Sunday, April 26, 2009

somnolent \SOM-nuh-luhnt\, adjective:

1. Sleepy; drowsy; inclined to sleep.
2. Tending to cause sleepiness or drowsiness.

Somnolent is from Latin somnolentus, from somnus, "sleep." A related word is insomnia (in-, "not" + somnus).

Twatted

• The past tense of "tweeting" on Twitter.

Meridith Vieira: "Oh, do you Twitter? Tweet?"
Stephen Colbert: "I have twatted."
Meridith Vieira: "Actually, so have I."
Trivia
When it comes to pet nutrition, what is the BARF diet?

• Biologically Appropriate Raw Food, or Bones And Raw Food. The BARF diet avoids commercially processed and home-cooked foods. It consists of uncooked meaty bones, animal offal, raw vegetables and fruit, and other natural foods.

Today in History:

• Cape Henry: Jamestown settlers made landfall on this Virginia promontory (1607)
• Tanzania: African republic was formed by the union of Tanganyika and Zanzibar (1964)
• Chernobyl disaster: worst-ever nuclear reactor accident occurred near the Ukrainian city of Chernobyl; the resulting radioactive cloud covered much of Europe (1986)

Today's Birthdays:

• Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903): landscape architect who designed Central Park; architect I. M. Pei (92) was also born on this date
• Bernard Malamud (1914-1986): author of The Fixer and The Natural
• Jet Li (46): martial arts movie star, War
• Kevin James (44): comedian, actor, King of Queens; comedian Carol Burnett (76) shares this birth date

Saturday, April 25, 2009
imbroglio \im-BROHL-yoh\, noun:

1. A complicated and embarrassing state of things.
2. A confused or complicated disagreement or misunderstanding.
3. An intricate, complicated plot, as of a drama or work of fiction.
4. A confused mass; a tangle.

Imbroglio derives from Italian, from Old Italian imbrogliare, "to tangle, to confuse," from in-, "in" + brogliare, "to mix, to stir." It is related to embroil, "to entangle in conflict or argument."

tolerance juice

• Any concoction of alcohol used to help tolerate a person, a place, or a situation. In theory, the more tolerance juice you consume, the less annoyed you will be. Without tolerance juice the person, place, or situation is quite simply, well, intolerable and you could potentially slip into a rage blackout. Warning: Excessive consumption of tolerance juice may result in memory loss and/or loss of clothing.

BRO1: 'Hey, let's go check out that new bar across the street.'
BRO2: 'I hear it's not that great.'
BRO1: 'Come on, 5 minutes. Real quick, if it's lame, we'll come back here.'
BRO2: 'Okay, let me just finish my tolerance juice first!'
GIRL1: 'Uh, were you just talking to your ex over there?'
GIRL2: 'Yeah, he came up and started rambling about how he misses me or whatever.'
GIRL1: 'What did you say to him?'
GIRL2: 'Nothing, all I could think of was coming back over here and ordering more tolerance juice so I don't have a rage blackout!'
GIRL1: 'Let's get some shots!!'
Trivia

Photos of what two actresses were tacked to the walls of John Lennon’s bedroom in his childhood home in Liverpool, England?

• Brigitte Bardot and Rita Hayworth. There also were pictures of Elvis Presley. The house, where Lennon lived from 1945 to 1963, was bought by Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, in 2001, and donated to the National Trust. It has since been restored and opened to the public.

Today's History:

• "La Marseillaise": French national anthem was composed by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle in Strasbourg (1792)
• Suez Canal: ground was broken on the waterway connecting the Mediterranean Sea and Red Sea (1859)
• license plates: were required on cars in New York State — the first time in the US (1901)
• double helix: in the magazine Nature, Francis Crick and James D. Watson published their "Molecular structure of nucleic acids: a structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid," which described the structure of DNA (1953)

Today's Birthdays:

• Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658): Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland
• Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893): composer of Swan Lake and the 1812 Overture
• Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937): physicist and inventor of wireless telegraphy and recipient of Nobel Prize in Physics; another Nobel Prize laureate born on this date was Wolfgang Pauli (1900-1958)
• Ella Fitzgerald (1918-1996): jazz singer known for scat
• Hank Azaria (45): Emmy-winning actor who provides many of the voices for The Simpsons; also, actors Paul Mazursky (79), Al Pacino (69), Bertrand Tavernier (68), Talia Shire (63), Renée Zellweger (40) and Jason Lee and Jason Wiles (both 39)