The Muralist
A huge, 500-foot mural has recently come to life in downtown Redwood City. It adds to the vitality of our city. Makes me proud to live here. I even wrote to the mayor and city council and praised them for spending my tax money with such vision. Take a look:
The Artist
The Artist Checks Her Work
Finally
So we’ve had Singing in the Rain, Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain, Here Comes That Rainy Day, A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall, Rain Drops Keep Falling on My Head… and now, in celebration of our much needed rain, I’ll add my “Not about the rain song,” “The Ballad of Sigmund Freud.” What it lacks in subtlety, it makes up for in energy. (Specially thanks to Jay Lehman on bass.)
The Language Corner
Word of the Year
About this time of year, Oxford Languages selects their “Word of the Year.” Not to be outdone, I am happy to announce that Let ‘er Rip Productions has also selected a “Word of the Year.” So, hang onto your hats….drum roll…here it is: Efffffing! Made famous by the Jan 6 Committee – but also liberally used elsewhere, the word is used when the word “fucking” could not be used, like on the evening news. So when Trump is enraged that the Secret Service would not take him to the capital to participate in the riots, he grabbed the steering wheel of the limo and screamed, “I’m the fucking president” (reported as “effffing president in committee testimony.)
Remember when Norman Mailer published The Naked and the Dead in 1948 about WW II, soldier dialogue had to say “fug” instead of fuck due to the sensors. Hmmm, have we advanced much since then? Maybe the committee testimony from people like Cassidy Hutchinson should have said, “Then President Trump grabbed the wheel and screamed, “I’m the fugging president.” Ahhh, how our language evolves.
Word of the Decade
Existential. What a winner. Happy to report many of my readers are reporting they use this word all the time in wide-ranging applications. They, and their readers have no fugging idea what it means, but it makes then seem smart and intellectual. Keep at it!
Enjoyed your song, Rick! The last few notes were….tuneful & sweet.
yes, rick, words count….using ‘existential’, sometimes, reminds me of my mortality….I am guessing you are right that its meanings and uses contain a vagueness, but it just may be that that quality generates attention both in the writer as it is chosen in a sentence and in the reader as it is attempted to be assimilated into a consciousness that seeks to understand…..what’s it all about, Alfie?
Thanks again for sharing! Great to see RWC embracing the Arts. Maybe I missed it, but I didn’t catch the artist’s name.
Love the mural, the song, and the word of the year. All fugging GREAT!
Love public art; congratulations on RC for encouraging it. As to word of the year, “effffffing”I didn’t see “fricking” as another euphemism for it, or the “F bomb or others I hear periodically. I once heard Garrison Keillr slip and say shit on the air on his old program. Does catch one’s attention!.
c
Rick, Great post. The mural and effing Dr. Freud.