Mead's Online Guide to Using Insults and Escaping While Your Victim Consults a Dictionary

Certain words emerge to represent personalities that serve as fixtures in the community. Scapegoats and sin-eaters bear the guilt for everyone else's trangressions; the gossipmonger collects the tawdry activities of the neighborhood and serializes them; the voyeur enjoys the thrill of watching private moments through a windowpane.

Come to think of it, none of these are positive, are they?

Today's entry is no exception, I'm afraid: it covers one of my favorite words, "curmudgeon." A curmudgeon is defined by dictionary.com as "a bad-tempered, difficult, cantankerous person."

Though the origin is unknown, I'm casting my vote with Walter William Skeat (1835 - 1912), author of several tracts on the English language. He maintained that curmudgeon is a combination of the English word "cur" (a mongrel dog, especially a worthless or unfriendly one) and one of two Lowland Scottish words: "mudgeon" (grimace) or "murgeon" (to mock; to grumble).

Strangely, in modern English dictionaries "murgeon" instead refers to grimace, whereas "mudgeon" isn't listed. "Ker" is also used in a variety of words as a prefix for greater emphasis in onomateopoeic words liked "kerplunk."* I do hope Sherlock Holmes can shed some light on this mystery.

Either way, the word literally translates to "an unfriendly, grimacing/grumbling mongrel dog." Better use this one sparingly, folks.**

Literary curmudgeons include A Christmas Carol's Ebenezer Scrooge, the Harry Potter series's Severus Snape, and To Kill a Mockingbird's morphine-addicted Mrs. Dubose.
Dr. Gregory House of the namesake show has also been labeled as such.

The curmudgeon who comes to my mind is the movie Steel Magnolias's Ousier Boudreaux (as if that it's pronounced "wheezer" isn't clue enough), the laughingstock of her friends with a kinder heart than she tends to show (farthest left in picture).

As literature and movies demonstrate, people are rarely curmudgeons for the sake of being curmudgeonly. Regret, pain or disillusionment gnaws at their roots, souring their moods. But Scrooge's heart thaws when faced with his own mortality, Mrs. Dubose sends a single white camelia to the Finch children as thanks for reading to her, and Ouiser's love for children shows in the smile she gives her friend's son.***

I don't know about House, because I don't watch "House," and if you need a reason why I don't watch "House," you're staring at it.

I suppose that makes me a curmudgeon, too?

I prefer to use the term "selectively cranky."



Information purloined from dictionary.com, the Oxford University Press Blog, and The Mavens' Word of the Day; image purloined from The International Movie Database



* - such as our word's comic-book cousin, KERBLUDGEON!
** - limit usage to your ancient in-laws who never really liked you, and who run about as fast as you can walk
*** - before he bursts into tears

When the saints go marching in

Do you ever have the wish that life was more like a play, or a video game, or a musical - someplace where a higher power can swoop in from above and rectify all of your problems?

Well, NOW YOU CAN - sorry, couldn't resist the temptation. I blame infomercials.

In any case, this blog will cover a literary device for which all literature buffs have the utmost contempt: the deus ex machina.

The Latin phrase (literally, God from the machine) is a translation from the original Greek, where it referred to the mechane, a device in ancient Greek theatre used to lower the actors playing the gods as if they were descending from Mt. Olympus. The gods functioned in the play as a means of resolving the plot or rescuing the protagonist from a particularly sticky situation, like some archaic Staples easy button.*
Let's not forget that divine intervention, however, doesn't lend a play any more substance.

Even ancient Greeks were critical of the mechane; in his play Thesmophoriazusae (Women Celebrating the Thesmophorae, the Thesmophorae being an annual fertility celebration held in honor of fertility goddess Demeter), Aristophanes makes fun of Euripides for overusing the convention. In the play, Euripides swoops in on the mechane in attempt to save his kinsman from harm when he is discovered spying for him at the females-only rite.**

Today, the deus ex machina refers to a device abhorred by every self-respecting literary buff - a tidy, but improbable and ultimately unsatisfying resolution.

My first encounter with the concept was a reading of Moliére's Tartuffe, or the Hypocrite (title character at right), where King Louis XIV sends an officer in the nick of time to arrest the impostor Tartuffe, to restore the house Tartuffe had swindled and blackmailed out of the family, and to announce the wedding of the play's young lovers - all the space of a few lines.

The convention is not something that disappeared with time and can today generally be chalked up to the laziness of the author. Modern versions include cavalry riding over the hill to the rescue, the villain's sudden death from cardiac arrest or - the particular brew of "God from the machine" that I love to hate - the protagonist waking to find it was all a bad dream.***

We call them cheat codes in video games for a reason.

In other news, a student's recent twist on the motorcycle made the list of search results, though I can't say any implications of divinity in its machinery look promising. And if the deus in question is the driver of the motorcycle, doesn't labeling a human "God" defy and defeat the purpose of godhood anyway?



Information purloined from The Phrase Finder, Statemaster.com; image purloined from idlemindproductions.com



* - "and Hephaestus heard the pleas of the bureaucrats, and paper clips rained from the heavens"
** - Subtext: crashing a goddess's charity function might kill you
*** - or a bad trip, if you fell down a rabbit hole

Puddle, puddle, po-puddle, banana-fana-fo-fuddle, me-my-mo-______

More blog entries forthcoming. Really need to get back on schedule with this thing.

Today's entry is on a versatile word applicable in the realms of the culinary, the artistic and the quotidian, or everyday - which, if improperly used, could do just what this word means: muddle.

The root of muddle is the Middle Dutch verb "moddelen," meaning "to muddy." Soil, besmirch, dirt-encrust - yes, these all are correct - but muddle's commonest meanings are "to mix up or confuse in a bungling manner" and "to mentally confuse."

My first encounter with the word came from playing a video game, Harvest Moon 64. I romanced the rancher girl on the game and, when she fell in love with the hat-clad studmuffin protagonist, the fiery redhead said:

"I like you. Does that muddle things up?"

My character said "no," to which she responded, "Well, then what are you waiting for?"

He went in the for the kiss and she promptly slapped him, saying, "Not that, stupid! The blue feather," the feather being the game's version of a wedding ring. I was left to ponder this exchange, and to discover my newfound word. See, video games aren't useless. They teach you vocabulary!*

Type "muddle" into an ad-sponsored dictionary and you'll get mojito recipes on the side. That's because muddling also refers to crushing or mashing ingredients into one another, a technique used in cooking and bartending. The process makes use of a spoon or, if you have one, a muddler (a rod with a flattened end) to crush the ingredients. The infamous mint julep requires a bartender to muddle mint and sugar inside the serving glass.

Image from Wikipedia

Too many mint juleps might muddle you - muddle also means "to confuse or stupefy with, or as if with, an intoxicating drink."**

If you check American online news with frequency, you might have noticed every politician, journalist and economic analyst using the phrase "muddle through." Though used about subjects ranging from U.S. policy in Afghanistan to the banking crises, the meaning is the same: "to achieve a certain degree of success but without much skill, polish, experience, or direction."

To just plain muddle is "to behave, proceed or think in a confused or aimless fashion, or with an air of improvisation."

Which, if either, is fitting, I'll leave for you to decide.

Psst! Here's a recipe for "The Genuine Cuban Mojito," courtesy of The Bodeguita del Medio in Cuba:

Ingredients

2 tsp sugar
Juice from 1/2 lime
2 mint sprigs
2 parts sparkling water
1 part rum
4 ice cubes

Add the ingredients to a glass, preferably a cylindrical one, in the order above, reserving the rum. Muddle in the glass. Add the rum, followed by the ice cubes. Enjoy!


Information purloined from dictionary.com; image purloined from Wikipedia



* - and that even if you're a self-made man who saves a farm from the brink of extinction and who courts his lady with all the propriety and gentility she is due, you will still be a thoughtless cad
** - in Soviet Russia, drinks muddle YOU!

The incantation continues...

Sorry for not posting - again - on my regularly scheduled days. I drove down to Maitland (near Orlando, for those for whom the name rings no bell), Fla., for the Fourth of July. My parents' house had no Internet access and my parents enlisted my help in Independence Day preparations. I'll write compensatory posts sometime this week.

Something you all might find interesting:

My girlfriend and I attempted to make a piña colada pancake last Wednesday. The recipe we used was for an oven pancake, meaning that the chef puts the pancake, pan and all, into the oven to cook it. As I was putting in the pan, I told myself that it would be hot when we finished it. Nonetheless, when my beloved removed it from the oven, she remarked on its appearance, and so I moseyed over, and with a reckless, "Really? Let me see," grabbed the scalding pan.

The resultant burn hurt so badly that I had to sit at home with my hand in ice water during my Political Science class. Once I looked at my hand, however, I noticed that the burn skipped over the lifeline.

When people seeing the burn-mark ask me about it, I say, "I guess it means I have a charmed life."

Hence, my blog entry.

The saying "a charmed life" comes again from our beloved playwright, William Shakespeare, in his infamous play Macbeth. The phrase occurs in line 16 of the play when Macbeth, complacent in the Weird Sisters' prediction that he shall not die at the hand of anyone born of a woman, taunts his opponent, Macduff (lines 12-17):

MACBETH

Thou losest labour:
As easy mayst thou the intrenchant* air
With thy keen sword impress as make me bleed:
Let fall thy blade on vulnerable crests;
I bear a charmed life, which must not yield,
To one of woman born.

Or, translated for your convenience:

Your attempts are in vain;
It is as easy for you to wound the invincible air as it is for you to wound me.
Swing at the shields/helmets/necks of the vulnerable;
Magic charms protect me, and no one born of a woman shall kill me.

Perhaps Shakespeare was also progenitor of the loophole; Macduff reveals three lines later that C-section babies don't count, and takes Macbeth's smug pate as a trophy. One would think moving forests would be enough to make the man a skeptic.

The true lesson of this play is that no man or woman can escape destiny. The Weird Sisters definitely live up to their name here. Shakespeare knew his mythology, as I'm about to explain. Yes, ladies and gents, a 2-for-1 entry. And it's not even happy hour!**

In Anglo-Saxon mythology, the goddess of Fate, also known as "the Lord of every man," bears the name "Wyrd" - a word also used as a noun to refer to one's fate or destiny itself. Chaucer in Troilus and Criseyde christens Fortune "executrice of wierdes" (executress of destinies; Book III, line 617), and writes in The Legend of Good Women of "The Wirdes, that we clepen [call] Destinee" (Book IX, line 19).

Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1577), however, was Shakespeare's source material for Macbeth. Shakespeare adapted the scene and dialogue of Macbeth and Banquo's first meeting with the Weird Sisters straight from this text, in which they are the Norns, or Sister-Fates, of Norse mythology: Urthr, the Past; Verthandi, the Present; and Skuld, the Future.

We have since demoted the word "weird" to the shame of "fantastic, bizarre" or "suggestive of the supernatural." I don't imagine Lady (or the Ladies) Wyrd are pleased. If we aren't careful, they might call in a favor with their Greek sisters****, Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos, to gang up on us. Those shears can be vicious, and I don't imagine they're cleaned very often.


Information purloined from The Phrase Finder, Theatre Database and william-shakespeare.info



* - one of Shakespeare's brilliant additions to the English language. If you must split hairs, intrenchant really means "not to be gashed or marked with furrows (or trenches)"
** - unless, by the time you read this entry, it is between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m.***
*** - unless, by the time you read this entry, you are in Ireland
**** - from the Mt. Olympus chapter of the Global Fateweaving Vocational Sorority