No real waffles, sadly, though there is still some pear galette left from yesterday's block party. This post is about a different kind of waffle, the word-based one.
I overheard this in the news the other day (scribbled it down furiously):
drunk drivers who endanger our families and communities will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law
So it would be perfectly ok for drunk drivers to hit and kill lonely hermits? Or outlaws? Or perhaps people who don't really feel like they belong to a community? Or at least the law's arm would be only half-extended in those cases?
I hate that poli-babble. It's an attempt to evoke feelings other than the ones that should be evoked. What drunk drivers kill when they kill people is exactly that, people. - I also hate the term "working families", even though I know why it is used. It connects all that family-values crap with all that "honest working man" crap into one emotional digestive biscuit. But for me it brings up visions of little children working twelve-hour days.
To move to something totally different: I found a criticism of my name on a feminist blog:
Echidne of the Snakes (the name is very Mists of Avalon, but we'll forgive her) is calling on a boycott of eminient business publication Forbes for a recent article warning of the dangers of marrying career women, written by executive editor Michael Noer.
It is a silly name, of course, and hard to know how to pronounce. But then any name I would have picked for blogging would have been silly. The runner-up was Olive the Omnivorous Ovary. Still, Echidne has nothing to do with the Mists of Avalon. Funny how people get very different associations from things like names.