the Word for Wednesday

SHENANIGAN






Trickery, underhand action, intrigue, skulduggery.



You’ll most commonly encounter this word in the plural. It seems to have originated in California at about the time of the Gold Rush, though it was first recorded in print only in 1855. In the years since, it has been spelt in about a dozen different ways, though recent dictionaries have settled on the version above. Where it comes from is still a matter of substantial dispute; the first five dictionaries I consulted gave four different origins (Oxford Dictionaries — as so often — opting for the ultra-cautious “origin unknown”). The word looks Irish, and there was no shortage of Irishmen in the California diggings, so it’s plausible to suggest the Irish word sionnachuighm as the source, meaning ‘I play tricks’, which is pronounced roughly as ‘shinnuckeem’. Others argue it comes from an East Anglian dialect word nannicking for playing the fool. Yet others guess at a link with the Spanish word chanada for a trick or deceit, which is another half-way plausible source, considering California’s history. Yet another theory was put forward in 1948 in American Speech for an origin in German schinnagel for a nail that holds the rim to the wheel, which produced the German slang terms schinageln, to work, and Schenigelei, a trick. As the man behind the market stall said, you pays your money and you takes your choice ...

Camera abandoned on mountain top is returned full of photos

A student left a camera on a picturesque mountaintop in Snowdonia, Wales in an experiment into human trust.

Paul Bellis Jones, 24, left a note with the camera near the summit of Mount Tryfan, instructing walkers to take a picture then leave it for the next person.

He was keen to know if the camera would be returned to his home in Glan Conwy, near Llandudno, as per his instructions, of if it would be stolen instead.

Snap happy: Paul Bellis Jones was left with over 30 pictures of fellow walkers when he abandoned a camera near the summit of Mount Tryfan

Thankfully for Mr Jones, over 30 ramblers took photographs of themselves at the beauty spot, which overlooks two large rocks near the summit.

When the film ran out four days later, the camera was personally returned to his house by a National Park warden.

The student, who left the camera and accompanying note in a sealed bag, launched the experiment in mid-May.

He said: 'I was speaking to a friend who said you can't trust anyone, anywhere these days.

'I didn't want to believe that so I set up this experiment to found out what might happen and proved you can trust people.'

High hopes: The camera was left on the Snowdonia peak as an experiment

Strike a pose: The camera was left with a note instructing walkers to take a picture then leave it for the next person

'I planned it that way. Tryfan is very popular and gets a lot of visitors, but not as many as Snowdon.

'The camera was one of the use-once type and was left in clear view near Adam and Eve, the two large rocks, right at the summit.

'I took the first photo of my friends and then left it. There was another group just behind us coming up to the summit and I saw they had found the camera and knew it was being used. But I didn't know then if I would see it again.'

In the frame: The camera was returned to Mr Jones personally by a National Park warden when the film ran out

Rock on: The camera was left in clear view near two large rocks near the summit

The camera was returned to Mr Jones by Ogwen Valley warden Brian Jones.

He said: 'We find a lot of equipment on the hills during the year and we do our best to reunite it with their owners.

'I found the camera and thought it had been lost until I saw the note.

'I was passing his home and just dropped it off. I'm glad the photos came out fine.'

Say cheese: Mr Jones set up the experiment to prove people could be trusted

National trust: Over 30 ramblers took photographs at the beauty spot

28 divided by 7 equals 13..here's proof

Easy Math - The most amazing videos are a click away

the Word for Tuesday

actually two words that are very similar and vitually interchangeable

scatology/coprology- the study of faeces.

Scatological studies allow one to determine a wide range of biological information about a creature, including its diet, healthiness, and diseases.

other forms might include:

coprophagiac- one who dines on faeces

scatological- pertaining to the study of faeces

scat-slang for faeces

coprology-obscenity, esp. words or humor referring to excrement

the Joke for tuesday

There was a guy riding through the desert on his camel. He had been travelling so long that he felt the need to have sex. Obviously there were no women in the desert so the man turned to his camel. He tried to position himself to have sex with his camel but the camel ran away. The man ran to catch up to the camel and got back on and started to ride again. Soon he was feeling the urge to have sex again so once again he turned to his camel. The camel refused by running away. So he caught up to it again and got on it again. Finally after riding the camel through the entire desert the man came to a road. There was a broken down car with three big chested beautiful blondes sitting in it. He went up to them and asked the women if they needed any help.

The hottest girl said,"If you fix our car we will do anything you want." The man luckily knew a thing or two about cars and fixed it in a flash. When he finished the three girls asked, "How could we ever repay you Mr." After thinking for a short while he replied, "Could you hold my camel?"

Video: Bike Thief Gets Beatdown

By John Del Signore

This rather graphic video depicts an alleged bike thief getting beaten up after getting caught by the bike owner and his friends in the East Village. On the one hand, lowlife thieves deserve what's coming to them; on the other hand, street justice does have its downsides (anarchy, mob rule, model riots, etc). But the blogger who posted the video, Prolly is not Probably, is all for it, writing, "The guy wasn't bleeding or banged up. Just enough to send a message. DON'T STEAL BIKES. Cops won't do anything and this guy will think twice about stealing bikes."

He does make a valid point there. Below, posted in its entirety, is the bike owner's friend's explanation of how the bike thief was caught, assaulted, and videotaped.

Here's the story. I was having brunch on first ave and first street with a a couple of friends including Alfred .It was a pretty sunny day and a good there was a good amount of pedestrian traffic .Nothing unusual. Alfred went out to make a call and spotted someone looking over his bike. Nothing unusual ,he got a hot ass cannondale with hot ass wheels.the guy was average looking,had a helmet and a bag.looked like your average joe casual biker.Suddenly this dude gets on his knees and pulls out a drill.At first Alfred thought he wanted to steal his wheels,until he saw the drill.Is this what it has come out to?!people stealing bike with drills?Anyways as he was getting ready to drill the lock,Alfred comes in the restaurant and yells,!yooooo someones trying to steal my bike,lets go get him.and let me tell you this ass hole tried stealing the wrong bike.first it was a bike messengers bike and second it was Alfred's bike and the motherFkr got a temper sometimes.so we roll out to this dude and start pounding him.my first instinct was to get my U lock and bang on him,but my bike was already locked up so , we bumbrushed this dude and started pounding him.Everybody is watching and wondering why this dude is being plumeted ,but at that point we don't give a fuck.we had to make sure this asshole dosen't do it again.me personal i have had 2 bikes stolen,in like a month apart.fuck that shit.he did't even look like a bike thief!so while pounding him i reach out to put my phone in my pocket and realized i had a camera on my wait.i pulled it out and captured the second half of the beating!

Bike Thief vs Street Justis from triple on Vimeo.

Julius Andreas Gimli Arn MacGyver Chewbacka Highlander Elessar-Jankov

According to Norwegian site VG Nett, bus driver Andreas Jankov has formally changed his name to Julius Andreas Gimli Arn MacGyver Chewbacka Highlander Elessar-Jankov. "I wanted to show that it is possible to be serious and at the same time take the name you like," said the film enthusiast. "I wanted to see how far I could take it with respect to the number of names. I started thinking about this three years ago and it was approved in January this year." Apparently, he's had his passport and bank card reissued, but the name was too long so he dropped "Highlander."

- Julius is an homage to the famous chimp at the Kristiansand Zoo
- 'Arn' is a Swedish knight movie
- Elessar and Gimli are from 'Lord of the Rings'
- 'MacGyver', just the greatest Richard Dean Anderson show ever!
- 'Highlander' could refer to either the movie or TV show
- Chewbacka (aka Chewbacca) is from 'Star Wars'

the Word for Monday

Ostrobogulous

The word is weird not only because it looks strange and is rather rare but because it can refer to something weird (or a strange, bizarre or generally unusual happening). To increase its peculiarity, it can also mean something mildly risqué, indecent or pornographic.

“Ostrobogulous” was Vickybird’s favourite word. It stood for anything from the bawdy to the slightly off-colour. Any double entendre that might otherwise have escaped his audience was prefaced by, “if you will pardon the ostrobogulosity”.

Magic my Youth, by Arthur Calder-Marshall, 1951.

It was coined by Victor Neuburg (Vickybird in the quotation), a gay British Jewish poet and writer and a close friend of the occultist Aleister Crowley, whose sexual magic practices he helped develop.

Neuburg said that the word was formed, highly irregularly as you might expect, from Greek ostro, rich, plus English bog, dirt, from the schoolboy slang sense of the toilet, and ending in Latin ulus, full of. So “full of rich dirt”. The Oxford English Dictionary doesn’t agree, arguing that the first part is from the adjective oestrous. But we ought to let Victor Neuburg have the last word, as it was his creation, even though he was a bit shaky on his etymology — the Greek word was ostreon, a type of mollusc (it’s the source, via Latin, of English oyster) that was harvested to obtain a rare and expensive purple dye, hence figuratively something rich.

Another meaning of ostrobogulous turns up occasionally.

I started out making toys because it was something I could do with no money, an artistic family and a Victorian sewing machine. In the evenings I made “ostrobogulous” toys, a term my mother used to mean harmlessly mischievous, and sold them in Heal’s, where I worked by day.

The Times, 8 Nov. 2003.

This matches a sense known to reader Graham Hill: “When I was at secondary school in the late 1960s ostrobogulous was used as an alternative name for a gonk.” (For those too young to remember, or who live in a country in which they never caught on, a gonk was a small furry soft toy, popular at the time.)

Ostrobogulous is a favourite of people who collect interestingly weird words. A notable appearance, in July 2009, was in the Daily Mail, a British family paper which might have looked askance at it had its editors known of its indecorous antecedents. It was quoted as the favourite word of Professor Christian Kay, who worked for 42 years on the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary.

the Joke for Monday

Have you ever wondered where and how

yodeling began? Many years ago a man

was traveling through the mountains of

Switzerland.Nightfall was rapidly approaching

and he had nowhere to sleep. He went up

to a farmhouse and asked the farmer if he

could spend the night.The farmer told him that

he could sleep in the barn.As the story goes,

the farmer's daughter asked her father,

'Who is that man going into the barn?'

'That fellow traveling through,'said the farmer.

'needs a place to stay for the night so I told 

him he could sleep in the barn.'The daughter 

said,'Perhaps he is hungry.'So she prepared him

a plate of food for him and then took it out to

the barn.About an hour later,the daughter returned.

Her clothing disheveled and straw in her hair.

Straight up to bed she went.The farmer's wife was

very observant.She then suggested that perhaps the 

man was thirsty.So she fetched a bottle of wine,

took it out to the barn and she too did not return

for an hour.Her clothing was askew, her blouse 

buttoned incorrectly.She also headed straight to bed.

The next morning at sunrise the man in the barn got 

up and continued on his journey,waving to the farmer 

as he left.When the daughter awoke and learned that 

the visitor was gone,she broke into tears.'How could 

he leave without even saying goodbye,'she cried.'We 

made such passionate love last night!''What?'shouted 

the father as he angrily ran out of the house looking 

for the man,who by now was halfway up the mountain. 

The farmer screamed up at him,'I'm going to get you! 

You had sex with my daughter!'The man looked back down

from the mountainside,cupped his hand next to his mouth

and yelled out.....'LAIDTHEOLAIDEETOO!' 

How to prevent chronic back and neck pain

How to Prevent Chronic Back and Neck Pain

When you are stiff and sore from sitting at your computer for long periods, it's best if you

vary your position and posture periodically. We know we shouldn't sit for too long without
taking a break to stretch and move around, but we forget and then pay for it at the end of


the day. In order to prevent chronic back & neck pain, here are several excellent stretches
that are suggested to relieve the stress.


Try one of these the next time your back and neck start feeling tight:

There, now don't you feel better?