#crassitude

[agentfascinateur]

Israeli genocidal crassitude

[petrichorate]

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao: Thoughts

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Junot Díaz) 

What a unique book. Junot Díaz’s voice alternates somewhere between poetry and crassitude, and his characters similarly waver between the realm of science fiction and the all-too-genuine fickleness of reality. I remember my dad bringing this book home for World Book Night back when I was a sophomore in high school; it took me five years to sit down and finally read it. 

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao almost feels physical in its structure, its descriptions, and its hard-hitting, brutal-yet-flippant style. The characters are entrancing. They’re not likable to me, not in the normal sense—but they’re understandable and real. Díaz generously sprinkles in footnotes, painting for us in broad strokes the past atrocities of the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic. I love the casual interjections of Spanish colloquialisms, the general sense of which I could mostly grasp, even though my Spanish is by no means up to par. If I had to pick one word to describe this book, it would be: rich. Rich with language, rich with a country’s history and with characters’ repeated histories, rich with stories and the supernatural and rich with life. 

Here are some excerpts that particularly struck me:

A beautiful description from Lola, about her relationship with her mother: “But she just stood there shaking, in her stupid wig and her stupid bata, with two huge foam prostheses in her bra, the smell of burning wig all around us. I almost felt sorry for her. This is how you treat your mother? she cried. And if I could have I would have broken the entire length of my life across her face, but instead I screamed back, And this is how you treat your daughter?”

On how easy it is to love even someone who has committed atrocities: “On the other hand, he was tormented by his crimes. When he drank too much, and that was often, he would mutter things like, If you only knew the diabluras I’ve committed, you wouldn’t be here right now. And on some nights she would wake up to him crying. I didn’t mean to do it! I didn’t mean it! And it was on one of those nights, while she cradled his head and brushed away his tears, that she realized with a start that she loved this Gangster.” (This reminded me of this excerpt from The Handmaid’s Tale):  “He was not a monster, she said. People say he was a monster, but he was not one. What could she have been thinking about? Not much, I guess; not back then, not at the time. She was thinking about how not to think. The times were abnormal. She took pride in her appearance. She did not believe he was a monster. He was not a monster, to her. Probably he had some endearing trait: he whistled, off key, in the shower, he had a yen for truffles, he called his dog Liebchen and made it sit up for little pieces of raw steak. How easy it is to invent a humanity, for anyone at all. What an available temptation. A big child, she would have said to herself. Her heart would have melted, she’d have smoothed the hair back from his forehead, kissed him on the ear, and not just to get something out of him either. The instinct to soothe, to make it better. There there, she’d say, as he woke from a nightmare. Things are so hard for you. All this she would have believed, because otherwise how could she have kept on living? She was very ordinary, under that beauty. She believed in decency, she was nice to the Jewish maid, or nice enough, nicer than she needed to be.”

A beautiful comparison to Eden: “A month before it all blew up, the Gangster took Beli on a vacation to his old haunts in Saman��. Their first real trip together, a peace offering prompted by a particularly long absence, a promissory note for future trips abroad. For those capitaleños who never leave the 27 de Febrero or who think Güaley is the Center of the Universe: Samaná es una chulería. One of the authors of the King James Bible traveled the Caribbean, and I often think that it was a place like Samaná that was on his mind when he sat down to pen the Eden chapters. For Eden it was, a blessed meridian where mar and sol and green have forged their union and produced a stubborn people that no amount of highfalutin prose can generalize.”

The book is scattered with science fiction and fantasy references that were amazingly well-integrated:  “A great darkness descended on the Island and for the third time since the rise of Fidel people were being rounded up by Trujillo’s son, Ramfis, and a good plenty were sacrificed in the most depraved fashion imaginable, the orgy of terror funeral goods for the father from the son. Even a woman as potent as La Inca, who with the elvish ring of her will had forged within Baní her own personal Lothlórien, knew that she could not protect the girl against a direct assault from the Eye.”

Lola, on the dread of the first judging glance from her mother: “And then the big moment, the one every daughter dreads. My mother looking me over. I’d never been in better shape, never felt more beautiful and desirable in my life, and what does the bitch say? Coño, pero tú sí eres fea. Those fourteen months—gone. Like they’d never happened.”

Oscar, on fear taking over regardless of how we think we’d act in our imagination: “While they argued with the colmado owner about prices, Oscar thought about escaping, thought about jumping out of the car and running down the street, screaming, but he couldn’t do it. Fear is the mind killer, he chanted in his head, but he couldn’t force himself to act. They had guns!”

Yunior, on not ending up with the woman he values the most: “Before all hope died I used to have this stupid dream that shit could be saved, that we would be in bed together like the old times, with the fan on, the smoke from our weed drifting above us, and I’d finally try to say words that could have saved us. ______ ______ ______. But before I can shape the vowels I wake up. My face is wet, and that’s how you know it’s never going to come true.  Never, ever. It ain’t too bad, though. During our run-ins we smile, we laugh, we take turns saying her daughter’s name. I never ask if her daughter has started to dream. I never mention our past. All we ever talk about is Oscar.”

[mastcomm]

Donald Trump the African strongman in America

Trump: behaving like an African strongman

By Fredrick Nwabufo

One of many 5 cardinal goals of america overseas coverage is ‘’selling and supporting’’ democracy. The US has fought wars and spent billions of {dollars} ‘’selling and supporting’’ its personal style of democracy in different nations – particularly within the growing world. The nation touted itself to be the emancipator of the world – towards communism — throughout the Chilly Warfare. And after the containment of this ‘’risk’’, the US started an aggressive ‘’democracy proselytising’’.

In contrast to, throughout the Chilly Warfare when the US pursued its containment coverage by consorting with dictators, it sermonised and preached ‘’democracy’’ demonising a number of the dictators it whisked to energy on the finish of the one-upmanship.

The US regards itself because the land of the free and the best democracy on the planet, however the rise of Donald Trump as accented the truth that democracy as evangelised by the US doesn’t preclude a dictatorship. The ‘’rise and rise’’ of Trump has endorsed my pondering that democracy is simply a really perfect, and that tyranny can rise from the world’s best democracy.

Coming from a rustic, Nigeria, within the throes of tyranny itself, I imagine I can determine all its lineaments out of the country. The US has unravelled uncharacteristically underneath Trump. It has been a sustained plunge down the Orwellian gap for the US.

Actually, Trump takes the illusion of the African strongman – missing prodigiously in civility, decency, temperance, grit, however sufficiently endowed in crassitude and imperiousness. No matter he doesn’t perceive he bullies his approach by way of it, prevaricating. Trump is about in his ignorance and can even power it down crucial throats with an unbearable facet. He additionally assumes he’s god coursing by way of a Valhalla of mortals. This isn’t the type of a president – however a dictator.

On Tuesday, Trump threatened to close down social media platforms after Twitter put a fact-check label on a few of his tweets.

Social media platforms have courted reproval concerning the dearth of reins on people with massive following who use the means to make unsubstantiated claims. Trump had tweeted that mail-in ballots had been fraudulent. This was reality checked by Twitter — an motion which peeved the US president.

Twitter put a warning on Trump’s tweet: “Get the information about mail-in ballots,” and redirected customers to information articles in regards to the president’s unproven declare. In a tweet on Wednesday, Trump stated social media was silencing the voices of conservatives, and that the platforms will likely be regulated or closed down earlier than they completely silence conservatives.

”Republicans really feel that Social Media Platforms completely silence conservatives voices. We are going to strongly regulate, or shut them down, earlier than we will ever enable this to occur. We noticed what they tried to do, and failed, in 2016. We are able to’t let a extra subtle model of that occur once more,” he tweeted.

And true to his phrases, on Thursday, Trump signed an government order to control social media corporations. In keeping with him, ‘’a small handful of social media monopolies controls an unlimited portion of all private and non-private communications in america. They’ve had unchecked energy to censor, prohibit, edit, form, disguise, alter, just about any type of communication between personal residents and enormous public audiences.’’

Naturally, that is what an African strongman will do. What’s left is for Trump to ‘’shut down’’ social media as some African strongmen had finished of their nations – like in Cameroon, Burundi, Sudan, and many others.

On Thursday, the US president threatened violence on residents protesting towards the homicide of George Floyd, an African-American, by a white policeman. And he known as them thugs.

“When the looting begins, the capturing begins,” he wrote on Twitter.

However his tweet was flagged for clearly baying for blood. The road: “When the looting begins, the capturing begins” emanates from a white Miami police chief, Walter Headley who attacked black folks in 1967 forward of the Republican conference. That is the president of ‘’the land of the free and the best democracy on this planet’’. What may very well be extra farcical?

Actually, with Trump, the US is simply one other nation dominated by a strongman. The nation has misplaced its bragging proper within the league of democratic nations. It’s a steep nose-dive. I have to say, what is going on within the US has far reaching penalties for nations enduring dictatorship. America which was the blueprint of a well-governed society is now an instance of how to not govern a folks. Dictators in Africa will readily discover their endorsement in Trump’s actions.

However can People salvage this wrecking ship in November, 2020? It’s their die to solid. The world doesn’t want extra robust males.

*Fredrick Nwabufo is a author and journalist.

from WordPress https://mastcomm.com.ng/opinion/donald-trump-the-african-strongman-in-america-2/

[lyrk-crtny]

love vulgarity, hate crassitude

[jackson38toh]

How can an airhead be dense?

Q: Why is the word “dense” used to describe both an empty-headed person and a novel stuffed with too much information?

A: For hundreds of years, someone with a low gray-cell count has been described as “empty-headed” or “thickheaded.” And “dense” has been used just as long to describe such a person, as well as a novel overloaded with plots, characters, or description.

How can an empty head be described as “thick” or “dense”? Perhaps because knowledge can’t penetrate it.

When the adjective “dense” appeared in English in the late 16th century, it meant “having its constituent particles closely compacted together; thick, compact,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The first OED citation is from a section on eye diseases in The Boock of Physicke, a 1599 translation of a medical work by the Dutch physician Oswald Gaebelkhover:

“When as the Cataracte is so dense and of such a crassitude [thickness] that heerwith they will not be soackede.”

In the 18th century, the adjective took on the figurative sense of being overwritten and unclear. The first Oxford citation is from a 1732 issue of Historia Litteraria, a monthly literary journal edited by the Scottish historian Archibald Bower:

“Sometimes the Author is not so properly concise, as dense, if I may use the Word. When the Subject is limpid of it self, he frequently inspissates [thickens] it, by throwing in a heap of Circumstances not Essential to it.”

In the early 19th century, the adjective came to mean stupid, as in this OED citation from an 1822 essay by Charles Lamb in the London Magazine: “I must needs conclude the present generation of play-goers more virtuous than myself, or more dense.”

The term “empty-headed,” which appeared in the early 17th century, describes someone “having or showing little intelligence; lacking sense; foolish, frivolous,” according to the dictionary.

The earliest Oxford citation is from The History of the World, a 1614 book by Sir Walter Raleigh: “Wise men depend vpon so many vnworthy and emptie-headed fooles.” (Raleigh wrote the history while he was in the Tower of London, awaiting execution.)

The term “thick-headed,” used figuratively to mean “dull of intellect; slow-witted, obtuse,” showed up in the early 19th century, according to the OED.

The dictionary’s earliest example is from The Good French Governess, an 1801 children’s novel by the Anglo-Irish writer Maria Edgeworth: “He was so ‘thick-headed at his book,’ that Mrs. Grace … affirmed, that he never would learn to read.”

English has many figurative adjectives and nouns for someone who’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Here are a few, with the earliest OED citations: “harebrained” (1548), “blockhead” (1589), “scatterbrained” (1804), “pea-brain” (1938), and “airhead” 1971.

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from Blog – Grammarphobia https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2018/03/dense.html

[davisenterprise]

http://www.davisenterprise.com/forum/opinion-columns/is-it-really-sexual-harassment-or-is-it-just-crassitude/

Is it really sexual harassment or is it just crassitude?

Apparently men can no longer be allowed in the workplace. Going forward, men will only be allowed as house pets. I keed, I keed… Because, come on — men make crummy house pets. They’re big, noisy and messy, and exceedingly difficult to leash-train. They’d do better as livestock —...

[mastcomm]

Donald Trump, the African strongman in America

Trump

By Fredrick Nwabufo

One of many 5 cardinal goals of the USA overseas coverage is ‘’selling and supporting’’ democracy. The US has fought wars and spent billions of {dollars} ‘’selling and supporting’’ its personal style of democracy in different nations – particularly within the creating world. The nation touted itself to be the emancipator of the world – towards communism — throughout the Chilly Struggle. And after the containment of this ‘’risk’’, the US started an aggressive ‘’democracy proselytising’’.

In contrast to, throughout the Chilly Struggle when the US pursued its containment coverage by consorting with dictators, it sermonised and preached ‘’democracy’’ demonising a number of the dictators it whisked to energy on the finish of the one-upmanship.

The US regards itself because the land of the free and the best democracy on the planet, however the rise of Donald Trump as accented the truth that democracy as evangelised by the US doesn’t preclude a dictatorship. The ‘’rise and rise’’ of Trump has endorsed my pondering that democracy is simply a great, and that tyranny can rise from the world’s best democracy.

Coming from a rustic, Nigeria, within the throes of tyranny itself, I consider I can establish all its lineaments out of the country. The US has unravelled uncharacteristically beneath Trump. It has been a sustained plunge down the Orwellian gap for the US.

Actually, Trump takes the illusion of the African strongman – missing prodigiously in civility, decency, temperance, grit, however sufficiently endowed in crassitude and imperiousness. No matter he doesn’t perceive he bullies his means via it, prevaricating. Trump is about in his ignorance and can even power it down important throats with an unbearable facet. He additionally assumes he’s god coursing via a Valhalla of mortals. This isn’t the type of a president – however a dictator.

On Tuesday, Trump threatened to close down social media platforms after Twitter put a fact-check label on a few of his tweets.

Social media platforms have courted reproval concerning the dearth of reins on people with massive following who use the means to make unsubstantiated claims. Trump had tweeted that mail-in ballots had been fraudulent. This was reality checked by Twitter — an motion which peeved the US president.

Twitter put a warning on Trump’s tweet: “Get the information about mail-in ballots,” and redirected customers to information articles in regards to the president’s unproven declare. In a tweet on Wednesday, Trump stated social media was silencing the voices of conservatives, and that the platforms will likely be regulated or closed down earlier than they completely silence conservatives.

”Republicans really feel that Social Media Platforms completely silence conservatives voices. We’ll strongly regulate, or shut them down, earlier than we are able to ever enable this to occur. We noticed what they tried to do, and failed, in 2016. We are able to’t let a extra refined model of that occur once more,” he tweeted.

And true to his phrases, on Thursday, Trump signed an government order to control social media firms. In response to him, ‘’a small handful of social media monopolies controls an enormous portion of all private and non-private communications in the USA. They’ve had unchecked energy to censor, limit, edit, form, disguise, alter, just about any type of communication between non-public residents and huge public audiences.’’

Naturally, that is what an African strongman will do. What’s left is for Trump to ‘’shut down’’ social media as some African strongmen had achieved of their nations – like in Cameroon, Burundi, Sudan, and so forth.

On Thursday, the US president threatened violence on residents protesting towards the homicide of George Floyd, an African-American, by a white policeman. And he known as them thugs.

“When the looting begins, the taking pictures begins,” he wrote on Twitter.

However his tweet was flagged for clearly baying for blood. The road: “When the looting begins, the taking pictures begins” emanates from a white Miami police chief, Walter Headley who attacked black folks in 1967 forward of the Republican conference. That is the president of ‘’the land of the free and the best democracy on this planet’’. What may very well be extra farcical?

Actually, with Trump, the US is simply one other nation dominated by a strongman. The nation has misplaced its bragging proper within the league of democratic nations. It’s a steep nose-dive. I need to say, what is occurring within the US has far reaching penalties for nations enduring dictatorship. America which was the blueprint of a well-governed society is now an instance of how to not govern a folks. Dictators in Africa will readily discover their endorsement in Trump’s actions.

However can People salvage this wrecking ship in November, 2020? It’s their die to solid. The world doesn’t want extra sturdy males.

-Fredrick Nwabufo is a author and journalist.

Twitter: @FredrickNwabufo

from WordPress https://mastcomm.com.ng/opinion/donald-trump-the-african-strongman-in-america/

[mcnaughtonmedia]

http://www.davisenterprise.com/forum/opinion-columns/is-it-really-sexual-harassment-or-is-it-just-crassitude/

Is it really sexual harassment or is it just crassitude?

Apparently men can no longer be allowed in the workplace. Going forward, men will only be allowed as house pets. I keed, I keed… Because, come on — men make crummy house pets. They’re big, noisy and messy, and exceedingly difficult to leash-train. They’d do better as livestock —...