January 10, 2009

fastidious \fa-STID-ee-uhs\, adjective:

• hard to please; extremely refined or critical

c 1440, "full of pride," from Latin fastidiosus "disdainful, squeamish, exacting," from fastidium "loathing," most likely from fastu-taidiom, a compound of fastus "contempt, arrogance" and tædium "aversion, disgust." The meaning "squeamish, over-nice" emerged in England by 1612.

Kitchenheimer's

• When you're in the kitchen going around in circles because you can't remember what you were doing there.

I was in the kitchen this morning walking around in circles wondering what the hell I was looking for when the microwave beeped reminding me I was heating up my cup of coffee. My Kitchenheimer's is getting worse!

Trivia
Which two states have official donuts? What kinds of donuts are they?

• Louisiana, the beignet; Massachusetts, the Boston cream donut.

Today in History:

• Common Sense: Thomas Paine published (anonymously) his influential pamphlet calling for American independence from Britain via revolution (1776)
• League of Nations: precursor to the United Nations held its first meeting; though it was proposed by a US president, the US never did join (1920)
• Vatican City: the US reestablished full diplomatic relations with the Holy See (1984)
• Where's the beef?: Wendy's ad campaign began; it quickly morphed into a political slogan (1984)

Today's Birthdays:

• Ray Bolger (1904-1987): The Wizard of Oz's Scarecrow; actors Paul Henreid (1905?-1992), Sal Mineo (1939-1976), William Sanderson (60), Evan Handler (48) and Trini Alvarado (42) share this birth date
• Max Roach (1924-2007): jazz percussionist and composer; other musicians born on this date include Sherrill Milnes and Eddy Clearwater (both 74), Rod Stewart (64), Donald Fagen (61), Pat Benatar (56) and Shawn Colvin (53)
• Tintin (80): fictional Belgian reporter in Hergé's comic book series The Adventures of Tintin
• Donald Knuth (71): computer science pioneer, developer of TeX
• George Foreman (60): boxer who promotes the popular indoor grill