Thursday, April 22, 2010

wastrel \WAY-struhl\, noun:

1. A person who wastes, especially one who squanders money; a spendthrift.
2. An idler; a loafer; a good-for-nothing.

Wastrel is from waste + -rel (as in scoundrel).
buy-curious

• A person who is just looking around and may or may not be interested in buying something from a store. As used on Arrested Development.

Store clerk: "Oh, look who's back... are you going to buy something this time, or are you just curious?"

Tobias: "Well, I guess you could say that I'm buy-curious!"

Trivia
What legendary actress is depicted as Melpomene, the Greek muse of tragedy, in a marble mosaic in the National Gallery in London?

• Greta Garbo.

History

• Pedro Alvares Cabral: landed on the coast of Brazil, claiming the land for Portugal (1500)
• Henry VIII: much-married king of England ascended to the throne (1509)
• "In God We Trust": US Congress mandated that all minted coins bear this inscription (1864)
• Oklahoma Land Rush: began officially at noon with thousands of homesteaders staking their claims (1889)
• Earth Day: first observed (1970)

Berfdays, yo!

• Isabella I (1451-1504): queen who sponsored Christopher Columbus' voyage to the New World; also, world leader Vladimir I. Lenin (1870-1924)
• Henry Fielding (1707-1754): novelist playwright, Tom Jones; plus, authors Germaine de Staël (1766-1817), Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) and Janet Evanovich (67)
• Immanuel Kant (1724-1804): German philosopher of the Enlightenment
• J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967): physicist who headed the Manhattan Project
• John Waters (64): offbeat film director, Hairspray
• Peter Frampton (60): rock musician, Fingerprints; also, musicians Yehudi Menuhin (1916-1999), Charles Mingus (1922-1979) and Glen Campbell (74)
• Jeffrey Dean Morgan (44): actor, Grey's Anatomy, Weeds; also, actors Charlotte Rae (84), Jack Nicholson (73), Ryan Stiles (51), Sherri Shepherd (43), and Ingo Rademacher and Eric Mabius (both 39)
• Anna Falchi (38): actress, hottie