Re: Syncretism

1

triune Abrahamic hat trick

As opposed to what other sort of hat trick?


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 03-27-10 3:59 PM
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The goal-scoring kind?


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 03-27-10 4:00 PM
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One that is not Abrahamic or one in which the three elements are not united in one.


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 03-27-10 4:02 PM
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So 1 pretty much failed utterly at little bitchery, is what you're all saying. I see that now.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 03-27-10 4:03 PM
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I can never think of schmaltz without thinking of this.


Posted by: Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 03-27-10 4:23 PM
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"As G-d is my witness, I will never be without chicken fat again!"


Posted by: Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 03-27-10 4:24 PM
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He's working up to declaring himself the Messiah of all religions.


Posted by: Walt Someguy | Link to this comment | 03-27-10 4:27 PM
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First in the White House, I believe. The same year that Obama dropped in on that three-person Seder, David Axelrod dropped in on a Seder I used to attend.


Posted by: k-sky | Link to this comment | 03-27-10 4:29 PM
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What, did they just not invite Capers Funnye?


Posted by: snarkout | Link to this comment | 03-27-10 4:30 PM
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One that is not Abrahamic or one in which the three elements are not united in one.

Wait, so there's theoretically a non-triune Abrahamic hat trick? I can't imagine such a thing.


Posted by: Jesus McQueen | Link to this comment | 03-27-10 4:35 PM
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If one were born in one Abrahamic religion, then converted first to another and then to third, that could be a non-triune Abrahamic hat trick.


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 03-27-10 4:39 PM
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I'm trying to indulge you, nosflow, but aren't you just desperately denying that "Abrahamic hat trick" would have sufficed for your purposes?


Posted by: Jesus McQueen | Link to this comment | 03-27-10 4:42 PM
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The storm-dances of gulls, the barking game of seals,
Over and under the ocean ...
Divinely superfluous beauty
Rules the games, presides over destinies, makes trees grow
And hills tower, waves fall.
The incredible beauty of joy
Stars with fire the joining of lips, O let our loves too
Be joined, there is not a maiden
Burns and thirsts for love
More than my blood for you, by the shore of seals while the wings
Weave like a web in the air
Divinely superfluous beauty.

If you're happy with the merely sufficient, so be it.


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 03-27-10 4:44 PM
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14

Can you deny that 11 describes a nontriune Abrahamic hat trick?


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 03-27-10 4:45 PM
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As well as describing Cat Stevens.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 03-27-10 4:49 PM
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See, there's even a witness.


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 03-27-10 4:51 PM
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I wouldn't deny it, neb, any more than I would deny that "triune Abrahamic hat trick" reads as redundant to all but the little-bitchiest reader.


Posted by: Jesus McQueen | Link to this comment | 03-27-10 4:53 PM
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I really don't understand that claim, though. Please, do me the service of explaining where the redundancy lies.


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 03-27-10 4:56 PM
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Or at least explain the reading that you feel is most natural to all but the little-bitchiest.


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 03-27-10 4:57 PM
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A hat trick is a singular thing made of three, triune in the crudest sense. The triune immersion, for example, is a baptismal hat trick.


Posted by: Jesus McQueen | Link to this comment | 03-27-10 5:02 PM
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Or at least, having described the trick as triune, the fact that it is also hat is implied.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 03-27-10 5:09 PM
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Oh, I see. It's "triune" and "hat trick" that you object to. So a three-piece suit or a table with two chairs would also be triune (the latter insofar as they create a dining room set or whatever).

I don't find this very compelling. While I grant that the "tri-" prefix is unnecessary in the presence of "hat trick", I don't see that "hat trick" connotes unity in any interesting sense. After all, the normal case of a hat trick involves the three things being done at different times (albeit in the course of a single game). But we are imagining Obama's religious feat to consist partly in having these three religions be present in him separately yet simultaneously.


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 03-27-10 5:13 PM
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In fact 20 demands the denial you repudiate in 17.


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 03-27-10 5:14 PM
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Maybe Obama is, in metaphorical fact, trying to hit for the cycle.


Posted by: fake accent | Link to this comment | 03-27-10 5:19 PM
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What of the kind of hat tricks that involve rabbits?


Posted by: Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 03-27-10 5:35 PM
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That trick never works!


Posted by: Rocket T. Squirrel | Link to this comment | 03-27-10 5:36 PM
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23: No, I offered a definition of triune in the crudest, though perhaps I should have said the broadest, sense, implicitly allowing that a person could define it in bitchier more specific or refined ways, even a person who might suggest such a way and then, a moment later, argue for using the word to describe a three-piece suit.


Posted by: Jesus McQueen | Link to this comment | 03-27-10 5:40 PM
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Mitre, yarmulke, taqiyah?

(Abrahamic hat hat trick.)


Posted by: Mister Smearcase | Link to this comment | 03-27-10 5:43 PM
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What of the kind of hat tricks that involve rabbits?

You've got an extra 't' in that last word.


Posted by: fake accent | Link to this comment | 03-27-10 5:49 PM
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A "Gordie Howe hat trick" is a goal, an assist, and a fight (in a hockey game, sigh, and by a single person). Gordie Howe, a god-like figure, only had two in his NHL career.


Posted by: bill | Link to this comment | 03-27-10 6:00 PM
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even a person who might suggest such a way and then, a moment later, argue for using the word to describe a three-piece suit.

I wasn't arguing for using the word to describe a suit. I was saying that on your broad, crude (and apparently most obvious and intuitive) use, a three-piece suit is triune.


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 03-27-10 6:24 PM
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The first time I saw schmaltz, I wondered what that yellowy fatty stuff was. On hearing it was 'schmaltz', I wondered why they put food colouring in their rendered pig fat (szmalec).


Posted by: teraz kurwa my | Link to this comment | 03-27-10 6:29 PM
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So how did 'Schmaltz' come to be a surname?


Posted by: essear | Link to this comment | 03-27-10 6:56 PM
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34

"Schmaltz" is a surname?


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 03-27-10 7:00 PM
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"Szmalec" is.


Posted by: teraz kurwa my | Link to this comment | 03-27-10 7:05 PM
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Yeah, I know a dude named Schmaltz (originally from Germany). Shows up on the second page of a Google Image Search for 'Schmaltz', so I guess there aren't overwhelming numbers of them.


Posted by: essear | Link to this comment | 03-27-10 7:06 PM
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Maybe descended from a fat-renderer? I dunno.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 03-27-10 7:08 PM
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38

Maybe they couldn't afford the good surnames.


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 03-27-10 7:10 PM
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38: Possibly not far from the truth. From Paul Johnson's History of the Jews (about Jews being required to take "Germanic" names in the late 18th century):

Bribes were necessary to secure 'nice' family names. ... Many poorer Jews had unpleasant names foisted on them by malignant clerks: Glagenstrick (gallow's rope), Eselkopf (donkey's head), Taschengregger (pickpocket), Schmalz (grease), Borgenicht (don't borrow), for example.
In fact my wife's family name is potentially a name given in that manner.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 03-27-10 8:13 PM
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40

not to mention a secret hindu - http://www.sepiamutiny.com/sepia/archives/005238.html and http://www.sepiamutiny.com/sepia/archives/006126.html


Posted by: rey de vaqueiros | Link to this comment | 03-27-10 8:19 PM
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39: I was actually not being facetious.


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 03-27-10 8:20 PM
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I meant to acknowledge that possibility.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 03-27-10 8:23 PM
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39 My grandmother had a friend in gymnasium whose last name was 'Mistaufstrasse', her name, 'Zimmerspitz', was a bit strange but basically innocuous.


Posted by: teraz kurwa my | Link to this comment | 03-27-10 8:46 PM
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Posted by: | Link to this comment | 03-27-10 9:01 PM
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Mistaufstrasse

That's terrible.

When I was an undergrad there was a grad student in the German department with the last name Dick. Awful in German and English.


Posted by: Blume | Link to this comment | 03-27-10 9:45 PM
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39

I think most of those names went away fairly quickly but you'll still meet the occasional Katzenellenbogen (which I'm told* means Cat's Elbow) who must have been...oh wow, the Internet tells me it is "[a]n old, widely ramified family counting many rabbis among its members." I have never heard that verb as a participle.

*incorrectly. Fanks, Internet, bok bok! Ellbogen means elbow. Please ignore all of this. Please continue ignoring all of this.


Posted by: Mister Smearcase | Link to this comment | 03-27-10 10:49 PM
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46: Obviously, Katzenellenbogen must mean "cat's ells bows."


Posted by: A White Bear | Link to this comment | 03-27-10 10:52 PM
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Or Katzenelnbogen.


Posted by: Jesus McQueen | Link to this comment | 03-27-10 10:57 PM
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I think there was a Katzenellenbogen in a school I attended. The name sounds familiar.


Posted by: fake accent | Link to this comment | 03-27-10 10:59 PM
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When I was an undergrad there was a grad student in the German department with the last name Dick. Awful in German and English.

There is a professor at your current institution who goes by Dick by choice. His published work identifies him as Richard, of course, but everyone calls him Dick.


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 03-28-10 12:28 AM
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The puerilization of America! Why can't we let the Dicks, Weiners, and Wieners of the world be?


Posted by: Minivet | Link to this comment | 03-28-10 12:40 AM
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I don't titter, of course. I am an adult! I just wonder what goes through someone's head when he decides to go by Dick (or does he accept the epithet from others?). Does he do it by way of a reclamation, for instance? Normalizing Dick? Or does he just like the sound?

One can hardly ask!


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 03-28-10 12:42 AM
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I suspect for most of them the decision is not fraught at all. After all, they're too close to the word for the dual meaning to have much mental import. (I'm pretty sure this is the case with Weiners.)


Posted by: Minivet | Link to this comment | 03-28-10 12:51 AM
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My (common) first name has another meaning which could be titter-worthy, but I can't remember ever having associated the proper name with the noun (though granted, I didn't go by it in adolescence).


Posted by: Minivet | Link to this comment | 03-28-10 12:54 AM
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Weiner? What's the problem with that?


Posted by: teraz kurwa my | Link to this comment | 03-28-10 12:59 AM
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In far Amurrikey "Weiner" rhymes with "meaner", not "whiner".


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 03-28-10 1:02 AM
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Since "rhyme" arguably excludes identity make the contrast "liner".


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 03-28-10 1:02 AM
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|| A review of that white people book, for anyone actually interested. |>


Posted by: fake accent | Link to this comment | 03-28-10 2:07 AM
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One of worst germanic surnames to have is arguably Frauenschläger (i. e. women beater).


Posted by: Tiny Hermaphrodite, Esq. | Link to this comment | 03-28-10 3:04 AM
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"Schmaltz" is a surname?

There's a town called Manteca; they have waterslides there.


Posted by: foolishmortal | Link to this comment | 03-28-10 5:01 AM
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I was at school with a kid called Willie Dix. Nobody bothered him after a year or so.

A hat trick was originally cricket jargon, meaning a bowler taking three wickets with successive balls. This is much harder and rarer than three goals in soccer or hockey, and at one time anybody who did it was given a new club cap in recognition.

Both understanding Athanasianism and uniting the Abrahamic religions however, are goals which have never been achieved.


Posted by: OFE | Link to this comment | 03-28-10 5:03 AM
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Huh, I didn't follow the link before, so I assumed people were talking about the Martin Mull book


Posted by: rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 03-28-10 7:29 AM
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A hat trick was originally cricket jargon, meaning a bowler taking three wickets with successive balls. This is much harder and rarer than three goals in soccer or hockey, and at one time anybody who did it was given a new club cap in recognition.

Well, when the great Ovechkin scored a hat trick in ice hockey against the Penguins a few weeks ago, I threw my Capitals ball cap onto the ice along with about a hundred other people. Don't know if Ovechkin was presented with one.


Posted by: bill | Link to this comment | 03-28-10 9:55 AM
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51: My whole seismic class was erected members, member stiffness, straining wood and inserting rods, for days. I didn't see my classmates giggling. They aren't puerile enough, I guess.


Posted by: Megan | Link to this comment | 03-28-10 10:12 AM
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But did the earth move?


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 03-28-10 10:25 AM
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Awful in German and English.

That particular false cognate led to the creation of my favorite stage name, the German traditional singer King Size Dick.

I still giggle at that one.


Posted by: rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 03-28-10 10:33 AM
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58:
That's a nice review fa, thanks. I had worries from the publisher's copy, but should have known better. Will have to read.


Posted by: Jimmy Pongo | Link to this comment | 03-28-10 10:39 AM
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I wonder if there's any history of this surname hokey-pokey in Poland. As I've mentioned before, my own last name seems to mean something like "of the family of those stupid Germans who moved to Poland".


Posted by: Stanley | Link to this comment | 03-28-10 12:53 PM
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69 The Slavic root for "German" is pejorative (at least toward the language) in itself. It's the same as the root for "mute" so the Germans were named the people who can't speak.


Posted by: Mister Smearcase | Link to this comment | 03-28-10 3:33 PM
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I don't know shit about history.


Posted by: ToS | Link to this comment | 03-28-10 4:41 PM
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the slavs had no language at the time (nor did germans)

No, they just went "barbarbar", right?


Posted by: Alex | Link to this comment | 03-28-10 4:43 PM
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72: No, that was the Berbers.


Posted by: foolishmortal | Link to this comment | 03-28-10 5:26 PM
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I thought the Slavic word for German had its origins in trading contacts and lack of mutually intelligible languages. The Germans couldn't speak (Slavic languages), rather than not speaking at all (obviously). Of course, the real etymology could be something else.


Posted by: fake accent | Link to this comment | 03-28-10 5:41 PM
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Technically, we're talking about whatever ancestor languages there were at the time for modern Slavic languages, anyway.


Posted by: fake accent | Link to this comment | 03-28-10 5:42 PM
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75

So the first few google hits agree that "schmaltz" in the sense of something overly sweet or sentimental is derived from "schmaltz" in the sense of rendered chicken fat. But is rendered fat actually sweet? It sounds to be like a better metaphorical usage for "schmaltz" might be something cheesy rather than sweet.


Posted by: rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 03-28-10 7:35 PM
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Rendered chicken fat tastes like cheese?


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 03-28-10 7:38 PM
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I've never thought of "schmaltzy" as sweet or saccharine, but definitely sentimental. (Working on pre-Romantic lit for so long, it's hard for me to remember that "sentimental" is a bad thing to most people.)


Posted by: A White Bear | Link to this comment | 03-28-10 7:42 PM
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76: Is cheese cheesy?


Posted by: essear | Link to this comment | 03-28-10 7:46 PM
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Delving deeply into wikipedia, the modern, American metaphorical usage appears to be NY jazz age slang, which suggests to me that the original meaning was informed by an association of tradtional Jewish cooking with retrograde sentimentality; the New Yorker article cited in wikipedia appears to indicate a degree of lowest-common-denominator crowd-pleasingness was implied, as well. Deli food vs. the fine dining of challenging, improvisational jazz.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 03-28-10 7:52 PM
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Hmm, taking the deep Wikipedia research in another direction, Schmaltz and Schmalz are also common last names amongst Ashkenazi Jewish people of German and Austrian descent as it is meant to imply that the bearer has enough wealth to regularly purchase schmaltz. The latter part does earn a "citation needed". But another source has, The surname Schmaltz is derived from the Middle High German smalz meaning tallow, grease, or fat--and hence a metonymic occupational name for a chandler (candlemaker) plus it appears there is a non-Jewish line of Smalzes in Germany with a crest of arms 'n' at. So maybe not the best example of an "insult" name.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 03-28-10 8:02 PM
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Checking Google Books.

From "The Moving Picture World", 1915: "The subject selected for Mr. Bernard's introduction to the motion picture public, "Poor Schmaltz," presents him in the hilarious role of a German wigmaker who becomes the principal agent in a series of excruciatingly comic adventures."

Life magazine, April 1938, has a photo piece of various Americans and their views on Roosevelt's stimulus proposal, and the caption for a Caucasian-looking man starts out "No Schmaltz or Hosenscheinder is this, but Chief Hiki, a Cherokee." Putting this together with the last one, I wonder if Schmaltz was once a go-to silly German Jewish name.

A book American Speech, from 1937, defines "schmaltz" as "Synonymous with Long Underwear; opposite of jazz, hot, swing."


Posted by: Minivet | Link to this comment | 03-28-10 8:34 PM
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a series of excruciatingly comic adventures.

I like this phrase.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 03-28-10 8:44 PM
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Posted by: | Link to this comment | 03-28-10 8:47 PM
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82.last: The Online Etymology Dictionary has after describing the Yiddish and German origins, First mentioned in Eng. as "a derogatory term used to describe straight jazz" ["Vanity Fair," Nov. 1935].


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 03-28-10 8:54 PM
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85

Huh, so maybe it originally had a connotation of "bland", too.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 03-28-10 8:56 PM
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the New Yorker article cited in wikipedia appears to indicate a degree of lowest-common-denominator crowd-pleasingness was implied, as well.

That seems like the obvious interpretation. "Comfort food", you know. Suitable for granny and cousin timid.


Posted by: Cryptic ned | Link to this comment | 03-28-10 9:03 PM
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85 (soon-to-be-84?): Yes, the OED has the same first citation.


Posted by: Minivet | Link to this comment | 03-28-10 9:22 PM
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Not only that, but the Online Etymology Dictionary is also "OED"! And the Oxford dictionary had a lexicographer named "Online" and the Online Dictionary had a lexicographer named "Oxford"! Eerie.


Posted by: fake accent | Link to this comment | 03-28-10 9:28 PM
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75 I'm talking about things I don't know well, here. Depending on what time frame we're talking about, I suppose this would be Proto-Slavic, which is probably more a historical construct than an actual thing you could call a language. Hedgiest answer ever. It's a long time since grad school and I wasn't that good at it.


Posted by: Mister Smearcase | Link to this comment | 03-28-10 9:54 PM
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So the first few google hits agree that "schmaltz" in the sense of something overly sweet or sentimental is derived from "schmaltz" in the sense of rendered chicken fat. But is rendered fat actually sweet?

No, but it is delicious. I'm not kidding. You should render some chicken fat. Here's the best part! Free cooking oil!

(a) if you eat a lot of chickens you can just save the fatty deposits (or even use the chickens in recipes that call for you to skin them and save the skin).

(b) places that do a lot of trade in skinless chicken breasts, etc., will probably just give you pounds of skin if you ask.

Then you can cut the skin up and render the fat out AND you'll have loads of cracklings!


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 03-28-10 10:10 PM
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Schmaltz = Yacht jazz.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 03-29-10 6:09 AM
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Perhaps you all remember, and I can't think of a cards-related pun to note it with, but Michelle Obama's cousin is a rabbi.

And of course, plenty of Hindus seems to like to claim him for our own. If he can add Buddhism & Animism he has a full hand from 7th grade world cultures.


Posted by: Ile | Link to this comment | 03-29-10 11:56 AM
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Last year a temple attendant in Mysore told me enthusiastically, "Obama loves Hanuman!"


Posted by: Minivet | Link to this comment | 03-29-10 3:33 PM
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Nobody can resist a monkey god.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 03-29-10 3:44 PM
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I don't know the answers to many questions, but I know the answer to one. The woman with the shawl is one of my sister's best friends from high school, Laura Moser. She is married to Arun Chaudhary, the White House videographer.


Posted by: 'stina | Link to this comment | 03-29-10 4:54 PM
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