Challenging Word of the WeeK: traduce

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Traduce
(truh DOOHS, -DYOOHS) verb

To traduce someone is to slander him, vilify him, malign, defame, and calumniate him, speak falsely and with malice toward him or his character; from Latin traducere (to disgrace), a variant of transducere (literally, to carry over; figuratively, to expose, “show up”). In Shakespeare’s Othello (Act V, Scene 2), Othello cries to Lodovico who has come to arrest him:

…In Aleppo once,
Where a malignant and turban’d Turk
Beat a Venetian and traduc’d the State,
I took by the throat the circumcised dog
And smote him thus.

Whereupon, he obeys Shakespeare’s stage directions: Stabs himself. Things are tough all around and it’s a bloody mess; but getting back to words and definitions, avoid the common error of identifying slander or defame with libel. Without going into legal minutiae and ramifications, libel is slander in written form and “published”, i.e., communicated in that form to a third party or parties. Best advice: Keep your mouth shut and your pen in your pocket.

My example: In an election year, the end of summer means the weather is cooling just as the political traducing season is really heating up. That’s some good advice above, though.

From the book, “1000 Most Challenging Words” by Norman W. Schur, ©1987 by the Ballantine Reference Library, Random House. I post a weekly “Challenging Words” definition to call more attention to this delightful book and to promote interesting word usage in the blogosphere. I challenge other bloggers to work the current word into a post sometime in the coming week. If you manage to do so, please leave a comment or a link to where I can find it. Previous words in this series can be found under the appropriate Category heading in the right-hand sidebar.

Perhaps they’ll stay at a Holiday Inn Express

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Laura Lee at the Wide Awake Cafe has some thoughts about how former president Jimmy Carter might entertain former Iranian President Khatami when they get together to commiserate over their failed administrations (I commented with some ideas of my own). I don’t know what Carter gets out of this except for another chance to sanctimoniously crap on the administration while trying to push kitty litter over his own performance.

The appeal for Khamani is obvious, however. If you’d like to ruin the U.S. economy, decimate America’s defense capability and globally humiliate a country then it makes sense to talk to someone who’s already done it.

Who’s next — Ron Dayne?

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I’m not officially back from my August vacation from blogging until next Tuesday, but I had to post a quick take on the Vikings and their new West Coast Offense — or is that the Wisconsin Cast-off Offense?

I can understand a football coach wanting to bring in guys who already know his offense and/or are people he knows pretty well. Some of the moves by the Brad Childress/Darrell Bevell brain trust make me wonder whatever happened to the idea that familiarity breeds contempt? I mean, trading an undrafted free agent for the underwhelming Billy McMullen didn’t concern me too much; after all, someone’s got to be your fifth receiver. I tried to stay calm with the Mike McMahon signing, hoping that Childress had to know something more about the guy than what anyone watching him play on television the last three years could see.

After McMahon’s pre-season floppage I started to get nervous when Koy Detmer and Todd Pinkston were released by the Eagles this week. I mean, as bad as McMahon has been, why pick up the guy who was behind him on the Eagles quarterback depth chart last year? Detmer’s such a useless bottom-feeder I think he should change the spelling of his first name to “Koi”. As for Pinkston — or “Stinkston” as he known in my fantasy football league — the guy is around 6′ 5″ which is good, but he weights as much as the Mall Diva and he gets off the line with the same ease as a ’74 Pacer.

At least the trade for Brooks Bollinger, who Childress and Bevell know from their Wisconsin days, eliminates any concern that Detmer is on the way (and Bollinger actually showed brief flashes of competence last year playing for a horrible team). With Ron Dayne expected to be released this weekend by the Broncos, however, the threat level is still at Badger-Red. With Dayne’s size you might think he’d be a good goal-line back, but his career has demonstrated that the only line he has a nose for is the one at the post-game buffet. It’s going to be a long weekend.

Update:

Aaarrgh!

Invincible, My Team was Not

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Hey, guys. What’s shakin’? Let’s see…what can I talk to you about?

Well, last Friday the Princess’s family took me with them to see “Invincible”, which was actually pretty good, considering it was about football. The thing I remember most about that movie, though, were the trailers beforehand. There was one for a movie called “Happy Feet” which I really want to see. It has a star-studded cast, lead by Elijah Wood! Yay! That one had all of us yukking it up. We also saw the trailer for that movie with Ben Stiller about the museum that comes to life at night, which I can never remember the name of. I do want to see it though. I also really want to see “Snakes on a Plane”, but I don’t know if I’ll get there.

Then on Friday night it was Hugh Hewitt’s trivia, which y’all already know about. I was there, just trying to do my job as team manager, and what does Terry Keegan do? He kicks me off our table! Hey, man, that’s not cool!

So I had to go sit in the corner, where I met another lady who had been kicked off her table, too. She told me her husband has a blog called Late Night Rants and he also writes for Anti-Strib. We had fun, even though we were exiled; and I found out that she is from Switzerland. Cool beans, huh?

I also got a couple of photos of my team, but it was hard because of a low battery and people getting in the way. We lost with 17 points, and I’ve been debating on whether I should drop these guys or give them another chance.

What do you think?

Pirates of the Coffee Table – Arrr!

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I’ve got a new game to play!

It’s about pirates. My mom (that would be the Reverend Mother to you) calls it The Boat Game. But that’s not it’s name. I’m not exactly sure what it’s really called, but everyone at church calls it Pirates. It’s something called “a constructible strategy game”, which I guess means that you buy packs of game cards and begin your adventure. The packs aren’t very expensive and it’s a really fun game. It requires a lot of strategy, which some people don’t have (wink wink nudge nudge).

Pirates is really fun because you get to act like a pirate. You get to sail around to islands and get treasure from them. In fact, coming up there will be a new series of Pirates that has something called Unknown Island (I think) where there will be things on the island that you have to fight! Oooooooohhhhhh, spooky! You can also sail around and blow people up! NNEEEEEEEEEERRRR–BOOOOOOOOOOOOOMM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Whee, hahaha! In other words, that means I have the time of my life while fighting a newbie! MWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!! (Can you tell I’m addicted to sound effects and laughing evilly?)

What you do is:

1. Learn how to talk pirate.

2. Go out and buy a pack of Pirate cards (available at Target for $4.25, or you can give me $3.75 and I’ll get you a pack from the bookstore at church, ‘cuz they’re cheaper there, and I’m nice…sometimes, mwahahaha.)

3. Look at the cards that you got in your pack (it varies on what ships you get, depending on what type you get from the store. There’s Davy Jones’ Curse (the best one by me,) Pirates Crimson Coast (that one’s o.k., sometimes if you’re lucky you get a fort in a pack), South China Seas (that one’s pretty good, you get a Chinese Junk ship in them sometimes, and junk ships are not junk!), and American Revolution.) There’s a game in every pack!

4. You get 40 points to start out with. You use those points to buy ships. (You can only use those points when you start the game, you can’t use them when you’re playing!)

5. On the main card for a ship there is a row of symbols. The first one is how many masts your ship has. The second one is its cargo space (how much gold and crew your ship can carry.) The third one is its movement (For example, if your ship’s movement is “S+L,” then your ship can move one short (the the length of the short side of the card) and one long (the long side of the card). And the 4th symbol is how many cannons it has (if your ship has a white cannon and a red one, that means that you have one short range cannon and one long range cannon. Short range is white and long range is red. There is a number on the cannon. If it is a two, that means you have to roll a three in order to shoot someone. Also, you need to be in range to shoot someone, which means if you have a short range cannon, they need to be within a short side length of the card of you).

6. Read the rules to find out the rest, or go here for how-to-play animations. Also, no game boards are required. All you need is a coffee table or any good-sized flat surface and even with only one pack of game cards you’ve got a game!


Whoa! A mysterious fleet sails out of the darkness!


Here’s one of my five-masted ships, the U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson. Five-masters are good because they’re hardest to sink,
but this one only has short-range cannons. Bummer.

So, interested yet?

Arr, matey.

Ciao for now,
Tiger Lilly

P.S. American ships are not very good, so don’t get the American Revolution packs.

Trivia Roundup

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One more week of blogging vacation for me, but I thought I better get my summary of last Friday night’s Trivia Challenge up and on display.

As you can tell from the photo below, Team “Three Weddings and Funeral” showed up at the Friday night trivia event ready to play and with fire in our eyes. That’s Jeff and Leo in the front (left to right) and myself and Ben on the opposite side of the table.

We were in the thick of it, but we had trouble with names, losing a point because we could only come up with half of the name of the Irish president, and missing an easy lay-up on the name of the proprietor of Keegan’s due to an epic brain-fart (to be fair, the Twins had runners in scoring position against the White Sox on the TV over our heads at the time). Those are points you just can’t let get away in rarefied air of such a heady competition. We did know, however, that Damascus is the longest continually inhabited capital in the world (for a few more months, anyway).

Congratulations to Terry Keegan (see, we know the name) for coming up with some truly worthy questions (unlike the People magazine trolling that has characterized more recent Thursday night contests) and to our local Fraters Libertas team (fortified with Atomizer’s mother) for keeping Hugh Hewitt and his All Stars from coming into our house and making off with the hardware. Best of all, the event raised a couple of grand for Soldier’s Angels, the MOB’s official favorite charity (next to Keegan’s, that is).

Beware the Bumpuses!

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Ok, the real reason I’ve been on blogging vacation is that I’ve been cramming for this Friday night’s All-Star Triva Throwdown and fund-raiser for Soldier’s Angels. Our team of Jeff Kouba , Leo Pusateri, Uncle Ben and myself will mix it up with national talk-show host and Blog-father Hugh Hewitt, the Fraters and many other minutiae-minded precontenders. We’ll be “managed” by the Mall Diva who, if this devolves into the expected Wrestlemania brawl, will leap into action, squirting hair-spray into the eyes of our opponents (either that or traitorously turning on Ben).

Our captain entered our team name as “Three Weddings and a Funeral”, but since there’s usually a Hewitt-inspired Ralphie-Christmas Story theme to this competition I’ve suggested we call ourselves “The Bumpus Brothers.” I can just hear Chad the Elder cursing “those %$#@* Bumpuses” as we hound the competition and run off with the prize!

Anyway, the event starts at 9:00 p.m. so come on down and cheer (or heckle) your chosen squad. While you’re at it, please make a contribution to Soldier’s Angels, a great organization dedicated to supporting our troops and their families. Hope to see you there!

Brigham for State Senate!

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Not content with trying to get his pro-life, pro-family, pro-small business points across in his blog or through his work as official graphic designer and tee-shirt maven to the MOB, my friend Derek Brigham has decided to run for the Minnesota Senate in District 45. The 45 is a deep-blue bastion and current fiefdom of long-time DFL incumbent Ann Rest.

If you want to help Derek to join the State Senate and change our government towards more conservative leadership (especially within the Republican Party), please go to his site and make a FULLY REFUNDABLE (up to $50 if you live in MN) donation. He needs to make his donations goal before the end of August, so the time is now. Please help if you can. It won’t cost you a thing through the MN PCR donation plan.

Post-Birthday

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Hey, everyone! Sick of hearing about my birthday, yet? Remember, only 361 days until my next one!

My week was a blast; what with winning trivia, Sock Wars, dresses and presents! I especially liked Sock Wars, where several friends I hadn’t seen in a while showed up. For Keegan’s, though, my memory is a little bittersweet because I really wanted Marty to sing me Happy Birthday, and he didn’t show his face all night. Coward. But, I did get a cigar as you all saw in an earlier post.

Saturday was dress-up day, and we ate cake and opened presents. Even Felix fit right in for this occasion, as he always wears a tuxedo. I decided to put a bow on him for good measure. Isn’t he cute???

We also played a game that Surly Dave taught to us. We have decided to call it “The Spanish Inquisition!” It’s a bit like 20 Questions, but played in a larger group. One person is “it”, and they have to leave the room while the group decides on something to do or be. Then the “it” person comes back and has to figure out what the group has decided by asking yes or no questions (there is no limit in this game). Well, one round I was “it”, and I must be very hilarious, because the whole group was busting a gut at my questions while I was utterly confused. They were so mean to me! What I didn’t realize was that the thing I had to figure out was that everyone wearing glasses had to answer “yes” to every question, regardless of whether or not it was true, while everyone not wearing glasses could tell the truth. There were three bespectacled people sitting in a row, so I’d ask questions of the first two, hear “yes” and then I’d think I knew the solution and I’d ask the last one, my uncle, if the answer was such-and-such. He’d say “yes” but no one would celebrate so I’d ask the next person (no-glasses) if I’d won and she’d say “no.” I had to put my head down a lot, because it hurt. Sound like fun?

But anyway, I had a very good birthday. Now I am older and wiser. I feel older because Sock Wars made me sore; and I am wiser, because I know I need to stretch first next time.

Golden Birthday: The Formal Tea Party!

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Day three of the party action and it’s time to shift gears to more grown-up things: a formal tea party. And yes, time for the great birthday dress unveiling!

Mall Diva and Lindsay, apres le guerre.


Family and friends were urged to dress formally; Tiger Lilly, Diva, the Reverend Mother and Princess Flicker Feather were
among those getting dolled up.

Princess Flicker Feather and the Diva.

Time for presents!

Wow! What a day! It’s even more fun than this tea par-tay!