Homo for the holidays

spookyfruit: Is monshu coming?
muckefuck: monshu's in Oregon. That's why I'm orphaned.
spookyfruit: So you're not doing Gay Thanksgiving?
muckefuck: No, I've gotta go to a straight Thanksgiving.
spookyfruit: We can make it more gay. Tell me what I have to do to make it more gay.
muckefuck: Well, first of all, there'd have to be no football at all.
spookyfruit: Well that ain't fucking happening.

Good morning!

God, what the hell am I doing at work before 8 in the morning? That's what happens when I can't sleep. At least I know much more about developments of the Common Slavic vowel system than I did four hours ago. New vocabulary from the weekend:

Spanish:
farándula [kickass word; the context was a gloss for "the [entertainment] business", but the original meaning is a traveling troupe of actors and its gone on to acquire the slang meaning of "the world of celebrities"], velatorio

German:
Hautgout, Hörigkeit, geschmeidig

Misc.
The Polish circumfix po...(i)e for "the area adjoining ...", e.g. Powiśle "area adjoining the Wisła [Vistula]", porzecze "area adjoining a river [rzeka]; river valley", pojezierze "lake [jezioro] district". It's present in Ukrainian in the form по...(')я (e.g. Подніпр'я "valley of the Dniepr") and, presumably, in other Slavic languages besides.

"Hello, I'm the Other."

It's not often that I'm the token paleface at a gathering, or the token sausage-bearer, but I was both at the game night on Saturday. The only other Euro-American male, the host's husband, was hiding upstairs, leaving me alone against four bright, opinionated South Asian women. After the most excruciating round of Settlers of Catan ever (2 newbies + 1 kibbutzer = 2+ hrs. of playing time) and much bitching about both White America and pathetic Desi men, we picked up a game called Wise or Otherwise, which is like Dictionary, only for proverbs[*].

I had second and then third thoughts about completing "There's an old Indian saying which goes, 'Sweetmeats are not distributed...'" with "...at the birth of a girl". Would their feminism trump their nationalism or would I be denounced for my neo-colonial condescension? In the end, one of them said, "That was a good one; who wrote that?" and there was a quick consensus that it was "typically Indian". None of them voted for it, however, and I got smoked twice by a woman who totally needs to find a way to make writing proverbs for a living pay. I'll remember some of her versions (e.g. "There's an old Egyptian saying, 'When you owe a debt to a dog...he stands on your tomb.'") long after I've forgotten the traditional versions.



[*] Players take turns being the Reader, who reads out the first half a traditional proverb. Each player completes the saying on a slip of paper and hands it to the Reader, who shuffles the slips together with the real ending and reads them all. Players get points for guessing the correct ending or for having other players identify their version as correct; the Reader gains points when no correctly guesses the orthodox version.