How to use this Page

The first full trailer for The Hunger Games film debuted on Good Morning America in New York City’s Times Square today. We’ve embedded the video above. More than three thousand Facebook fans have hit “like” on the announcement.

What do you think? The trailer offers glimpses of several major events in the story. Judging from this short clip as well as the teaser released three months ago, it seems that the movie will be faithful to the original novel (author Suzanne Collins played a major role in adapting her book).

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

 I just have to get something off my mind this morning. Call if a pet peeve. Call it bitching. Either way, it could qualify.

I was watching Good Morning America this morning when they had a segment that just proved to me how nuts we’ve become in the past twenty years. The segment had to do with decorating a child’s room and having the cost run from $50,000 upward to give the little darling a wish come true. And that little darling could be an infant at the time.

You could call my reaction one of disgust, disbelief, etc. You’d be right, but you’d also miss my secondary response. That one would cover words like disappointment, outrage, and defeat.

Why would I have such a strong reaction to someone spending that kind of money on something as transient as a child’s room’s décor? I think it has something to do with the fact that it exemplifies the chasm between those with and those without. Recent news reports have discussed the reality of more millionaires being created every year than ever before while the ranks of the poor increase exponentially during the same timeframe. The middle class is separating into upper and lower classes.

We are truly becoming a class system in this country. It’s been coming for a long time, but the blatant signs of the division have finally come out to blind us with their neon lights.

Some watchers of this trend speculate about creating a generation of children who believe they’re entitled to all the perks in life without having earned anything. My question is this. Why haven’t these people already seen that trend?

Bigger and better houses, a new bigger and better phone every time one comes onto the market, expectations of a new car on that 16^th birthday—all of these imply a need for status symbols. Stand in any electronics department of any store, including discount stores, and listen to kids with their parents. Do this for an hour and you’ll understand what I’m talking about.

Any time a child throws a temper tantrum because they’re going to have to wait for a new phone, or that a 60” HDTV for the child’s room is not possible simply because they’ve asked for it are only two examples of a normal day in that electronics department. I have to ask, though, if all of the kids’ influences come from advertising or peers.

There are plenty of adults out there who live the same way, and I’m not talking about those in their 20s and 30s. There are plenty of those in their 40s who seem to have the same problem as the kids. Instant gratification runs rampant.

What about those who will buy the newest, brightest, flashiest phones with apps out the whazoo and they’re worrying about making the mortgage at that moment? Or, how about the fifty some-year- old that just has to have a new paint job on his car instead of paying down the credit card?

It seems as if our culture has bred a few generations of citizens who’re more concerned with living the good life rather than having a good life. I’ve come to disbelieve people who look as if they have everything. I guess I’ve watched too many shows educating people about dealing with debt and witnessing those that are trying to climb out of a hole so deep it will take years of careful planning to prevent them from losing everything.

Until the mindset changes within our country, I doubt that much can be

By Anatoly Liberman

Part 1 appeared long ago and dealt with blackguard, blackleg, and blackmail, three words whose history is unclear despite the seeming transparency of their structure.  Were those guards as black as they were painted?  Who had black legs, and did anyone ever receive black mail?  As I then noted, the etymology of compounds may be evasive.  One begins with obvious words (doormat, for example), passes by dormouse with its impenetrable first element, wonders at moonstone (does it have anything to do with the moon?), moonlighting, and moonshine (be it “foolish talk” or “illegally distilled whiskey”), experiences a temporary relief at the sight of roommate, and stops in bewilderment at mushroom.  The way from dormouse to mushroom is full of pitfalls.  (And shouldn’t pitfall be fallpit?  Originally a pitfall was a trapdoor, a snare, a device for catching birds, but then why pit?).  So-called disguised, or simplified, compounds, like lord and lady (at one time they consisted of two elements) will not interest us today.

Some compounds are so simple and we learn them so early in life that their incongruity never bothers us.  Why is the opposite of sunrise sunset rather than sunsit?  Even the OED is not quite sure.  Regardless of whether sunset is a combination of two nouns (sun + set) or of a noun with a verb in the subjunctive, we expect sit because the sun “sits down” in the west (no one sets it).  Sit and set have often been confused, though the result of the confusion is not as catastrophic as with lie and lay.  Recently one could hear on Good Morning, America a responsible person’s advice to an actress to lay low; the speaker may have grown up in the Midwest, but the lie/lay game has also been attested in several British dialects, and from there it was presumably imported to the New World.  Drawback, we discover, was first used as a banking term; it referred to a sum paid as duty, which is quite natural: we can still overdraw our account; the meaning “an amount of import duty paid back when goods are exported again” continues into the present.  At the end of the 18^th century, drawback was used in bookselling with the sense “rebate, discount.”  Drawback “a weak point, disadvantage, deficiency” appeared in texts and probably in speech early in the 18^th century, and we no longer “hear” its separate parts.  Whatever the details of the convoluted history of bedridden (from Old Engl. bedrede), another deceptive compound, a bedridden person is a poor rider, and a bed is not a horse, but we have heard the word too often to react to the incongruous metaphor.

A most curious adjective is beetle-browed “with bushy, shaggy, or prominent eyebrows.”  Hardly anyone uses it, but it is probably still recognizable without a dictionary.  The word goes back to Middle English, and the question is: “Why beetle?”  Some older scholars did not realize that initially brow meant only “eyebrow” (like German Braue), not “forehead,” so the gloss “with a brow overhanging like that of a beetle” can be dismissed (also, an average beetle does not have much of a brow, does it?). Beetle is, etymologically speaking, a “biter” and is thus related to bite and bitter, because a bitter thing “bites.”  Middle English had the adjective bitel “biting,” with a suffix, as in fickle, brittle, and nimble.  For this reason, Skeat, in the first edition of his dic

NOTE TO MYSELF: WHY IN THE WORLD DID ABC CAVE IN BASED ON THE OPINION OF 1500COMPLAINING VIEWERS AND INSTITUTE CENSORSHIP POLICY

Seems that ABC decided to cancel controversial (to some) rocker, Adam Lambert, appearance on Good Morning America, on November 25th. Lambert, who is openly gay, performed on the American Musical Awards show and made what some perceive as obscene gestures while promoting his single release. Given the open-ness and language used in lyrics by rap singers with absolutely no intervention on the part TV networks, this move by ABC is unwarranted and IMHO, dummmmb. The AMA show in itself is very open and nobody blinks an eye when any of the performers push the limits - and they do that. In cancelling Lambert, CBS immediately grabbed him.

Silly, silly ABC!

BTW - ABC received 1500 complaint phone calls from viewers who found Lambert's actions distasteful. Perhaps the viewers should have just clicked to another network. The late Elvis Presley, who was featured waist-up during his early performances on TV, must be laughing it up, somewhere, however those were in the staid and proper 1950's/'60's. Times have changed and ABC should know better.

BTW - in cancelling Lambert, CBS immediately grabbed him guaranteeing the network a large viewing audience. Silly, silly ABC!