Au Cochonnet Marin

I thought that I possessed a fairly decent vocabulary, but new words are creeping up every day in our speech and I am sometimes at loss to understand their meaning.

Below are some of these newly minted words that  I recently came across.

Crowdfunding: crowdfunding is the use of small amounts of capital from a large number of individuals to finance a new business venture.

Decarceration: release from imprisonment also: the practice or policy of reducing the number of people subject to imprisonment.

Eco-anxiety: persistent worries about the future of Earth

 Fag Hag: a heterosexual woman who seeks out or particularly enjoys the company of gay men.

Froyo: Frozen yogurt

GOAT. Acronym for “Greatest Of All Time.”

Misgendering: to identify the gender of (a person, such as a transsexual or transgender person) incorrectly (as by using an incorrect label or pronoun).

Panpanic: a strong feeling of fear experienced by many people during the covid-19 pandemic, leading to a lack of reasonable thought and action.

Pansexual – emotional attraction towards people regardless of their sex or gender identity.

Rat tamer: a psychologist or psychiatrist, Australian informal

 Regenuary a movement organized in January that encourages people to eat food that is seasonal, local, and produced using regenerative farming techniques.

Sadfishing: a term used to describe a behavioral trend where people make exaggerated claims about their emotional problems to generate sympathy

 Staycation: a vacation spent at home or nearby.

Stretchologist:  someone who helps you improve your posture and become more flexible by showing you how to stretch properly.

Try one of those words with some of your friends or during a job interview. It might impress (or not) some of them…

Alain

 

Big political and religious organizations are usually driven and blinded by ideology. Intransigent ideology!

These organizations all prescribe horse blinkers for their followers. It is to prevent their flock from seeing anything to the rear and the sides. They should only catch sight of the carrot that the puppet master dangles in front of them.

If you are not with us, you are against us, is their motto. A prime example of this phenomenon is the recent demotion of congresswoman Liz Cheney within the GOP. Long a faithful Republican trooper, she had the audacity to break with the pack and vote to impeach Saint Trump. A mortal sin in the eyes of the “Big Lie” supporters. They demanded her head, and the GOP was quick to oblige.

“The big lie (German: große Lüge; often the big lie) is a propaganda technique used for political purposes, defined as “a gross distortion or misrepresentation of the facts, especially when used as a propaganda device by a politician or official body.”

As Goebbels and Hitler said, if you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth, or at least it forces citizens to have some doubts about the truth.

“The ultimate end of any ideology is totalitarianism.” Tom Robbins

And this is the hidden and dangerous side of this doctrine. The ultimate goal of these organizations is the total subjugation of their flock. Nazism, communism, Islamism, early Christianism, conservatism, far-right groups, etc. all follow that scenario,

They want to impose their narrow views on all and rule by intimidation and fear. No dissent is authorized, and all are primed to worship their leader, their god. Like Il Duce, the leader cannot be wrong, even when what says feels rather outrageous. But you don’t question the Messiah!

In America (as well as many parts of the world) many individuals many families are blinded by ideology. They do so because they feel comfortable with what they hear, and they are surrounded by think-alike individuals. They are not loners… many people share their ideas…

Another dangerous ideology is the distrust and fear of vaccines. Vaccines have been successfully used for over a hundred years and have helped to cure or prevent scores of terrible diseases. But some people blinded by ideology and accepting outrageous lies, still believe that it does more harm than good.

Ideology does not fare well when compared with common sense, but alas “None so blind as those who will not see.”

When in doubt, forget the damn ideology… just use common sense!

Alain

I don’t know if you have noticed, but it is now fairly common in today’s movies to show various characters sitting in the loo.

What was long considered to be a private affair, is now shown in CinemaScope to thousands of spectators. I realize that the film director (probably a cinema-verité lover) wants to show realism, but is this really necessary? Personally, when I am in the loo, I  prefer privacy; it is more conducive to the business at hand.

By the way, do not confuse “loo” with the French word “loup”. They are “homophones” and despite their different spelling, they are pronounced totally the same way. But the catch is that they have an entirely different meaning. To be specific, the French word “loup” (pronounced exactly as loo) means “wolf”, and it is widely used in many popular expressions such as:

 Avoir une faim de loup : To be as hungry as a wolf
Se jeter dans la gueule du loup : To jump into the wolf’s mouth
Crier au Loup: To cry Wolf
Hurler avec les loups: To howl with the wolves
Être connu comme le loup blanc : To be known as the white wolf
To be known by everybody.
L’homme est un loup pour l’homme : Man is a wolf to man
Faire entrer le loup dans la bergerie : To let the wolf in the sheepfold
Elle a vu le loup: She has seen the wolf (she lost her innocence)

So, when a UK citizen comes to France and asks “où est le loo?” (where is the loo/loup?)  he might get some rather surprising looks.

French (as well as English) is ripe with homophones and they can be rather confusing to a foreigner. But they are fun to play with, such as in the following sentence:

La mère du maire habite à côté de la mer. (The mother of the mayor lives next to the sea.)

La mer — the sea
Le maire/ la maire — the mayor
La mère — the mother

That is all for now…

Alain

 PS:  A reminder that you can read this text in French, German, Spanish and Russian by clicking on “Translate”.