Word of The Year

Every year, Merriam-Webster's Dictionary selects a word of the year. The selection is determined by what word has been searched for most frequently on the company's web site. Since the humans who make up society seem to be more stupid with each generation, that's a lot of searches to go through. The word of the year usually reflects a trendy view of the anxieties of the moment. No, that doesn't mean this year's word of the year is the left wing's favorite "racist". This year it's that word so often misused by less than educated athletes or protesters. The word of the year for 2016 is "surreal".

Merriam-Webster defines surreal as "marked by the intense irrational reality of a dream."  This means it is misused more often than not. To describe a terrorists attack, for example, as surreal is bizarre, given that terrorists attacks are almost the norm today and not unlikely or dreamy events. But then, words often change with misuse. They can be redefined into something that barely resembles their former meaning. That English words change so often is both annoying and a reflection of how the English language is clever enough to adapt to its users.

According to Merriam-Webster, "surreal" was researched multiple times throughout the year by the less than literate out there. The most frequent occasions for the search were after the terror attack in Brussels in March, after the coup attempt in Turkey over the summer,  after the terrorist attack in Nice, and, of course, on November 9, after the  election of Donald Trump as president of the United States of America. Hillary Clinton and her brood frequently call Trump's election "surreal". In fact, with a lousy candidate and corrupt political party she represents, I would call the Trump election "logical".

Webster said the choice of surreal wasn't so ..well...surreal (I am getting in the mood for using that word) after all. It lists nine other words that people almost Googled as much in 2016. They include:

1) Revenant - (which is a ghost like corpse that terrorizes the living) was the name of an Oscar winning movie staring the over exposed and over hyped Leonardo DiCaprio. Naturally his fans wanted to know what the word meant.
2) Icon- When Prince died the media and fans couldn't call him an "icon" enough. A religious work of art that is highly cherished is an icon. Prince was never that.
3) In Omnia Paratus- The translation to English is "Ready for all things". This became a trendy phrase in 2016 that almost no one who used it fully understood.
4) Bigly-Thank Trump for this nonsense word. He sometimes  pronounces the two words, big and league, together so that they sound like “bigly” when he says them.
5) Deplorable- The deplorable  Hillary Clinton was responsible for the many searches for “deplorable,” when in a campaign speech she said half of Trump’s supporters were deplorable.
6) Irregardless- Not a real word, but rather a corruption of the real word "regardless' We can thank the air headed news commentators continual use of it today for making it such a searched word in 2016.
7) Assumpsit- I had never heard of this one until reading about the Webster word of the year. It means "an action to recover damages for breach of a contract." With more and more of us suing each other for less and less, it makes sense people would Google this one so much in 2106.
8) Faute de Mieux- Another trendy foreign phrase this year meaning  "lack of something better or more desirable". In this age of materialism and desire for a better electronic device to rot our brains, I guess wasting your life with last year's cell is a Faute de Mieux.
9) Feckless- What Barrack Obama's opponents call him. Well, they have a point. Obama is an empty suit of sort, weak and full of empty words.

If all these words and the misuse or overuse of them bothers you, relax. They will soon quickly disappear from use or interest, only to be quickly replaced with more nonsense in 2017. After all, those words are all too "surreal" for us anyway.....

Death During The Holidays

I read something in my local newspaper that is interesting because it's a little mysterious why.  The article said that in the United States you're more likely to die of natural causes from Dec. 25 through New Year's Day than at any other time of the year. Further, there isn't a reason that clearly explains it. According to studies using Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this holds true for all ages except for children and for numerous conditions including heart disease, respiratory problems and cancer. Why are we dropping like flies during what should be the happiest time of the year?

The best guesses why so far include peculation from in-law stress during the holidays (surely you have or had a relative that brings on high blood pressure or a stroke when he arrives at your home for Christmas dinner) to the excesses of eating all that fruitcake and eggnog. But the doctors and researcher opinion is the weather is killing. The colder it is, the more vulnerable people's bodies might be to having a complication from a heart attack, flu or other ailment that they can't recover from. Maybe....because according to a study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association on Thursday, the rise in deaths during the holidays doesn't appear to have anything to do with the cold winter months. Besides, the global warming nuts say it isn't cold anymore.

Some of those who poo poo those reasons for the increased deaths suggest the possibility of reduced staffing at medical facilities or even that patients hold back on seeking medical care during the season as being factors causing the jump in deaths.  Too, they say that  it could be that terminally ill patients may be hanging on to spend the holiday with their loved ones and then feel ready to let go and say good bye. However, I suspect they aren't hanging on to get the last piece of fruitcake and eggnog.

Many people suffer loneliness, disappointment, disillusionment or conflict during the Christmas holidays. That could be a powerful impetus for adverse health outcomes. The holidays bring changes in routine and schedules including late nights, more work sleep and other non routine out of ordinary events.  Maybe the unrealistic expectations of the holidays are too much to take. What do you think?

PC Doll World

There are dolls with darker skin and hazel eyes. Some have freckles; others have black skin, curly hair or straight. I counted 40 different dolls with varying skin tones and permutations of hair texture. And what if your daughter has a disability? Or a food allergy? You can purchase hearing aids, allergy free lunches, diabetes kits, wheelchairs, and dolly crutches for your doll. Mattel has also stepped up to the plate with its bald dolls, for cancer sufferers. It also offers, among other ethnic and occupational variations, an African American nurse doll, and a black eye doctor doll. (What Mattel, she’s not smart enough to be a surgeon? Is it because she’s black? How non PC of you.)

The PC doll trend is driven by social media movements which pressure companies to manufacture racially and culturally sensitive merchandise. Lego’s latest doll called 'Hipster Dad' is a bearded, stay-at-home daddy, who pushes a stroller next to his business-suit-attired wife. It's the absurd manifestation of PC stupidity in that it promotes that as the norm. Yep! In case you haven't noticed, those plastic dolls that little girls love so much have become politically correct figures. Those crazy liberal diversity types have passed on their guilt about what they see as a "racist" or "not diverse enough" doll world to children. Is their really a need for plastic dolls to be politically correct? What does all this doll and toy conformity to "diversity" add up to? At least in its more exaggerated form, it represents another intrusion by the PC police to politicize every aspect of our lives, even to propagandize small children about stereotypes the PC crowd has about what humans should be and how they should act.

One one hand it's nice that a child with cancer can have a doll that looks like her, and ethnic dolls might help some children build self esteem. But that is a special niche doll. Today's dolls are all "diverse' and conform to PC ers ideas of what is right and wrong. In the past dolls have always been politically incorrect manifestations of childhood. They were not meant to teach the values that PC people like and most of us think are extreme. Sigmund Freud called them “uncanny” because they are a way for children to process fears and let their imaginations bubble up from the unconscious. Take that, left wing crazies!

When my daughter played with her dolls I noticed that the dolls inspired her imagination and brought about feelings not quite understood or resolved. They were blank slates, not politically correct lessons, that my daughter could mold into her own world view. Kids should not be indoctrinated with toys. They should use toys as a way of discovering their values and judging the values of the world. Today, the PC world and its slave, corporations fearing to dissent from PC orders, promotes the culture of hatred toward the "white world" and an anti imagination in kids. Dolls are now reflecting PC party line. Can't the left wait until our children are older to start brain washing them about the PC ideal? Small kids are not yet developed enough to recognize the brain washing and are damaged greatly by it.

Dolls should be made for ever ethnic group, religion etc. But  promoting an agenda of diversity in every doll is just a crime against our kids imagination

Christmas Morning TV

Christmas fell on a Sunday this year. And so it was a day of inactivity personified.  Just about every business was closed.  Even Wal mart takes a vacation on Christmas Sunday. So for those of us who are tired of reading or listening to music (too those Christmas songs make one tone deaf and weary) and unwilling or uninterested in a Christmas walk or activity outside, what is there to do? When your friends and acquaintances and the crazy relatives have already departed your home with tummies full of Christmas goodies you fed them, what does one do on a Sunday Christmas morning?

TV!  Ah, the bastion of the brain dead and lazy can be useful in those times. So I turned on the idiot box to see what was on view at 10:00 am Christmas Sunday.  Wouldn't you know it. The set was tuned to a station that was airing "Jewel's Christmas Homecoming". Oh my..... I had forgotten about Jewel. Well, I am glad she is alive and found a slot for  possibly another 5 minutes of fame. She was singing one of those hip, modern Christmas songs that make me snarl like Scrooge. How dare Jewel defile Christmas music with that pop pabulum! I quickly looked at the channel guide the cable company provides to find what else was being aired.

It was a B list of Christmas shows that probably couldn't sell itself to TV networks in prime time Christmas airing. That would be three weeks to one week before Christmas Day when sponsors want to air Christmas shows that viewers will see. This would subject the viewers to those Christmas sale ads that sponsors want them to see.  That's probably why the '2012 Holiday Baking Championship' was airing  four years late on Christmas morning. Gee, those Christmas sweets must be stale by now. I skipped that one.  And why was Dolly Parton doing her 'Country Christmas' special on Christmas morning. Celebrities I never heard of filled the airwaves, particularly in re-runs. Why, the long deceased John Denver and and Andy Williams had Christmas specials from more than 25 years ago airing at 10 am on this Christmas 2016 . I paused and ruminated how much I dislike most of television, even on non religious days. I asked myself, "There must be more than this"? (people do talk to themselves after being hit straight on with 'Jewel's Homecoming'. I swear that I am not yet crazy.)

Copying the character from Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner "I bite my wrist, I sucked my blood and cried"...Show me something watch able.  Alas! I' found a flurry of those old religious movies, the kind that are not made any more because the mainstream PV view has been conscripted by atheist and humanist leftists who find any reference to Christianity or other religious belief to be a sacrilege. What fun those old films were. 'The Greatest Story Ever Told' was one on Christmas morning. It was a big budget, fanciful, perhaps silly but fascinating, view of Jesus Christ that is so PC now that it and the other great pro Christianity films can only find a sponsor in the days surrounding Christmas and Easter. I found 'The Nativity Story' too and watched a couple of minutes to relieve my guilt at not being a model of religiosity.

Wow! Next, I stumbled onto the classic 'Santa Claus Captures the Martians'. But I would prefer Santa do something more meaningful than fighting an army from invading Mars, instead perhaps, Santa could capture and destroy all the cell phones in existence. That's it! Restore civilization, Santa. It's my annual Christmas wish. I decided to skip that Martian battle. Another station was showing the classic 50's 'A Christmas Carol', and another had Bing Crosby in 'Holiday Inn', and still another was showing 'It's a Wonderful Life'.  'Miracle on 34th Street' and 'Elf'' were on too.
By then my head was spinning amidst all that holiday TV merriment.  I was beginning to believe I was a member of the Light Brigade in Tennyson's poem, "Into the valley of death" rode this bored and weary Sunday Christmas denizen.  I hallucinated  and wondered whether Santa really existed. TV  can do that to we believers.

But not all was lost! The channel scanning made me so tired I turned off the TV and engaged in my best Christmas activity of all. I took a nap and dreamed of Monday to come.

Eggnog

It's Christmas season and I will discuss one of the hated and loved foods of the holiday. Relax! I'm not talking about fruitcake (which I happen  to love), but rather the even more mysterious food- eggnog.  Eggnog in pure liquid drinkable form has a myriad of  ingredients  including : milk; cream; sugar; some sort of an alcohol like rum, brandy, vodka, cognac, or whiskey; whipped raw eggs; and sometimes nutmeg, cinnamon, or other spices. Today eggnog  a person can buy in the store often excludes the alcoholic ingredient, traditionally this was always included and was half the point of eggnog. It also leaves out raw eggs. Sigh! I am not sure of the point if you leave out the defining ingredients.

I fall in the category of hating to drink eggnog, but loving to bake with it. I make a great eggnog cake that wows people when I don't tell them I used plenty of eggnog in both the cake and the icing. I also make eggnog cookies too, a distinctively different taste that few dislike. Raw eggnog itself is unappealing to me, even nauseating.  For me drinking eggnog would be like eating a stick of butter. Both are great as ingredients but overpowering a when eating alone.

It isn't known exactly who was the first make and drink, but eggnog seems to have originated in Europe around the 17th century, very possibly in England. It was generally only drunk by the extremely wealthy due to the need for eggs and milk which were a rarity for commoners in Europe at the time. People of the day liked to mix alcohol with their dairy, so it's logical that they created eggnog to drink. But in our current day during the Christmas holidays, eggnog suddenly shows up on supermarket shelves (I bought a more pure version the other day to use in my eggnog cake I will make before Christmas) and as a new offering in coffee shops. 

But why drink eggnog at this time of year? It's because it isn't sold after the holidays. Makers of it know the demand falls dramatically and stop producing it after January 1st. You can make it yourself, but why do it after the holidays when the thirst for it has ended. Or better not....

Gift Cards

The gift card dilemma arises every Christmas season. That is, is giving someone a gift card a great idea or an act of rudeness and insensitivity. I admit up front that i like gift cards, and I'll give my reason below. But here is what anti gift card writer in my newspaper wrote about gift card as presents.  "In some ways, gift cards are the equivalent of looking under the Christmas tree to find that your significant other got you socks. Sure, you need socks, some of us maybe even want them, but for the majority of gift receivers, a gift giver taking the lazy option often makes the actual gift less special."

On the other hand, in opposition to that view, I see gift cards as the ultimate effort gift because most of use who resort to an occasional gift card do so after exhausting efforts to find some material product or service the receiver wants. That's not easy to do in this age of garish consumption where the idea gift is popular for five minutes before being replaced with the next most popular (usually some crazy electronic or electronic related gift).

Giving a gift card is saying, "I tried hard to find something I was sure you wanted or didn't already have. I spent hours searching but could not. Here is a gift card because you can better search for what you want. If this gift card is not appropriate for you, tell me and I shall never give you another one of those." And no one has ever dissented about getting the gift card I have given them...ever. In fact most seem happier to have a gift card than some random gift chosen on a wing and a prayer. Getting gift cards is like receiving money. Who could object to that?

Gift cards don't say, "I don't know you that well" or "I don't care about you that much." They say, I am not as capable as you of knowing what gift would be best for you. I care or I wouldn't have given you this gift card ." But here is an odd statistic for Americans at Christmas time. According to Bankrate, while more than 50% of gift givers plan to give gift cards this holiday season, only 27% of people prefer to get them. Explain that one? Maybe it is in line with the fact that giving a gift is avery difficult task for most of us. And perhaps, we should be happy with anything given to us. But then, people today do like to whine and protest.

What do you think? Is giving a gift card a personal insult, an admission you don't know or care enough about the person to select a tangible gift? Or is it the best way to give in this age of endless and changing "junk" from which to select a gift?

What Your Christmas Tree Says About You

In this age of superficiality and belief in what we want to be true rather than what is truth, comes a crazy analysis of why a person puts up  particular  Christmas tree and why it is decorated a particular way. Yep! It's time to analyze why you put ups that orange Christmas tree, or whatever tree it is you erected. Hmmm Does your Christmas tree reveal your personality and character? After perusing the web and studying this pop psychology subject here is what I found about the subject.

* Real or fake tree-  Real tree people are traditionalists who like rituals. But the artificial tree users differ. Whether you pick the artificial tree because you don't like the mess of pine needles, or because you don't like chopping down live trees, your choice points to you being extremely practical in nature. It makes much more sense to you to invest in something that will last year after year, showing that you are a long term planner.
Or, maybe you find a sale on a cheap fake tree and can convince your family that you are saving the planet by not chopping down a real one.

*Too many lights on the tree- You are outgoing, colorful, and bold. Unafraid to let your true light shine, you think of your tree just as you think of your personality, big, bright, and bold. You are a performer at heart, and definitely don't shy away from being the center of attention. Your outgoing nature makes you fun to be around, and your ability to tell a great story or joke makes you fun at holiday parties.
Or, you are an exhibitionist (probably arrested more than once for indecent exposure) and probably have too many lights accumulated at those after Christmas light sales. Because your IQ is so low, you lack the awareness that too many lights are not good. But in the end, the problem will be solved when a power surge of those lights electrocutes you.

*Perfectly shaped tree- you are: deliberate, structured, and visual. As someone who likes things to be perfect, you rely on your strong visual aesthetic. You enjoy structure, and probably thrive in environments where order is needed. You also don't make decisions lightly, choosing each word, action, or decoration extremely carefully.
Or, your neatness drives everyone crazy. Even your family wants to send you to a shrink. You are so compulsive about neatness and perfection  you wash the dishes WHILE you are eating dinner. Rumors are several members of your family are looking for a Mafia hit man to end your existence.

*The tree is too big to fit-  You are ambitious and unafraid. When picking out a tree, you are never worried that it will be too big. Your ambitious personality reassures you that you can, in fact, make it work. It obviously can't, but you are the one who wears shoes two sizes too small and denies they don't fit. You like to dream big, never afraid of fail.  You don’t worry about failure because you don’t think of your mistakes as failures. Your extra big Christmas tree is simply an expression of your grandiose nature.
Or, you are too stupid to measure the tree before buying it and bringing it home. This may be indicative of the fact that you had to repeat 3rd grade twice. You solution to making the too big tree fit is to cut a hole in the living room ceiling to accommodate it. After that suggestion, you wife filed for divorce and your kids ran away from home.

* Real or artificial tree- Real tree users are grounded in tradition and like the natural. But fake tree users are said to be practical, planner, and organized. You pick the artificial tree because you don’t like the mess of pine needles, or because you don’t like chopping down live trees. Your choice points to you being extremely practical in nature. It makes much more sense to you to invest in something that will last year after year, showing that you are a long term planner.
Or, you got a great deal on a cheap and tacky artificial tree at that after Christmas sale last year.  Putting up that monstrosity may be an eyesore, but you falsely claim that you are "saving the planet" by not using a real one. No one believes you , but given your artificial nature you don't care.

*You put a star on top of the tree- If you top the tree with one of those aluminum stars you are moral, leader, and strong. As a person who likes a star on top of the tree, you place a large amount of stock in destiny and following your guiding star. You have a strong belief system, and you often look for ‘signs’ around you to point you in the right direction. Many times, you think of yourself as a guiding star, stepping up to take a strong leadership role. You also have a strong moral compass that you use in making important life decisions.
Or, you inherited grandma's star tree topper. It beats finding and paying for a new one. The only signs you see are that getting rid of the tacky grandma star would mean an expensive make over for the rest of the tree. You prefer to use the same deteriorating decorations every year.

*You put an angel on top of the tree- If you instead put an angel as your tree topper you are said to be spiritual, kind, and charitable. Putting an angel atop your tree shows that you have a strong spiritual side, and that you aren't afraid to let the world know. You are a kind soul, who knows how to take care of others and make them feel special. People will often turn to you in times of need. They know you have a charitable heart, and that you will be there to support them.
Or, you are a phony, an atheist who covers all bases by putting that star on top to fool the religious types who visit your home and see your tree. Behind your back others sneer at your hypocrisy and swear that your last donation to charity was that mangled penny you found  in the street in 1970  and tossed into a Salvation Army donation pail.

*Handmade ornaments and decorations for the tree-  You are creative. If your Christmas tree is full of homemade ornaments, it shows that you aren't afraid to reveal your creative side to the world. Your life is an open book, and people flock to you for honest opinions and honest answers. They also know that you will keep an open mind at all times. You are also quite in touch with nature and your environment, making practical use of the things around you.
Or, you are a cheapskate. Instead of buying nice ornaments and decorations, you save a few dollars by organizing a slave ornament making camp each fall among your spouse, grandparents and children, thereby ruining the spirit of Christmas for all.

May your Christmas tree be whatever you want it to be this year....