Don't You Subjugate My Jejuneness

If you have a high school degree, then the American Heritage Dictionary thinks you need to know these 100 words. The list ranges from words like impeach (ooo! I know that one!) to tougher ones like lugubrious. I feel like my Linguistics degree definitely isn't paying off right now.

But come on, does a person really need to know all these words? How often do you use supercilious in a sentence when you could just say arrogant? Or quotidian instead of daily? I'll admit, they may be advantageous to know for reading or writing, but that's what the dictionary/thesaurus widget is for right?

The Senior Editor of the American Heritage Dictionary states that, "If you are able to use these words correctly, you are likely to have a superior command of the language." Well, I flat out disagree with that. It doesn't seem like it's appropriate to say you have a "superior command of the language" when a good percentage of your listeners would most likely have no idea what you're talking about if you said, "My quotidian life keeps me quite sanguine."

Mr. Senior Editor, I only have one thing to say to you: It seems churlish of you not to consider bowdlerizing your lexicon due to its chicanery. Take that.

“Please Occupy Us!”

This past weekend while on his European tour, President Bush visited what could be the world’s most pro-American country. Yep, a European country may actually love us more than we love ourselves.

As one of the first countries to send forces to join America’s troops in both Afghanistan and Iraq, Albania has consistently supported American policy. As it happens, they also dig our cornbread names. Bill and Hillary have been a few of the most popular baby names since the end of the cold war and some anticipate a string of baby Georges to spring up due to his recent visit.

Albania went all out in preparing for Bush’s tour of Tirana, the capital. A street was named for him, commemorative stamps were printed and their Parliament passed a bill allowing “American forces to engage in any kind of operation, including the use of force, in order to provide security for the president.”

All that said, it came as a shock to hear that a sly Albanian stole President Bush’s watch right off of his wrist during a walkabout. Bold. Very bold. Although several reports deny this, the video seems to prove otherwise. I would keep a lookout on Ebay.

Confession

I feel that honesty is the best way to keep any relationship healthy, so I guess it's about time I fessed up. I've been blogging for someone else.

Last week I began my internship at the Weekly Alibi, an event I was highly anticipating. And man, it's pretty awesome. I'm officially a web intern and my tasks are to webify (I'm still learning the jargon) and to blog. Webifying, in Alibinese, means to add links within a story or article. For example, at the beginning of this post, I made "Weekly Alibi" into a link. So I read through the articles, find things that I think people might want to read more on or just don't know about, and make those into links. It's actually pretty fun.

But the really exciting part is the blogging. I haven't had any of my writing posted on their blog yet, but I believe it will begin soon. If you check out the Alibi's blog, you'll probably notice that the content is quite similar to G&C, with the exception of more local news. This has proved to be a double-edged sword. It's great because since my topics I bring up on G&C are so similar, it won't be that difficult to write articles the Alibi will like. BUT, recently, since those ideas for posts have automatically been put towards writing posts for the Alibi, G&C has been suffering from my lack of attention. I've thought about double posting, for example, if I write something for the Alibi, I would post it on G&C too, or vice-versa, but I just feel like that's unfair. I want to keep both original and separate. That's easier said than done, though.

So I'm in a pickle.

If any of you have any advice, please share it. I'm open for any suggestions.

Documenting Zombies = Guaranteed Death

This is the kind of stuff I like to see. People getting creative in really outlandish, extensive and (oh yes) public ways.

On Friday, San Francisco had a surprise visit from a rather large plague of zombies (other fun collective nouns here). It appears they were able to create quite a uproar as they stumbled through town, transforming innocent onlookers into their own kind, leaving blood smears as they went and even managing to piss off a few Scientologists. Not a bad day if you ask me.
Check out the awesome photo journal of the entire event.

For those of us who don't follow the tenets of Vodoun or come from the Middle Ages, I think we can agree it's fair to conclude that zombies are a big fat myth.

So what was the real reason behind the invasion? Honestly, I doubt you would ever guess this one. A wedding. Awesome right? For some reason, when I found out this was actually a wedding, it just made me smile.

The zombies even got to take a short break from the killing spree and show off their moves on the dance floor.

Stop Hatin' On the Babies

Firstly I would like to apologize for my extended absence from G & C. I have no acceptable excuse, it was poor form on my part. If you so kindly choose to accept my apology I would like to share an interesting find with you.

Our beloved baby carrot has had quite a stressful last week due to a wave of bad publicity. It seems like everyone who hears the truth about the baby carrot has turned against it, choosing to never again indulge in such a satisfying yet healthful snack. If you haven't heard the news, allow me to fill you in.

There's no such thing as a "baby" carrot. Calm down, just take a deep breath, I'll explain. Baby carrots are whittled down from normal size carrots into their cute little uniform size that we all know and love. However, the carrots that are chosen to become the baby version aren't perfect. They're the ugly, abnormal, for lack of a better word, "special" carrots. For those of you out there that have ever grown carrots, you know what I'm talking about. It's hard to get those perfect carrots.

This should be a positive attribute for baby carrots right? If it weren't for the idea of chopping up these ugly carrots into little clones, these carrots would be tossed. That was the initial reason for baby carrots, to keep from wasting hundreds of unsellable carrots.

Of course, there are a few bad facts that come along with this. For one, baby carrots are more expensive than normal carrots. But that should be expected since they are processed more, such as being pealed, whittled down, etc. Also, since baby carrots come from less desirable carrots, they lack 30% of the beta carotene present in normal carrots. That means they still have 70%, not bad if you ask me.

So in my opinion, the good outweighs the bad. Although baby carrots aren't as healthful or cheap as their larger counterpart, the fact that they avoid a large amount of waste and seem to provide an alternative snack for many of our overweight, fast-food-addicted citizens, it a good enough reason to keep these little guys around.

Mother's Day for Peace

Here's a good option for those of you who have conveniently forgotten about the big M-Day mañana. The video is definitely cheesy at points, but the overall message is crucially pertinent to our world's current situation.

Encyclopedia of Life

Check out the Encyclopedia of Life here.