That’s good…

Linkmeister,

Confirming ghani’s post, here’s the word from my Swiss friend from Zurich (German-speaking Switzerland):

Linkmeister? 99.9% of Germans wouldn’t have a clue what that is, lest alone
Linkmeisterin. nor do I. Does this have to do with computer links?
In sports we don’t hesitate to talk about a Weltmeisterin in case of a world
champion of the other sex and I think you can make a Meisterin out of any
Meister.

David, THE great male name, with Adam being THE seminal name; at least Murray is a cross over name. (When I order camera stuff from those closed on Saturday places, they always perk up when I say my name is Murray). It is also a Scottish name (useful with a Scottish wife) and the last name of my dad’s favorite seminary professor. (My parents were incredulous when I told them that most Murrays were Jewish). Who knew?

Yes, they did. I’ll send along your Yuletide wishes to them (what is Yuletide in Hawaiian?)

Thanks.

Motherweary,

Wonderful, especially the exercise in etymology.
Room to run with Merry-begot…

That David - the Green Swamp Felbernaut (David is THE great male name, even if Adam is seminal).

Your comment about “strong smart flying … girl reindeer” reminds me of one of my favorite movies, The Dark Crystal. Among the Gelfings it is the females who have wings and can fly, and Kira, the female Gelfing seems to be smarter, more resouceful, and braver than the male who is supposedly the hero, but would never have completed his task with the female’s assistance. One of my cats is named in her honor.

Jay

This plays merry hell with all that testosterone-driven North Pole stuff, doesn’t it? I mean, there’s Santa (male) and his elves (male) and Mrs. Clause (female, presumably, but out of the running) and a bunch of strong, smart, flying … girl reindeer. What a blow to tradition! Females shouldn’t be strong and smart and able to fly. It’s just not right.

The truth is that years ago, we lefty pinkos packed those twelve reindeer (and Rudolph!) off to Sweden for sex-change operations. So the truth is that Santa makes his seasonal rounds courtesy of a bunch of transexual antlered ex-boy members of the species Rangifer tarandus.

Now then, anybody interested in the fact that “Merry Christmas” is a lewd suggestion? According to the Etymology Online Dictionary:

Merry-bout “an incident of sexual intercourse” was low slang from 1780. Merry-begot “illegitimate” (adj.), “bastard” (n.) is from 1785.

And this is the greeting that O’Reilley favors?

1. We’re going to war because I want to, and because the French have dissed us. (Very loose translation…) They don’t give us any respect! (AFAIK from the evidence in the book, he made all this up from sheer paranoia. Since he was a monarch, he didn’t have to explain anything to Congress.)

2. Nobody will object if we just roll the German army through (neutral) Belgium; after all, we have to do it in order to outflank France. (They did object, of course… later in the war, WillieII was heard to complain that no one had told him the British would actually fight to defend Belgium - except the guy he fired early on for saying that…)

3. It’ll all be over in 6-10 weeks. (Because the Germans were brilliantly organized and no one was going to fight them. And besides, that’s as long as we can afford to have it run…)

Reading the whole thing, I was depressed by how little we seem to have learned in the intervening 95 years. As usual, I agree with you fully that the money we spend on aid is niggling compared to what we could spend; further complicated by the fact that when the current administration says they’ll earmark X billion dollars for good cause Y, they never somehow get around to funding the X billion dollars. (Check out “No Child Left Behind” and other unfunded disasters.)