Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

Not feeling well. Instead of insight, a few drive-by snippets just to de-clutter my brain a tiny bit:

Listening to CSPAN radio ... is it just chance that I happen to catch it at those moments, or is "fissical" becoming a common pronounciation for the word "fiscal"? (It doesn't sound quite like "physical", but close enough to catch my ear and make me wonder for a moment whether they grabbed the wrong word.)

Listening a part of to Rove's Instruction To The Bloggers a few days ago (pretty sure that wasn't what it was officially called, but it was clearly a delineation of the next week's right-wing radio and blog talking points), I kept marvelling at his ability to utter some of those sentences without a trace of irony in his voice. Oblivious to the ironic nature, or just a really good actor? But it did raise the cynical thought that maybe the reason the Democrats haven't done as well is that Republicans are better at spouting bullshit with a straight face. (Note that in addition to the crap and doublethink, he also said some perfectly reasonable things I just happen to disagree with in the ways that reasonable people can disagree, but those aren't the point of this paragraph.)

Random typo in a comment somewhere: "extorsion" where the writer meant "extortion". It got me wondering what "extorsion" would mean. The silly answer I came up with was, "the feeling of relief when the chiropractor un-kinks a twisted part of your body." Turns out that there's a less interesting real medical definition using the other meaning of "ex-" ("rotation in an outward direction"). But I guess either one could be related to failure to pay extortion money...

John McCain keeps saying Really Important Things that make a lot of sense, then following those with statements that make him really hard to respect anyhow. I kinda wish he'd either turn into a proper political hero or just go over to the dark side so I don't have to keep experiencing the roller coaster effect when listening to him. But I guess this is one way to be a moderate ...

After hearing a bunch of speeches and snippets of testimony and such on the radio ... I am rather disappointed in our leaders' and representatives' public speaking skills as a whole.. On both sides of the aisle. I hear people I agree with and people I disagree with sounding like robots, sounding unprepared, sounding unconvinced by their own rhetoric, sounding like the not-ready-for-the-school-talent-show players. Okay, how they think and vote is more important, but I'd had this idea that (our current president aside) politicians were supposed to be statesmen and statesmen were supposed to be eloquent. And it does matter when we're counting on some of them to convince others to vote the right way on things, right? Or are my standards too high? (No, I don't expect them all to sound like the very best episodes of The West Wing, and I don't expect an extemporatneous response to a question to be as polished as if a scriptwriter had worked on it for a week, but I shouldn't be able to hear the fact that you're staring down at your notes with your mind elsewhere, when I'm listening on the radio!

Hmm. That takes me into territory covering rhetoric and actors and rehearsal and stuff that I think I want to put off writing until I've organized those thoughts a little more.