Politicians

The other night I was speaking to my friend Loopy and I told him of this Blog that I was planning to write. It’s been taking me three or four day to write a Blog. Mainly because of my pains, I can only write when I am pleasantly anesthetized with alcohol. Usually by that point in time, I do not really feel like writing anything.

Back several decades ago I took a 200 Level English course. The main reasons that I took the course were that it had one of the shortest sign-up lines and all in the line were young ladies. Although it can become a distraction, a classroom full of young ladies is a good experience for a young male with high testosterone levels. It allows you to daydream if the class is boring.

There are many reasons that there are short sign-up lines for certain elective classes. The three predominant factors are listed below:

1) The class is highly specialized and usually boring. The people in the sign-up line more than likely need this class as a pre-requisite for another highly specialized and equally boring class.
2) The Bad Professor syndrome. Either you don’t understand what they are trying to teach you or they are very hard with their grading (I found this to be a major factor when signing up for a class with an East Indian teacher). Except for the gifted few, most students don’t learn a damn thing and inevitably drop out (take an incomplete) or get bad grades.
3) The class is scheduled at an inconvenient time or coincides with a mandatory class.

It was a good course, not too boring and a hot babe sat next to me (let me rephrase that last statement – I intentionally sat next to the hot babe). The subject of the course was Etymology, which would seemingly be boring, but fortunately we had a Good Professor.

But I have strayed, as usual, from the topic of my Blog; Politicians. But before I get to the point of this Blog, I must say something about my friend Loopy (Paul).

As I did, Paul took 4 years of Latin, but he also took two years of Classical Greek. He therefore knows a lot about the origins of words (Etymology) in this thing that we refer to as the English language.

In our conversation I mentioned the word Politicians and asked if he knew the Etymology of the word. Unsurprisingly we both came to the same conclusion; great minds think alike.

The Etymology of the word Politics according to Webster’s:
Greek politika, from neuter plural of politikos political.

However we, Paul and I, had a different take on the word Politicians. Let’s break it down.

Poli - (no Y’s in either the Greek or Roman Latin Alphabet) so this is the same as Poly, which is a prefix meaning many.
tic – (no C’s in the Greek alphabet) so let’s add K to give it the right sound. This turns it into tick. As we all should know, a Tick is a small blood sucking insect that bores under your skin and causes pestilence.
ians – a suffix from the Latin word “anus” (I kid you not) meaning “from, related to, or like.

Therefore the true meaning of the word Politicians is: Related to many small blood sucking insects that get under your skin, cause disease and expel feces.

The Beach Bum