I was not kidding:
And I only know what a shillelagh is because of years as a misspent youth reading sci-fi and playing AD&D.
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
And we’re all out of bubblegum.
If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.
We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.
Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.
A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires
We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.
Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?
Everybody saw this coming.
Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity
Impressively dumb. Congratulations.
Being the leader of the world means to be the leader of peace.
It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.
Hot air and ill-informed banter
Usually wrong but never in doubt
Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.
Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.
We still have time to mess this up!
Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll
Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.
And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.
When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.
The words do not have to be perfect.
The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.
The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.
Sayne
Shillelagh certainly is a really crappy Druid spell on Baldur’s Gate 2.
*Claims Nerd King hat for himself*
*Sits proudly*
Ash Can
GIVE THEM COOKING LESSONS FOR CHRISTMAS. And yes, I am shouting.
Helen
Oh my. I asked you all to define what a Shillelagh is and you all did great. Greater than I ever would have thought. Congrats!! Now say it. How does it sound in English? (Oh by the way – in my mom’s Northern Ireland English!!)
Dead Ernest
@Cole:
You didn’t mention anything about a mouse being involved in the cooking fiasco. But there he is, plain as day, imprisoned in the glop, inside and at the top of the whisk.
Curious.
RoonieRoo
Your previous post on your frat kids’ cooking adventure had Grumpy and me in tears of laughter. I think I sprained something from laughing. So, umm, there was some good that came from the sacrifice of your cookware.
Paddy
So, for this multi topic thread, I offer to you the Cool Things Annual Gift Guide, with a few BJ’rs contributing.
Holiday Cool Things 2013 Is Here!
If you have a charity, if you make art, books, stuff that would make a good holiday gift, send it all along and I’ll advertise it for you for the next month. Least we can do is support our fellow Whatevers.
BTW- Cole, I emailed you for info on MARC and you ignored me. Bassstard!!!
Narcissus
@Dead Ernest: Ah holy crap!
MoeLarryAndJesus
I’ve known what a shillelagh is and how to pronounce it since I was about six. The benefits of having two parents from County Galway. It’s “sha-lay-lee.” And I will hit you with one if you disagree.
Steeplejack
@Dead Ernest:
OMG! I see it too.
? Martin
@Helen: More specifically, a shillelagh is a club made from a gnarled branch as opposed to one fabricated that can also be used as a walking stick.
Irish family.
Yatsuno
@Dead Ernest: It looks a bit more like a gerbil to me. That brings up…implications…
Amir Khalid
Now that I know what a shillelagh is, I remember that Hugh Jackman carries one as the recently paroled Jean Valjean in Les Misérables. And I learned the pronunciation of the word from this song.
Helen
@MoeLarryAndJesus: Moe wins with the pronunciation and also what I said to max in the last thread:
I am stunned by the answers I got here. My whole life I thought it was a “walking stick’ You know to help one to get up a hill. Apparently my mom who grew up in Belfast, kinda fibbed to me. Yeah it’s a walking stick, but also? club some asshole with it!!! Go figure. Live and learn.
Jeepers; what I learn at Balloon Juice.
Kay so all you micks (and I mean that with major affection). Eire is “Air” Seriously, right?
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@MoeLarryAndJesus: I thought that was common knowledge! First generation American Irish grandmother, for whom I’m named.
fuckwit
@Helen: Does it also have anything to do with golf? It looks a lot like a 1 driver.
rammalamadingdong
This is what you get for serving fake potatoes.
Helen
@fuckwit: No. But please tell me your thoughts. They always make me laugh.
maeve
An early triumph for me in the NYT crossword puzzle when it was St. Patrick’s Day
Two Irish born grandparents – immigrated (separately) to the US in the 30’s and met in NYC. Moved to California in the 40’s.
Don’t call is St. Paddy”s day – my grandmother considered “Paddy” a slur – my brother is Patrick Joseph, but his Uncle is Joseph Patrick because the woman next to her in the maternity ward (in Brooklyn in 1934) said “Don’t call him Patrick- he’ll be Paddy dis and Paddy dat all his life!”
I didn’t understand what she meant (since the Irish have become white since then and my father not only finished high school but got a PhD) but in the “Crying Game” Stephen Rea is referred to as “Paddy” and that’s only when I understood why my grandmother was upset by us teasing her by referring to my brother Patrick as “Paddy”
chopper
I’ve always known what a shillelagh was. until spell checker was invented, however, I was never able to spell it right.
Knight of Nothing
Cole – I think you mean “well-spent youth.”
sfinny
Well shillelagh has been a part of my vocabulary forever, but it became a forbidden term for many years because there was family feud about a particular shillelagh. Don’t even know how it turned out, all I know is that it became a taboo to mention the “shillelagh”.
danielx
Cole, if you’re an advisor…advise them. In small groups, starting with the basics like how to use a six inch chef’s knife without cutting off fingertips (hint: don’t get your fingers under the knife, nitwits). Make it a project and tell them it’s an essential life skill, which it is. And you might throw in that more than one of your male commentators have found this skill to be of great value in relationships with women, many of whom are surprised – nay, dazzled – to see a male in a kitchen with any skills at all other than staying out of the way.
And if they ask about a Thermomix*….you know what to do.
*Jaysus, I’d almost forgotten how much fun that was….
MomSense
Holy sh&t Cole there is a MOUSE in the potatoes–in the whisk. WTH went on at your place tonight??
ETA Not the only one who saw it!
Jim C
My first encounter with a shillelagh came from this Droopy cartoon. (Specifically around the 5:35 mark if the link starts at the beginning and you have no time.)
Alison
So the craptastic dishwasher we have in this apartment – the one we’d pointed out to management was craptastic more than once and hinted at wanting replaced, at which they smiled and nodded and said PFFFT – finally conked out for good yesterday and now we’re getting a new one. And we are so happy, you’d think it was gonna be filled with gold bars when it arrives or something.
I just hope the whole process of them removing the old one and installing the new won’t be too loud or long or annoying. But then – dishes that actually come out clean! WONDER OF WONDERS.
Suzanne
@Alison: my new dishwasher is so awesome that it gives me a boner, but the installers broke the floor tile in front of the dishwasher while installing it. So then they fixed it, but then more of the adjacent tiles are coming loose.
Anyway, thank you for letting me complain.
YAY DISHWASHERS. I hope yours brings you as much Martha Stewart-y excitement as mine brings to me,
Alison
@Suzanne: One of the benefits of having cheap ass apartment laminate flooring or whatever it is. Doubt they could break it :P
Narcissus
Get ‘the frat an Easy Bake oven. Don’t say anything, just when they come back from the holidays it’s sitting in the kitchen.
MomSense
@Narcissus:
That may be too much oven for the frat kids.
Violet
Nothing a good soak won’t take care of. Use hot water and add some dishwashing liquid.
I once sublet my place to a group of college guys for the summer. This is nothing. Trust me.
? Martin
My grandparents taught me how to cook. My mom can cook, but she was always a bit miffed I got the better training. (Grandparents have more time than parents. Always.) My mom taught me how to do most of the other household stuff. She stopped doing my laundry when I was 13. She taught me how to mend my own clothes.
My first roommate in college came to me the first weekend asking for help with using the dryer. I pointed out that it had a coin slot and a single button, there were two options – push the button and insert the coins, or insert the coins and push the button. Try both. One will work. Write it down.
I swore my kids would never be that helpless.
Anne Laurie
@Helen: Gaelic spelling (and pronunciation) is infamous, even in its homeland. Serious critic Hugh Kenner once wrote an article explaining that “Hamlet, Prince of Denmark” probably started out with the much more plausible name Olaf…
… which the Irish monks, writing about Vikings, spelled Aoilaibh, because one always likes to have a few spare vowels on hand…
… and the root story behind the ‘romance’ ended up in Brittany, where bad handwriting and sound logic eventually turned it into Amlevh, or Amleth…
… and Will Cockney added the H in front, for reasons.
As for shillelaghs, have the Notre Dame sportsters stopped using them in their logo?
Malovich
I might recommend a cooking basics textbook for the boys.
Maybe someone to read it to them.
Or perhaps one of them gets a job in a kitchen somewhere.
Dear sweet FSM, save us from the well-meaning in the kitchen…
Joshua Norton
Bless their hearts. I remember my first attempts at creative “gourmet” cooking. There wasn’t any brandy for after dinner since I used most of it in the mashed potatoes.
Good times….
? Martin
If you want to teach them to cook, start with the grill and tailgating food. Get their interest first.
Fred
@MoeLarryAndJesus: Don’t forget to mention that the accent is on the “lay”.
Bart
I don’t know what is wrong with https://balloon-juice.com/2013/11/30/open-thread-omg-the-obamas-may-stay-in-dc-after-2016/ but that post is f***ing up the layout of the home page. It is that post because all other posts have the proper layout when you open them individually, whereas that one doesn’t. Also, the font is too small. (I think it may be the P tag just before the IFRAME tag, but I could be mistaken.)
sm*t cl*de
The narrator’s Uncle Albert in Zelazny’s “Doorways in the Sand” is swinging a shillelagh when he makes his appearance. A few sentences later the word is glossed as “cudgel”. Don’t the kids today read books, or remember the words on the pages? Now I am sad.
… which the Irish monks, writing about Vikings, spelled Aoilaibh, because one always likes to have a few spare vowels on hand…
Hey, give them a break. Scrabble game. They had to get rid of those As and Os somehow.
WaterGIrl
@Suzanne: Suzanne, what model dishwasher do you have? Mine has not been happy for a long time and I figure it will crap out soon. I’d like to get a good one this time!
tybee
@WaterGIrl:
don’t get a kenmore elite. we bought one 18 months ago and it spends more time waiting on parts than it does washing dishes. a complete and total piece of shit.
Suzanne
@WaterGIrl: Sorry, I just saw this. We got an LG. I think it is model LSDF9962ST. If that’s not it, it’s very similar. It has three racks and is very quiet. We have a water softening system in the house so we did not get the one with the integrated softener.
Munira
@Paddy: I have several books. The latest is a memoir about moving from Washington State to Quebec and building my cabin in the woods. Here’s the Amazon link:http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=munira+judith+avinger
Keith P
That’s not sci-fi and AD&D; that’s high-grade marijuana.
WaterGIrl
@tybee: @Suzanne: thanks for the info.
Lurking Buffoon
John, I for one commend your high Wisdom score and the nat 20 you rolled on your Knowledge (Nerd Lore) check.
Bruce Webb
@Helen: Eire is “Air” Seriously, right?
Seriously unright.
It is the same root/word as in ‘Ire’-land and ‘Erann’ and seems to have been the normal name for the island for time immemorial. And IIRC might even be pre-Celtic. But it has nothing to do with ‘Air’.
BTW I took a semester of Early Modern Irish (basically Shakespeare era) and can tell you that everyone of those extra vowels and consonants in Irish has a function. But the functions are so strange that it isn’t worth explaining. Suffice it to say that when Irish grammarians talk about ‘mutations’ they aren’t talking about something odd, all the Celtic languages mutate initial consonants depending on all kinds of things in all kinds of different ways. But Irish doubles down by using initial and trailing vowels to indicate other things.
I knew my future as a student of Irish was licked when I came across a two syllable word of some 13 letters where neither syllable looked remotely like the other and yet the word was pronounced “Vee Vee”. And all those ‘B’s and ‘H’s and ‘G’s just went away. In strict accordance with the rules. Which make your average game of Magic look as simple as 52 Card Pickup.
By the way the word ‘whisky’ is an English spelling of Irish ‘usquebaugh’ which unambiguously translates to ‘water of life’. As does ‘vod ka’ which is exactly cognate (and pronounced with the same ‘w’ of ‘whiskey’). And of course Scandinavian ‘aka vit’ (in varying spellings) is just Latin ‘aqua vita’ meaning the same thing.
As I tell everyone who listens I am NOT a lush. I just do a lot of research involving perfectly healthy ‘life waters’. I mean how bad for you can they be? When we have have a thousand plus years of Irish, Russians and Scandinavians all agreeing?