Category Archives: Expert Analysis

Once, while I was talking with my mom on the phone, she informed me of a doggie IQ test. I don’t remember all of the tests — which might say something about my IQ — but each one consisted of a task (such as extracting a treat from underneath an overturned cup), which was then timed and assessed by the speed with thish the dog completed it.

Mom explained each test to me over the phone, and I proceeded to administer them to Tember. The first test was to put a towel over her head and shoulders and see how fast she freed herself. She did it in about three seconds. In fact, she did most of the remaining tests in three seconds or less, thereby qualifying as a “genius.” I don’t know how difficult the tests actually were (I found them pretty easy), but I believe she’s proven herself in some other ways.

She has learned, for example, to get worried any time someone starts to use a printer since it usually just makes people angry. She also learned just this past week to hate traffic jams. We were on our wa to Milwaukee when we hit some stop-and-go traffic. I was trying to keep the stops gradual so as not to throw Tember around, but at one point, the cars ahead of me stopped very suddenly. I realized how suddenly they were stopping only mid-way through my gradual stop, at which point I started chanting “shit” cuz, you know, sometimes that helps. The problem is, Tember is familiar with such chants (thanks to the printer, for one). She started pacing around the back of the car until the traffic cleared up, when she relaxed and lay down.

The next day, as we were leaving Milwaukee, we again hit some stop-and-go traffic. There were no close calls, and thus no “chanting,” but she still got agitated. Until we hit a smooth flow of traffic.

Later, as we were entering Madison, I put it to the test. I tried some quick slow-downs followed by some acceleration, and sure enough, I got a pacing animal in the back seat.

I just saw this word on the national spelling bee. It was the word that tripped up the 2nd place speller. It means “mental depression or apathy caused by comparison of the actual state of the world with an ideal state.” Author J.D. MacDonald defines it as “homesickness for a place you have never seen.” Ha! I love that.

In google, it returns 390,000 hits, way more than hukilau, an earlier word that means “A Hawaiian fishing party usually involving many people and much revelry” and which only returns 146,000 hits. Still, I find both those numbers staggering. There are actually almost 400,000 websites that mention “weltschmerz.” Crazy.

The final three spellers were girls. It’s not unusual for a girl to win; in fact the contestants are almost 50-50 boys and girls, and previous years’ winners are just as often girls as boys. But it does make the third-to-last word, “kundalini,” poetically appropriate. It means, “The latent (female) energy said to lie coiled at the base of the spine.”

But the winning word is even more poetic. When the second place finisher erred on “weltschmerz,” the announcers commented that the final girl would have known that word since it was German and since her dad speaks German. (Turns out that spelling bee commentators make just as many hasty conclusions as most sports commentators; how would they know for sure she knew it?) The final word, “Ursprache,” which won said girl the competition, was also German in origin, and (here’s the poetry) it means, “parent language.”

It’s humbling what these middle schoolers know. I mean, for them, words like ennui and paroxysm are child’s play. Most days, I can’t remember how to spell alligator. So I have no Schadenfreude for the losers. I was pained for each of them. Ah the weltschmerz; in an ideal world, we would all be winners.

Actually, strike that. If everyone wins, then victory is meaningless. I bet there’s a German word for that. Auschkugel: victory rendered meaningless by its being shared with everyone.

A couple years ago, I went to the Memorial weekend brat fest at Hilldale and ate three brats. It was there that I discovered that such a thing should not be attempted. Two brats would have been acceptable. But three brats was excessive. It made me a bit nauseous — and by “it,” I mean the third brat.

With this in mind, I’m proposing a new slang phrase: “the third brat.” Its definition would be “taken to unnecessary excess.” See if you can start incorporating it into your everyday, casual speech. Here are some sample sentences:

Now I admit, we were telling poop jokes, but that last one you told was the third brat!

Man! John and Kelly had their hands full with just two kids. Jason is really a third brat. (watch your pronunciation on this one.)

Look, I know you need to prove you’re a man and all, but the Ironman is just the third brat.

Just relax, Megan; the party will be great. You’ve got an incredible spread here: smoked cheddar waffles, spinach coconut soup, vietnamese root vegetable slaw, curried quinoa, and roasted carmelized balsamic onions. This swiss chard strudel is the third brat.

Okay, so I’ve been corrected. Twice. “It was Ambesol, not Anbesol,” according to my critics.

See, that’s what I thought originally. And then I looked it up cuz I wasn’t sure if it was Ambesol or Ambesil (or maybe Ambecile). I attempted the a-m-b-e-s-o-l spelling through google and I came up with 900 some hits, none of which were very obviously the mouth-sore-relieving product of my memory. But there was a prominently-placed “Did you mean: anbesol?” at the top of the search results page, so I clicked on it and found the search results for a-n-b-e-s-o-l. There were over 72,000 of them, including a link to “the answer for oral pain relief,” called Anbesol.

You gotta keep in mind, however, that these commercials were back in the 80s, well before the internet became the source of (dis)information it is now. I tend to trust my own memories when they’re confirmed by a few other people, but I tried Ambesol in wikipedia and came up dry. Anbesol, however, yielded an entry.

Still, the damn baby said “Ambesol,” I’m sure of it. I tried one more search, this time typing “ad advertisement commercial baby says ambesol anbesol.” Nothing promising came up, though google helpfully inquired, “Did you mean ad advertisement commercial baby says anbesol anbesol?”

So now I’m at a loss. Memory vs. the Internet. Who wins?