Tag: delicacy

Take it from Snee: Cleaning out the language gutters 2013

Just like a picture of mouths, these words don't say a damn thing.
Just like a picture of mouths, these words don’t say a damn thing.

According to a count performed by Google and Harvard in 2010, there were 1,022,000 words in the English language with an estimated 8,500 words added each year. The average speaker, however, only knows anywhere from 12,000 to 21,000 words. And though that still seems like a lot, we manage to mangle, twist and abuse certain words until they not only lose their original meaning, but appear to have lost all meaning whatsoever.

If these words were leaves, they would have directly bypassed being dried out and brittle, lying on the ground for any old user to pick up and twirl around. Instead, they were deposited into the gutter and, through overuse, become a moldy, muddy, indecipherable goop that prevents the language from moving forward.

They are the words people resort to when they actually have nothing to say, usually when “you’re having just too much fun” or when it’s time to define insanity for everyone all over again. (This phrase, that “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” is both the definition and cause of my own insanity.)

That is why, every couple of years, I contract myself out to the English language, cleaning out this meaningless morass in hopes that those who resort to them will find new words. (Or say nothing at all.) Here’s what I found in the gutters for 2013.  Continue reading Take it from Snee: Cleaning out the language gutters 2013

You can’t freedom-ize cow guts

The U.S. government is reconsidering its ban on Scotland’s national dish haggis.

The Department of Agriculture has shot down rumors that the sausage – made by rolling the cooked innards of a sheep (its heart, liver and lungs) in oats and pepper, then stuffing it in cow’s intestine and boiling it – will be allowed in the United States any time soon.

The Scottish delicacy has been barred from this country since the late ’80s mad cow outbreak in the U.K. Oh darn.

At the request of Scottish officials, the USDA is reviewing the risks of the dish and the ban on it, according to The Associated Press. USDA spokeswoman Lindsay Cole issued a statement saying reports that the ban will be lifted are incorrect and though the latest science is being examined, no timetable has been set for a decision. Haggis is getting another look in this country because Scottish Rural Affairs minister Richard Lochhead asked U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to clarify the government’s embargo, the AP reported.

“We want to allow American consumers to sample our world renowned national dish,” said Lochhead. “They should be assured Scotland has an excellent reputation in animal disease surveillance and prevention.”

Scottish haggis producers are happy at the prospect that it might be allowed in the U.S. after all these years.

“This is long overdue and I’m glad the U.S. authorities are coming to their senses,” master butcher Neil Watt of Watt the Butcher in Montrose, Scotland, told the AP. “The haggis you get in the States does not taste like proper haggis.”

Jo Macsween, director of Macsween’s Haggis in Edinburgh, believes removing the U.S. ban would be good for business and says Americans who visit Scotland are “eager to try” the national dish.

“We believe there is a big market to be tapped,” he told the AP. “Once [Americans] have tasted it, they generally love it and become enthusiasts.”

At least one American isn’t enthused about haggis, however. Former President George W. Bush told the AP he had no desire to try the sausage at the 2005 G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland.

“I was briefed on haggis,” he said. Attaboy, George, attaboy.