Militate \MIL-ih-tayt\, intransitive verb:
To have force or influence.

In our current era of politics, many factors militate against changes in policies.
— Reed Hundt, You Say You Want a Revolution

Even though Simpson’s youth, limited professional experience, lack of reputation, unmarried status, and modest social origins all militated against success, the twenty-eight-year-old Simpson applied for the post.
— Donald Caton, What a Blessing She Had Chloroform

By 2003 many of the uncertainties which militate against a “yes” might be resolved.
— Anatole Kaletsky, “Why Brown is right to put off the euro test”, Times (London), June 21, 2001

Militate comes from Latin militatus, past participle of militare, “to serve as a soldier,” from miles, milit-, “a soldier.”

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for militate

YouTube is reading militate as militant. Thank goodness. I’ll find something that way.

His American accent needs some work, but it probably sounds real enough to these English folks. His Jesse Jackson-esque Rhymin is top-notch though!

Power to the Link!

Vertiginous \vur-TIJ-uh-nuhs\, adjective:
1. Affected with vertigo; giddy; dizzy.
2. Causing or tending to cause dizziness.
3. Turning round; whirling; revolving.
4. Inclined to change quickly or frequently; inconstant.

But up close the building is impossibly steep, vertiginous, hostile.
— Neil Baldwln, Legends of the Plumed Serpent

He did us no good when, without permission, he entered Tibetan air space and flew up over central China, explaining that it was impossible to comply with the authorities’ instructions to land because of the vertiginous mountain terrain.
— Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones, Around the World in 20 Days

. . .the bouldery ruins of vertiginous cliffs pounded and lashed by the fury of wind and water.
— Lena Lencek and Gideon Bosker, The Beach

Vertiginous derives from Latin vertigo, “a turning round, a whirling round; giddiness,” from vertere, “to turn.” Related words include reverse, “to turn back (re-) or around”; subvert, “to undermine” (from sub-, “under” + vertere — at root “to turn from under, to overturn”); and versus, “against” (from versus, “turned towards,” hence “facing, opposed,” from the past participle of vertere).

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for vertiginous

This is kinda cool:

Time for a link!

Who says I ain’t got no culture or learnin’? Enjoy the The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude:

The Vertiginous Link of Exactitude!

Stanch \STONCH; STANCH\, transitive verb:
To stop the flowing of; to check in its course; also, to stop the flowing of blood from; as, “to stanch a wound.”

Out of the corner of my eye I can see one of Shiggy’s daughters busy at the rear door with a mop and a mountain of napkins, furious activity, but not enough to stanch the flow of water seeping inexorably into the room.
— T. Coraghessan Boyle, A Friend of the Earth

Otherwise Stalin might have feared that President Harry Truman would stanch any North Korean invasion by threatening to use atomic weapons.
— John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America

Stanch is from Old French estancher, “to stop a liquid from flowing.”

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for stanch

Oh, god. I want to stanch the bleeding from my eyes and ears!

DON’T CLICK THIS LINK!!!!!!

Opprobrium \uh-PRO-bree-uhm\, noun:
1. Disgrace; infamy; reproach mingled with contempt.
2. A cause or object of reproach or disgrace.

Typically academic, they disdainfully observed about many university press books–“too dry, too specialized, too self-absorbed for us.” In their world, the word “academic” was as much a term of opprobrium as the word “middlebrow” was in mine.
— Janice A. Radway, A Feeling for Books

Five months after Malaysia incurred global opprobrium by closing off its currency and capital markets, its officials are in no mood to apologize.
— Mark Landler, “Malaysia Says Its Much-Criticized Financial Strategy Has Worked”, New York Times, February 14, 1999

Opprobrium derives from Latin opprobrare, “to reproach,” from ob, “in the way of” + probrum, “reproach.” The adjective form is opprobrious.

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for opprobrium

This is exactly the kind of word designed to derail a comeback. No results in youtube. Nothing on Google Video (when is that going away? Or is it?)

OK, well, the FWFS is Disgrace and the FWSS is (let’s say) reproach. Here goes Disgrace:

Oh sweet irony. Don’t Hassle the Hoff!

KITT! Activate Super Link!

And Reproach:

I don’t know what these chicks are saying, but I sure feel reproached!

BAYAVADUUUUAHALINKABNDFGUAYAAAAAA!!!!!!

Solace \SOL-is\, noun:
1. Comfort in time of grief; alleviation of grief or anxiety.
2. That which relieves in distress; that which cheers or consoles; a source of relief.

transitive verb:
1. To comfort or cheer in grief or affliction; to console.
2. To allay; to soothe; as, “to solace grief.”

Surrounded by unhappiness at home, John Sr. early on found solace and certainty in the realm of science and technology.
— Sylvia Nasar, A Beautiful Mind

But immediately afterwards he dispels the agony by finding his customary solace in tales of chivalry.
— Andre Philippus Brink, The Novel: Language and Narrative from Cervantes to Calvino

It provided some solace that three large, highly conservative insurance companies were willing to bet on my life.
— Michael D. Eisner with Tony Schwartz, Work in Progress

Lillian’s Lutheranism, with its harsh creed that suffering was a sign of God’s favor, solaced her.
— Lois W. Banner, Finding Fran

Solace comes from Latin solacium, from solari, “to comfort; to console.”

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for solace

This is one of my very favorite episodes of South Park. Stan and Wendy break-up and he goes all goth until he learns how grown-ups deal with pain:

You want a link? Right here buddy!

cataract \KAT-uh-rakt\, noun:
1. A great fall of water over a precipice; a large waterfall.
2. A downpour; a flood.
3. A clouding or opacity of the lens or capsule of the eye, which obstructs the passage of light.

Niagara is no virgin. Today, its cataract can be stopped with the pull of a lever, and less than half its natural flow pours over the precipice.
— Thurston Clarke, “Roll Out the Barrel”, New York Times, February 16, 1997

Bartram was an ace self-dramatizer and avid explorer of nature, whose journals are full of blood and thunder and such dramatic observations of animals as this one of the American crocodile: “His enormous body swells. His plaited tail brandished high, floats upon the lake. The waters like a cataract descend from his opening jaws. Clouds of smoke issue from his dilated nostrils.”
— Diane Ackerman, “Nature Writers: A Species Unto Themselves”, New York Times, May 13, 1990

So ambitious is he to detail the full background of every individual, group, institution or phenomenon that figures in his chronicle . . . that a reader sometimes founders in the cataract of details.
— Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, review of Common Ground, by J. Anthony Lukasm, New York Times, September 12, 1985

A cataract of names spills over the pages: Henry Kissinger, G. Gordon Liddy, Betty Ford, Frank Sinatra, Alice Roosevelt Longworth.
— Richard F. Shepard, “How ’60 Minutes’ Ticks”, New York Times, December 25, 1985

Cataract is from Latin cataracta, “a waterfall, a portcullis,” from Greek kataraktes, katarrhaktes, from katarassein, “to dash down,” from kata-, “down” + arassein, “to strike, dash.”

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for cataract

On the way back. Beware the Return of the Living Cataract:

Use your cloudy eye to see the link!

Improvident \im-PROV-uh-duhnt; -dent\, adjective:
Lacking foresight or forethought; not foreseeing or providing for the future; negligent or thoughtless.

Elizabeth’s husband . . . had been a reckless, improvident man, who left many debts behind him when he died suddenly of a consumption in September 1704.
— David Nokes, Jane Austen: A Life

Lily is spoiled, pleasure-loving, and has one of those society mothers who are as improvident as a tornado.
— Elizabeth Hardwick, Sight-Readings: American Fictions

He called the decision “an exercise in raw judicial power” that was “improvident and extravagant.”
— Linda Greenhouse, “White Announces He’ll Step Down From High Court”, New York Times, March 20, 1993

Improvident derives from Latin improvidens, improvident-, from im- (for in-), “not” + providens, provident-, present participle of providere, “to see beforehand, to provide for,” from pro-, “before, forward” + videre, “to see.”

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for improvident

Youtube’s search interpreter is weird. It obviously found no exact matches for improvident, so it’s word-form database and logic told it to strip off the -nt to form improvide (which is must understand as some construction of the word “provide”), but since improvide is not a word, it didn’t find anything except two videos where the user misspelled improvise. This is how I get most of the less obvious word-match videos I find.

It’s video like this that make me despair of ever learning to play guitar. My fingers just don’t move that fast. Rock and Roll is forever. Party on Marty:

Whammy link.

I am taking a hiatus until next Wednesday (9/27) from Tube of The Day so that I can finish up my moving. When I come back, I will catch up the 9 days between 9/16 and then. As a special treat to hold you over, enjoy the robot bodybuilder:

Weah Heah to LINK *CLAP* you UP!

Commodious \kuh-MOH-dee-us\, adjective:
Comfortably or conveniently spacious; roomy; as, a commodious house.

Then there are the trousers, black check or blue check, with commodious pockets.
— Richard F. Shepard, “For Caring Chefs, Crowning Glory Is the Headgear”, New York Times, August 15, 1990

This brought John to accept Benjamin Franklin’s invitation to reside in his commodious quarters in Passy, a suburb at the city’s edge.
— Paul C. Nagel, John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, a Private Life

Fed by the melting ice packs, the ocean rose again, inundating coastal lowlands and pouring back through the Narrows, creating the commodious Upper Bay that would serve as the harbor of New York.
— Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898

Commodious derives from the Latin commodus, “conforming to measure, hence convenient or fit for a particular purpose,” from com-, “with” + modus, “measure.”

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for commodious

This is the kind of thing that made me want to do this in the first place. I love finding these little objets d’art. Well done all around.

This my Link of Whatever

Staid \STAYD\, adjective:
Steady or sedate in character; sober; composed; regular; not wild, volatile, or fanciful.

After the founders have left or died, after the excitement has moved elsewhere along with the best employees, after the company’s products and logo and image have grown synonymous with staid and predictable.
— Michael S. Malone, Infinite Loop

His mother being, in fact, a rather staid English country lady of mild habits and genteel aspirations.
— Lesley Hazleton, Driving To Detroit

He took no interest in artistic pursuits, and in time became a staid businessman like his father — a bank manager; in fact, utterly middle class.
— Patrick McGilligan, Fritz Lang: The Nature of the Beast

Staid is from obsolete staid, past participle of stay.

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for staid

OK, I hate to start posting again with such a lame entry, but there really wasn’t anything neat, and I didn’t want to post any AMVs and apprently staid is a common misspelling of Staind. This is just weird. At least it is somewhat original. He just kind of sits there. God, I hate performance art, I hope you enjoy the music at least.

Feel the link.