Mergellina

Last Sunday's pizza from Via Napoli was one of their new offerings, Mergellina, containing, quoting from their menu, Yellow Heirloom Tomatoes (Vesuvio), Fior Di Latte, Octopus, Mussels & Neapolitan Tarallo.

But this put me in mind of the original Mergellina, from 38 years ago, on my first trip to Europe. An Israeli backpacker whom I had met in Corfu, and I had stayed at the youth hostel there. We had a great day trip to Capri and night in town. The hostel was perfectly adequate for poor backpackers, but the one thing that has stuck in my mind was that some families who had been displaced by the 1980 Irpinia Earthquake occupied some floors there. As far as I can tell the hostel is still there after all these years, still with good views of the harbour, being on a hill, but has mixed reviews.

As I commented in the original post on Naples, I must go back some day.

Pessimal

After signing a petition opposing Cormann's candidacy for OECD SG, I realised that pessimal, the antonym to optimal, should be used more.

Actually I first encountered it in the Spanish form in 1997, when some Chilean girls talked about their coche (car) pessimo. I understood immediately from the context. That was also my introduction to pisco sour. Fun times.

20%LOAF

I came across a piece of advice in a Mark Rice-Oxley’s The Upside newsletter: Try to give 20% less of a fuck about everything. In these times where we are inundated by information, are we wasting time on issues that we have no power over, when we could be making a real difference and be more happy working on issues that we can influence? Often these issues are closer to home and closer to our self.

20%LOAF means that out of every 5 issues confronting us, we discard one as not worthy of our energy. This is a more realistic course of action than DGAF immediately. Now assume that we make a yearly resolution to give 20%LOAF, then our attachment will then diminish according to this series: 0.8, 0.64, 0.512, … By the 5th year we would only waste a third of our time, and by the 10th year only a tenth. Wouldn’t that be worth aiming for?

How should we determine if the issue is worth GAF? Here’s a flowchart that might help:

 

Generic language joke

A [NationalityB] walked into a shopping centre and saw an attractive shop. He walked inside and said in a thick [NationalityB] accent: Can you gimme a half kilo of cheese please?

Everyone began to laugh loudly. As the [NationalityB] walked away deeply offended, he thought to himself: If I learn to speak good [LanguageA], then they will not know I am [NationalityB].

He took course after course until he spoke flawless [LanguageA].

He went back to [NationA] and went into a shop. There he said in his best [LanguageA]: May I have half a loaf of sliced brown bread, four biscuits and a white milk loaf?

The shopkeeper began to laugh uproariously and said: You're [NationalityB], right?

The poor [NationalityB] was completely embarrassed and said: But I spoke perfect [LanguageA]. I don't have the slightest [NationalityB] accent.

The shopkeeper replied: You asked for bread. This is a butcher shop.

Hypobole

Today I wondered if the antonym of hyperbole might be hypobole. Like the Apollo 13 report "Ok, Houston, we've had a problem here". Or my Peruvian friend's account of a Shining Path massacre of an entire village: "Naturally the villagers were not too happy after that". My friend was a master of that verbal art.

It turns out that hypobole is a real word, but means something different, to anticipate objections for the purpose of refuting them later. Understatement is probably the closest to what I wanted, with a couple of related terms like litotes and melosis.

FOBI

You probably know the acronym FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) (on news, bargains, etc). Today I found the term for a concept that's been fermenting in my head: Fear of Becoming Irrelevant (FOBI) . My original search term was Fear of Loss of Relevance (FOLOR), but FOBI is more memorable and also generates more results from a search.

Anybody can have FOBI at any time, but it probably is more likely to be associated with a life change, such as retirement. It probably explains a lot of activity on forums where people, who were experts when they were working, try hard to maintain their status with long dissertations.

Suggestions for dealing with FOBI are numerous and varied. What works depends on the individual. For me the course taken by the author of the article linked to sounds good to me; just do what you feel is valuable, live in the moment and let go of the outcome.

Smoocheroso

I've found my word of the day: smoocheroso.

It was used to describe a couple of performances on the now defunct Radio National program The Planet.

https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/archived/dailyplanet/jenny-game-lopata--bennie-wallace/3408848

If you like smoocheroso, sensuous tenor saxophone, it's hard to imagine anything more appetizing than "The Nearness of You".

https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/archived/weekendplanet/richard-galliano-and-maria-kalaniemi/3306210

RICHARD GALLIANO (NEW YORK TRIO) - ’RUBY, MY DEAR’ (one of the world’s greatest accordionists, ’live’, & smoocheroso with ac bassist Larry Grenadier & the brushes of drummer Clarence Penn.

So it has been used to describe tenor saxophone and accordion performances. It sounds like a medley of smooth and smooch, with the Spanish suffix to turn it into an adjective. There are few occurrences of the word on the Internet and no definition, but you can infer what it implies.

Shaggy number story

A science reporter was interviewing a famous pure mathematician at home. After the interview, his attention was drawn to the various beautiful paintings on the wall depicting well-known mathematical numbers, such as √2, 1729, Fibonacci series, and even transcendentals such as π and e.

Ah yes, they are presents from my artist friends. Aren't they lovely? she asked.

The reporter noticed one painting on the ground depicting 0. Why isn't that one on the wall?

Why, that's the unhung zero, replied the mathematician.