Today’s word might not meet a strict, scrabble (is it in the dictionary?) definition, but I found enough sites and writing using it to meet my low standards.

I came across the word on William Gibson’s blog. An interesting thought provoking, just a little bit out there blog, that Gibson has recently returned to writing.

The word is fortean. It is an adjective derived from Charles Fort’s work. Who was Charles Fort? Good question.

Fort was an early 20th century writer and researcher who coined the term teleportation while making a name for himself researching and writing on the paranormal. Today the term fortean is used to describe weird unexplainable phenomena.

The unexplainable phenomena that Gibson refers to in his blog is the vacation that apparently he and a big shot economist at Morgan Stanley believe Americans have been enjoying. A vacation from an impending economic Armageddon caused by America’s record trade deficit. I will have to look up Armageddon but it sure sounds worse than a depression.

ForteanTimes.com offers some entertaining fortean stories.

Happy Thanksgiving!

First off I must apologize to Olivier whose comment I played yesterday. I mispronounced his name. My spell checker “corrected” the spelling to Oliver.

I also want to add to yesterday’s podcast. I got an email from Lee Ann of the Lascivious Biddies letting me know “The Biddies are also a set of characters in The Music Man – it means little hens, but also talkative, gossipy women…” I think I will have to see that musical.

Today’s quote is inspired by a road trip my girlfriend and I took a few weeks ago. On the trip Billy Joel’s famous song “We Didn’t Start the Fire” turned up on one of our old mix CDs. We must have replayed it ten times trying to recall the cultural significance of each of his historical references. Between the two of us I think we got about half of them.

So starting with today’s very special Thanksgiving podcast I will go through one or two references per week. Think of it as a very long quote. I think there are over 100 references.

The song is essentially a catalog of the historical events of Billy’s life. The song begins in 1949 with Harry Truman.

Harry S. Truman was the 34th president of the United States. He had a sign on his desk that read “the buck stops here.”

He served as FDR’s Vice President until 1945 when FDR passed away and Truman became president.

He was re-elected for a second term, but barely, he was expected to lose the election and the Chicago Tribune even ran the headline “Dewey Defeats Truman”

While Truman is most famous for his decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan in August 1945 effectively ending World War II. I suspect Joel started with Truman because Truman was Joel’s earliest memory of an historical figure.

I stumbled across today’s word in Wikipedia. It is used in the entry for Madame Bovary, a scandalous 19th century novel by Gustave Flaubert. ( I was looking up Madame Bovary because the book was featured prominently in last night’s Desperate House Wives).

The word is exegesis. It is a noun that means an “extensive and critical interpretation of any text, or especially of a holy scripture. An exegete is a person skilled in the science of interpretation.”

In Wikipedia’s Madame Bovary entry exegesis is the title of section that examines the scandal the novel caused and and some of the techniques Flaubert employed. In my opinion the 171 word section isn’t extensive enough to be an exegesis. But that is the nice thing about Wikipedia this entry can grow and be improved.

Actually I first learned this word from Stephen Jay Gould- one of my favorite writers. I am sorry I can’t recall which book or article it was in. But if you read his work, you will come across exegesis frequently. And he most certainly uses it correctly.

I got a few questions about a word I used in yesterday’s Today’s Podcast. Maybe I should refer to Today’s Podcast as just TP or maybe something else?

Anyway I used a word yesterday that raised a few questions. The word was provenance. It is a noun meaning place of origin or where something came from. It can also have the connotation of authenticity such as the quote I used yesterday. Where did that quote really come from?

If you were listening to today’s podcast hoping to learn the provenance of podcasting. Long story short, Adam and Dave did it.

If you want a little more detail you can visit Wikipedia’s entry on podcasting and learn all about the beginning of podcasting.

Now into my 3rd week of podcasting I decided to listen to some of my past podcasts and see what I thought.

And what I think is I need some work on my delivery. I am too stiff. I talk to fast, pardon me I read too fast. That’s right I have been writing then reading my podcasts. Not a good idea if you want a conversational casual podcast feel.

Hopefully todays podcast will be a step in the right direction

To help me along I have chosen mellifluous as today’s word.

Mellifluous is an adjective that means flowing with sweetness or honey.

I would like my podcasts to flow with sweetness and honey.

I will keep repeating this word, mellifluous, over and over again and then I will become it. That reminds me of a good quote for tomorrow’s podcast.

Not reading my podcasts word for word should help to.