The Word Nerd Sez: F is for ...

fumfer

I have to admit, I only discovered this word a couple of weeks ago. I was reading an article in Newsweek on the government response to the financial crisis that has been rocking the markets over the past two months. The actual quote was this:

"Fellow citizens," Bush fumfered Friday, "we can solve this crisis—and we will." Unfortunately, his reassurances seem about as calming as the scene from "Airplane" in which the flight attendant urges everyone to remain calm while all hell breaks loose.

I was immediately intrigued. I mean, Newsweek is pretty mainstream, with a fairly clear style; it's not like it's a journal written for an academic audience. And yet they used a word I didn't know ... and I'm not used to finding words I don't know in a mainstream magazine, especially not ones only six letters long. I immediately had to stop reading and go to the dictionary. And this is what I found:

Fumfer: Yiddish word meaning to "mumble", most often used to mean to be evasive; can also mean to putter aimlessly or to waste time.

Wow. What a great word. Sometimes people really do mumble with the intention of being unclear, and now I know the exact word for it. Not only is it a more exact word, it's fun to say. In general, I like the feeling of many Yiddish words. Dreck, glitch, klutz, putz, schlep, schmaltz, schmooze, shtick, spiel, tchotchke, tuckus—the hard, clipped sounds of these words seem to give them extra emphasis. And it's always fun to season your vocabulary with words that have origins other than the more common French, Latin, and German.

We often borrow words from other languages that give us more exactitude than English; if you're a word nerd like me, you'd probably enjoy Adam Jacot de Boinod's The Meaning of Tingo, which is an exploration of these kinds of words that we haven't yet borrowed. If you want to know all those Eskimo words for snow, or the dozens of Somali words that describe camels, this is a fun read. Now, I've fumfered long enough in this post, so I should get back to work.

Don't just vote—Think!

Well, voting day is finally here, for which my sanity is profoundly grateful. (You know you're hearing way too many political ads when you start having dreams about not being able to escape political ads.) And I've done my civic duty and gone out and voted. I feel virtuous about it, because not only did I go vote, but I spent time studying my ballot before I went in.

Doing a little research is important. Sure, by now most people should have an idea of who they're voting for at the top of the ticket, and it's not hard to "Vote only for 18" when there are 18 judges on the ballot, but what about all those lesser-known races? Local supervisors and university regents and circuit court judges and township library trustees? (Library trustees!! Very important, I need the library for my work!)

The internet is a great tool. If you go to the website of your local newspaper, they'll have a list of their endorsements. You can read what they say about each candidate; they often have articles about the candidates as well, with interviews. Often they have voter guides with responses from the candidates themselves. If they don't, you can always search the League of Women Voters website for their candidate questionnaires.

But what about that all-important library trustee race? The LWV didn't have a questionnaire for them, nor did the big city newspaper. Well, I had to do a little more research. First, I googled "Canton township library trustee" and discovered that four of the eight candidates were incumbents. I think they've been doing a good job, so that made it easy to pick them. There were four other candidates for the two remaining positions, so I needed to do a little more digging. I added one of the candidate's names to my google search, and discovered that two of the four had actually attended a library board meeting in the past six months. Those same two also responded to the hometown newspaper's questionnaire, while the other two didn't bother. I read what they said to make sure they weren't nutcases, and voila! Last two picks made.

I consider the hour or so I spend doing this research a wise investment; and hopefully it pays off. May your time in the voting booth pay off as well.

Photo of the Week--10/27/08

While we lived in London from 1998 to 2002, we had plenty of opportunities to travel around the British Isles—a weekend here, a weekend there, and we covered several regions of the country. During a trip to the West Midlands (which border Wales), we saw many lovely castles, manors, and even a set of Roman ruins. This is a view of the gatehouse of Goodrich Castle, in Herefordshire not far from the Welsh border. It dates to Norman times, and was built sometime in the late 11th or early 12th centuries. I like this picture not only for the sense of scale, but because it proves I will climb almost anything to get a good shot.

Happy Halloween!

I love Halloween. It's one of my favorite holidays. I mean, who couldn't love a day when you're supposed to dress up in crazy costumes and then devour tons of sugar? Even as a so-called grown-up, I've taken any chance I get to dress up for Halloween. At my first job, before the company became corporate and boring, we actually had a Halloween party and employees were encouraged to dress up. I came up with some weird costumes for those parties. One was "prom date from hell": I took an old bridesmaid dress (and matching shoes!), ratted my hair, and wore socks and a jean jacket with the outfit. In 1992 I went political: I borrowed a suit from the TSU, wore it backwards with a George H.W. Bush mask on the back of my head; put a duck bill on my nose, and used a squeaky red-white-and-blue cane. (Lame duck, get it? Okay, it looked better than it sounds.) In 1994, when I was six months pregnant with Boy, I made a snake costume that had a mouse's tail sticking out of the mouth. (Recently fed snake, get it? You had to see it, I guess.) More recently, I've been able to dress up for the Dexter Community Band's annual Halloween concert. I've made Cat in the Hat, Moon Goddess, Renaissance Princess, and Egyptian Queen costumes for those events. Tragically, this year we couldn't get the auditorium for Halloween and so I have no excuse to dress up.

Still, there's always the decorating. I don't go crazy with lights and sculptures and fake webs and ghosts, like some of my neighbors. No, I'm all about the pumpkin carving. I make my pumpkins do weird things. Last year I re-enacted the alien-busting-out-of-the-stomach scene from Alien using a pumpkin and a squash. This year, though, I'm going with an old favorite: the barfing pumpkin. Instead of the usual CSI: Pumpkin patch scene (one pumpkin with a knife in its head, the other a barfing witness), I went for something a little more topical:

You can't read the sign, but it says: "I told you not to eat all your Halloween candy at once." Here's a closeup of the barfing pumpkin:


Halloween is the best!

It's a tough job ...

... but someone has to cuddle a big puddle of purring fur:

Just to make sense of the photo, I was sitting in the kitty cage, a cube no more than 3 feet square. Black-and-white kitten was tucked into the left side of my jacket (the gray fleece), and gray-and-white kitten #1 was tucked into the right. (That's his head in the middle.) Gray-and-white kitten #2 wanted his own space up close, so I leaned back so he could settle atop my torso and neck, and let my legs dangle out of the cage. My head is barely supported by a mylar shelf, and I took the photo myself with my cell phone. It was incredibly awkward, but warm, cuddly, and full of loud purrs. Like I said, a tough job, but I'm willing to do it.

Watchmen: The Official Haiku Review

I've still been too harried to spare two hours to sit down and watch a classic movie, but I did get through a work that Time magazine hailed as one of the 100 greatest English-language novels from 1923 to the present. (Nice thing about books: you can digest them a chapter at a time.) Entertainment Weekly recently ranked it as #13 on their list of the greatest novels of the past 25 years. Oh, and it helped legitimize a genre: before it was published in 1986-87, you called them "comics" and you found them at newsstands and specialty shops, not in the book store's "graphic novel" section. So here, without further ado, is my review of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' 1987 classic Watchmen.

What is a hero?
Outlaw, steward, idol, god?
No, merely human.

I suppose today, after a decade of popular movies eager to explore their heroes' darker sides (the new Star Wars films, The Dark Knight), that Watchmen might not seem unusual. But it was groundbreaking at the time, and even now it seems to go further into exploring real flaws than anything else I've ever read or seen. The mostly-retired masked heroes in Watchmen include a violent psychopath, an attempted rapist, an impotent has-been, a self-serving businessman, and a woman with severe mommy issues. The only one with true superpowers (he is able to see and affect all quantum states of matter) has becoming emotionally divorced from humanity. The plot revolves around the murder of one of these heroes, which leads the rest to explore if (and why) there is a plot against them all. The conclusion (which I won't give away) is bleak—there's no justice in the usual sense—and yet it feels totally real and satisfying.

So, the subject matter and characterization aren't what you typically think of when you think "comics"; in addition, the structure is very complex. There are numerous flashbacks that reveal the characters' histories; there are "documents" appended to each chapter (some written by the characters themselves) which give more details; and throughout is a comic-within-a-comic that further explores the themes of heroism and villainy. As for the graphics, they contain all sorts of details that reinforce the story; I'm sure I would catch many more of them on a second reading.

Now, I have to admit I was a comic book nerd when I was a kid; I have very fond memories of my dad taking me down to the old Blue Front in Ann Arbor and letting me browse the comics (and candy) shelves. I grew out of them—I couldn't read them regularly, so I couldn't benefit from the longer story arcs—but I still love comic book movies and hit most of the big ones. (My favorite this year: Iron Man.) Still, I don't think I'm being a fangirl when I say that Watchmen has the depth and complexity of the best classic fiction. I hear rumors that the upcoming movie adaptation will remain fairly faithful to the original novel, if the current studio wrangling over its release doesn't end up getting it butchered or canceled. If so, I'll be in line opening weekend.

Oh, and having enjoyed one classic graphic novel, I decided to check out another. Coming soon: a review of Art Spiegelman's Pulitzer-winning Maus.

Like, the best, most excellent (you tell 'em!) post EVER!!!!!

Okay, so this post was inspired by my friend Jacqui, who last week dared her fellow writers for children to post a picture of themselves at the age of their target audience. That sounds like fun, I thought, and I dug into my box of old school stuff to find a picture. And besides a bunch of old yearbook photos, this was all I found: a shot of me on my aunt's pony. I was about three at the time, and terribly cute (whatever happened!). I have no other childhood photos in my house, except for a bunch I took on a trip West when I was twelve. (Unfortunately, since I took them, the only time I appear is when I accidentally stuck my finger into the frame.) Either my mother is hoarding photos, or I'm trying to avoid producing evidence of my awkward teenage years. Because my target audience isn't three; my inner child is really a 13-year-old boy, still reading comic books and laughing at fart jokes.

To my protests that I only have old black-and-white yearbook photos, Jacqui responded: the scanner still works even if you don't have a color photo. Fine. Here, so all of you can point and laugh, is my 8th-grade school portrait. I prefer to think of my expression as "introspective and dreamy," not "dazed and confused." The glasses? Not my fault; I had to pick from what the '70s offered me. My hair? I have no excuse besides ignorance of all that girl stuff. At least I stand out (yeah, um, that's it!) among the feathered-bang gang that roamed the middle school in the late 1970s. And at least I wore earrings, so you could tell I was a girl. If the photo was in color, you'd see my T-shirt, so artfully layered underneath my blouse, was dark purple, another giveaway that I wasn't a boy (because my figure sure wasn't telling!).

Still, it's not that hideous or embarrassing. But I found something else that was: my high school diary. Despite my protestations in its pages that I wasn't writing a diary (ick! I commented), I really was. A lot of cryptic comments about boys and friends (or so-called friends) who had pissed me off; many laments about how tragic my life was (punctuated with many parenthetical! asides! and! many! exclamation! points!!!!). Many, many, nonsensical remarks about everyday stuff, like what was playing on the radio. Occasional introspective comments that are marred by being oh so melodramatic. This particular page is from my freshman year, which I remember as being a challenging time, with an adjustment to a new school and a shifting group of friends. This is probably one of least obnoxiously self-pitying pages; I was evidently in a good mood because I was about to ditch the glasses. (And after seeing those glasses, can you blame me?)

Anyway, reading through this reminder that the teenaged me wasn't quite as deep or articulate as I remember made me think about why writing for this age appeals to me so much. Back then, everything seemed life or death; everything was up or down, with no in-between. Any setback was a tragedy; any triumph meant you could conquer the world. Often I've thought that if I had a time machine, I would go back to that age and tell myself to chill, to take things less seriously and believe they would get better. (The teenaged me would probably look at present-day me and wonder why that old lady thinks she knows anything about anything.) Of course, there's no such thing as time machines. But books are just as good as a time machine for taking you into another time or another world. Many times when I was a teenager a book could lift my mood, or at least help me forget my all-consuming problems. To think about someone else, empathize, and take me out of that self-absorption that defines most adolescents. Can you think of an audience more primed to be affected by a book? I can't, which is why I keep writing for them.