Haver

So when the Proclaimers say, "And when I haver, hey I know I'm gonna be /I'm gonna be the man who's havering to you," they mean something like "blathering on incessantly," which is something my girlfriend once accused me of - now she's my wife.

We met in the Republic of Korea - that's South Korea - not to be mistaken with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea), which even a lot of my students there didn't realize was its technical name. Just based on the reality of the two places and their systems of governance, it makes sense to make the mistake. After all, Korea - like Germany - is one of those places that doesn't call itself by the name foreigners call it: "Daehan Minguk" and "Deutschland," respectively.

There's actually a joke - an observation, maybe - about the number of adjectives, particularly creditable ones, in front of a country's name, acting as a function of how miserable the place actually is. Like, if I were to found the Wonderful, Shiny, Republican Democracy of Happy People, you'd want to avoid going there as if your life depended on it. It's sort of like Danth's Law: if you have to point out that you've won an argument, you've actually lost it.

I learned that when I went down an internet rabbit-hole of eponymous laws. It's not the only one that I've been down. My friend Jason and I got t-boned by a Dodge Durango when I was in college, and the last thing I was able to get out before impact was, "Dude!"

So, I started looking up famous people's last words. My favorite ones were Francisco "Pancho" Villa's, "It can't end this way. Tell them I said something." The quote's almost certainly apocryphal though; Villa died pretty suddenly when he was suddenly ventilated by a bunch of bullets.

Quickly is a much better way to go than what happened to Taylor Mitchell, the only adult who's ever been killed by coyotes. She was a nineteen year-old popstar in Canada. This came up when I taught English alongside a bunch of Canadians in Seoul. We were always ribbing each other about our respective countries. For them, it was always the fact that we had George W. Bush as President, unaffordable healthcare, and, well, a bunch of things. We'd try to clap back about how 90% of their population lives within a hundred miles of us. Like, if we suck so much, why are you all huddled up against us like we're your mom or something? And, while we're at it, one of your CELEBRITIES is one of the only adults ever to be eaten by coyotes. It's like, Jesus, guys - take care of your people!

My wife's not Canadian, she's from Pittsburgh. I'm from Philly. We don't have that rivalry because I never really followed sports until I came to North Carolina. I really liked Cam Newton. The Panther's logo is in the shape of the Carolinas. The Steelers have bars all over the US because after the steel industry shut down, there was a diaspora of fans from the region, looking for jobs all over the country.

I was never super big on sports, but I kind of get it. It feels good to have some sort of identity connected with where you live, even if the players and the franchises are often not originally from the area. So, it's like they say: you're sort of just cheering for laundry.

But that's okay. We should get to feel good about things like that. It gets kind of dangerous when people go overboard. I always say that nationalism has its place, and that place is sports. (I'll have to beg the pardon of people who've lost friends or family in sports riots.) Anything more than that, you end up with wars.

Speaking of wars, did you know that the music we always associate with clowns is actually a military march called, "The Entrance of the Gladiators"? If you hear it performed as it was originally written, it makes a bit more sense, but I just keep imagining waaaaaay too many guys getting out of an Armored Personnel Carrier, like a ridiculous number of guys. It could be one of those jokes from "Family Guy" that just keeps going and going and going. Those are called "overly long gags" in comedy.

Paraprosdokian jokes are the ones that set you up to think that the joke is going in one direction, and the punchline is something completely out of left field. Supposedly, the expression "left field" comes from the Chicago Cubs, having been close by a mental asylum. Guess which side of the field was in earshot of people whooping and screaming? The left.

The chronology doesn't really work to explain that though because people didn't start saying that until quite a while after the Cubs changed locations. So, yeah, it's disputed - like our usage of the word "black" in English. Most of our linguistic roots come from German or Latin, so it would stand to reason that we'd say something like "nero" or "schwarz," but we don't. Words are crazy. And we've got so many of them. Seriously, we have a word for organisms that eat only nutmeg: myristicivorous.

I'm a word guy, but I'm not etymologist. If I did that, I'd be talking about something outside of my realm of expertise. A person who does that is called an "ultracrepedarian."

Really, they're just havering on anyway.