execration (noun) The act of cursing or denouncing.
eructation (noun) A violent belching out or emitting.
Though Morgan’s execrations toward Aaron were certainly expected (and probably well-deserved), the intensity with which they issued forth—eructation-like—came as something of a surprise to her coworkers.
Back in 2012, I alerted readers to the Australian slang word boofy. At the time, I wondered whether a term that seemed to apply to both CK and me—when it should be clear to even the most casual observer that we’re, well…completely different—had any linguistic value whatsoever.
But I hadn’t considered the possible derivations.
Just yesterday, the New South Wales parliament unanimously voted to condemn television personality Eddie McGuire as a “boofhead” for “racist comments.” Set aside for a moment my profound disappointment in seeing Australia, of all places, clutching its pearls over a tenuous claim of racism; I like where this is going. From boofy to boofhead to…? (Help me out, Aussie readers.)
I’ve always thought that we Americans had mastered the art of idiomatic derivation: dumb, dummy, dumbhead, dumbass, dumbsh*t, dumbf—, and so on. I obviously shouldn’t have been so quick to discount a country with venomous trees, drunk feral pigs, and 65,486 Jedi.
One of helveticka’s longest client relationships is with Hecla Mining Company. Its founding in 1891 makes Hecla the oldest precious metals company in North America; its success over the last 124 years has made it the largest silver producer in the United States. In 2014 alone, in fact, Hecla produced 11 million ounces from its Greens Creek (Alaska) and Lucky Friday (North Idaho) mines.
So where’s all that silver go? Funny you should ask—because it turns out it’s not all fancy flatware and jewelry. According to the Silver Institute, industrial applications account for the largest component of physical silver demand, reaching 56 percent in 2014. It turns out that argentum (that’s Latin for silver, kids) plays a critical role in alternative energy, medicine, and nanotechnology. And that’s just the science-y stuff. It’s also used in batteries, plastics, and those thin wires that defrost your rear car window.
And really, where would Maxwell be without it?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OCnQrhQbtI
Eva Braun’s unmentionables are “first rate: the fabric, embroidery and monogramming, the sewing of the button,” says Ernie Scarango. And they can be yours for only $7,500. As for their provenance, well…that’s another story entirely.
C. S. Lewis, from his introduction to Athanasius’s On the Incarnation:
“Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books.”
I’m guessing the precious Ivy League snowflakes calling for a “trigger warning” on Ovid’s Metamorphoses wouldn’t agree.
Over at Helveticahaus, intern/apprentice/go-to gal Morgan Lynch has a great post on the true meaning of National Hamburger Day.
What? You haven’t heard about Helveticahaus? Here is a great place to start.
It seems a lot of people are confused about the difference between singular and plural possessives—and wonder where the heck the apostrophe is supposed to go. Is it Phyllis’s car, or Phyllis’ car?
The general rule is simper than you might think.
If it’s singular, it’s apostrophe s:
Critics agree that the highlight of last season’s Mikado was CK’s inspired performance as Nanki-Poo.
The only answer to Morgan’s insolence, thought Courtney, is a sword-hand strike to the solar plexus.
If it’s plural ending in s, just add an apostrophe:
Rifling through her parents’ record collection, Shirlee found a mint-condition copy of Jim Nabors Sings Love Me with All Your Heart.
The contradictory nature of the witnesses’ testimonies meant that, despite those meddling kids, Linda had, in fact, gotten away with the perfect crime.
There are exceptions, of course—children’s museum, women’s restroom, for goodness’ sake, Descartes’ moral code, et al.—but if you can get the basic singular/plural thing figured out, the rest will come much more readily.
Last Friday we had the privilege of of giving a tour to around 30 first-year design students from Spokane Falls Community College—who unknowingly gave away their early arrival by posting up outside helveticka’s west wall.
Whether you see eager-to-please students waiting to learn from one of Spokane’s best creative directors (or, like me, a creepy image of ZOMBIES), we can all agree that it’s refreshing to see such drive and enthusiasm.
Photo credit: Me.
A couple of months ago, I lost a T-shirt in Rapid City, South Dakota.
It’s not nearly as salacious as it sounds. Nor was it just any old T-shirt. It was this beauty in charcoal grey.
The thing is, it’s not something I do, losing a piece of clothing like that. The missus and I have a routine whenever we check out of a hotel: I load the car, she performs a hard-target search for anything we may have left behind. Sometimes it’s a book, sometimes it’s a toothbrush. It’s never clothing. Yet the very shirt I was wearing when we arrived in Rapid City is the shirt that was mysteriously missing when we returned to Spokane a week later.
Then I remembered where we stayed. A place that, according to the TV show Ghost Hunters, “is so freaky that contractors have walked off the job and refused to return.” A place rife with “unexplained noises and groaning” and “ghostly piano music.” A place where a “heart-broken bride still cries and relives her suicide.”
Granted, I was probably tempting fate when I requested a room on a floor noted for its paranormal activity. And I should have known that, just because you’re a spiritual being trapped between two planes of existence, it doesn’t mean you don’t recognize a stylin’ T when you see it.
It’s a bit unsettling, though.
On a recent visit to the southwest, I had the good fortune of visiting one of the finest architectural structures I’ve ever seen: the Arizona Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix. The visit included lunch in an open-air restaurant known as Frank & Albert’s—as in Frank Lloyd Wright and Albert Chase McArthur. The latter, a former student of Wright’s, was the primary architect on the 1929 masterpiece, while Wright served as consultant.
The hotel was constructed using Wright-inspired pre-cast blocks nicknamed “Biltmore block,” derived from Arizona’s desert sands and formed into 34 beautiful geometric patterns.
The Biltmore campus has been carefully restored, maintained, and expanded upon over the years. Just walking around the facility, one can’t help but be inspired by what is often—and accurately—referred to as “the jewel of the desert.”
In a 1958 letter to his friend Hume Logan, 20-year-old Hunter S. Thompson proves to be wise beyond his years:
A man who procrastinates in his CHOOSING will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance. So if you now number yourself among the disenchanted, then you have no choice but to accept things as they are, or to seriously seek something else. But beware of looking for goals: look for a way of life. Decide how you want to live and then see what you can do to make a living WITHIN that way of life. But you say, “I don’t know where to look; I don’t know what to look for.”
And there’s the crux. Is it worth giving up what I have to look for something better? I don’t know—is it? Who can make that decision but you? But even by DECIDING TO LOOK, you go a long way toward making the choice.
Starting yesterday and extending through next Tuesday, every date is a palindrome: 5/10/15, 5/11/15, 5/12/15, etc. So if your yin and yang feel more balanced than usual, now you know why.
And according to this guy—a professor of electrical engineering who actually tracks palindromes (and no doubt kills them, stuffs them, and hangs them over his fireplace)—yesterday’s date was even more special: 5/10/2015. There’s more, too. A lot more.
If you’ve got a couple of minutes to kill online but dread the prospect of yet another misspelled meme on Facebook, Drexel University’s The Smart Set is worth a look-see.
Currently on the site, Colin Fleming examines Orson Welles’s Macbeth—”what amounts to a classic 1940s horror film, although no one ever talks about it that way,” Stefany Ann Goldberg reflects on Betty Willis and her “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign, and Michael Lind asks the question no one else dares: “How did Conan the barbarian and Dracula manage to slaughter Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock?”
It’s almost always a welcome diversion.
Seb Lester can draw seemingly any logo by hand. Is there a practical application for this talent of his? Who cares—watching him in action is positively mesmerizing. See more over at his Instagram page.
Fifty years ago today, the Warlocks plugged in their borrowed instruments at Magoo’s Pizza in Menlo Park, California. But it wasn’t until December of that year—at one of Ken Kesey’s Acid Tests—that they performed as the Grateful Dead.
None other than George R. R. Martin, the man behind the Game of Thrones juggernaut, has admitted to the band’s influence on his work; as for me, of I had to choose one album to listen to for the rest of my life, it’d be 1969’s Live/Dead. Mr. Martin and I aren’t alone in our admiration, either: tickets to the band’s upcoming Fare Thee Well concert, with Phish’s Trey Anastasio filling in for the late Jerry Garcia, sold out in minutes.
Meanwhile, David Browne, author of the just-released So Many Roads, has some thoughts on the Dead’s enduring “hippy cool.”