Is it just that I had too many jalapeños with my fri­joles con queso y arroz, or is Quaddafi  Kaddaffhi, Gaddafi Qadaffi look­ing more and more these days like an asshole?

I don’t mean that fig­u­ra­tively. I mean the real thing. What the proc­tol­o­gist sees. Where they put the proc­to­scope. Where a hem­or­rhoid spends its life.

I mean, Look At That Face!

The piece I snagged this from over at Hot Air (atta girl, MM!!!) has a lot more. I just wanted the video because I wanted to ini­ti­ate some rea­soned dis­cus­sion about how much he (gqfeiofdn — What IS IT with this infat­u­a­tion about tak­ing a lan­guage that looks like can­dle flames and putting it into Eng­lish? — Mum­mar! OK?) looks like a butt hole.

And while you’re at it, think of the fact that the peo­ple now in power were furi­ous — mad as wet hens — when Rea­gan dropped a cou­ple on this guy’s house and killed his mis­tress and one of his kids.

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Inter­est­ing.  Today we have the sense that the word aux­il­iary means a stand by, some­thing to be used as a last resort, a sport coat you hate but will wear if every­thing else is at the clean­ers, a gen­er­a­tor for when the power is out.

I have a lit­tle fea­ture from the folks at Oxford Eng­lish Dic­tio­nary called Word of the Day, and today’s (Wednesday’s) word is aux­il­iary. The fea­ture also includes the first known usage of the word. For aux­il­iary it is

1601 “They main­taine three sorts of sol­diers… the third are Aux­il­iaries, which serve for pay”

Pretty funny.

Up until the 30 Years War get­ting com­bat­ants usu­ally involved, say, King Edward III pick­ing up the phone and call­ing his dukes, barons, counts, etc., and say­ing I’m throw­ing a lit­tle shindig over in France and I need some troops and the troops would show up.

That model worked less and less well until the Mid­dle Ages thing wob­bled and then fell over and took the idea of liege lords and fealty with it.  Dur­ing the tran­si­tion the pow­ers that were start­ing using some troops that demanded (gasp!) money.

The sol­diers you’d use only when you absolutely had to would be those who required pay­ment.  The aux­il­iaries. The pants that don’t quite fit, the gen­er­a­tor that gob­bles gas and makes a lot of noise, the sport coat with the 100 deci­bel window-pane check. The auxiliaries.

The word hung around after the sys­tem that cre­ated it was gone and found a niche to fill.  Like a migrant farm worker who doesn’t want to go home.

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[Note: I hit PUBLISH instead of SAVE so this thing went live before it was
 ready. If you have encountered it in its various versions before this one
 I apologize. I was greatly annoyed when I wrote it. I still am.]

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[updated 19:15 UTC]

The new list of the rich­est coun­ties in Amer­ica is out and guess where the rich­est one is located.

I’ll give you three hints.

It is not located near Detroit, where they make cars.

It is not located near Pitts­burgh, where they make steel.

It’s not located near Chicago, the man­u­fac­tur­ing and retail hub of the country.

OK. Three more.

It’s not located near Hous­ton, where they import and refine much of our oil.

It’s not located near Omaha, where they process much of our beef.

It’s not located near Sil­i­con Val­ley, where they do a lot of high tech com­puter stuff, nor near Red­mond, Wash­ing­ton, where they do a lot of the soft­ware, nor near Dal­las, where they make a lot of the chips.

OK. One More.

It’s not located near any area of the coun­try that grows, man­u­fac­tures, designs, builds, makes, or sells any­thing of any use to anybody.

Give up? OK. Remem­ber Derbyshire’s advice:  get a Gov­ern­ment Job! And remem­ber, the next time you hear

• it’s for the homeless
• it’s for the starving
• it’s for the fill in the blank minority
• it’s for the country’s future
• it’s for the children

for­got one — sorry

• it’s for the environment

you’ll know who it’s really for, won’t you?

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