)
• The Present Participle (le Participe Présent)
• The Past Participle (le Participe Passé)
• The Present (le Présent)
• The Imperfect (l’Imparfait)
• The Past Perfect (le passé composé)
• The Past Perfect (le passé composé)
• The Immediate/Near Past
• The Future (le Futur)
• The Future (le Futur)
• The Imperative Mood (l’impératif)
• The Present Subjunctive (le Présent du Subjonctif)
• The Past Subjunctive (le Passé du Subjonctif)
• The Past Subjunctive (le Passé du Subjonctif)
• The Past Conditional (le Conditionnel Passé)
• Si Clauses
• Passive Voice

I left out the Future Perfect (haven’t gotten there in my studies yet…will probably get to that soon) and the less common tenses like the passé simple. But despite that, this should be pretty complete.

Anyway, so there you have it. I imagine it will be useful to about, oh, one person (me) but the utility of this seems pretty cool so perhaps someone else out there on the net will stumble across it and get something out of it.

Au revoir mes amis!

-c

Those glittering abstract nouns aren’t sufficient, but they can be damn useful. They aren’t accurate descriptions of this country right now, and probably they never have been, but a lot of Americans are sincerely attached to them. And sometimes, when presented with a stark contradiction between the bedtime stories we learned about this country as children, and concrete effects of our actions, we will choose to make the bedtime story true rather than give it up entirely.

– Katherine at Obsidian Wings (brilliant post, very worthwhile to read).