The app “A Word A Day” noted recently that Stellenbosch as a verb means to be demoted to a useless job without loss of rank. Comes from the town of the same name in South Africa, which today is wonderful, a Napa Valley on steroids; seems during one of the Boer Wars the Brits parked their worst officers there to perform menial tasks. I thought that here in the States we stellenbosched our incompetents to Congress.
Speaking of South Africa, as we often do, the Boer War also gave us the verb “maffick” which, as we all know, means a wild celebration. Seems London mafficked til they dropped when the seige of Maffick was lifted in May, 1900, freeing the English garrison. I do not use this verb as it sounds mildly obscene, a gestalt no doubt wholly divorced from its origin and meaning but then again, some people can say “hello” in a leering way also.
Why do they put pools in critical care facilities for the elderly?
Why are you not supposed to stand in the airplane galley after the service hours when waiting for the rest room, thus forcing you to place your rump in someone’s face by being required to stand in the aisle?
Why did the Boston Red Sox increase the price of an average seat at the same time they pared their payroll by letting their most exciting player go to the NY Yankees, thereby making their product less appealing and increasing the team’s bottom line even if ticket prices remained static?
Why is it, all of a sudden, that everyone who is dying is younger than I am? Did they see or feel it coming, and what should I be looking out for?
Is everyone as confused as I am about the Middle East, its religious and ethnic complexities? I just ordered a large laminated map of the region that I hope to put up on a wall and write down facts with magic marker until I can understand why the bombs are going off where they are. I could not find a large enough map for the data so I suspect I will need foot-notes.
Since the Wall Street Journal has become the rich man’s USA Today as a paper of general news reportage, do you share my growing perception that human beings are fundamentally evil? Today’s front page reveals that big banks will not lend to businesses, that bonds are weakening, that IBM is sinking faster than first feared, that Target is stopping health coverage for part time workers, that J&J will save $1B by firing people, that polio is back in Pakistan as militants kill vaccination workers, that pilgrims in that country are killed in bus bombings, that the former governor of Virginia and his wife allegedly took bribes, that Russian Islamists promise death in Russia, that in Lebanon another bomb killed 20 because Hezbollah and Iran took a role in Syria (why is there not a political/religious map of the Region, sort of like a score card for a baseball game?), that more surveillance is needed to track nuclear proliferation, that Vatican clerics smuggle money, that credit card theft arises because web-sites for crooks offer openly to sell malware, that women in war-torn Syria are reduced to eating cat and donkey meat, and finally that the latest IPO will finance just what the world most needs, a new nightclub featuring Jagerbombs. Enough to make you go back to the Boston Herald where all you read about are murders and Ponzi schemes that affect small numbers of people for merely venal purposes. Finally, recent statistics from Harvard, announced this very day, show that it is educationally more harmful to hold school during snow storms with sparse attendance than to just plain cancel school and declare a snow day. Readers are requested not to convey this information to my son, who at ten years of age still likes to remind me continually when he is right and I am wrong about crucial facts. (“I’ve Been Thinking” is an occasional diversion from postings of legal content, availed of when actual intelligence demands to be provided to readers of this blog.)