Why Americans have such poor hygiene (one of the many reasons)

If you're thirsty you may go to get a drink from the sink (unless, of course, there's bottled water around). The problem is that the sink is where you wash your dishes and food, and even your baby. Using the faucet, like they do in Poland, just makes better sense. Sink and faucet just aren't synonyms, but they're used like they are all the time. I'd prefer water from the faucet, myself.

Elephant or Gorilla?

It starts with a question: is it an elephant or a gorilla?

This question, I feel, is an unlikely one since the two animals are so very different, and also not usually wandering around near people with poor eyesight who may need clarification about what animal is about to crush their dog.

Really, though, one of these animals is often in the room, and I could see how an 800 pound gorilla could be mistaken for a small elephant. So which is it: elephant or gorilla?

It's a gorilla, a really big gorilla. Unless there's a problem in the bedroom (and not because getting an upholstered headboard is too expensive or you need a new duvet cover), then it's an elephant. Other than the obvious and tired elephant-trunk jokes (this meme really peaked with Missy Elliot), when it comes to elephant v. gorilla, elephant always wins (they have better lawyers), and a leaky sink in the kitchen is always less bad than one in the bedroom.

Doctor, do you think he'll ever recover from this comma?

How do you spell "comma?"
C-O-M-M-A.
For both types of "commas?"
What do you mean both types? Do you mean a colon?
No. What about for a medical comma?
You mean "coma."
So one "m?"
Yes, to be in a medical coma has just one "m." Also, it's pronounced very differently.

Lip service

Reading a website, I came across the phrase 'lip service'. I ask my two totally awesomely amazing co-workers what it means. They discuss the fact that it means to talk something up; to speak well of something, but also that it also indicates falling short in regards to taking action.

"Hipsters pay plenty of lip service to safety [actually they don't], but they still don't have brakes on their bicycles."

After a few minutes of conversation, I ask the real question:

"So, it's not something dirty, then?"

No. No it's not.

The hardest part...

I've continually found that the most difficult aspect of writing the Polecat blog is avoiding using words like: 'titty', 'tatas', 'dildo', 'cock-'anything, 'homo'. Well, it's hard getting criticized for dancing around these words and they're all pretty much direct quotations or at least hominems. So, in true George Carlin style, I'm using them all here. If you ever need a dirty word for an earlier post and you're not quite sure what word to use, just pick one from above.

You've been Polecatted.

Father is Not Safe for Work

Getting a snack while at work, a particular word comes up (it's not important how). This word is somewhat amusing sounding and so, when it's simply the Polish word for 'father', there's no reason not to repeat it several times at different speeds and intonations... in front of a tour group.

Who knew that the Polish word for 'father' is 'tata'?

Herbs gone wild

"The fish isn't great ; I like the dill though."

An innocent statement, until you have a Polish accent and don't pause quite long enough between the words 'dill' and 'though'. Let's just say that we were sitting at dinner and suddenly three people were strongly unsure how the conversation went from the quality of the food to items which can be purchased at a semi-famous SF store that has nothing to do with Earthquakes. (Here's a hint -- Earthquakes cause vibrations.)

Leadership training takes lots of asses

Polecat is at a leadership training exercise. It's an intense, multi-day event with almost all outside contact cut off. It's important to assess your progress during these events and to assess where you are professionally. It's also important not to pronounce 'assess' and 'asses' the same way.

Walk your lunch...

or, edible pets.

It can be quite a lot of work to bring lunch from one place to another. You have to hold it, your hands aren't free. If you have a drink too, how will you open doors? (You don't open doors for people?! You are a terrible person.) And yet, during lunch time, especially on a nice day, people are often out walking their pets. If only we had edible pets. They would be a sort of living, walking, tofu dog -- the pet would need to be edible without cooking, or you could only go for long walks on very hot days and that would mean that you'd need to live in Texas, which would mean that you'd never eat tofu, unless it was made of meat.

On a related note, I wonder how salamanders taste.

He has his way with animals

Special guest awk moment from 'the French'.

We have recently learned from the French (specifically from Frenchy McFrencherson -- who is, for the record, not at all Irish) that there is a drastic difference between the sentence:

"He has a way with animals." (Animals like him) and
"He has his way with animals." (He likes animals, a lot)

"So, you have genital herpes"

I think it's important to start by thinking about how to frame a topic of conversation. You may say something like: "I have a question about similar sounding terms that seem to be totally unrelated", or "I don't understand why it's called genital heart disease". The latter would quickly pinpoint the misunderstanding and therefore the question that should be posed and the issue to be elucidated. These are both much better ways to start a conversation than turning to the person sitting next to you and saying: "So, you have genital herpes [for the record, very not true]". This is, well, just not the right way to start a question about word meanings and origins.

This brings us to the next point; genital != congenital != genetic. Polecat obviously needs to watch more episodes of House, or ER (omg, that show is still on the air?!), or some other suitable medical drama (maybe Scrubs?).

Time to clarify. Genetic is something that is inherited, through one's genes. Congenital is something that is present at birth (there are Latin work origins and stuff), genital is where no one here has herpes.

Why isn't it 'the blood'?

So when it's on the floor, it's 'the blood is on the floor.' When you're talking about biting and it ends up making someone bleed, you 'draw blood', not 'draw the blood'.

Polecat, you're scaring me.

Swap meat?

I fail at understanding the meaning of "swap meet". Someone said it and I though it's "swap meat" ... a gathering where people exchange partners or something... that... partners... have.

Sauce pants

Polecat just cooked a large Polish dinner for teh other kittehs. While everyone was waiting in suspense for the food to be finished, Polecat spilled some food on his pants. Thus Polecat had sauce pants. Polecat didn't know this was different from what the waiting people felt. There was quite a build-up of sauce pants until the food was ready.

I mean, Polecat does work in a tech company...

but when Polecat walked outside past the garden of cacti, he was not trying to make a comment on the decline of women in computer science. The plural of cactus, is definitely pronounced cacti; Polecat did not mean to comment on how many cockti there are around the office.

An oven-like mitt?

The astronaunts in this story had 'oven-like mitts'?! Either their hands must have been weighted down by a four-range stove with oven door and warming bin (and maybe one of those little kitchen timers), or the mittens kept their hands nice and toasty warm -- wouldn't they have been 'toaster-like mitts' in that case? An alternative is that the reporter should have said "oven-mitt like mitts". Ideally, she would have avoided the contentious issue all together, but we shouldn't really expect someone who titles an article: "Astronauts step outside space station for lube job" to seriously consider the semantics of hand-wear.
Moreover, a mitt is pretty much the same as a mitten, but somehow muffs and muffins are not so grammatically interchangeable? Yes, we're back to the muff issue again. No, you should not think about it too hard, at least not out loud.

Watch out Superman

When starting a new, complicated project, it's often important to get some oversight, someone to supervise, if you will. It looks like Polecat needs some supervision. This can be a tricky ask when you're Polecat, because you don't accidentally want to ask for someone's super-vision (or super vision), thus leaving them with normal 20/20, or even a pair of glasses.

Supervision: someone is going to watch out for you
Super-vision (or super vision): someone may end up blind, then they'll need to supervision

One exam you don't want to proctor

"Just to clarify, proctor and Proctology are not related."

Proctology is from the Greek words Proktos and Logos. Proctor is from the word procurator. No relation.

In America, they rear children

Child rearing has become a more prominent in the news with discussions of Michelle Obama's role as first lady (or first mother?). Polecat doesn't understand why child rearing is okay to talk about on such a wide scale, or in public, or not in jail.

It would seem that raising and rearing children is the same thing. How does this make sense? You can raise a flag, but not rear it. You can not go into a raise entrance to a building. Can you get too drunk in a bar and end up raising.......? um. yeah.

meow.

The udderly wrong word for work

It's just that cows aren't the cleanest animals in the world. Polecat doesn't want things that come from them. Steak is okay, but milk, well, Polecat doesn't want to touch anything that comes from a cow's... udders.

Sometimes Polecat forgets more specific words like 'udder'. Not all animals have them. People don't have them so Polecat doesn't need that word so often. Technically there are other words that can be more widely used; remembering those means having a wider vocabulary with fewer words.

Some of these words don't seem to be as okay to use in public, however.

But, Polecat doesn't want anything that comes from a cows udders.