Today’s guest blogger is Brian O’Nolan, who from 1939 until his death in 1966 commanded a satiric weekly column for The Irish Times called “Cruiskeen Lawn.” Under the pen name…

When, in a last minute effort to become re-elected, a political figure happens upon a bit of "lucky coincidence."

News from October 31: We found Osama!

… although we really had his ass in a cell under the Pentagon the last three years.

I appreciate Josh Gunn’s latest words on the NCA Boycott, so much so I’m linking directly to them.

I’ve been relatively quiet about this issue because it IS political and because CRITNET has covered almost every perspective one could take on the NCA boycott issue.

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A Republican friend sent me this piece from Time magazine that argues for letting “the poorly managed, overly risk-taking financial institutions fail!”

This friend forwarded this along and compared the current discussion about the bailout to discussions about The Patriot Act. That is, if you are against the bailout, you hate America and you want the economy to collapse. I think this is exactly what is happening, and as much as I don’t like the reasons for dissent (”you’re being partisan”…”no, YOU’RE being partisan”) I’m happy to see dissent. I don’t know what the answer is, and I’m uncomfortable with the “let them fail” rhetoric because it seems to oversimplify things. What about the collateral damage? What about the people that will suffer because of the failure of such banks…people who didn’t necessarily take any risks or make any bad decisions?

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t’s a little late to try to circulate this ad (deadline is tomorrow), but I’m going to do it anyway. CCCC is looking for a web editor:

The Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) is seeking applications from CCCC members for a new position as CCCC Web Editor (to be distinguished from CCC Online Archivist). The CCCC Web Editor’s term will be three years (non-renewable) beginning as soon as possible after the application deadline and ending in December of 2011. This is a volunteer position.

Actual programming or Web building is not required. Instead, the CCCC Web Editor will have the responsibility of orchestrating uses of new Web building structures made available in the coming months (e.g., blogs, Wikis, Face Book and so on), moderating new community spaces, publishing relevant information, and working with NCTE/CCCC to develop a stronger Website with new features. We anticipate that after the initial restructuring period, no more than 5 to 10 hours per month will be required of the Web Editor’s time.

Persons interested in applying for the CCCC Web Editor position should send a cover letter of application to be received no later than October 1, 2008. The applicant letter should be accompanied by the applicant’s CV, one sample of published writing, and a one-page statement of the applicant’s vision for transforming the CCCC Website into an active community space. Two reference letters from CCCC members attesting to the applicant’s qualifications can be sent under separate cover. Please do not send books, monographs, or other materials that cannot be easily copied for the Search Committee.

Applications should be mailed to Kristen Suchor, CCCC Web Editor Search Committee, NCTE, 1111 W. Kenyon Road, Urbana, Illinois 61801-1096; faxed to (217) 328-0977; or emailed to cccc@ncte.org.

I originally intended to post this as a “be part of the solution” exhortation, as several of us have expressed criticism of how CCCC has used the web in the past. For example, when they started a blog, some of us weren’t impressed. I took a look at the CCCC blog right before writing this post, though, and I was very impressed. The blog had lain fallow throughout late 2006, all of 2007, and the first half of 2008, but now Joyce Middleton has started a series of posts titled Conversations on Diversity. She’s featuring essay-length posts by — so far — Victor Villanueva, Krista Ratcliffe, Malea Powell, Paul Kei Matsuda, Haivan Hoang, Jonathan Alexander, and Mike Rose. Check it out; I will very likely be assigning this series of posts in my pedagogy classes.

Cross-posted at CultureCat.

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Military term, ‘Fucking New Guy’ usually someone just out of training or just transfered into the unit/AO, who either hasn’t proved his worth or doesn’t know how to operate properly due to lack of experiance.

"Damnit, nearly everyone here is an FNG, we’ll be wiped out on the next op"

“I don’t want to talk grammar,” Liza says in George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion. “I want to talk like a lady.”

Eliza Doolittle (you might know her from the musical version,…

A people traffic jam that occurrs in subway tunnels and bus stations. Caused by inconsiderate workaholics walking too slow while their noses are glued to their Blackberry device.

I was late for work because there was a Blackberry Jam getting out of the A train.

“We should write as we dream; we should even try and write, we should all do it for ourselves, it’s very healthy, because it’s the only place where we never lie. At night we don’t lie. Now if we think that our whole lives are built on lying — they are strange buildings — we should try and write as our dreams teach us; shamelessly, fearlessly, and by facing what is inside every human being — sheer violence, disgust, terror, shit, invention, poetry. In our dreams we are criminals; we kill, and we kill with a lot of enjoyment.

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A person who is obsessed with name brand clothing. See label whore.

Nicole always flaunts the latest clothing. She is such a tag hag.

Did Piggyback originally have anything to do with pigs?

A long-dead word, Gnathonic, refers to a sycophant or toady.

It was odd watching this with public address people in an auditorium. My opinion? It was a draw, which is probably a net plus for Obama. But, frankly, again McCain made emotional connections better, and, Barack, Americans don’t *care* that no one else in the world respects us any more. What do you readers think? My punditry skills are limited with these things. I can make more sense of Supreme Court politics.

I attended the first biennial public address conference at the University of Wisconsin in 1988. My oldest son Nick was here in utero with Miriam (her last academic conference attendance ever). The surroundings then were somewhat squalid (especially the university housing), and State Street was still pleasantly hippie-ish. That conference was still about public address finding its way after some years in the doldrums, with a heavy focus on close reading of single texts and no little bit of theory-bashing.

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what are we fighting for?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keating_Five

Urinate (chiefly British)

"I’m dying for a slash, but there’s a line for the bog."

We kick off our fall campaign to cut the clutter in our writing with these eight common redundancies:

Most problems are defused before they become an acute crisis.
Crisis means “a crucial…

What you say to a person when you have been one-upped by said person in an argument or debate of some sort. Pretty much just lets you try to get the last word in when you have no other retort.

Person A: "Oh man! We got jumped by like twelve guys and kicked all their asses!"

Person B: "Actually there were three; Steve McPeterson, Dave Ellis, and that guy that works the Wendy’s drive-thru."

Person A: "Well, you forgot Poland."

What you say to a person when you have been one-upped by said person in an argument or debate of some sort. Pretty much just lets you try to get the last word in when you have no other retort.

Person A: "Oh man! We got jumped by like twelve guys and kicked all their asses!"

Person B: "Actually there were three; Steve McPeterson, Dave Ellis, and that guy that works the Wendy’s drive-thru."

Person A: "Well, you forgot Poland."

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/9/24/naomi_klein_now_is_the_time

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95007340

give a listen. maybe npr news is “fluff” after all.

btw hope someone blogs/liveblogs the public address conference. i have to be out of the u.s. early in october — and want to be — so i couldn’t be in madlysung this week. luff to the assembled. gunns to josh. a fine psu undergrad, kelly, will be in madison, thanks to the glorious and multitalented jessica sheffield.

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Abbr. GB. One billion dollars. An insane amount of money

Starbucks earned 77 Gigabucks last year.

Abbr. GB. One billion dollars. An insane amount of money

Starbucks earned 77 Gigabucks last year.

I probably don’t have to tell you that September 24 is National Punctuation Day. For weeks we’ve been gathering dashes, calling up old commas, and hiding gaily wrapped colons where…

Meanwhile, from the Nation, a spam email you’ll want to read:

Dear American:
I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.
I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.

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Life imitates South Park, as usual:

[In the gnome's cave]
Gnome 1: This is where all our work is done.
Kyle: So what are you gonna do with all these underpants you steal?
Gnome 1: Collecting underpants is just phase one. Phase one: collect underpants.
Kyle: So what’s phase two?
[Silence]
Gnome 1: Hey, what’s phase two?!
Gnome 2: Phase one: we collect underpants.
Gnome 1: Ya, ya, ya. But what about phase two?
[Silence]
Gnome 2: Well, phase three is profit. Get it?
Stan: I don’t get it.

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Lawrence Lessig provides evidence (and evidence, and evidence) that Palin would be the least experienced (at best, the third least experienced) VP ever.

A political pundit or commentator who is unable to think for her/himself.

Fox News uses the opinions of politiclones to bolster support for the Bush Administration.

A political pundit or commentator who is unable to think for her/himself.

Fox News uses the opinions of politiclones to bolster support for the Bush Administration.

The Computer Connection, a project of the CCCC Committee on Computers in Composition (7Cs), seeks submissions for short presentations and workshops to be delivered at the Conference on College Composition and Communication in San Francisco, CA, March 11-14, 2009. The CC presentations will be offered during sessions A-D on Thursday, March 12, and sessions F-H on the morning of Friday, March 13.

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a double handed high five, reserved for especially awesome scenarios.

High five: Dude, you screwed the head cheerleader!

High ten: Dude, you screwed the entire cheerleading team!

a double handed high five, reserved for especially awesome scenarios.

High five: Dude, you screwed the head cheerleader!

High ten: Dude, you screwed the entire cheerleading team!

If you need a break today…

Join the RSA Facebook group.

Link via Blogos

Zizek on Obama’s campaign rhetoric: “When Obama talks about the ‘audacity to hope,’ about ‘a change we can believe in,’ he is using a rhetoric of change that lacks specific content: To hope for what? To change what?”

Gratitude and love to Josh Gunn for sending this one our way.

Van Morrison’s most recent CD is so worth your time.
Here’s a tasty taste.

“No wavelength
no mileage
no current currency….”

Hard to decide which track to share….

Let’s hope this country’s universities and colleges aren’t hoodwinked by the latest neo-con strategies to bootstrap undergraduate curriculum with conservative values. This NYT piece has the scoop…”The initiatives are only political insofar as they ‘work against the thrust of programs and courses in gender, race and class studies, and postmodernism in general’.” UGH…shades of the E306 flap at UT.

From The Economist to the Bangkok Post, last week’s most popular headline was “Nightmare on Wall Street.” Journalists talked of “carnage,” “panic,” and “doom.” A few even dared to whisper…

The peak of office employee stress levels which ultimately starts with the screaming of vulgar language within the workplace. It can often times lead to assaulting fellow employees, abusing office equipment and/or stealing of company property, abusing sick days and ultimately poor production at work. A possible side effect is that the employee continues to take out his or her rage at their residence in the form of kicking small animals and drinking heavily.

With my pending at work and the amount of people calling me each day I’m on the brink of desk rage and one day I’m going to break and take it out on that weird guy that sits next to me.

The peak of office employee stress levels which ultimately starts with the screaming of vulgar language within the workplace. It can often times lead to assaulting fellow employees, abusing office equipment and/or stealing of company property, abusing sick days and ultimately poor production at work. A possible side effect is that the employee continues to take out his or her rage at their residence in the form of kicking small animals and drinking heavily.

With my pending at work and the amount of people calling me each day I’m on the brink of desk rage and one day I’m going to break and take it out on that weird guy that sits next to me.

Adam Thierer in Technology Liberation Front has a nice overview of the recent raft of books on the internet. Thierer presents a schema grouping optimists and pessimists, and books by their beliefs/themes.

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Sanitized replacement for "Fuck" used on "Battlestar Galactica"

"Aw frack and feldercarb!!!"

Sanitized replacement for "Fuck" used on "Battlestar Galactica"

"Aw frack and feldercarb!!!"

What is the origin of the strange phrase Bless your cotton socks?

The term Geo-engineering is becoming more widely known and has also shifted its meaning.

A truly odd word, Mooreeffoc, has never been used by anybody except to comment on it.

A term used to describe an electric guitar that is being played without an amplifier, or "unplugged." It’s still an electric guitar, but without the distortion and volume that the amp provides it sounds more like an acoustic.

Lenny’s neighbors called the cops to complain about his late night guitar solos, so now he has to go elecoustic.

A term used to describe an electric guitar that is being played without an amplifier, or "unplugged." It’s still an electric guitar, but without the distortion and volume that the amp provides it sounds more like an acoustic.

Lenny’s neighbors called the cops to complain about his late night guitar solos, so now he has to go elecoustic.

Call For Essays

Metamorphosis: The Effects of Professional Development on Graduate Students

Editors: Andréa Davis and Suzanne Webb

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An amazing collapse of Palin’s approval ratings in just a week. Here’s a question for discussion (related to the fact that I’m doing a paper on religion and the republic at Madison next week): Does Palin represent the last gasp of the “Christianists” (as Andrew Sullivan calls them–I’d prefer Christo-fascists, personally) in national politics, doomed to falter against the inevitable forces of secularization, or will they possess significant strength (at least as part of a coalition) for some time?

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So there you are, crouched over the keyboard with a topic and a deadline–and not a blessed thought in your head. You’ve already raided the fridge, checked your email (twice),…

the child of a gay couple. plain and simple.

"Have you had the chance to see Dan & Terry’s gaybie? He is absolutely fabulous and cute as a button!"

Other People’s Money

Man, this cellie bill is killin me, I gotta get some OPM.

Mark Crispin Miller explains the central role of Governor Palin in the vote fraud strategy.

fed hugs aig. 85 bil of ourbucks. film at eleven. over and over. jason compson where are you now? listening to the radio??

phobos was a god.

maybe “the investing public” isn’t an oxymoron after all.

sleep tight.

You don’t have to be a budding novelist to benefit from some of the advice offered by professional writers. Consider, for example, Ernest Hemingway’s famous iceberg theory of prose, which…

A demand made on internet forums to post images of a currently discussed topic. A lack of images is tantamount to a lack of proof; hence the consequence is "shens" or shenanigans. See pics or stfu

Roughly translated, it means "show images of said topic or I will consider your claim to be false"

Cantankerously: OMFG Ellen Degeneres was found dead, drowned.

Catmando: Pics or shens.

Here. I’m “Bigger Channel.”

I borrowed a copy of Programmers at Work and found some pretty good comments in there from the Bill Gates interview. It’s harder than heck to get a copy of this book–I ILL’ed it, and then they only let me keep it for a week. But here’s the quotations. These are from either from 1986 or 1989; my guess is the interview was closer to the former.

Is studying computer science the best way to prepare to be a programmer?

Gates: No, the best way to prepare is to write programs, and to study great programs that other people have written. In my case, I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and I fished out listings of their operating system.

You’ve got to be willing to read other people’s code, then write your own, then have other people review your code. You’ve got to want to be in this incredible feedback loop where you get the world-class people to tell you what you’re doing wrong.

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An acronym for "First Lady I’d Rim Job", and a reference to Hilary Clinton. Made famous by the 9/13/2008 opening skit of Saturday Night Live dialog:

Tina Fey as Sarah Palin: "Don’t refer to me as a ‘MILF.’"

Via Phaedra Pezzullo’s Facebook page on the Manchester/NCA boycott, here are some alternatives:

* Embassy Suites San Diego Bay – Downtown
601 Pacific Highway, San Diego, California, United States 92101
Tel: 1-619-239-2400 Fax: 1-619-239-1520
- 1-2 blocks from the Manchester Grand Hyatt
Politics: no objections known. Recommended: by a local.
http://embassysuites1.hilton.com/en_US/es/hotel/SANDNES-Embassy-Suites-S…

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Things could be worse. More on the Canadian election here.

“Cut out all these exclamation points,” F. Scott Fitzgerald once advised a young author. “An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.”

Since its first appearance in the latter…

someone who purchases at locations for an underlying purpose of being seen. Buying the label not the look.

Someone who walks around with a Starbucks cup; Someone wearing a shirt with a very obvious logo (i.e.: ENYCE)

Mark is such a conspicuous consumer, look at his shirt.

Here.

The act of putting on lipstick suggestively;

The oral equivalent of a striptease.

Diane was giving me a liptease from across the room, so I went over and asked her out.

One of the most insightful accounts I’ve ever read of why people vote Republican. (Hat tip to Jonathan Jones.) “The Democrats could close much of the gap if they simply learned to see society not just as a collection of individuals—each with a panoply of rights–but as an entity in itself, an entity that needs some tending and caring. Our national motto is e pluribus unum (”from many, one”).

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Colin and some others are raising the question of 4C’s panel selection criteria. One point Colin makes is that 4C’s has become more inclusive, and that this lends itself to a certain kind of proposal:

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A typically British word, Bespoke, puzzles an American reader.

The newish term Virosphere reflects the increasing importance given by scientists to the humble virus.

A rare word for hunger, Esurience is sometimes used figuratively to mean greed.

Does anyone know of any scholarly literature connecting the history of rhetoric with the composition of treaties? I assume there’s some connection with ars dictaminis, but I’m not having much luck finding any sources, other than the online Journal of Diplomatic Language.

A policy of preemptive strike, as proposed by President George W. Bush.

"My pants weren’t dirty yet, but I Bush Doctrined them and washed them anyway."

"If that asshat so much as looks at me again, I’m going to Bush Doctrine his face into the ground."

Bryan-College Station appears to be in the path of the hurricane. There is apparently no gas to be had here, either. And my dogs are freaking out. . . . I recommend Kim Stanley Robinson’s global warming trilogy, if you’re in an apocalyptic mood. And entertain yourself with the worst picture of me, ever–what is with my hair?

Mudslinging and muckraking are nothing new in political campaigns. And for that matter neither are metaphors–metaphors like mudslinging and muckraking, for example.

In the U.S. presidential race, gibes about pork-barrel spending…

The political primary season in the United States, where the party rank-and-file select their candidates for elective office. So called because of the phony "issues" prospective candidates dredge up to get attention, which tend to have little to do with the real challenges facing the republic.

Thought to have originated in New Hampshire, the state with the first presidential primaries.

"The silly season is upon us!"

Kairos is hiring! Would you like to join our journal? All positions are unpaid volunteer positions.

We have immediate openings for two qualified candidates for the position of Praxis Assistant Editor.

We have an immediate opening for a qualified candidate for the position of Reviews Assistant Editor.

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Why it’s hard for me to be fair and balanced. .

Some simple eloquence:

If somebody had told me on September 11, 2001 that seven years later Osama bin Laden would still be alive, and that the principal accomplishment of the U.S. military over the past seven years had been to install some theocratic Iranian allies in power in Baghdad, and had done so at the cost of 4,500 American and between a quarter of a million and a million Iraqi lives, I would have simply refused to believe them.

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