cheese it, the cops!

thoroughly postmodern terrorism

you know, i often approach the zeitgeist through pop music, but terrorism would do just as well. today's terrorists are so, as it were, today.

in paris, a female terrorist's last words before self-detonation, as the police closed in: 'he's not my boyfriend!' kaboom! how many times have teenage girls texted that in the last ten years? (a: 3,274,498,622,007; the fbi is interrogating all the senders)

 

the san bernadino folks went back and shot up the office party, like a sit-com in its season finale.

 

and then there is the monstrous san bernadino suspect enrique marquez. 

he hates our sacred way of life!

 

the american people are anxious, jittery, trepidatious, agitated, twitchy, tremulant, unmanned, unstrung, shaken, quivering, quavering, quaking, prostrate, prostate, and whatnot. you can read it in our selfies and emoticons, our encryption and our assault rifles. 'who will calm a jittery public? who, who will keep us safe from enrique?,' asks the greatest nation this world or any other has ever seen, as it wets itself. one man. only one. or rather, at most one. 

ted "the ooze" cruz

 

unbaseless

apparently, the american people are feeling profoundly scared. we have only one question as the infestation of pollsters indicates an oncoming presidential election: who will keep me safe? oh man, maybe marco rubio can keep me safe! americans definitely are in a crisis, a crisis of confidence with regard to which roget, consulting his excellent thesaurus, might describe us as poltroonish, cowardly, cringing, quailing, weak-kneed, craven, invertebrate, milksop, lily-livered, pluckless, spineless, gritless, spiritless, and base. those are all polling well.

sorry for slow blogging. life is kind of overfull sometimes! i know y'all want to hear all my peeves; nothing is so edifying and interesting or closer to the basic use of a blog. anyway, the use of the term "individual" to mean any person is just epidemic. i first got it from police-speak, where i guess the idea is to distinguish official from informal communications in some entirely useless and meaningless way. but now i notice it, for example, in anyone's media quotes about anything, and it's suddenly non-stop in student papers, incomprehensibly. i can only speculate that its use is to signal that the suspect or citizen referred to is not a pair of conjoined twins, or is not harboring within her body an entire intact person as a humunculus, which obviously might be an important fact, particularly if you're contemplating random wide-scale vivisections, which we obviously are.

perhaps, on the other hand, the use of the term is a pointedly ironic commentary on our amazing era of social constructionism and ecstatic collectivism. after all, the last human individual died in 1927.

today's roget

341. rear, rear end, hind end, hinder part, afterpart, posterior, behind, breech, stern, tail, afterpiece, backside, back door, buttocks, rump, hips, derriere, pyg(o)-, croup, crupper, podex, haunches, gluteal region, nates, butt, hind end, behind, ass, arse, can, cheeks, nether cheeks, stern, rusty-dusty, bum, fanny, prat, keister, tuchis, tushy, tush. [note: my 4th ed roget omits booty and its variants, such a bootay, as well as such idiomatic expressions as "what mama gave you," "that money-maker" and so on.]

545.2 nonsense, stuff, poppycock, folderol, bosh, buncombe, bilge, balderdash, piffle, niaiserie, flummery, trumpery, rubbish, trash, truck, blatherskite, moonshine, fiddle-faddle,  fiddledeedee, flumdiddle, flapdoodle, fudge, humbug. 3. tommyrot, rot, hogwash, malarkey, tosh, kibosh, bunk, hokum. hooey, bushwah, blah, huftmagufty, whoopla, hoopdedoodle, monkey-doodle, gook, applesauce, baloney, tripe, horsefeathers. 4.  twaddle, twattle, twiddle-twaddle, blather, babble, bibble-babble, gabble, gibble-gabble, blabber, gibber, jabber, prate, prattle, rattle, bavardage, guff, gash, clack, gas, hot air, bull, blah-blah, gammon, claptrap, skimble-scamble, slipslap, wish-wash, drivel, dribble, drool, slaver; gibberish, jargon, mumbo-jumbo, double-talk, gobbldegook, bafflegab.

today's roget

967.13 censure, reprehend, blame, reproach, impugn, condemn, damn, denounce, decry, cry down, exclaim/declaim/inveigh against, cry shame upon, reprobate, animadvert on or upon, cast a slur upon, throw a stone at. 14. criticize, judge, pan, knock, slam, hit, rap. 15. find fault, pick holes, pick a hole in one's coat, cut up, pick/pull/tear apart, pick/pull/tear to pieces, carp, cavil. 16. nag, carp at, fuss at, yap at, woof at (+), pick at, pester, henpeck, pick on. 17. reprove, rebuke, reprimand, reprehend, scold, chide, admonish, upbraid, exprobate, objurgate, have words with, lecture, read a lesson to, correct, rap on the knuckles, take to task, call to account, bring to book, call on the carpet, read the riot act, take up, take down. 18. call down, dress down, speak or talk to, tell off, tell a thing or two, give a piece/bit of one's mind, rake/haul over the coals, give it to, trim, come down on , jump on, jump down one's throat. 19. bawl out, chew out, cuss out, jack up, sit on, lambaste, give a going-over, tell where to get off, give what-for, give jesse, give the deuce/devil, give hell, hail Columbia (seriously?). 20. berate, rate, betongue, jaw, clapper-claw, tongue-lash, give a lick with the rough side of the tongue, rail at, rag, thunder or fulminate against, blow up, rave against, yell at, bark or yeall at, revile, abuse, vituperate, load with reproaches. 21. attack, asssail, castigate, flay, lash, slash, excoriate, scarify, scathe, roast, scorch, blister, trounce.

today's roget

725
failure, "lame and impotent conclusion [shakespeare], bankruptcy, flop, floperoo, bust, frost, fizzle, lemon, washout, turkey, bomb, dull thud, total loss, collapse, crash, smash, comedown, breakdown, fall, pratfall, stumble, tumble, cropper, nose dive, tailspin, misfire, wet squib, dud, fiasco, botch, bungle, hash, mess, foozle, bollix, flunk, washout.

today's roget

1019.
hell, hades, perdition, damnation, pandemonium, inferno, the pit, nether world, underworld, infernal region, abode of the damned, place of torment, the lake of fire and brimstone, the fire that never shall be quenched, orcus, tartarus, pit of acheron, hel, niflhel, sheol, gehenna, tophet, abaddon, naraka, jahannan, avichith.

today's roget

691
1. destruction, ruin, ruination, blue ruin [slang], perdition; wreck, wrack, rack, wrack or rack and ruin; ballyhack, bullywack, bullywrack [all slang]; devastation, ravage, havoc, desolation, waste, consumption; decimation. 4. debacle; cataclysm, catastrophe; breakdown,collapse; crash, smash, smashup, crack-up [coll.]; wreck, shipwreck [fig.]. 5. demolition, demolishment; dismantlement, disassembly; mangling. 6. extinction, extermination, elimination, eradication, extirpation, annihilation, extinguishment; abolition, liquidation; purge. 7. obliteration, erasure, effacement, expunction; delection.

today's roget

905.3
sycophant, toady, toad, toadeater, footlicker, bootlick or bootlicker [slang, US], lickspit, lickspittle,  truckler,  fawner, courtier, kowtower, groveler, reptile, backslapper, back-scratcher, clawback [dial. Eng], handshaker; apple-polisher, yes man [all slang, UD]; fllunky, lackey, stooge [slang], spaniel, jackal, ; snob, tufthunter, timeserver; Sir Pertinax MacSycophant.
4. parasite, sucker [slang], barnacle, leech; sponger, sponge [coll.], free loader [slang, US], small-feast; beat, dead beat [both slang].