My life with covfefe

Hours ago, I was asking, "WTH is covfefe?"  Moments after I found out, I was asked, "WTH is covfefe?"  So I decided to look into it.

Apparently early Wednesday morning, President Trump was sleep-tweeting, and the since deleted result was this:

“Despite the constant negative press covfefe"

And it ended there.

So now the big word on the internet is covfefe, and apparently you can even get hats with the "word"- that is, if you want your payment to become a "donation to Planned Parenthood.  But being the researcher that I am, I wondered if I could learn anything from that bastion of linguistic knowledge, Google Translate.  Well, GT detected Samoan- but gave no results other than covfefe right back at me.  But not all of GT's 100 odd languages just reflected it back at me.  No, some 15 languages capitalised Covfefe.  And some even gave me words back in the English translation box.  None of these words were remotely English, however.  But they did lead me down some interesting trails.

Out of 8 languages that responded with other nonsense words, 6 of them were major languages in India- Bengali (their 2nd biggest), Telugu (#3), Tamil (#5), Urdu (#6), Gujarati (#7), and Kannada (#8), which is NOT spoken in Canada.

with apologies to Debbie the Dog Lady

In fact there were only two languages outside of India that responded- and they both had the same word!  That word was "cofever" and it came up both in Portuguese and Slovenian.  When I Google searched cofever, what I got was the twitter handle of a Japanese person, who goes by the "real name" of Spring Summer Autumn Winter, and in the 4 years and seven months he/she/they have had the account, they have tweeted a grand total of 0 times.  Making things easy on their one follower.

The word Bengali gave me was Cappafe, which I learned is actually the name of a Turkish auto accessories company.

In Telugu was my favorite translation, kopphph.  I almost expected to find it under "other choices for the new IPFW acronym", but the closest I actually came was on a Japanese medical journal exploring low-hormone treatments for the nastier parts of menstruation.

Tamil had my 2nd-favorite word, Kovpapa, which is the pseudonym for a Hungarian blogger real name Kovats Kristof, who's blog is titled either "Free University of Lebanon" or Country Girl Free University."  I'm not sure if the name is inverted, and if not, it's gender neutral, and so is his/her blogger picture, but whichever, they have "an eclectic worldview, I try to wake up with my age. Do not always succeed."  Again, not sure if that should have been "with my age" or "AT my age."


Urdu had a word that might well become the name of my next pet, Kuuffy.  I found Kuuffy is a "summoner" in the game League of Legends, which pretty much precludes me from understanding anything further there.


Gujarati gives us Kovafenf, to which the only lead I got was to a Brazilian massage sofa.  Sorry, no pictures.  Leastways, no good ones.


And finally Kannada brings us Chowff- which I at first thought, surely that will come up in Welsh.  However, all I really got from it was a link to the Chow Test.  Not a ISTEP for doggies, it had a definition a mile long of which I understood none until I hit:  "In a time-series analysis... used to determine whether an independent variable has different effects on different subgroups of the population."  Yep, got it.


So, if you extrapolate all the data, here is what covfefe means:  It is a statistical formula devised at the Free University of Lebanon to determine if a summoner suffering symptoms of menstrual pain while lying on a Brazilian massage sofa can be cured by low-level sex hormone treatments found on Turkish auto accessory sites.  Simple, huh?

And today's subject...

So, in politics this weekend, we had Trump making a less than respectful Memorial Day tweet, Ivanka getting blasted for showing us how to make champagne popsicles, Pat Miller bashing Andrea Mitchell for bashing the SecState's Harley, Kathy Griffin adds her name to the growing list of celebrities who consider President-cide a viable alternative to co-existing, Shep Smith comes out as an open homosexual but closet wisher that he worked for CNN, and a FB friend thought it would be amusing to post an anti-America meme on Memorial Day.  But, wait, because...

Instead of worrying about such feeble-minded BS, I have something much more fun today- the 24 animals MOST likely to kill you!  And at least 23 of them can do it without gun control!  According to CNet, here they are:


24- Alligators

According to the story, vending machines are 13 X more likely to kill you than a gator.  But who swims with a vending machine at Disney World?

23- Sharks

Well, that'll blow a big hole in Discovery Channel's Shark Week, won't it?

22- Wolves

I'm guessing this doesn't include werewolves as the kill-ers and vampires as the kill-ees...

21- Horses

Especially those sneaky little Shetland Ponies.  Never did trust those sneaky buggers.

20- Leopards

LeoPARDS, you idiot!  The cat!


19- Ants


Fire Ants can kill up to 30 people a year- no word on bears with pick-a-nick baskets...


18- Jellyfish

And I am the god of jellyfish... so beware....

17- Bees

Their pretty hard on bears too, I hear...

16- Deer

Car-deer events take out about 130 people every year.  With 65,000 deer hit every year just in New York State, I think we got off easy.

15- Cape Buffalo

They even scare the lions.  Of course, the Packers scare lions too, but that's another dealio....


14- Lions

Okay, so maybe I shouldn't have just made fun of them...


13- Elephants

Pachyderms kill about 500 people a year.  Hopefully, all poachers.

12- Hippos

So think again before fat-shaming one.

11- Crocodiles

Crocs kill almost 77 times more people per year than vending machines.  Take THAT, gators!

10- and 9- Tapeworms and ascaris roundworms

Yuck.  I call bogus.

8- Scorpions

2,000 species of scorps.  Only 30 or so can kill a human being.  But they manage to get over 3,200 a year.  They work harder at it.


7 (tie)- Freshwater snails

I call BS on this one too.  They get nominated for releasing the schistosomiasis bacteria into water, and IT kills you.  But no, bacteria don't make the list, only vectors, Victor.

7 (tie) Assassin Bug

Again, a vector for Chagas' Disease, which he shoulda kept to himself.

7 (tie)- Tsetse Fly

Will we ever hit another one that'll kill you itself?

4- Dogs

Damn straight I will... now get my dinner!

3- Snakes

Snakes claim 50K people per year- and by some stats, maybe one of them is in a snake-handling church.

2- Humans

You knew they'd get to us eventually, right?  Out of 475,000 annually I believe three are committed by the operators of Gerber fabric cutting machines whose bosses are too cheap to get them fixed properly, but that's just a hunch.


And the Numero Uno killer?  It's another vector, Victor...


1- Mosquitos

Most through passing on malaria, though after the swarm that attacked Laurie at Eagle Marsh last summer, I'm not convinced that a few of those one million per aren't just sucked dry.

And there you have it!

A three day weekend's picture stories- heavily edited

Well, if one picture is worth 1K words, I took a couple volumes of War And Peace this weekend.  That would actually 2X 588 give or take, so I am greatly exaggerating here; however, I did take a LOT of pics, so consider this a "Best of" post.


FRIDAY

Scrappy off-leashing:  Does he head for the groundhog dens?  No, the woods.  Shithead.

All but two (that I have seen) of the Jacks in the woods have lost their pulpits.  Inside...

...Jack is now a fruit, so to speak

As Scrappy approached this tree from the front a ground hog had just run to a den beneath it from the right.  This is after Scrappy veered off to avoid detecting the beast.

I'm guessing we had a destructive tree-fall in the Swamp a few days back

Most of that water is actually California Road in disguise

Now here is a funny story.  See this guy a ways off.  He sees us, runs over to a den just off the left side of the puddle, looks at us through the tall grass as we approach.  As he's diving in, another one from the right of the puddle farther away runs right towards us, veering off at the same spot to also go into the den.  By the time we got to the hole, they were growling at each other in their weird whistling-growling way.  Scrappy, always more interested in smell left in butt-imprints than scents airborne, whined a sec and moved on.

SATURDAY

Several shouting matches with Scooter the Pig as he consumed a half a feeder of food in about an hour and a half.  The one time I snuck up to the door and yelled, "SCOOOTER!"  He did a backflip.

Baby bunny on Groundhog Road.  He did the "play dead thing"- or else, he just realised, as many forest creatures do, that Scrappy is little threat.

IDK what these are, but they are popping up all over.

These too

"Would you be done with those flowers and COME ON?!?"

Yeah, we had to cross that or turn around.

I don't mean to say that the water across the trail gets deep at times, but that green stuff is honest-to-Bob algae.

One of the two Jacks still preaching that I know of.

Peanut hosted a cookout that afternoon

Tons of little kids + two willing adults+ a very muddy back yard will soon = a very messy kickball game.

Lilly and Ellie weren't quite carhop material on those skates

Crash

Grillmaster Uncle Chuck being congratulated on a fine job

Out of about 50 tries, finally got one pic of a ball actually being kicked.

SUNDAY

Scrappy scares a duck hen out of the office flower bed

Some of the damage AEP is still on the hook for

DAISIES!

Way down the way, a hawk being harassed by the little guys

MONDAY

Zoo 2017

Penguin Union meeting- waiting for Joe to get back fro m Starbucks

Best part of the Zoo- pet the stingrays!  No, seriously!

Taz off duty

Held up at Kangaroo pen- they were crossing the road at their leisure

Tour guide desperately trying not to photobomb a shot I was trying to get her in in the first place

Dingo

The horniest tortoise alive

Laurie getting your goat

At the sitatunga exhibit, the two antelope were too rude to stand for guests, so everyone checked out the bullfrogs nearby instead.

Bat eared fox

Lovin' that lettuce

"Lettuce?  Did I miss the memo AGAIN?"

"I'm gettin' bagged!"

The baby girl of the family.

Provost's Squirrel sound asleep on the branch.

"But, the sign says..."