What's In A Word

 I Can Hear Your Hilarious Response

"Five letters!" before you even quote it, so don't bother.  Seriously.  If you do, then my Remote Nuclear Detonator button will be getting a workout.

     Okay, consider laser, scuba, moping and moped.  No, nothing to do with crosswords or codewords - although I do have six copies of the M.E.N. that have yet to be tackled O what a chore - these are a few of the words (hence today's title) that cropped up in my mind.  Art!

     It occurred to me, you see, that "laser" is now a word in it's own right, when back in the Sixties you would see it written as L.A.S.E.R. because this is the acronym for "Light Amplification by the Stimulated Emission of Radiation". Which is rather a mouthful, not lending itself very well to our noble starship captain's stirring words "Fire all Light Amplification by the Stimulated Emission of Radiations!" "Too late, sir the battle's over" .

"Dog Buns! I never get to say that line!"

     Yes I know they're phasers.  Don't quibble*.

     Then we come to "Scuba", which, again, back around last mid-century, would have been "Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus" which once more did not sit well when pronounced.  You can picture the scene at the beach: 

Phil: Hi Bill, what are you up to with all that elaborate swimming gear?  

Bill: I'm going to go diving in my new Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus.

Phil: Ah - no, you're not.  

Bill:?  

Phil: The tide's gone out.

" - something beginning with "S""

     Then we come onto "Moped", the article of transport, which my Collins Concise defines as a small two-wheeled vehicle of less than 50 cc engine size (is that good?  Bad?  Indifferent?) that has pedals; the name is a portmanteau version of "Motor" and "Pedal".  Art!

Moped mayhem!

     So now you know.  And let us not forget someone mooching around with a long face, which we would call 'moping' or 'moped' in the past tense.  Where does it come from?  Ah, well, once again my Collins Concise to the rescue: from the seventeenth century word "Mop", meaning "Fool".  No mention in my Brewers - ANYWAY it would be legitimate to write "He moped on a moped" and have people puzzle out what you meant.

     There you go, now we all know more than we did five minutes ago.

      Motley, bring me my pipe and slippers, for I feel the urge to Crossword coming on!

Meanwhile, Back In 2003

The Mars Volta released their debut album, "Deloused In The Comatorium", which is a strange title, I admit.  Given that the lyrics to all the songs sound as if they were composed by a man in the grip of a fever, whilst also chugging absinthe and quaffing hallucinogenic drugs, a strange title is perfectly appropriate.  Take this couplet from "Roulette Dares (The Haunt Of)":

Exoskeletal junction at the railroad delayed
Exoskeletal junction at the railroad delayed

     Say what?  "Exoskeleton" is a real thing, you'll have seen them in action in "Aliens" and that one with Mark Damon, you know, where he gets it bolted onto him (without anaethetics, I fear).  Art!

     That's the one.  There you go, an exoskeletal equipment, which has lots of junctions.  Quite where trains and branch lines come in I don't know, perhaps he turned over two pages at once? though if we're talking British railways then delays are all part of your travelling experience.  Art!

"The train not arriving at Platform Three ..."

    A challenging band for A Little Musical Critique, one feels.

Schadenfreude: Delicious Yet Calorie-Free

If you are amused and entertained by the spectacle of other people's misfortune, then welcome!  Sit right down and have some Angostura, for we revisit that epic disaster "Batwoman" - no, it's not about a disaster, it is a disaster.  Conrad needs to find a better metaphor than "Combination dumpster-fire and trainwreck" to describe it, but that can serve for the meantime.  Art!

Buttwoman

     Earlier this week I posted how it had continued to lose viewers, dropping from 509,000 to 507,000, with the proviso that these are interim numbers that are revised later in the week.  So the CW channel that makes this stuff might have been popping champagne corks as figures finally bottom out, hooray, only two thousand viewers lost, that's very nearly almost as good as gai -

     Oops.

Borrowed from "TV series finale.com"

   Adjusted, they actually lost 16,000 viewers; and this is a show being broadcast for free on three different channels in South Canada.  During a pandemic.  When people have little else to do but watch television.  Once again, Conrad is positive this whole series is a tax-dodge.  It was renewed for a third season and one has to ask - who will be watching it**? <enjoys his popcorn>

THE APOCALYPSE IS COMING! WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!  RUN!  HIDE!  (Drink Tea)

That last is Your Humble Scribe, of course.  I have been reading about the Near Earth Object 'Apophis' recently, because of some reason I cannot now remember, possibly connected with that television program "You, Me And The Apocalypse" or possibly not.  For those of you whom have never heard of it, Apophis is an asteroid that worried the yellow press a few years back, when they ran around shrieking this item's title.  Art!

     Apophis weighs in at about 60 million tons, and would do in any continent it hit, so people might have been worried about the risk of an impact in 2029 or 2036 or 2068.  Unless they were astronomers, because this sort of worry goes on all the time.  What happens is that a brief observation is made of an NEO, which indicates a probability that it might hit Earth at some point in the future, where trajectories intersect terminally  (hey! that sounds like a Mars Volta lyric!).

     

Calling Doctor Freud ...

     

     Typically what happens next is that lots of astronomers look for the errant heavenly missile, find it, track it, record lots of data and refine the orbit repeatedly, where we find it misses Planet Earth by 150 million miles <pauses to delicately sip his Darjeeling> and all the fuss and bother was completely futile.  Well, except that it sold papers.  We may come back to this topic, for it has legs.

Finally -

Just in case anyone out there is bothered, or interested, and even if they're not, Conrad is typing this up well before his bedtime for to be published on Friday.  Hence there may be a little confusion about dates and days and tenses.  I have also taken to posting it up on Facebook and Twitter at lunchtime, purely on a whim.  We'll see if this affects traffic in a positive or negative manner and judge accordingly.

Not that kind - O never mind.

*  Or Tribble.  Remember - Remote Nuclear Detonator.

** Not I.  There are brave reviewers out there who watch it so I don't have to.