Tuesday, May 12, 2009

odium \OH-dee-uhm\, noun:

1. Intense hatred or dislike; loathing; abhorrence.
2. The state or fact of being intensely hated as the result of some despicable action.
3. Disgrace or discredit attaching to something hated or repugnant.

Odium comes from the Latin odium, "hatred," from odisse, "to hate."

Reader's Block

• Related to Writer's Block, this is when you cannot, for the life of you, pick up a book and read it. Sure, you may be able to read a paragraph or two, or maybe even a page, but you don't retain anything of what you just read or have the attention span and/or will to go on. This is common for those who have ADD, are in possession of garbage literature, or are just so exhausted from having to read so many books during school/college that reading anything else, even for pleasure, has become impossible. To those who love to read, this is worse than heart disease and cancer combined.

Eddie - Hey, man, I see you're reading McCarthy's The Road. Nice.

Nerdlinger - I'm trying to read it, but I got this damn reader's block! I'm 20 pages in but I don't remember anything. Fuck!

Eddie - Poor bastard.

Trivia

How much of the water on the earth’s surface is salt water? How much is freshwater?

• Salt water, 97 percent; freshwater, 3 percent (of which 1 percent is drinkable and 2 percent is frozen).

Today in History:

• odometer: pioneer and inventor William Clayton first used his "roadometer," an early tool for measuring distance traveled (1847)
• Berlin blockade: the Soviets ended their nearly year-long blockade of the Western-held sectors of Berlin (1949)
• hurricanes: the US Dept. of Commerce announced that storms would no longer be named after women only (1978)
• 2008 Sichuan earthquake: killed nearly 70,000 Chinese and left millions homeless (2008)

Today's Birthdays:

• Edward Lear (1812-1888): the author of "The Owl and the Pussycat"
• Florence Nightingale (1820-1910): founder of modern nursing
• Henry Cabot Lodge (1850-1924): US Senator; he was the first to receive a PhD in political science from Harvard
• Burt Bachrach (81): composer, That's What Friends are For, Alfie; musician Steve Winwood (61) also celebrates his birthday today
• George Carlin (1937-2008): counterculture comedian
• Gabriel Byrne (59): star of In Treatment; also, actors Katharine Hepburn (1907-2003), Lindsay Crouse (61), Bruce Boxleitner (59), Ving Rhames (50), Emilio Estevez (47), Stephen Baldwin (43), Jason Biggs (31) and Emily VanCamp (23)
• Yogi Berra (84): the first manager to lead both an AL team (NY Yankees) and an NL team (NY Mets) to the World Series

Quotes:

• "When you come to a fork in the road, take it."
• "A nickel isn't worth a dime today."
• "Anyone who is popular is bound to be disliked."
• "You gotta be careful if you don't know where you're going, otherwise you might not get there."

Yogi Berra