Welcome to this week’s “zine.”

by Mark M

How the English Language Worx, Volume 2, Etymology (1997, 2004)

by Mark M, N.o.P.

etymology – the history of a linguistic form (as a word) shown by tracing its development since its earliest recorded occurrence in the language where it is found, by tracing its transmission from one language to another, by analyzing it into its component parts, by identifying its cognates in other languages, or by tracing it and its cognates to a common ancestral form in an ancestral language

–Merriam-Webster

Mtymology – same diff

–M

HOW ETYMOLOGY WORKS

It’s easy; words in the first column gave rise to those in the second; trust me:

liar familiar

dual individual

gator investigator

cuss discuss

car carburetor

racism ostracism

gated segregated

cent decent

bad badger

corn unicorn

ok amok

ish blemish

rain terrain

dent accident

riot patriot

lite elite

vine divine

vow vowel

or traitor

ore explore

national reincarnational

gut gutter

drum conundrum

chief mischief

age language

ho holy

la lazy

lousy jealousy

phew nephew

row tomorrow

tangle rectangle

deed indeed

toes potatoes

lace palace

key turkey

kit kitchen

nine asinine

tail detail

chase purchase

nasty dynasty

tiny destiny

pair despair

doze dozen

liberate deliberate

tense intense

peat repeat

pound compound

nick nickel

ray hooray

ear hear

ant antacid

cult difficult

band husband

low pillow

aw law

him whim

oil turmoil

ride deride

scent nascent

lip slip

lips slips

reign foreign

me meal

he ache

in zinc

now winnow

hear rehearsal

ton cotton

ham hammer

boon baboon

all alloy

gent intelligent

ware aware

rot carrot

casual casualty

it bandit

ox fox

sire desire

bap baptize

late chocolate

pies occupies

elf self

elves selves

sands thousands

gem stratagem

ice justice

scene obscene

invent inventory

tire entire

lion pavilion

rage barrage

fish selfish

parent transparent

very recovery

own down

over cover

gain again

oof goof

end lend

too tool

hanging changing

monk monkey

ally incidentally

cue rescue

count country

my tummy

tern pattern

at format

termination determination

and demand

ass harass

an anvil

gory category

ant coolant

pert expert

main remain

grant immigrant

cute prosecute

pose dispose

bee beep

shove shovel

chives archives

step steep

see seek

sport transport

car careen

port report

glob global

demon demonstrate

native alternative

natives alternatives

rest forest

real boreal

eon pigeon

quality equality

um aluminum

um museum

umph triumph

ut utmost

sis emphasis

dance abundance

pump pumpkin

dance attendance

kin pumpkin

slum slumber

veal reveal

red hatred

nite ignite

a accurse

by lullaby

sour source

fee free

ream dream

ban banquet

bile labile

mini minister

try entry

grin chagrin

mum minimum

rein reinforced

gate congregate

hard orchard

man maniac

omen women

malevolent femalevolent

manager womanager

mentor womentor

parent apparent

broth brother

son poison

other mother

fa father

us anus

at habitat

did splendid

try chemistry

member remember

busy sacrificial

bit exhibit

crate desecrate

eat sweat

ate eliminate

spices auspices

flu fluid

fur furtive

end extend

tent extent

and expand

quip equip

mission submission

icy policy

rid ridiculous

toes vetoes

fist pacifist

ramp rampage

ass assault

rage storage

ants contaminants

mine examine

position composition

mental detrimental

duct product

main maintain

tour contour

cant lubricant

medic comedic

yell yellow

his hiss

rot tarot

dent dentist

rigid frigid

lure failure

rude protrude

dance accordance

quest request

mission permission

positionproposition

form reform

it deposit

any company

terminator determinator

ion corrosion

torn tornado

tier frontier

hall shall

ying lying

zen citizen

pa patrol

very delivery

liver deliver

heater theater

rated incorporated

coal coalesce

lion rebellion

create cremate

ration concentration

needle needless

try industry

trial industrial

phony symphony

tradition extradition

gent intelligent

pant occupant

sin sinister

is penis

size emphasize

stag stagnant

dated dilapidated

aging packaging

anti anticipate

fat fatigue

ease grease

garb garbage

acre massacre

vice service

lied supplied

sip gossip

tempo temporary

dip diplomat

city capacity

scent adolescent

rate vibrate

range orange

vocation provocation

iota biota

coma glaucoma

rated exonerated

urine figurine

stain abstain

mate intimate

stating devastating

real cereal

rapist therapist

sear search

rage courage

sensual consensual

ant giant

deter detergent

sic classic

lack black

serve deserve

ado adolescent

nation explanation

rat ratification

pronoun pronounce

ass carcass

ten often

lute absolute

yang yabba dabba do

oops troops

wart thwart

viable enviable

session obsession

suit pursuit

form perform

fort effort

yes yesterday

curse course

gent urgent

temporary contemporary

tub tube

tress distress

gal Portugal

lulu Honolulu

Pepsi dyspepsia

Sony oligopsony

Nancy pregnancy

chest Chester

Diana Indiana

Tina Argentina

Troy destroy

tan Satan

as Thomas

glad Gladys

tin Martin

baby Babylon

brew Hebrew

Asian caucasian

can Vatican (Vatican’t?)

hawk Mohawk

ward Edward

Wanda Rwanda

Al genital

Tom bottom

ran Lutheran

arm Armageddon

Ron iron

Ron erroneous

Ron Sharon

Eden Sweden

mania Romania

ago Chicago

Pict depict

Rome syndrome

wall Wally

Dan dang danger

ton newt Newton

man wombman woman

dating validating invalidating

jest jesty majesty

go cargo go, car, go

car in car incarceration

pee peenis penis (by shortening)

sent resent represent

did candid candidate

eat treat retreat

tab table comfortable

temp tempt attempt

do ado tornado

or favor flavor

man germ German

turd turday Saturday

fell fella fellatio

fact factor factory satisfactory

Appendices

Appendix I

pair repair

mon salmon

uncle unclean

fort effort

Appendix II

brothel bETrothAl

Larsen Larseny

Word of the Future:

mon salmon salmoney

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Brand new book: Nakam: The Holocaust Survivors Who Sought Full-Scale Revenge by Dina Porat.

From the publisher: ‘Nakam (Hebrew for vengeance) tells the story of the Avengers (Nokmim), a group of young Holocaust survivors led by poet and resistance fighter Abba Kovner, who undertook a mission of revenge against Germany following the crimes of the Holocaust. Motivated by both the atrocities they had endured and the realization that murderous anti-Semitic attacks on survivors continued long after the Nazi surrender, these fifty young men and women sought retaliation at a level commensurate with the devastation caused by the Holocaust, making clear to the world that Jewish blood would no longer be shed with impunity. Had they been successful, they would have poisoned city water supplies [“Plan A”] and loaves of bread distributed to German POWs [“Plan B”], with the aim of killing six million Germans. Kovner and his followers went to great lengths to carry out their plans, going so far as to obtain the plans for Nuremberg’s municipal water system [for “Plan A”], secure large quantities of poison, infiltrate a POW camp and the bakery that supplied it, and distribute poisoned bread to prisoners [“Plan B,” which was carried out]–but their plots were ultimately stymied [though some 2,000 SS veterans became ill, and hundreds were hospitalized, but none died –Mark]. Most of the members of Nakam eventually returned to Israel, where for decades many of them refused to speak publicly about their roles in the group.’

Given the horrors of the Holocaust and the continued killings, post-war, one can easily understand the motivation of the Avengers, but, as they say, two wrongs don’t make a right and poisoning a water supply would kill innocent children, for instance. Also, who knows how many Germans actually opposed Hitler but were afraid to speak out? The members of the dissenting White Rose society were executed, for instance: Hans Scholl and Sophie Scholl, as well as Christoph Probst, were executed by guillotine four days after their arrest, on 22 February 1943.

This article reports: ‘Many of the Avengers came to think differently about Plan A as time passed. Simcha Rotem described it in retrospect as “an utterly lunatic idea” and suggested that the guilt of murdering so many children would have driven him to suicide; Vitka Kempner-Kovner, an Avenger who later married Abba Kovner, described their attempted mass murder as “a Satanic concept” and “a destructive ideology.”’

A rather contrary, to put it mildly, U.S. post-WW II action:

Operation Paperclip was a secret United States intelligence program in which more than 1,600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians were taken from the former Nazi Germany to the U.S. for government employment after the end of World War II in Europe, between 1945 and 1959. Conducted by the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA), it was largely carried out by special agents of the U.S. Army‘s Counterintelligence Corps (CIC). Many of these personnel were former members, and some were former leaders of the Nazi Party.

And to think of the D-Day and other soldiers fighting and dying for that? Yet another reason not to enlist.

(Hail CO’s. International Conscientious Objectors’ Day is May 15th.)

By the way, Adolph Hitler named his special personal World War II train “Amerika”? Why in the world would he do that?

From the article I linked in the sentence above:

“[Hitler] admired and envied not only (the United States of) ‘America’s’ near-extermination of its Indigenous peoples but also its long history of Black chattel slavery, its racist Jim Crow segregation laws and practices [hear that, Kanye West? –Mark], its rugged and violent frontier spirit, its breakneck industrialization, its pioneering mass production methods, its vast network of roads and rail lines, and the propagandistic power of its movie and radio industries.”

Hitler switched the train’s name to The Brandenburg in 1943, by which time U.S. forces had engaged Third Reich troops in North Africa and Western Europe.

Hitler would also envy that the U.S. gets away with its wars such as, but not limited to, Viet Nam, Afghanistan, and Iraq and has around 800 military bases around the world.

(Incidentally, those black POW/MIA flags which arose at the time of the Viet Nam war are based essentially on myth.)

And…

Regarding the Holocaust, Germany has, for instance, Stolpersteine; literally ‘stumbling stones,’ metaphorically a ‘stumbling block’), a sett-size, 4-inch concrete cube bearing a brass plate inscribed with the name and life dates of victims of Nazi extermination or persecution and the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a 200,000 sq ft (big!) memorial in Berlin.

There are no statues of Hitler or of the other Nazi or SS leaders in Germany.

However, in the U.S., concerning slavery, we have, in contrast, Confederate monuments and memorials.

And what has the U.S. to memorialize those who died in the genocide of Native Americans?

———=———

If food waste were a country, it would be the third top emitter of greenhouse gases after the United States and China. People funnel enormous resources into food we don’t eat. First, we waste resources in how we produce food; then, in the United States, we waste up to 40% of that food.

Food waste is responsible for 21% of freshwater use, contributing to the loss of riparian ecosystems and the decline of precious wild species that depend on them.

———=———

Tired of being exploited by Facebook and its other abuses?

Check out Facebook Users Union.

———=———

A thing (that is, “assembly” or folkmoot) was a governing assembly in early Germanic society, made up of the free people of the community presided over by a lawspeaker. Things took place at regular intervals, usually at prominent places that were accessible by travel. They provided legislative functions, as well as being social events and opportunities for trade. In modern usage, the meaning of this word in English and other languages has shifted to mean not just an assemblage of some sort but simply an object of any sort.

I learned of this when reading a piece questioning the value of the state. The writer observes:

“…we almost never fail to find an extraordinary record of stability and equilibrium that suggests, and goes a long way to proving, that the human animal, without the patterns of the state and the pillars of authority, tends to peace not war, to self-­regulation not chaos, to cooperation not dissension, to harmony not violence, to order not disarray. Indeed, looking at the long human record, it is hard not to find an increase in all of the latter characteristics with the development of the state.”

And:

“Examples of societies that have lived, and lived long and well, without the trappings of the state are surprisingly common, once one begins combing through the scientific literature. In fact they are so common, occurring right throughout the Indian societies of both North and South America, through much of North Africa and almost all of the great region from the Sudan to the Kalahari, and throughout the islands of the South Pacific from Sumatra all the way to Polynesia, occurring among patrilineal as well as matrilineal societies, settled and pastoral as well as hunting and nomadic, large and scattered as well as small and cohesive, isolated and ingrown as well as confederative and cooperative, occurring in such variety and profusion that it comes to seem from the anthropological evidence that this is indeed the basic natural organiza­tion of human societies.”

———=———

Remember when Democrat Nancy Pelosi took impeachment of Republican G. W. Bush off the table?

And then, later, when rootsaction.org was proposing 25 articles of impeachment of Trump (Nader had about a dozen), Nancy’s first impeachment of Trump only concerned Ukraine (N.B.) with only two articles?

Ever wonder about these decisions?

Read all about it here.

———=———

My Shrunken Musical Tastes

Starting around age 15 (1971), noting cheap records (the original age of vinyl) in the cut-out bins, I started to go hog wild a few years later in record buying once I started earning money from part-time jobs. Cut-outs, so named because they often had a corner snipped off the jacket or a hole punched through jacket’s corner, were akin to “remainders” in the book-publishing world, product that was overstocked and/or being discontinued, going out of print.

I think my first cut-out purchase was Steppenwolf 7; eventually most all their original albums ended up in the cut-out bins. These were a “distraction” from my initial project of collecting all the Beatles’ releases.

For a few years, I was afraid to buy used LPs, fearing they were worn enough to make fidelity suffer, but I finally relented and went hog wild with those too. Their fidelity was usually fine.

Also, despite a sticker or such denoting a record was for promotion only and not to be sold, the used record stores routinely put promo LPs in their racks for sale, and snap them up I often did.

My main taste was for rock, but at the low, low prices of used or cut-outs, I could afford to explore and dipped into jazz territory also.

At those low prices, exploration was the name of my game and I ultimately accumulated on the order of 2000 LPs in about five years of avid buying.

I even recall going to a Chicago record collectors convention armed with, I suppose, about $100 or so and spending almost every penny of it necessitating I not take the toll road home, as I had no money left for the tolls.

I remember, in the record section of a second-hand store, finding a number of Dave Clark Five records. Even though the records were kind of beat up, this was treasure since, in 1978, hearing such out-of-fashion stuff was a rare occurence. At that point, I probably hadn’t heard any Dave Clark Five for, perhaps, 12 years.

The first punk rock I heard was the Ramones second album, Leave Home (1977), a record I checked out from the library, another source for exploration.

I liked it, but it seemed kind of like a novelty relative to the wider world of rock in general which was everything from pop to progressive rock to jazz-rock, etc.

And, not that I was a devotee of either, but there was also disco and country-rock. The then “progressive” rock FM station in Minneapolis, MN where I lived, KQRS, played a lot of the latter.

But punk/new wave came to take hold with me and my tastes in music began to shrink in favor of the often instant gratification of a catchy song played very fast, whereas, groups such as Yes and Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, which I owned records of, most likely didn’t offer me gratification of any instant nature.

A note on tempo: Often, within reason, for me, the faster the better. I think, for instance, as much as I like ABBA’s “Dancing Queen,” its tempo is kind of draggy. On the other hand, Hugh Masekela ruined “Grazing in the Grass” when he performed it at the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival by playing it at a frenetic pace as seen in the film, Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised).

In some respects late 1970s punk/new wave was a throwback to the mid-60s and often these bands would include on an album a cover of a song from then, often some long-forgotten, but really catchy song such as “(Hey) Little Girl” originally by Syndicate of Sound, but covered by the Dead Boys on their first album.

Again, I likely hadn’t heard these songs for around 12 years.

A friend who muchly liked progressive rock and jazz and didn’t care at all for punk/new wave thought it sounded like old wave to him. What was new was the crop of artists playing the music.

The Beatles and Stones et al. were mostly born in the 1940-1945 range. The punk/new wavers were born mostly around 1955.

For instance, John(ny Rotten) Lydon was only about 2 months older than me. Sid Vicious was one year younger.

Also, there was a do-it-yourself spirit to it. Virtuosity was not a requirement and might even be looked on with askance.

Some of the older artists embraced punk/new wave.

Progger Robert Fripp is on a Blondie Parallel Lines song and joined them on-stage. He’s on a Talking Heads album, David Byrne is on one of his albums, and he hanged out with the Damned, and says he even jammed with the Ramones.

Be Bop Deluxe’s incredibly prolific Bill Nelson produced some of the new wavers.

Former Door Ray Manzarek produced the first four albums by the group X.

Nick Mason of Pink Floyd produced The Damned’s second album (the group were vainly hoping to get Syd Barrett to produce and were disappointed when Nick walked in the door; Nick found they wanted work very fast, several songs per day, whereas he was used to the first day of a Floyd session just tinkering with drum tuning and miking, for instance).

Also, aside from disco, punk/new wave resurrected dancing to rock. Unless one was into ballet, Yes and ELP, for instance, weren’t very danceable. (Actually, with its unsyncopated, simple thump, thump, thump and at a slower tempo, I never found disco very danceable. I do recall, at a 1975 Yes arena gig, a woman in the audience “balleting” to the music.)

In time, I became “all about” punk and new wave. I was too young to be a hippie (age 11 in 1967), but I embraced punk/new wave by my early 20s. What cemented that was discovering a couple of clubs in Milwaukee where the bands played that and the crowd was the then new punk subculture.

I drove up there from Racine most every Friday and Saturday night in 1979 and 1980 and, besides the local bands such as the Haskels and later the Oil Tasters, I caught, in no particular order, Pere Ubu, the Dead Boys, the Stranglers, Richard Hell and the Voidoids, David Johansen, Johnny Thunders, the Ramones, the Psychedelic Furs, the Rockcats, the Cramps, Eddie and the Hot Rods, Black Flag, Iggy Pop, Devo, Captain Beefheart, Jonathan Richman, first solo on electric guitar, then, about one year later, with a Modern Lovers line-up which included two women singers, Talking Heads, the Cars, the then little-known U2 and the Police, 999…

I’m probably forgetting some bands. Some of these gigs were on week nights, work the next day, ugh!

I remember one night at the Starship, the new wave club, members of Motorhead wandered in, apparently post-gig from elsewhere, with their leather biker-style jackets and long hair. They looked pretty out of place. They were largely ignored. One of them might have been Lemmy, but I never followed them so I don’t know.

One very memorable not-punk gig I caught, at the Jazz Gallery, was Anthony Braxton, solo sax. Stupendous! And I was hardly 15 feet away from him.

But, otherwise, rather rapidly, my taste in music shrank to be not much wider than punk/new wave.

A number of the punks adopted amusing names, for instance, The Damned’s Captain Sensible and Rat Scabies or Wire’s Robert Gotobed.

When I still lived in Minneapolis, at a record store signing, I got the autographs of the Ramones and on a separate occasion, different store, that of Patti Smith and her band.

I remember at one point, when she’s signing autographs, Bowie’s “Heroes” was playing, and she was sort of swaying/dancing-in-place to the music.

After they had finished signing, and had piled into the limo, Patti Smith angrily burst out of it cos one band member was still in the store, bassist Ivan Kral. “Ivan! Ivan!” she yelled and, because I happened in that moment to be standing in front of the door, shoved me aside to dash into the store. The shove wasn’t overly violent and I thought little of it until it dawned on me that Patti Smith had shoved me, not just some Jane Doe.

I got my autographs on just pieces of paper. I wasn’t acquainted with the idea of an artist signing their album and even naively thought “Why would I want my album defaced?” !

Another encounter was when Pere Ubu was playing the Starship in Milwaukee, and, when I arrived for the gig, singer David Thomas was out front of the club speaking to about 8-10 fans.

I joined in the little chat and somehow offered that I had come up from Racine. Also, a button I had on said nothing; it was just thin black parallel lines on white and David noted it.

I asked him, “Can you dig it?” and he said, “No.”

After the gig, he and a band member were out front and the band member asked me where they might get a bite to eat and David Thomas said, “He doesn’t know; he’s from Racine!”

But around 1981, I began to get bored with it all, stopped going to Milwaukee, and for about 12 years only listened to an oldies station on the radio then playing hits from the 50s and 60s — when I listened to music.

It was rare for me then to buy anything.

But in 1993, when I heard the Breeders’ “Cannonball,” it was like the floodgates of then “alternative” opened.

By this time, LPs as a new product were long gone and CDs were king.

I resumed my old habits of buying cut-outs and used and with in a few years accumulated on the order of 1000 CDs.

A note on Morrissey:

The alternative Milwaukee station would occasionally play his stuff and I thought, “Who is this crooner?” and, though I didn’t hate his stuff, it didn’t do much for me either.

But then a mini-floodgates opened with they played his then new “The More You Ignore Me, the Closer I Get,” so sonically gorgeous, that I experienced complete conversion and also then explored his prior group, the Smiths, having ignored them along with all the rest of the 1980s.

I thought Morrissey’s very frequent “woe is me” lyrics were something of a put-on until I read his autobiography and saw he really has suffered from depression, so the lyrics were presumably largely sincere.

He is very outspoken and opinionated, for instance, saying about “The Iron Lady,” Margaret Thatcher, that she was neither.

Wikipedia reports: ‘When asked in a 2017 interview if he would push a button that would kill Trump if given the opportunity, he responded that he “would, for the safety of the human race.” He later said the United States Secret Service questioned him over his comments on Trump.’

In any case, I came to grow bored with alternative too and nowadays seldom put anything on or buy anything.

Such are my shrunken (focused?) musical tastes.

———=———

Misc.

Less than 1% of cotton is organic according to Sierra, Winter 2022, in that issue’s the problem with fast fashion article.

The Pentagon fails another audit, gets $858 billion anyway.

Biden kills Senate Resolution to end Yemen war.

Tomorrow [i.e., Thursday, Dec 15, 2022] will be 0 minutes 30 seconds shorter, according to wunderground.com.

We’ve already had the day(s) of earliest sunset at 4:18 pm (Racine); now the sunset is at 4:19, yet the days are still shortening albeit by minuscule amounts as above.

Happy shortest days of the year.

The End.

Next week, my second-to-the-last post (subject to change): Ignoramia, “Bad Memories,” A Look at John McWhorter, Artist Nehemiah R. Edwards, Anecdote, More McWhorter, Justices “Unblinded,” U.S. and Treaties

Boilerplate: As part of my community project as Racine Writer in Residence, I hereby invite Racine-area people to send me prose or poems of 250 words or less for me to consider for inclusion in my posts as a “guest appearance.” Former Racine Writers in Residence, I want to explicitly include you in this invitation. If you want, also send a photo and a very short “bio.” You will retain the copyright for the material you submit. Send to m.mk at att.net with “Racine WiR” in the subject line. Thank you.

Don’t hide your light under a bushel-sized basket; it is recommended that you let it be all bright and stuff.