Knock it off, Nabokov

Vladimir Nabokov was born on this day in 1899. He died in 1977.

Nabokov's stories were rife with wordplay -- anagrams, puns, allusions, portmanteau words (see Lewis Carroll), coined words, etc.

In Lolita, Nabokov coins the word nymphet to describe the object of Humbert Humbert's lustful love. A character in that novel is named Vivian Darkbloom, an anagram of Vladimir Nabokov. And Humbert recounts a youthful fling of his on the seashore, with a girl named Annabelle Leigh. (See Poe's Annabel Lee.)

Gored by bull

Ghost word:

Algorism, n.: A statement, easily disproved, claiming credit for something.

Today is Al Gore's 62nd birthday. At one time or another, to some degree or another, the Nobel Prize-winner has said that he was instrumental in the creation of the Internet, and in coining the terms "nanotechnology" and "the Information Superhighway."

Wait around long enough, and Gore will claim he discovered global warming.

Anagram of the day:

Albert Arnold Gore = blander rot galore

This is also the 62nd birthday, by the way, of Rhea Perlman, who played Carla on Cheers. She coined a word of her own: Birdzilla, the oversized turkey that Norm stuck in her oven on Thanksgiving Day.

Rose is not a rose

Pete Rose is 71 years old today.

Pun:

Rose-tainted classes -- all those who naively believed that Charlie Hustle never bet on baseball.

Sydow-analysis

This is the 84th birthday of Max von Sydow, the Swedish actor who was a stalwart in Ingmar Bergman movies. He played the knight who had the chess game with Death in The Seventh Seal.

Von Sydow's character was usually anguished and brooding. His long face and serious mien were effective in casting a pall over the proceedings.

Today's ghost words: sydow, n. A gaunt, angular shadow.

A coincidence worth noting: Von Sydow played in the movie Truth and Treason opposite Haley Joel Osment, who has the same birthday (he is 23 today).

Don't be born again

According to records, the philosopher Buddha was born right around this time in 563 B. C.

Buddha taught, roughly speaking, that all life is suffering and that we must strive for release from the endless recurrence of suffering life through a renunciation -- an annihilation -- of self.

The flaw, or paradox, of this philosophy has always seemed to me that we must first be able to develop a self, capable enough of enlightened self-awareness, in order to renounce it.

In any event, Buddha and his adherents called this self-lessness, or egolessness, anatta. Ever since Buddha's time, of course, and before it, societies have conspired to facilitate the process of eroding and destroying the individual self.

Which leads me to today's ghost word: anattamization.

Anattamization is the systematic eradication of the self, carried out by the state in collaboration with the culture.

A Bentley of an insult

Today is the birthday of George III of England, born in 1738.

George the Third
Ought never to have occurred.
One can only wonder
At so grotesque a blunder.

-- Edmund Clerihew Bentley

A word worth keeping

Poet William Wordsworth was born on this day in 1770. Wordsworth was said to have coined the word pedestrian, the noun meaning someone going on foot. That could be, however, just another of the pedantries (anagram of pedestrian) of certain word scholars.

Pedestrian comes from the Latin pedester, going on foot (from pedes, foot).

Has A PRESIDENT (another anagram of pedestrian) ever been a pedestrian of note? Our current one is pedestrian (adj.), to be sure -- meaning dull and mediocre -- but no modern Presidents have been walkers, to speak of, except maybe Eisenhower, who walked along golf courses.

Gored by bull

Ghost word:

Algorism, n.: A statement, easily disproved, claiming credit for something.

Today is Al Gore's 62nd birthday. At one time or another, to some degree or another, the Nobel Prize-winner has said that he was instrumental in the creation of the Internet, and in coining the terms "nanotechnology" and "the Information Superhighway."

Wait around long enough, and Gore will claim he discovered global warming.

Anagram of the day:

Albert Arnold Gore = blander rot galore

This is also the 62nd birthday, by the way, of Rhea Perlman, who played Carla on Cheers. She coined a word of her own: Birdzilla, the oversized turkey that Norm stuck in her oven on Thanksgiving Day.