NEWSFLASH: WELSH IS ABSURD!

This is an actual place, in actual Wales. "Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch" (pronounced "whostheblackprivatedickthatsasexmachinetoallthechicks") is the location of the infamous Prince Charles Anagram Mania Research Institute and Sanatorium. Breaking this word down to it's roots would take me a few hours, so get out your Brythonic dictionaries and do some research on your own for a change, you lazy swine!

ZEITGEIST

n. 'spirit of the age'; philosophy or outlook of a particular period.

Let's break it down for all you ignorant pondscum out there: "Zeit," German for "time" or "age" and "Geist," German for "spirit" (also found in the word "poltergeist" meaning "scary f*cking movie about spirits"). Here are a few examples of various Zeitgeister (plural of Zeitgeist) throughout history:

The Zeitgeist of the 1980's: Madonna snorting coke off of Keith Hernandez' wang.
The Zeitgeist of the 1990's: Kelly Kapowski snorting coke off of A.C. Slater's wang.
The Zeitgeist of the 1770's: Benjamin Franklin snorting snuff in moderation off of Thomas Jefferson's wang.
The Zeitgeist of the 2000's: you would think this would have something to do with some "celebrity" snorting (crystal m3th, yay0, cat litter, calamari) off of some other "celebrity's" wang...but no! The Zeitgeist of our age is expressed best in the settlment of differences through dance-offs. As you see here, three Korean bboys ironically and figuratively avenge their ancestors on the dance floor by "murdering," "pillaging" and making three Japanese bgirls their "comfort women" to the international language of the music of poor American ghetto people:

What a sad time it is to be alive, children.

LACONIC (SAT)

adj. using few words; expressing much in few words; concise

Laconia was the region in Ancient Greece from which the Spartans hailed, and we all know what strong silent types those f*ckers were.

PRIAPISM (GYNAECOCRACY Prequel)

n. an abnormal often painful persistent erecti0n of the peni$.

Cyborg Dick Cheney is on the treacherous dog-leg ninth hole at Shenzhen Golf Club in the Autumn of 2009. Still getting used to his cyborg arms, he has just crushed a 375 yard nine iron right through the dog leg and onto the adjacent seventh hole fairway. Although his new biomechanically enhanced cyborg voicebox has unleashed a stentorian "FORE!," the ball lands just a few feet from Vladimir Putin, who is trying to figure out a way to get his ball out of the sand trap without murdering a dissenting journalist. Pissed off that someone would hit onto his fairway, he immediately jumps on the back of his Ukrainian caddy/golfcart, clicks his tongue twice, and heads right for C-Dick. Constantly on the alert for threats both seen and unseen, C-Dick activates his automatic clotheslining arm once his new biometric software senses a look of vexation on Not At All Cyborg Putin's face. He knows he can neutralize this threat, even if it takes ten years and two trazillion dollars...

VP: "Dude, what the f*ck?!"
CDC: "Processing..."
VP: "You just hit into my fairway, you douche!"
CDC: "Affirmative."
VP: "Listen, I know you're a cyborg now, but do you have to talk like a computer?"
CDC: "Negative. Just f*ckin' witcha, man. Sorry about my ball. Sometimes I have trouble controlling my balls."
VP: "Dude, tell me about it. My balls have been all over the place these days."
Cyborg Dick's Unnecessary Instigation of Hostility Software kicks in...
CDC: "That's funny, I heard you didn't have any balls."
VP: "WHAT?! Listen, bitch, bionic arms and legs or not, I will crush you."
CDC: "Negative, Trotskyite."
VP: "Alright, please don't fall back into the computer talk. Its really annoying."
CDC: "What's annoying is the fact that you have yet to engage me in hand to hand combat despite the fact that my instigation hostility software has been recently updated to include people I really shouldn't f*ck with."
VP: "Well, if its hand to hand combat you want, then take this!"
Putin judo chops C-Dick across the throat, expecting to instantly crush his copper-plated windpipe. C-Dick is unfazed. He gets Putin from behind in a deadly headlock and wrestles him to the ground. C-Dick stands over him. His face wears it's signature sneer of disgust, or maybe that's just how his face looks. Your author still hasn't figured that one out.
VP: "Alright just finish me. I am defeated."
CDC: "Dude, you're not giving up already? What a wussy!"
VP: "Seriously. Just do it. Those Chinese intelligence agents are watching from the soda machines behind the next tee and there's really no way of saving face at this point. You know how they are about face and $hit. They'll never let me live this down. I've had a good life. Got to bone Anna Kournikova twice. Finally got to meet Misha Mouse in person at Baghdad Disney. Wish I would have stuck with the piano lessons when I was a kid though. My mother always said I would regret it. All in all, its been a good run."
CDC: "One question before I terminate you. Did you really kill that ex-spy guy in London?"
VP: "Umm, yeah, he was a dissenter!"
CDC: "So that radiation really works huh?"
VP: "Nah...it was just cooties."
CDC: "Cooties? You don't say! We haven't used that since our nation was in seventh grade. I like your style, man. Okay, now prepare to die."
Just then, Putin sees a small blue diamond-shaped button on the inner part of C-Dick's titanium encased bionic thigh. He instinctively pushes it and unleashes a true weapon of mass destruction.
CDC: "DUDE! You have engaged my Spontaneous Priapism Mechanism! My one weakness! All other systems will shut down. Cyborg Brain going into sleep mode. All sorts of bad decisions possible. Ability to promise anything heightening."
VP: "I've got you right where I want you. Prepare to die. I will get my face back!"
Putin gives the titanic teflon-kevlar composite member a vicious tug, which does nothing but unleash a powerful stream of battery acid right into his face. He is blinded and writhing in pain in the intermediate rough, which was cut pretty generously such that anyone could really play a ball from the middle of their stance and with very little downswing, as if they were in the middle of the fairway. The Chinese have yet to perfect their course management skills.
C-Dick, newly revived and back to his senses, lights up a bionic cigarette.
CDC: "Looks like you'll never get your face back now, motherf*cker! And I mean that in both the literal and figurative sense."
C-Dick steps on Putin's throat, pitches onto the green, two-putts and makes a four. He decides to hit the clubhouse after nine holes and meet Bionic Kissinger and William F. Buckleytron for a martini in the clubhouse. He would regale them with the story of how he FINALLY made par on the ninth. He might mention that pushy Russian, but there was really no point in spoiling the afternoon with an unpleasant anecdote. There were so few truly pleasurable moments these days, even with their new cybertronic bodies, and he didn't want to spoil things. Negative, he did not.

GYNAECOCRACY

The year is 2010. The economy has bounced back from the brief downturn of 2008-2009. The hard-hitting journalists at the Today Show have broken the story that Osama bin Laden has been dead since 1989 and was since replaced with an animatronic muppet with liver disease. Baghdad Disney has opened and closed and is now the site of the biggest Walmart in the Middle East. Vladimir Putin has died in a fight to the death judo match with Cyborg Dick Cheney.

Barack Hussein Obama looks out a window onto the White House lawn. There is a tear in his eye. He is one of the most powerful men in the world. He has his finger on the button that could destroy what is left of India after girl-genius Maithreyi Gopalakrishnan finished her B.A. and PhD in International Relations at Oxford in six months, led a new military junta to power in Pakistan and blew most of Western India sky high, thereby returning hundreds of thousands of call center jobs to the United States and in turn giving the faltering economy a shot in the arm by putting money back into the pockets of American citizens who lost everything after taking interest-only loans for $800,000 with $12,000 in income to buy trailers in the middle of nowhere. He has made Bill Clinton look like a punk in public on several occasions by yelling "I AM THE FIRST BLACK PRESIDENT, BITCH!!!" on both the newly revived Arsenio Hall show and the recently re-defunked Magic Johnson Show.

Yet despite all of these triumphs, our 44th President is a little down this morning. The reason? He left his briefcase on the bed last night. Why the tears at leaving a simple briefcase on one's bed? Well, the reason is simple: that briefcase accompanied him on his recent publicity ride of the DC Metro. He briefly put it down on the floor of the Metro so that he could kiss some beaming yuppie's baby ("What the hell do these people do that they can afford an expensive carriage like that and ride the Metro at ten thirty in the morning? Must be professional bloggers with lots of advertising revenue and tons of time on their hands." he thought to himself.)

While that briefcase was on the floor of the Metro, it was picking up vile and aggressive diseases that were left there by the shoes of homeless people, hobo's, homeless hobo's, hobo-Americans and bums. When he put that disease carrying whore of a briefcase on their bed, the hate rays emitting from the eyes of his First Lady were more than he could stand. This was worse than that time she caught him sneaking out the back door of the White House for a cigarette (who knew there was a back door to the White House? Turns out JFK loved plenty of THAT action! perv.). He left his filthy briefcase on the bed and he would never live it down.

You see, young lads, no matter how powerful or rich you may become, if you get married you will always live in a gynaecocracy. While marriage can be a beautiful thing (the WordGnome has been married twelve times in his 796 years and fathered hundreds of children...please don't tell anyone I'm in New York by the way, if I get garnished one more time I'll be washing the cat food down with Arizona Iced Tea instead of the turpentine to which I've grown accustomed)...it is a form of government, and the governatrix of that government is a woman. Hence "gynaecocracy," from the Greek "gynek-" (pronounced "gu-nayk") meaning "woman," and "kratia" meaning "rule." Not to be confused with connivingbitchocracy (Rule by Hillary) or managementconsultantdoucheocracy (Rule by Mitt Romney). Gynaecocracy can be found in every home in America. Learn it. Its an important word. Don't say I didn't warn you.

The WordGnome endorses Al Lewis for President in 2008.

SPHEKSOPHOBIA

n. fear of wasps

Fear words are pretty cool and they're a great way to learn Greek roots for words. In this case we have "sphekso" meaning "wasp" (duh) and "phobia" meaning "phobia" (need I say it again?). The preceding cartoon is a politically correct illustration of the meaning of this word. Please enjoy all of its highbrow goodness. Drink in it's detail. Get naked and roll around in it's erudition. Also, don't forget to make note of the self-deprecating Ivy League modesty of it, for that, my friends, is the most sublime part. Zounds! I'm late for my Goldman Sachs interview! See you tonight at Mory's!

Nagonnaworkhereanymore?!

You only need to watch this video until about the 2:20 mark:

A) OF COURSE THIS GIRL WON FOUR YEARS IN A ROW....if YOU could spell her last name, YOU would win four years in a row too! I mean, Maithreyi Gopalakrishnan? Jesus!

B) This is clearly fixed. The first kid gets a difficult word ("dubiety") pronounced by that official who clearly has a cleft palate, and the next kid gets a ridiculously easy word! Even WordGnome readers can spell Geronimo! I swear these things are fixed!

On a less mean, and more lettered note, here is a lovely poem by Robert Browning titled "Dubiety":

I will be happy if but for once:
Only help me, Autumn weather,
Me and my cares to screen, ensconce
In luxury’s sofa-lap of leather!

Sleep? Nay, comfort—with just a cloud
Suffusing day too clear and bright:
Eve’s essence, the single drop allowed
To sully, like milk, Noon’s water-white.

Let gauziness shade, not shroud,—adjust,
Dim and not deaden,—somehow sheathe
Aught sharp in the rough world’s busy thrust,
If it reach me through dreaming’s vapor-wreath.

Be life so, all things ever the same!
For, what has disarmed the world? Outside,
Quiet and peace: inside, nor blame
Nor want, nor wish whate’er betide.

What is it like that has happened before?
A dream? No dream, more real by much.
A vision? But fanciful days of yore
Brought many: mere musing seems not such.
Perhaps but a memory, after all!
—Of what came once when a woman leant
To feel for my brow where her kiss might fall.
Truth ever, truth only the excellent!

Its Sunday night and its time for me to sink into "luxury's sofa-lap of leather." Happy Almost-Monday!

POOR NOAH

"He who blasphemeth so as to educate is aight." - God 3:16

ANTEDILUVIAN

adj. of or pertaining to the times before the flood in the days of Noah.

"My grandfather had gone so long without buying new underwear that the pair we found him in appeared to be antediluvian."

"My grandfather had gone so long without buying new underwear that the pair we found him in appeared to be ancient."

"My grandfather's underwear was really really old."

Although I use this word, unkindly, to refer to my grandfather's undergarments, its not really too far off the mark. They have holes in them and they're stained and pretty much falling off of him. Don't ask me how I know that.

Breaking it down into its root parts we have "ante-" (Latin "before") and "diluvium" (also Latin, duh, "deluge").

Anyway...a good way to remember this word would be with the phrase "Noah wore antediluvian underpants." Noah lived a long time ago (presumably) and his underpants (unless he went commando) would have been truly ancient. I'm sure you can all imagine what hilarious cartoon is in the works for my demonstration of the meaning of this word. What's my fixation with old man's underpants all about? Well, if you've read my profile, I am 796 years old, so my underpants are also pretty old. Which reminds me, I got a gift certificate for freshpair.com for Christmas. I hope they have something that can contain my gnomebulge!

Oh yeah, also, Happy New Year!