Posts by Stephen Judd
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Just to nerd right out here:
- strictly, there's no "p" there, in speech or writing. I think the Yiddish spelling is fe-alef-reysh-kof-lamed-ayin-mem-tet/**פארקﬥעמט**. YIVO transliterates it far-klemt.
- most of the actual usage by Yiddish speakers I have googled up is about sadness and depression. There is a happy verklemmt but it's clearly one that arises out of deep tragedy. Thus, a very appropriate word. -
Damn. Verklem__m__theit. Which means "inhibition."
Note to self, always check dictionary before embarking on pedantic exercise.
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verklemptness (is that a word?)
It's a word if you want to use it that way.
Assuming we're talking Yiddish, farklemterheyt would probably be what my great grandmother would have said. And die Verklemptheit is good German, although I'm not sure whether it's idiomatic in the emotional context.
Literally it's to be seized up or stuck, and hence metaphorically to be overcome with emotion. Possibly it shares a root with "clamp" and might be related to clamming up. But it's the feeling when you are so overwhelmed that nothing can come out.
(Pardon the lecture, but I've noticed a recent tendency in NZ, where people sling around Yiddishisms they've heard on US television in ways that just aren't right because they've inferred the meaning from context incorrectly. Not that you did, but I thought I'd get proactive).
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Whose prostate are we talking about?
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Oh, Paul Rowe, you were wondering about those elderly Jewish voters: the exit polls said the Jewish vote split 78:21, which is higher than for Kerry. Which is entirely expected. The Jewish vote in the US is generally Democratic, pro-choice, pro-civil rights issues.
Of course, Palin's whacko Christianity and Jew-baiting pastor probably didn't help.
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mark taslov: is this what you were trying to say?
It's kind of hard to tell, because you seem to be spoiling for a fight so hard you're incoherent.
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Do we have television in New Zealand?
Who needs them?
I have the interwobs. I have CNN and Fox and BBC world on Saturn cable. I haven't watched NZ news since when Dad came to visit months ago, and apart from our own election coverage, when I will reluctantly tune in, I can't imagine when I will again.
Because NZ tv news sucks. Hard. It has for years. I'm sure I'll hear about it when it improves, via some other medium.
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I just checked. Obama currently has 52% of the popular vote in the US. It is literally 20 years since a president enjoyed that level of support (oddly, that was Bush senior, on 53).
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Here you go, Simon:
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I wonder what a future Republican competitor to Obama could be like.
He's dealt convincingly with the patriotism and terrorism and socialism slurs, he's overcome being a black man. He's beaten the patricians and the would-be dynasty. And he currently owns political decency. The more he's slimed, the better he looks.
Meanwhile the Rs are a bitter, congealing lump, like a dislodged limpet in the sun.
One of my colleagues at work remarked that the electoral map looked like an old map of the Union vs the Confederacy. And that's right. The Republicans are reduced to what's left of the Southern Strategy.
My bet is that he'll go two terms, and even then, if the Dems lose it will be because they can't find a half-way good successor.
Anyway, I'm getting happily drunk. The lawless, revolting, torturing pluto-klepto-caco-archy are going to be out on their ear. Their cheerleaders on Fox (now there are some lickspittles) are slump shouldered and grim and I'm maxing out on schadenfreude. If the Obama regime is the most boring, bloodless, merely competent administration ever, we will have been rescued.
I think they'll do better than that though.
(My sentimental part has been tearing up all day with accounts of African Americans at the polls who never thought this day would come. That really gladdened my heart.)
I wonder what will happen in NZ politics three years hence? You'd have to be studying the Obama campaign and its stupendous use of volunteer energy for clues.