Alternative Pastimes to Sticking Pins in One's Self

It's a Thursday morning and so I am sitting in the bookshop with my nose buried in this laptop.

Yesterday night I began to watch the Republican convention's second day (not including the first day which essentially did not take place because of Tropical Storm Isaac), but I then decided that my time would be much better spent reading a romance novel.

THE PROBLEM is that there was a great deal of hypocrisy, criticizing the President for problems of the Republican congressmen and voters themselves. Later on, according to the reports that I've read, Paul Ryan also said a good deal of things which simply weren't true; so it seems that I really didn't miss much worth hearing.

For instance, when I think of exorbitant spending I think of the Bush-era military sending planes to Afghanistan with pallets full of dollar bills which amount to billions of dollars — which then disappear; and invading Iraq in the absence of any threat to the US from that quarter. Whereas the criticisms of government spending under the Obama presidency are, in fact, criticizing worthwhile and necessary projects like social security, health care funding, and keeping the American-based car manufacturing industry working. Why are the Republicans complaining about this now when this would so clearly have been better applied and undeniably effective during the Bush presidency (they are, after all, still in the majority in the House of Representatives, and profit from a divided Democratic congress)?

I came across a handy graph which showed — and I can't believe this is true — that the tax cuts which were introduced under George W. Bush are in fact a greater contributor of public debt than all of our wars in the past decade. It is the Republican Party who are refusing to allow these cuts to be even partially repealed. I know that debt is calculated two ways — private debt and government debt — so I haven't sorted out yet what the graph precisely means, but this seems pretty egregious.

***

Pronounsical Adventures

Today we had (beginning at 9:30 a.m., which is groaningly early compared to the 10:15ish times we've had) an exam review session in my Greek class. Needless to say, it was loads of fun to learn indefinite pronouns and prepositions (hopefully my translation of the grammatical nomenclature is correct) as well as the noun group which includes the word grammatéas.* So I am sharing the wealth and imparting to you what I should be engraving in my cranium for future reference: *secretary

Taken from Giorgos Babinioti's Elliniki Glossa, Chapter 14.
(Ληφθεί από το "Ελληνική Γλώσσα" του Γεώργιου Μπαμπινιώτη, στο ενότητα 14.
This field of highflown expression within the translational art, Greek-to-English, remains in a highly experimental stage.)

Indefinite adjectival pronouns:

1. Κάποιος = somebody, some [person]
Feminine singular: κάποια, Neuter singular: κάποιο
Declined like the paradigmatic adjective νέ -ος, -α, -ο)

Example: Somebody rang the bell.; OR At the party I met someone.

2. Κανένας OR κανείς = anyone
Feminine singular: καμία (it's a little hoity-toitier to put the emphasis on the ι instead of the α after it), Neuter singular: κανένα
Κανείς stays the same, but it's kanén -as, -os (genitive), -an (accusative); kamía, kamías, kamía; kanéna, kanenós, kanéna.

Example: Did anyone call you? OR No, nobody called you.

3. Μερικοί = several, a couple of
Feminine plural: μερικές, Neuter plural: μερικά
Declined merikoí, merikón, merikoús; merikés, merikón, merikés; meriká, merikón, meriká.
[Italics indicate an omega instead of an omicron.]

Example: The eyes of some (/ a couple of) men are very lovely. 
(That was the textbook's first example, so I went with it . . .)

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Though we haven't even gotten around to the prepositions and nouns, I've run out of, er, enthusiasm. (c:

The exam will take place on Monday. — Ο όνειδος θα πραγματοποιηθεί τη Δευτέρα.